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About This Week’s Guest

Bart van Loon

After volunteering for the United Nations in the aftermath of the Kashmir Earthquake in 2005, Bart realized the potential of the South Asian labor market in Europe.

Ever since he is building long lasting professional relationships between companies and employees spanning the globe.

His tips to become more culturally competent are:

1. Always realize that when it comes to communication that this is a shared responsibility. It is a 50% sender and a 50% receiver thing.
2. Don’t stereotype when you’re dealing with individuals. When you’re dealing with one person, you’re not dealing with the “average” person from that culture. So be careful with this.
3. Have patience when you’re dealing with someone from another culture. Take for instance the English language (or for that matter any language that two people share to communicate): The first time a Brit will speak to someone from Pakistan, (s)he might face some difficulty in understanding. But give it some time and before you know it you won’t even hear the differences in accents.

Interview Links

Links that are mentioned in this episode:

• Bart’s personal website: http://bbbart.be
• Email: [email protected]

Build Your Cultural Competence

In the Culture Matters podcast, we interview real people with real stories.

Every other week there is a guest with broad international experience and lots of cultural insights. I interview real people with real stories.

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Finally

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this far, and to listen to my Podcast.

I hope you will be back for the next episode of the Culture Matters Podcast!

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Chris Smit

Chris is passionate about Cultural Differences. He has been helping organizations save time and money when they work Internationally for the last 20+ years. While doing this he had the fortunate opportunity to hold lectures, workshops, and consulting projects on this subject World Wide. It has made him understand his own culture much better and appreciate the differences around the world.
His education is in Organisational Psychology and he has lived in the USA, the Netherlands, and currently lives in Belgium.

Chris Smit

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