Where Have You Been? An Exercise to Assess Your Exposure to the Rest of the World’s Peoples (2021)

Learning Objective

This simple exercise makes an important point—most people have had much less direct exposure to the rest of the world’s peoples than they previously thought. When coupled with the widely-held perception that exposure to other cultures makes one a better global manager, most respondents acknowledge that a change in their individual behaviour is in order. The exercise can be used with individual cases or as an ice-breaker during the initial class or session of international management courses or programs. In those classes, it can serve both as an individual assessment and as a measure for the development of a group. This is a useful team-building and familiarization activity. For marketers, it underscores the need to gather greater base knowledge about opportunities in 219 countries.