Copyright GENIUS

1. ERASMUS + \ Genius

An intercultural and interdisciplinary challenge…

by José Carlos Morais

ERASMUS is in..

• International;
• Intercultural;
• Inter-institutional;
• Interdisciplinary;
• Intergroup;
• Inter-individual;
• Inter-gender;
• Individual.

… a program where…

in a short period of time,
mentors and students create, develop and deliver applications or other quality projects, under intensive rhythm of work.

Challenges:

• Different countries with different cultures and socio-cultural reference systems;
• Different institutional cultures (each participating higher education institution has its own culture);
• Different basic formations (management, computer science, etc.);
• Different cultures of individual reference groups (friends, family, colleagues);
• Different personalities and talents of mentors and students.

The fragility resulting from this multi-level dispersion is also the reason why:

• program dynamics,
• group dynamics and
• Intergroup dynamics

Challenges for organizers:

• Bring together an international group of appropriate mentors;
• Bring together an international group of appropriate students;
• To form groups\ teams attending base formation and personality of mentors and base formation and personality of students.

Challenges for mentors:

• Align the behaviours and performance of each individual with the objectives of the program and the team, on a multicultural and interdisciplinary basis, enhancing and facilitating the contributions that each team member can give.
• Enhance «group intelligence».

Challenges for students:

• Self-motivation;
• Compliance with rules and schedules;
• Participate in planning objectives and results to achieve;
• Participate in the regular evaluation of the achievement of objectives according to the proposed timings;
• Deliver their full potential to the goals of the program and team;
• Exponentially increase their soft skills and boost their talent.

2. Erasmus\Genius:

lets take a look on Boosting Competences…

Elements common to definitions of Competence

• The best way to understand performance is to observe what people actually do to be successful, instead of focusing attention on personality traits or attributes;
• Skills must be learned and developed over time;
• Skills should be related to meaningful outcomes that describe desirable behaviours.

Competences valued by companies

Know how to act:

Know what you are and why you do it. Know how to judge choose, decide.

To mobilize resources:

Create synergies, mobilize resources and Skills.

Know how to communicate:

Understand, transmit information and knowledge.

Knowing to learn:

Working knowledge and experience, reviewing mental models; Develop yourself.

Engage and commit:

Knowing to undertake, taking risks. Commit yourself.

Knowing how to take on responsibility:

Being responsible, taking risks and consequences of their actions.

Have strategic vision:

Know and understand the business of organization, its environment, identifying opportunities and alternatives.

That’s what we are talking about by making ERASMUS.

Is this your opinion?

Mine is!

Recent studies reveal the presence of competences which appear more frequently in the characterization of Professional Profiles:

Skills: what (which) are they?

Skills are a component of competences

A competence implies:

• Knowledge:

It comprises the necessary and specific information to perform the tasks that make up a given function. It is acquired through formal education, on-the-job training and during professional experience.

• Skill:

Ability to use instruments and equipment required for the job. This ability must be acquired in an educational environment or learned in the exercise of the function.

• Ability (Capacity):

It results from concepts such as intelligence, spatial orientation and reaction time. Capacities are often measured by tests that provide estimates.

• Other:

Are the additional features needed to do well job. This category includes achievement skills, attitudes, personal characteristics and other personal characteristics required.

Types of Skills:

• Specific Hard Skills (examples):

They are technical skills, exclusive to certain professions.
Medicine - active ingredients of medicines
Teaching - pedagogies / didactics
Carpenter - cutting and resistance
Nursing – dressings
...

• Soft Skills

They relate to individual capacity - attitudes and behaviors in interaction, being useful in different domains of the individual's life.

• Self-control and self-confidence
• Flexibility
• Stress resistance
• Creativity and problem solving
• Interpersonal relationship and cooperation
• Ability to solve problems
• Autonomy and Initiative
• Professional Success...

Compentences in the Organization
•Individual Skills	•Leadership skills •Personal skills
•Collective Skills	•Organizational skills for teamwork •Relational skills for teamwork
•Strategic Skills	•Innovation skills •Competences for internationalization
•External Skills	•Supplier relationship management skills •Customer relationship management skills •Technological and market surveillance skills

If you keep in mind your group project and goals, and don’t forgetting the entire program, you will observe an exact correspondence between what you do and development of competences.
Let’s see…


Basically…

• each of the team members, duly guided by their tutor and in line with the organizers of the program, also the tutors, should carry out a set of tasks in order to reach objectives, which can be simultaneously suggested by companies, public entities, educational institutions, etc.;
• It is a permanent communication exercise, at various levels, where the motivation for results is fundamental, working to develop computer applications or other products according to criteria of quality and utility demanded by the public that will acquire and use them, which implies a detailed and current knowledge of the area of business or branch of activity to which they are distinguished;
• In order to reach the total objectives proposed, teamwork and group dynamics are fundamental, highlighting the qualities and leadership skills of students and mentors;
• The objectives are only achieved through a permanent and rigorous planning and organization of tasks, which gives rise to the flexibility and adaptability of team members;
• The intense pace of work, which requires a «surgical» resolution of problems, only occurs if the elements involved in the teams have analytical thinking and achieve closeness in terms of interpersonal relationships;
• Finally, more than just carrying out tasks, the final result of the program is the development of the team members and organizers of the program, making this European experience a milestone in the individual journey of each participant.

