A Bookreview
Anna Fuchs' book - Transkulturelle Herausforderungen. Missverständnisse klären und Kompetenzen stärken is a must read and great success. Here she conveys the complexity of the topic of human/interpersonal relationships as well as culture/transcultural relationships in a wonderfully vivid way, which offers many helpful approaches for both professional and private contexts. In her remarks, Anna Fuchs incorporates findings from cultural studies, intercultural communication, social and individual psychology and critically questions the hitherto common concepts for their usefulness in the transcultural everyday life of the people of our time.
In doing so, she always proceeds very appreciatively. Anna Fuchs conveys the same appreciation when, in a further step, she combines Hofstede's cultural dimensions, which were previously – rightly – described as sub-complex, with the tools of Hamburg communication psychology and presents different types of behavior in interaction. Anna Fuchs describes the inner team that each of us carries within himself with fine tact and humor in its transcultural forms. Through everyday application examples, it also conveys catchy tools, such as the "square of values", which each of us can use to train our transcultural competence every day.
The "square of values" is polarizing in itself and at the same time dynamic and thus wonderfully suited to classify our own behavior and that of our interaction partners and to adapt them to the respective situation with suitable means. It is also wonderfully suitable as a tool for metacommunication. However, Anna Fuchs conveys to readers gently but unequivocally that the "all-purpose means" of direct speech or metacommunication, which tend to be more northern European communication styles are, globally speaking, usually not the means of choice for conflict resolution.
Also, a frequently found line of conflict in a transcultural couple relationship/family between more individualistic and more collectivistic values and behaviors becomes clear. And many a "German free spirit" could thus be spared a broken heart if his/her great love, which comes from a rather collectivistic environment, nevertheless opts for the arranged marriage through his/her family with a partner from the culture of origin instead of for him/her.
The book is a must-read for all people working in international contexts. Project teams of any profession or industry will find simple tools for improving their emotional, social and communicative skills. As a result, conflicts can be avoided, resolved more quickly and companies can be spared large financial losses. A big thank you for writing this book.
We will definitely include it in our Transcultural Trainings and Coachings.
Yours
Nora
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