After addressing the first two steps within Kohls and Knights (1994) intercultural training model by reflecting on my awareness to the concept of culture broadly and specifically to me in the introduction. I am now going to focus on the third; my general skills development (Ibid.) The first step I took was to learn about the communication process in the second seminar. After being introduced to the basic concept I undertook some independent study and discovered communication is a circular process because it requires feedback from the receiver to the sender (Beamer and Varner, 2008).

I had not previously considered listening a critical step in the communication process (ibid.) or the fact that it is a skill which can be honed. In the sixth seminar we undertook an active listening exercise in which I exposed to myself that this is an area that I should improve. I read that listening is important in leadership and decision making and 45% of leaders time spent communicating is listening (Scarnati, 1998). Therefore learning how to be an effective and active listener could be advantageous for my future career so I investigated the listening process with aims to improve my skills.

Looking outside the communication process in the eighth seminar I analysed the results from the Thomas-Kilmann questionnaire and found that my behavioural responses in conflict situations were not conducive of successful communication (Manning & Robertson, 2004). When reflecting on the group work within this module and others, I feel I have often taken a competing attitude to conflict and negotiation, which has not always worked out in my favour. In future situations I should try and encourage more collaboration instead of being uncooperative because teamwork can benefit motivation and output (Boddy, 2002).

During the experience of being part of a Virtual team producing a business report I was required to utilise various ICT based communication media. I felt initially worried using the Wiki software as did I about the PebbelPad software I had began to use to write my reflections. However I became proficient in both of these quickly. I think I have good ICT competency and after planning to proof read messages following the second seminar and learning more about information technology relating to global communication in the seventh seminar I am confident that this ability has been developed into the skill, to be able to employ ICT and the related tools to achieve successful communication.

I had never before experienced teamwork which solely relied on this asynchronous communication. I found it particularly difficult to hold a discussion; I read that this is because of the lack of immediacy (Deluca and Valacich, 2000). From this challenge I was required to develop my skill of optimising the efficiency of my communication using only media with low synchronicity (Ibid.).