Building Successful Working Relationships: U.S.A. - Mexico

In the 1990s the United States and Mexico are facing increasing challenges in their international relations. Issues of free trade, immigration, international cooperation, etc. are at the core of a new wave of relations that will take the two countries into the 21st century. At and individual level politicians, mediators, and business and support people from both countries are facing the challenges that cross-cultural interactions bring. This means that regular citizens have to know how culture influences perceptions and actions. It requires people to read the cultural cues of others and decode the meaning of these cues for an effective cross-cultural interaction. Through presenting an intercultural training session, the present work begins to address the need to improve cross-cultural communication and understanding of U.S. American business people working with Mexicans. The benefits of doing intercultural training range from more effective cross-cultural interaction to economic gains and greater productivity for each country. In the intercultural training field, the overreaching objective is to make participants more effective in overseas, cross-cultural, or multicultural situations. This Facilitator\u27s Guide is intended to help U.S. American participants think and behave more effectively when working with Mexicans. This facilitator\u27s guide for training is based on a two-day workshop that served as a field test for this guide. The session was delivered in 1995 in Washington, DC to an audience of 11 U.S. American businesspeople who conducted business with Mexicans. The training session is documented in two sections: The Facilitator\u27s Guide and the Supplement to the Facilitator\u27s Guide. The Facilitator\u27s Guide is a step-by-step guideline of how to implement the training session. The Supplement to the Facilitator\u27s Guide is supporting information the documents the process of development of the training session and its theoretical base