International Project Teams: Soft skills Germans shall bring in to be successful in Japanese Project Teams

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 2,3, FOM Duisburg, course: International Project Management, language: English, abstract: Over the years soft skills become more important when dealing with humans. Those skills will not only be considered by employers in the selection process of a new employee, but are also crucial when trying to successfully accomplish an International Project. The success of a project depends on the cooperation of the project team. Already in national projects misunderstanding and conflicts arise. In international teams this danger is bigger due to cultural differences, which - besides of big distances and different time zones - bear different patterns of thinking and acting, languages, norms and values. An example is a telephone conference between a German and a Japanese staff. The German is informing that he is still waiting for the figures of the last quarter and asking when he will receive them. The Japanese is answering that it will be a little bit difficult. The German is telling that he can understand his situation and points out that he requires the figures by end of this week. The Japanese is answering that he will try. The conclusion of this communication is that the German cannot understand that the Japanese is not able to supply the figures. He feels to be taken not seriously. On the other hand the Japanese cannot understand that the German does not understand that he is not able to supply the requested figures. He feels stalemate and under pressure. That is a typical example of a German-Japanese communication error - the direct versus the indirect communication stile. In German we tend to hear what indeed has been said. Difficult means difficult and is solvable, if you are only willing. In Japan difficult can eventually means difficult, but in the most cases it means infeasible. In order to avoid, handle and solve such cultural differences within International Project teams and thus to ensure a successfully accomplishment of a project the possession of soft skills is getting more and more important in today's world.