Anders, A (2017, October). Exploring Cultural Diversity with Brainwriting and Post-It Notes. 82nd Annual Association for Business Communication Conference. Dublin, Ireland.
This learning activity offers a creative approach to exploring cultural diversity. It is based on GLOBE’s cultural dimensions, but could be used with other frameworks. Participants are placed in small groups and asked to silently write examples of personal likes and dislikes on post-it notes for each cultural dimension. This brainwriting phase creates a space for individual thinking before shared group reflection. After the post-it notes are shared and discussed in small groups, they are posted on a wall to visualize the spectrum of cultural perspectives of the entire group. This exercise facilitates teachable moments by quickly generating concrete examples of cultural styles and preferences for discussion. And, it promotes reflection by illustrating how certain cultural styles may tend to dominate discussion in contrast to the full range of perspectives visualized by the final wall display.
