Communication and intercultural skills are frequently listed as among the most desired and least common skills of MBA graduates. At CIMBA, developing such leadership competencies in our MBA students is a primary focus, instilling in them that they require a lifelong commitment to their practice. We facilitate this practice during the MBA program through structured, reflective debriefing of leadership development seminars.

This year, our CIMBA full-time MBA student cohort includes a diverse mix of students. This multicultural diversity has provided many opportunities for such intercultural learning. Currently, the students are working in several small intercultural teams to complete consulting projects for local Italian companies.

They also just completed an intercultural activity where they discussed Italian versus American business/professional cultures. The activity was designed in particular to provide support in dealing with intercultural challenges students may encounter within their multicultural consulting project teams and with their clients.

For the activity, every student was given both a list of Italian business practices and a list of American business practices. These lists were based on those a businessperson might review as part of "cultural etiquette" preparation before traveling abroad for business. First, each student was asked to individually identify the practices on each list they agreed with, as well as ones they disagreed with.

The class was then divided into two cultural groups: Italians and non-Italians. The non-Italian group included American and Peruvian students, as well as a student from Hong Kong. Both groups were instructed to collectively decide on five items from each list they felt were the most accurate, as well as five they felt were the least accurate.

Without prompting, the approaches each group took were markedly different. The non-Italians immediately asked, "What is the most efficient way to do this?" and tallied a matrix using the individual number of votes for each option. They discussed particular items only when required to break ties. By contrast, the Italians engaged in thorough discussion of each item in order to reach consensus on group selections. Even the seating arrangements for discussion were noticeably different:

 

The non-Italian Team

The Italian Team

The results of the activity revealed some interesting findings. In general, there were more points of agreement regarding Italian business/professional culture than regarding American business/professional culture. Students postulated that this was perhaps because the non-Italians have been immersed in Italian culture for the past several months while the Italians have not yet reached the part of the MBA program that takes place in the United States.