The following organizational tips should help you to keep calm focused and collected on meeting day.

Arrive early at venue. Give yourself plenty of time to have adjustments made to room set-up and display if necessary.

Agree on a plan of action before meeting day itself. Review all crucial details with participating staff. (Who is handling registration process? How many volunteers do you have? Whom are your volunteers assigned to?) Also make sure that your staff knows venue address, directions and time expected to arrive.

Designate a point person from your organization to coordinate with venue management, direct volunteers and manage any displays or additional set-up required. If you have multiple contacts from your organization at venue, make sure that responsibilities are clearly defined. (For example: Bob will coordinate with audiovisual technicians to make sure sales presentation is up and running. Mary will oversee distribution of presentation materials.)

Find out who your own contact will be on meeting day itself. The manager that you initially dealt with may not be same person assigned to your event. Make sure that venue management is fully aware of your agenda. For instance, if you neglect to make clear that you are planning a forty five minute speech between time your lunch buffet is set up and actually served, you may wind up with a dried out and very unappetizing meal.

Make sure that facility management is aware of any outside vendors or deliveries (flowers, audiovisual equipment etc.) expected, so that they can tell you best way to enter building. This information should be communicated to your vendors before meeting day.

Here are some simple tips to help you improve your cross cultural communication skills:

Slow Down

Even when English is common language in a cross cultural situation, this does not mean you should speak at normal speed. Slow down, speak clearly and ensure your pronunciation is intelligible.

Separate Questions

Try not to ask double questions such as, “Do you want to carry on or shall we stop here?” In a cross cultural situation only first or second question may have been comprehended. Let your listener answer one question at a time.

Avoid Negative Questions

Many cross cultural communication misunderstandings have been caused by use of negative questions and answers. In English we answer ‘yes’ if answer is affirmative and ‘no’ if it is negative. In other cultures a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ may only be indicating whether questioner is right or wrong. For example, response to “Are you not coming?” may be ‘yes’, meaning ‘Yes, I am not coming.’

Take Turns

Cross cultural communication is enhanced through taking turns to talk, making a point and then listening to response.

Write it Down

If you are unsure whether something has been understood write it down and check. This can be useful when using large figures. For example, a billion in USA is 1,000,000,000,000 while in UK it is 1,000,000,000.

Be Supportive