InterNations Blog

On Wednesday, October 29th, the Copenhagen community of InterNations had the opportunity to deepen their understanding of cross-cultural networking, thanks to the excellent lecture made by IN member Dr Finn Majlergaard at their latest Get-Together.

Finn presented several scientific models on cross-cultural communication and funny examples from daily life, together with classic sales strategies, in an entertaining and knowledgeable manner. Finn himself is a very experienced intercultural networker with business achievements in different countries and a profound expertise pertaining to international business life.

One of Finn’s main points was reconciliation, i.e. to understand, respect and use diversity – differences between you and me. Drawing upon the scientific framework of Fons Trompenaars, Finn delivered a model for successful cross-cultural networking based on a few basic steps like: 1) learn who you are yourself and the reasons why others would like you; 2) learn to present yourself in a few sentences; 3) define your action plan; 4) assess the risk of your plan (e.g. rejection); 5) do it!

Another basic rule of networking is to ask yourself the question: How can you help others? Finn, himself a Dane, said that the Danish are often worse off as networkers than other nations because they tend to set the primary focus of their networking activity on what they can GET, instead of what they can offer. This, however, is detrimental to successful networking!

To round off the presentation, Finn started a group exercise by organising a networking “marketplace”, where everybody could present themselves, what they could give and what they were looking for. During the rest of the evening, the participants exchanged more information on themselves and made new global-minded InterNations friends.

InterNations Ambassador Tobias Fuchs and intercultural consultant Søren Stig Andersen would like to thank Finn for his wonderful presentation and for giving the whole group helpful insights into the rules for ‚networking 101‘. All in all, it was yet another fine evening together with the best people in town!

PS: If you are interested in knowing more, or would like to take networking to a new level, please feel free to contact Finn Mejlergaard on InterNations.

Filed under: InterNations News on November 3rd, 2008