Effective Communication in the Globalised Workplace Specialization

In the course ‘Establishing a professional ‘self’ through effective intercultural communication’, you will learn how to communicate effectively to establish relationships with colleagues in a culturally and linguistically diverse community and workplace. As language reflects cultures, we begin the course by highlighting the need to take into considerations cultural values when we communicate in a multicultural community and workplace. We then move on to discuss some effective communication skills required to build relationships with colleagues in a globalised workplace. You will learn to adopt appropriate intrapersonal and interpersonal, verbal and nonverbal, communicative strategies to present information based on the 7 communication principles. Finally, you will learn to build your personal profile and appropriately align yourself in a globalised workplace.

In this course, you will learn strategies not only on how to communicate effectively but also how to strengthen your relationships with co-workers and other stakeholders from diverse cultural backgrounds, both inside and beyond the organisation. In particular, "Strengthening your widening network" aims to equip you with a workplace discourse that facilitates familiarity with practices in the working environment and to help you appreciate the complexities inherent in the organisational structure and hierarchy. You will learn to write effective emails demonstrating a keen awareness of your audience and the 7 communication principles. In addition, you will learn to voice your views and assert your position at various communication contexts such as formal meetings and work-related discussions. By the end of the course, you should demonstrate a greater communicative and linguistic competence, with a better grasp of interpersonal and intercultural communication in a globalised workplace.

In "Engaging in Persuasive and Credible Communication", you will learn the key skill of persuasion, in the context of professional communication in a globalised world. Persuasive communication is essential to any professional workplace. From a simple email request for your colleague to help you, to developing a presentation for the board of directors, these are acts of communication that require a good degree of persuasion. Even the process of entering the workforce requires effective persuasive communication, for in the act of writing your resume, cover-letter, or in the interview process, you are essentially persuading the potential employer to hire you. By the end of this course, you will be able to structure and express your ideas in a convincing and persuasive manner in writing, apply basic principles of persuasive writing to convince different sets of audiences at the globalised workplace, and learn to engage in persuasive and credible communication across different cultures in a complex globalised environment.

The final course aims to build learners’ confidence and adaptability when communicating in cross-cultural environments as they assume leadership responsibility to communicate influence in persuasive workplace contexts. The course focuses on enhancing learners’ professional persona for skilful engagement and intercultural communication with stakeholders within and beyond the organization, including cross-departmental work teams, clients and external partners. Learners will also discover and apply good practices in organising information, using visual aids and body language for presentations while demonstrating a heightened sense of cultural sensitivity in a given context. In all, learners will acquire skills to demonstrate persuasive verbal and intercultural communication in workplace contexts which may include dialogues and presentations to critical stakeholders and effective task delegation to team members. At the end of this course, learners will be able to: - Analyse factors of motivation among workplace counterparts. - Recognise the impact of culture on factors of motivation. - Critique and craft persuasive verbal communication products (i.e. script of dialogue) for exchanges with work teams and critical stakeholders. - Apply principles of effective PowerPoint slide design with consideration for cultural sensitivity. - Identify and adopt strategies on the use of voice and body language for engaging presentations.