Cross Cultural Coaching -Business Coaching

As the New Global Economy continues to evolve most businesses are becoming global-centric. As a result, new leadership skills and behaviors are needed and new challenges are emerging - e.g., the need for dramatic and rapid change, virtual work, and personnel who are increasingly multicultural, mobile, and independent. Given the challenges and opportunities this new corporate order presents, the "cultural" in cross cultural coaching will become even more important than it is today.

In today's international environment organizations work across national and cultural borders. As a result business leaders and professionals travelling across these boundaries constantly face a variety of "cultural challenges".

To operate successfully in the global marketplace, managers increasingly require skills and support which help them to deal with intercultural conflict and become "interculturally knowledgeable" -the ability to adapt to divergent cultural attitudes, beliefs and behavior and think and act systemically—globally and locally. Intercultural conflict is defined as the perceived or actual incompatibility of values, norms, processes or goals between two or more cultural parties over content, identity, relational and procedural issues.

Businesses require a new breed of leadership able to achieve sustainable high performance in today’s global and multicultural environment. Successful cultural integration is also a prerequisite to successful cross-cultural teams. Successful team integration is the acceptance of cultural differences within the team while focusing on one common objective, forming an integrated, powerful and compelling 'team' versus a 'group' of individuals separated by cultural divides.

Organizational Coaching and intercultural communication have long coexisted as separate, parallel disciplines. Cross Cultural Coaching weaves the two disciplines together into a coherent and accessible whole.

The Culture and Behavioral Practices of an Organization:
In today's international markets, problems typically arise if international corporations develop behaviour strategies locally and then try to implement them globally. In international corporations with multiple local languages, culture-centrism of management strategies is not the only problem. In most contemporary organizations, strategies are presented in the form of written guidelines or policies that either explicitly or implicitly convey behavior prescription for employees and/or associates. If multinational corporations use multiple languages, translations of strategies add another potential for cultural misunderstandings. Although two cultures might agree on a lexical categorization, the language translation or denotation of identities and behaviors that describe an event, and the connotation or affective meaning of these identities and behaviours might still differ.

Some people are often misled to assume global similarities when they see homogenized centers of consumption all around the globe. For example, people still attach their culture-specific meaning to the global representation of worldwide corporations like Disney. As it became painfully clear, in the case of Euro Disney in France, people act upon their culture-specific meanings. The Multiplex Group is another recent example of a company that tried to export its successful domestic formula of conducting business and management style into a new foreign marketplace that ended in disastrous financial consequences for the entire group.

The affective meaning of professional identities differs cross-culturally, so, to maintain professional identities, it is more efficient for professionals to act upon the affective meaning of their identities than to follow culturally uniform behaviour prescriptions. Hence the need for support and guidance via cross cultural coaching.

Cross cultural coaching

Coaching individuals and teams in cross-cultural settings is a rapidly expanding niche for behavioral trained Coaches. Such coaches are specialists who know about and can guide and support others through the complex process of cultural adaptation. Whereas traditional coaching tends to operate within the confines of your own cultural norms, values and beliefs, coaching across cultures seeks to challenge these cultural assumptions and discover solutions that lie ‘outside-the-box’.

The case for Behavioral Coaching as a platform for cross cultural leadership development
Recent research involving leaders from around the world has shown that cross-cultural understanding is seen as a key to effectiveness for the global leader. Further research has found that personalized behavioral and performance feed-back is the critical component to any successful cross cultural coaching initiative.

Many HR Departments have initiated global leadership coaching development programmes. There are two central premises to any global leadership program. First, that 'global competence' can be defined in terms of developmental dimensions and secondly that these defined dimensions can be developed through global experience supported by behavioral coaching. Yet many companies still assume that global leadership competencies will somehow either come naturally or through superficial training. On the contrary, excellent international companies (including Unilever, IBM and Chubb Insurance) have found that developing global leaders requires a systematic coaching program conducted by specialist trained coaches employing validated cultural change coaching models and behavioral-based coaching techniques and tools.

Examples of Specialist Areas of Cross Cultural Coaching:

For Expatriate Managers
Because of their stressful and demanding work-life conditions abroad, expatriates and their families suffer high rates of mediocre performance and failure (about 20% premature returns). Managers on foreign assignments are the most expensive employees next to senior executives. Therefore, each loss or failure can be extremely expensive in direct and indirect costs.

For Repatriate Managers
Many repatriated managers are unfortunately seldom fully appreciated and valued after returning to their country/home office. Although repatriates have developed hard-earned skills and knowledge, corporations often squander their investment in these valuable returnees.

For Expatriate Spouses/Partners
Few organizations acknowledge the critical role that expatriate spouses or partners play in the success of an international assignment for their executive. Spouses have great influence and impact on expatriate managers. The manager and their spouses form a "working team" or an "assignment partnership" to represent the corporation and to accomplish strategic objectives.

For Repatriate Spouses/Partners
For many expatriates, returning home after a foreign assignment is more strenuous and demanding than the initial relocation. Re-entry always seems like it should be easy and naïve colleagues and management often expect repatriated managers and families to adjust rapidly and happily upon returning home.

The key to success of any cross cultural coaching initiative is the selection of the appropriate cultural behavioral change model to fit the client's specific needs. Dr Skiffington's industry-proven Global Leader Master Coach Course (world's top-rated business leadership coaching course -ICAA Survey 2004) meets the critical needs for professionals engaged in leadership development to be trained and mentored in the use of a range of validated, reliable cultural coaching models, tools and techniques.