Wag The Dog FM

The Importance of Cultural Intelligence in Communications

“Culture is the widening of the mind and the spirit” said Jawaharlal Nehru – but do we really stop and think about the real cultural and social background of our audiences…?

As global or regional communicators we can go wrong in so many ways; a wrong word, wrong colours, symbols or attitudes can ruin a campaign or even the social equilibrium in a company.

This week I have the pleasure to interview Rana Nejem from Jordan who specialises in cultural and social intelligence and how this reflects on human interaction at work.

Rana started out her career as a broadcast journalist with Jordan Television. After working with CNN during the First Gulf War, she moved to the Royal Hashemite Court where she was responsible for His Majesty the late King Hussein’s International Media Department for 2 years.

Rana then moved into the field of communications and public relations leading the public diplomacy and communications work of the British Embassy in Amman for 18 years.

As Communications and Public Diplomacy manager, Rana provided Cross-cultural communications advice to British Ambassadors and diplomats as well as Western consultants working in the Middle East region.

Rana founded her own company in 2013 – Yarnu – an Arabic word meaning to look towards, to aspire to with calm and serenity. Yarnu helps people to distinguish themselves by raising their social and cultural intelligence, enabling them to float with ease and confidence from one situation to the other.

Rana has since been coaching, training and advising business executives, diplomats and officials in the Middle East region helping them refine their professional profile and presence.

If you have feedback, questions, remarks or anything else, please let me know via the audio mailbox of Wag The Dog FM.

Links for this podcast:

The post The Importance of Cultural Intelligence in Communications – an interview with Rana Nejem appeared first on Online PR Training.

Communicating Science and Complexity

The Higgs Boson particle, dark matter, computational biology and artificial intelligence…

Our two guests – our first double interview – on this episode of Wag The Dog are both specialists in what I would call CSC or “complex science communications”…

We’ll be talking about the importance of storytelling, demystifying versus simplifying and stakeholder relations.

 

Please join me as I interview:

James GilliesJames Gillies who began his career at CERN as a research physicist in the 1980s, joining the laboratory’s communication team in 1995. He has been Head of Communication there since 2003.

Chris SciaccaChris Sciacca, the European Communications manager for IBM Research. He joined IBM in 2001 and has worked in New York, Czech Republic, Austria and now Switzerland at the IBM Rüschlikon Research & Development facility in Zurich.

James, Chris and I had not spoken for years and this was really a good meet up around a big challenge in our industry; communicating the complex.

Glad we did this and hope you enjoyed the show.

If you have feedback, questions, remarks or anything else, please let me know via the audio mailbox of Wag The Dog FM.

Podcast Notes from this episode of Wag The Dog:

The post Communicating Science and Complexity – An interview with James Gillies & Chris Sciacca appeared first on Online PR Training.