Juan Carlos Albornoz Cspedes

Dr. Gastn Fornes

9 de octubre de 2014

The Next Generation of Condoms

Individual Report - Critical Self-Reflection & Group Critical
Analysis
The group decided to make the presentation using a project called The Next
Generation Of Condoms; this was an excellent experience to challenge all the team
members to face different cultural approaches regarding such a difficult topic in terms of
opinions, religious approach and personal beliefs.

The picked topic belongs to a non-governmental organization called Bill & Belinda
Gates foundation, taking into account that due to the cultural diversity of the group was going
to cause several points of disagreement.

The established ground rules for the group were regardless the country, believes,
political inclination and religion all the team members were supposed to provide supported
ideas that helped the development of the proposal based in respect for other ways of thinking.

Nada Elyazami who is from Morocco was a key part of the group due to the islam
religion providing the group a good approach of the possible thoughts in her home-country;
Marta and Beatriz from Spain gave a more open-minded approach from Europe and myself
from a latin-america perspective.

At the moment the group started talking about the political and religious approach, an
inflection point was marked inside the group because the idea that Beatriz, Marta and myself
had was the rejection by the islam culture for preservatives; but as Nada explained that
regardless the strong cultural position her country has, nowadays they encourage the use of
preservatives ideally after women are married as a planning method against unwanted
pregnancies and deseases. This was a surprise for the team members because these changed

CROSS CULTURAL MGMT AND NEGOTIATION

completely the paradigm we have from an islam country. As mentioned before, this was an
inflection point because the approach the group wanted to give to the presentation and
content for the project changed completely.

The team members started again with a brainstorming session to understand what was
the best way to merge the latin-american perspective, the islamic one and the european based
in catholics principles.

To enhance the synergy among the members of the group myself proposed to split the
work according to the skills related to the pending task with the main objective to take
advantage of the short time the group had to prepare the presentation; all the team members
agreed to proceed this way working in couples Nada with Marta and Beatriz with me.

The group worked as a team and in the first stage started dividing the pending tasks and
after this was performed the second phase of the team plan with the objective to rise the
group awareness was to switch the teams to share the performed tasks and start building the
final presentation using the inputs of the four integrants to make sure that everybodys
opinion was considered and included in the final document making visible all the inputs
provided in the previous stage.

The third stage of the teams plan was based in practicing several times the presentation
with a brief talk among the participants to tell the others their strengths and weaknesses
regarding presentation skills. After this was done, the practice started and the listening
participants provided feedback as respectful as possible with constructive criticism as a nonnegotiable rule. The result of this practice was improvement of the presentation and this gave
more confidence to each one of the participants.

The fourth stage after the practicing was finished all the members agreed to look later to
the presentation and in case there was any idea or intention to change something talk to the
group at the next day. This was made basically to empower the participants and to give them
the feeling that the group is always open to ideas to improve the output.

The last stage before the presentation was to listen the speech of everyone with the
adjustments each one made the night before the presentation to make the final adjustments.
CROSS CULTURAL MGMT AND NEGOTIATION

In conclusion here we didnt stay with the perspective we use to have from the other
cultures. In one hand we went beyond the surface with Nada trying to understand the way
islamic people from Morocco is thinking nowadays. In the other hand, the three main
elements in life were very clear for the participants among the differences using the key
words as nature, culture and personality.
We concluded that the power distance in the three cultures we had inside the team was
completely different and the one we thought probably was the most hierarchical it wasnt;
with several points in common with western countries as Colombia and Spain and with a
different approach that was given by the islamic approach advising to use this type of method
but after women were already married this with the main purpose of avoiding promoting
promiscuity.

Moving to a different topic, regarding the group presentation the analysis to provide at
this point mainly be to focus on the presentation skills. A great leader independent of his
developing field needs to understand that he is the best visual for his audience; just because,
audiences that divide their attention will only be able to partially commit with the speaker.

The main goal before of being a speaker and as a leader is to have the ability to
persuade the audience to act or think differently by concentrating in the speaker they can
understand the message better and in a clear way and here the group didnt achieve the goal
to convince the investors to support the project.

The speaker has to develop skills to control the environment around the place where he
is speaking and no to make actions that get the audience be distracted from the purpose but
Juan Carlos as first speaker switched off the light and this resulted in the audience being
distracted and more focused on the slides rather than in the speaker.

The slides as a component of the presentation are dispassionate and the speaker voice
and gestures provide passion and emphasis to ideas, comments and quotes inside the speech.
Almost all the integrants were hidden at the right side of the stage with a low tone of voice
resulting in a non-expressive transmitted message.

CROSS CULTURAL MGMT AND NEGOTIATION

Use a chart can support the main point of the story but in the case data is going to be
presented the speaker need to be careful no to confuse the audience; but data was missing
inside the slides giving the audience the feeling that the investment proposal was not fully
prepared and putting a red flag in the investors because they werent seeing the financials.

Following the same style is always useful and always trying to answer the question if
there is something to subtract to be more consistent and clear in the same way; a different
style of slides were used in the beginning of the presentation as very summarized slides but
this turned into the opposite with the last couple of slides that were full of text.

Summarizing, the speaker has to believe in his arguments and in the content of what he
is trying to transmit, all the data must be supported and always being sure that everything that
is on the slide must be known by the team and in the case that someone need something to be
clarified the group will be able to do it.
Less is better and as summarized as a slide can be the audience will focus on the story
you are telling them and that is it shown that has been prepared time ago and being prepared
to questions and problems that probably will be shown at the time the presentation has begun.

CROSS CULTURAL MGMT AND NEGOTIATION