Living Competently in a Global World

Sat, 09/24/2016 - 11:27am

When: October 20, 2016 at Downtown Library Multi-Purpose Room

We live in an increasingly global world where people live, work, and study in countries other than their own. Even when living in our home countries, we interact with people from all over the world.

What are the skills that are needed to succeed in this global world? How do we develop and learn these skills? Recent research has shown that the answer to these questions are not as intuitive as one would suspect. Exposing yourself to other cultures does not always help and can sometimes backfire.

However, there are also many things you can do to develop your global competence skills, even if you have never left your home country!

In this talk, Professor Fiona Lee of the U-M Department of Psychology discusses some of this research, and provides concrete strategies you can use to increase your global competence. Professor Lee's research focuses on 3 main topics under the broad topic of social behaviors in organizational and work contexts: Identity Integration: How do people negotiate between their multiple identities? Power: How does having power (or not) affect the way people behave? Culture: When do cultural differences affect people and organizations?

This program was part of the Fall "Exploring the Mind" series of talks, and was co-sponsored by The University of Michigan Department of Psychology.