Sheida Hodge

Sheida Hodge uses a consultative approach in tailoring presentations to address your business needs. No program is ever the same. The following programs and keynote presentations are customized to provide practical and effective strategies for achieving business results for your company:

Global Diversity: Energize Your Global Workforce to Achieve Business Objectives

In our global business environment, companies are focusing more than ever on ways to improve the effectiveness of their diverse and dispersed employees while reducing associated expenses. However, the business of navigating successfully in a different work environment and integrating and reconciling different business practices to achieve business objectives has been mostly left to trial and error.

In these challenging times, managing and motivating internationalemployees are keys to gaining a competitive advantage. Companies must take a critical look at – and a fresh approach to – providing the necessary tools for their employees to achieve business objectives. Furthermore, an increasing number of companies are sending employees on fewer and shorter business trips and commuter assignments and these employees’ abilities to execute and implement corporate strategies is the key to surviving and thriving in today’s challenging times.

This program will discuss working and communicating effectively across differences in work styles and cultures to achieve measurable business results.

Effective Global Communication

People communicate differently in different countries, and recognizing these differences is an important asset when working with people from other cultures. What might be a successful communication style in your country might backfire in interacting with other cultures. However, an awareness of the values and behavioral norms of the target culture can help ensure a success­ful business relationship. This program is most useful for individuals working with international associates, or traveling to other countries to do business.

Global Leadership: Successful Strategies for Leading, Managing,
and Working in a Multicultural Business Environment

The increasingly global nature of business and the multicultural make-up of the workforce require cultural competence to achieve business results. To lead successfully across borders and cultures, it is imperative to understand differences in cultural values, and their influences on everyday business practices (i.e. implementing global initiatives, motivating employees, getting buy-in, conducting meetings).

This program supplies practical and proven tools and strategies for developing global com­petencies that energize and motivate the global workforce to achieve consistent business results.

Effective Cross-Cultural / Virtual Teamwork: the Key to Aligning
Your Global Strategy with Execution

Successful teams are based on a shared vision, good communication, effective decision making, and leadership. In an increasingly global and high-tech economy where employees from far-flung operations join together to work on projects, understanding how cultural differ­ences impact the internal factors that drive teams is critical for achieving business results.

Global Negotiating Skills: Tools to Keep You One Step Ahead

Mastering the skills of cross-cultural communication and negotiation is essential for succeeding in business in today’s highly competitive marketplace. Knowledge of etiquette and protocol is not enough. In order to get results—to bring home contracts that don’t fall apart—executives have to become skilled cross-cultural negotiators. You need to understand how other cultures negotiate, how they differ from American approaches in their strategies and tactics, how they handle conflict, and the ways different thinking patterns and styles of decision-making influence the negotiating process.

Global Diversity: Blending Our Cultures, Blending Our Strength

This program thoroughly analyzes team dynamics and business objectives to ensure effective performance in a multicultural and global organization.

Effective teams have at least two common characteristics: (1) individuals develop an understanding for differences in behavioral styles and skills and work together in a complementary manner, and (2) individuals are aware of how cultural differences affect cooper­ation and interactions. This knowledge will enable team members to work together to assimilate into new teams and quickly become effective. In today’s multicultural business environment, high-performing multicultural teams can out-perform homogeneous teams when their diverse skills and contributions are maximized.

The Deal on Doing Business in China

For those that have done business in China for a while, you have probably had the experience where you are talking to a prospective client or partner about your business proposal and it appears that you both agree on the details and the opportunity. Your meeting concludes with handshakes and beaming smiles. From your perspective, “yes” means “yes, we have a deal,” while your Chinese colleague is thinking “yes, I need to talk to more people about this idea.”

So, here’s the deal on doing business in China: besides having a sound business idea, you need to anticipate what your Chinese partner is thinking about the opportunity and understand the para­meters of his authority. What are the steps (and how many steps are there) between discussion and decision? In a Chinese banquet, you know the end of the party is near when the fruit arrives. But in the realm of business, what would be analogous to orange slices in gauging where you are in the process?

Successful Cross-Cultural Sales and Customer Service in the Domestic Marketplace

Serving and selling to international and foreign-born clients is a fact of life for the majority of sales professionals in the United States. Understanding values, attitudes and behaviors of people who come from other countries is the key to doing business with them.

People communicate differently in different countries, and recognizing these differences is an important asset when providing sales and service to people from other cultures. We have extensive experience in consulting and presenting to real estate and healthcare industries.