BUILDING EFFECTIVE INTERPERSONAL SKILLS Exercise Overview Interpersonal skills reflect the manager's ability to communicate with, understand, and motivate individuals and groups. Managers in international organizations must understand how cultural manners and norms affect communication with people in different parts of the world. Similarly, as organizations become more diverse, it is also important to understand the roles that various forms of diversity play in the development of interpersonal skills. Exercise Background Managers spend a lot of their time working with others. These other individuals may be supervisors, subordinates, team members, or peers and colleagues. They may also be as close as the next office or on the other side of the planet. To interact with such a diverse set of people effectively, you must first develop an awareness of and sensitivity to people from other parts of the world and to people different from yourself. Exercise Task A list of five scenarios involving people communicating with others on work-related matters follows. Your first task, working alone, is to rank these scenarios in order of the likelihood of interaction difficulties. Rank the scenario that seems to have the lowest likelihood of difficulty as number 1 (for example, all else equal, interactions between two white males from the same home town and of the same age and similar interests will not likely be difficult). Rank the scenario with the highest likelihood of difficulty as number 5 (for example, an employee with racial prejudices interacting with someone of a different race might have a higher likelihood of interpersonal difficulty). Young U.S. female manager meeting with older female manager from Mexico German and French colleagues exchanging e-mails about a new project Skype call involving a male Jordanian man- ager, a female Australian manager, and a male Israeli manager Telephone conference call between a young Indian male manager and an older Chinese male manager A face-to-face committee meeting with five people of the same gender from Indonesia, Russia, Canada, Pakistan, and Israel After you have finished your ranking, form small groups of three to five people and compare your rankings. Discuss the similarities and differences. Try to identify the relative impact of global differences, other differences, and technology