Christmas, Holi and Ramadan are famous feasts celebrated by people all over the world. But there are many more religious festivals that are much less well-known. This year, from the evening of Tuesday 13 May until the end of Thursday 15 May, the Jewish community celebrates one of their annual festivals; Shavuot. In Hebrew, Shavuot [...]
According to the World Database of Happiness the average level of happiness of most European countries increased throughout the last decades. People in Germany, however, are less satisfied with their lives than they used to be. The fact that the German gross domestic product has constantly been growing illustrates that an increase in wealth does [...]
The global marketplace is an extremely competitive world where intercultural skills are no longer just an advantage but a requirement. As companies increasingly ask their employees to work on a global scale to stay ahead of the game, they need to ensure they select people not only for their technical skills and international experience, but [...]
In recent years, there has been a steady decline in the foreign language skills of native English speakers. Not only does this skills gap increase the need for English speakers to rely on interpreters with the risk that they misinterpret implicit messages or miss the cultural nuances of what has been said, but it also [...]
“Operating effectively in a global economy relies on the right language skills – and the UK has the worst foreign language proficiency in Europe.” The CBI’s annual CBI Education and Skills Survey 2012 provides bleak reading on the state of UK employees’ foreign language skills. The UK’s share of global exports has gradually declined over [...]
English as the lingua franca we know today is facing challenges that affect its long term stability in the business world. Although many rely on it heavily to communicate across cultures, it may not be long before we say ‘adiós’ or ‘zai jian’ to the dominance of English in business. The need to take Spanish [...]
Listening is probably the most crucial element of business communication yet so often it is sorely neglected. The ability to focus fully on another person and pay complete attention to what is being said appears to be a dying art. It is often said that at best we retain only between 20 and 50% of [...]
The first thing to understand is that conflict in the workplace is a reality. We can either live with it, ignore it or deal with it. We are often faced with conflict from early on in our careers but managing conflict is a key skill for effective management and can make the difference between a [...]
A typical CEO of a company gets about 1000 emails a day and a typical corporate user 114 according to McKinsey’s 2012 Social Economy report. How about you? Do you waste hours wading through them or give in to the urge to simply delete the more cumbersome, vague or badly written emails. More to the [...]
