These possibilities are accompanied by many traps. The clash of different cultures often leads to - unintended and unexpected - misunderstandings, conflicts, professional and personal failures. Strategies that  work in our own culture does not necessarily work in another culture as well. Our norms and values are not valid any more. Even the simplest rules of politeness may be different. Communication is no longer a means to create understanding, for the verbal and nonverbal (!) communications patterns vary from country to country, from region to region, from generation to generation. As Adler states: “Communication does not necessarily result in understanding.  Cross-cultural communication continually involves misunderstanding caused by misperception, misinterpretation and misevaluation.”  There are even some important aspects that go totally unrecognized by us if we don´t have cultural background knowledge. As other people judge us according to their cultural rules, we may not at all give the intended impression abroad. For example we Germans seem rude, uncontrolled and and even ridiculous to Japanese. To an Indian they may appear too gentle, even purposeless. The English often judge us to be authoritarian. In France we are regarded to be uncouth and to direct, in South America to be cold and distanced. We keep interrupting Scandinavians, because their intonation and pauses of speech signals us they have finished speaking. Americans can´t understand why we always shut our office doors. A Chinese will never get a cup of tea from us, because after his or her first polite decline we think he/she doesn´t want any and don´t ask again (same happens to Hungarians). When offering flowers in England we are suspected to have stolen them in a park, because we are used to unwrap the bunch before presenting it. As soon as we ask in a restaurant in France to have the bill devided - perfectly normal in Germany that when going out with friends everybody pays for his own - we confirm the French prejudice that Germans are stingy. To prepare for these habits some companies give their employees lists of Do´s and Don´ts before they leave for a foreign country.

By telling stories and anecdotes about cross-cultural encounters and by explaining some of the ways of thinking and acting in other countries the intercultural training gives an insight into the richness of cultural possibilities and the potential conflicts going along with them. During a cultural simulation the participants are confronted to an unkown “culture” and may live through their first, mild “culture shock”. In teams we work out the typical characteristics of our culture. This helps us to understand how we appear to others and why they react in the way they do to us. At the same time  behaviors that at first glance seemed weird, or mean, or unlogical (like appearing very late or not at all to an appointment), may become understandable when looked at in a cross-cultural context. Do´s and Don´ts and strategies of adaptation give us a clue how to avoid part of the conflicts awaiting us. At the end of the training the phenomenon of “culture shock” is explained and strategies to cope with it are offered . This includes reverse culture shock, which can be just as trying as the culture shock itself. As Paige said, “culture shock is the expected confrontation with the unknown. Reverse culture shock is the unexpected confrontation with the known.”