3 Mobility and intercultural relations

3.1 LEADERSHIP, GROUPS, TEAMS, COACHING

“The pack is the strength of the wolf”
«THE TEAM is more than the GROUP»

The concept of a team replaces the group concept in the Social Psychology.
The group becomes a team when it develops a feeling of shared involvement, trust, openly cooperate, seek synergies among their members.

Characteristics and 'advantages' of cohesion in groups =/= polarisation:

1. Trust, cooperation, communication, satisfaction;
2. Lower turnover and absenteeism;
3. Little variation in individual productivity;
4. Speed of decision;
5. Increased productivity; better results; «Synergies».

Factors contributing to cohesion:

• LEADERSHIP ... .charismatics ...;
• Existence of a demanding common objective;
• Interaction - frequency and type;
• Intergroup competition / conflict external threats;
• Preferred or dominant status of the group;
• Occupation of seats / positions in power;
• Social and cultural equality or similarity;
• The success story; the accumulated success;
• Difficulty in accessing the group (elite perception);
• Individual needs met in group;
• Low intra-group competition (remuneration system);
• Non-individualized, non-competitive remuneration system.


3.2 Intercultural Psychology

Sometimes is necessary…
Context:

• Global economy;
• Movement of people;
• International companies;
• Multinational companies.
Implications: different social, political, legal and economic environment …………need of intercultural competencies of managers

National culture determines group and individual culture



3.2.1 Cultural diversity: Determining Factors and challenges

Different Time Reading……the solution: Emotional intelligence

• Assertiveness;
• Respect for individual and social / cultural differences;
• Cordiality;
• Feedback.

Recognition of cultural diversity

Culture = universal phenomenon ⇨ present in all human societies ...

Each society creates its own patterns of culture ⇨ great diversity of cultural patterns ...
The universal traits of culture translate into different cultural expressions from society to society ⇨ Cultural Diversity ...

Through the process of socialization, individuals internalize and integrate into the structure of their personality the socio-cultural elements of their environment (habits, values, norms, customs, customs, ...)
"Man receives from his cultural environment a way of being and thinking"
From the system of values internalized throughout the socialization, the attitudes are developed ...
"A tendency, a predisposition to react to a situation, person, object or fact in a positive or negative way. The presence of an attitude predisposes the individual to behave in a certain way "
Attitudes ≠ Behaviours ...
Importance of interpersonal relationships based on respect, tolerance and trust.

Ethnocentrism…

It consists in judging other cultures by comparing their own culture, that is, it is the attitude of a subject (or even of a collectively) that, in its evaluations, in its scales of values and in the judgments it issues about individuals from another group, from another class or from a different culture, systematically refers to the norms of their own group, class, and culture. This attitude is directly related to the belief that the group to which it belongs is superior to others ...
Ethnocentrism, in its most extreme form, leads to racism and xenophobia ...

It assumes:
Overvaluation of the group and the local, regional or national culture to which the subjects belong, with a consequent devaluation of different cultures and social organizations ... Universalization of the group's own values and the culture of belonging, considering that these values are benchmarks in the evaluation of diverse social structures and practices ... It is the "I" vs. the "other"
It can be a way to legitimize the domain and structure a power relationship ... Extreme historical forms of ethnocentrism: Racism; Religious Fanaticism; Colonial Genocide...

However, ethnocentrism is not restricted to historical forms, nor to political aspects ...

... It reveals itself in the relations between different groups of the same society (namely "class ethnocentrism") ...
Unprocessed and unconscious forms of ethnocentrism constitute a major obstacle to the understanding of social reality ...
- These arise implicitly; Not assumed; They are not elaborated
Ethnocentrism ⇨ think for preconceptions (race, sex, class, religion, civilization, ...)

• Ideas made;
• Ideas considered absolute;
• Ideas considered as indisputable;
• Ideas considered as not evaluable by scientific analysis.

The attitude that opposes ethnocentrism is RELATIVIZATION

to understand others in their own values and not in our own ...
Understand that many of the "truths of life" are less a matter of the essence of things, and more a matter of opinion ...

•Purpose of the coacher (coaching):
align the individual behaviour with group and team objectives
The “big Five” personality characteristics


•Challenge for mentors:

• Align the individual behaviour with group and team objectives in a multicultural basis,
• The key: mentoring, coaching…attend all inter-individual challenges