Cross-cultural training programs are designed to create cultural awareness, both of self and of others.

“The workshop was amazing. You painted a picture of culture that included its many dimensions and personal aspects in language that was clear and easy to understand…. The information that you have developed for the seminar has global implications….I left the seminar thinking that this information should be shared in the widest way possible.” William Reiner, Ph.D. 

"The What"

Cross-Cultural Training is an experiential training program designed to help participants develop cultural awareness, skills and attitudes to enable them to adjust to and function successfully, productively and positively with people who are culturally different.

“The Why”

Most people typically control about 5% of their lives.

According to cognitive neuroscientists, approximately 95% of our decisions, behaviors and emotions are derived from processes way beyond our awareness, deep in the unconscious mind.

This powerful part of our mind was programmed—you guessed it—directly from our culture, very early on in our life.

It is culture that is largely responsible for creating the basic structure of our everyday reality, generating very specific invisible guidelines on how to interact in all aspects of society.

It gives us our unconscious sense of who we are, how things work, and what to expect from life.

At work, home and social gatherings, this encoded cultural data is at play, evoking emotions, interpreting information and generating behavior, all without our awareness or conscious permission.

"We don't have beliefs, so much as beliefs 'have' us."

— Dr. Paul Marsden

Since each human group has developed a different set of unconscious cultural guidelines, when interacting with each other, unaware of these differences, we commit enormous misjudgments, misinterpretations, and at times, unforgiving mistakes.

For much of our human history, groups were relatively isolated so that such lack of cultural awareness had little bearing on our ability to survive.

However in today's increasingly interdependent, rapidly changing world, being culturally aware or culturally competent has become essential for success.

Cross-Cultural Training programs are designed to create cultural awareness, both of self and of others.

Our culturally learned patterns are exposed and compared, and strategies are developed for not only dealing with our differences but learning how to perceive and understand the advantages of our human diversity.

To have the ability to see ones' own cultural mechanisms and patterns and that of others, gives us the distinct advantage of being able to consciously modify our behaviors and perceptions, to choose, and therefore more fully participate as co-creators of our destiny.

Every few minutes during the four hours of Mary Ellen’s workshop I gasped…with wonder, with insight, with surprise, with the magnitude of the work to be done by all of us. I call it work— actually it is a generous responsibility and a gift to understand and grow more sensitive to the cultural differences all around us—and Mary Ellen is the best at opening our eyes and leading us toward this much-needed cultural sensitivity.

-Nancy Shapiro, author of  "The Book of Calm", TBP Oct 2017

contact@maryellencolon.com