Yesterday I had a chance to deliver a seminar about Intercultural Communication under the auspices of ALC Press. We had 24 participants, a very good number for a seminar of this type. One of the things we did was to talk about what was needed to be successful in navigating a global, diverse business environment.
Essentially, we think there are three major pillars: English ability, job skills, and intercultural awareness. Of course, English is necessary, even if the vast majority of Japanese business people in our data base are either neutral of openly negative about English. People don't really like English, as a rule. But they know they need it. And that gap also causes big stress for many people.
However, even if a person has a TOEIC score over 900, if they don't have business skills, they cannot truly contribute their full ability in a global, diverse business environment.
But the base is having the requisite intercultural awareness to be able to read to other people and decide objectively the best way to work with each individual.
What we did in the seminar yesterday (Sat 8/29) was to focus on the overlap between English ability and intercultural skill. The participants were very active and we had many good discussions. I have confidence that the participants left the seminar with a practical toolkit that they can access when they are using English to communicate with people from different backgrounds and nationalities.
Robert 
