Workshop content:

We will discuss the challenges and rewards of intercultural communication in the workplace and our personal relationships. Adam Komisarof ‘90, a corporate trainer and professor of intercultural communication based in Japan, will begin by explaining some concepts from this field that help people to make sense of various cultural differences in verbal communication styles and values that they encounter. He will share some of his own memories after living in the UK almost two years in which the cultural gap both challenged him and served as a source of curiosity, discovery, and even pleasure. Participants will be asked to recount some of their experiences—either as a non-British person communicating with the British or vice versa. Adam will also give tips on how to bridge these culture gaps so we can build better interpersonal understanding with each other, whether for the purpose of friendship, love, or simply getting the job done at work.

Speaker profile:

Adam Komisarof, PhD, is Professor in Keio University's Faculty of Letters in Tokyo. He has spent two sabbaticals at the University of Oxford, first as a Visiting Academic at the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies (2012-13), and currently at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS). Adam has published 3 books about intercultural communication in business, higher education, and society—the newest being Crossing Boundaries and Weaving Intercultural Work, Life, and Scholarship in Globalizing Universities (Routledge, with Zhu Hua), as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters. As an intercultural trainer, he has performed scores of workshops over the past 25 years for large companies and governmental organizations in the United States, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Europe. Adam is also a Fellow and President of the International Academy for Intercultural Research, an academic organization dedicated to advancing research in intercultural studies and intergroup understanding in the world.

Mind The Culture Gap