Coaching Across Cultures
Globalisation entails a rise in the requirement for cross-cultural cooperation. Cultures vary across companies, disciplines and individuals as well as countries, so any encounter will bring a rich mixture of these.
We help you navigate the complexities of cross-cultural work and maximise the advantages of diversity.
Openness
“People all have one thing in common: they are all different”
Robert Zend
Clever Cross Culture Co-Operation
When you are working with someone from outside your own departmental, company or national culture, it can be hard to recognise your own unconscious biases. Working with an external coach is a great way to make the unseen and unacknowledged visible.
Early recognition of potential mismatches of working stye and expectations allows costly problems to be avoided and opportunities to maximise the competitive advantages of working together to be realised.
Contexts
Cross–Cultural working occurs at many levels. Do you have any of these?
- Parent Company
- Subsidiary Company
- Partner Companies
- Critical Suppliers
- Critical Customers
- Government Relations
- Ex-Pat Colleagues
- Families Accompanying Ex-pats
Exploring Differences
Cross-Cultural Coaching will help you increase self-awareness of your own culture and its impact on others, and develop your ability to recognise cultural differences in others. Factors include:
- Concepts of time and deadlines
- Conventions in written, verbal and visual communication
- Treatment of professional and private-life boundaries
- Uses and abuses of humour and taboos
Informed Choice
Cross-Cultural training can bring you a lot of information about the country and culture you are interested in. The unique contribution of coaching?
- Focussed attention on the personalities you are interacting with
- Working with you to develop your own personal range of appropriate behaviours
- Most crucially, helping you to decide where to “fit in” and where to “stand out”
LATEST BLOGS
Cultural Intelligence: Head, Body and Heart – and More!
Are you grappling with a cultural puzzle? Then I heartily recommend this…
Power Distance and Cross-Cultural Working
An awareness of cultural norms and relative differences between nations can be invaluable for anyone in business
Holy Flying Circus: A call to critical thinking
I missed the first 30 minutes of this excellent play on BBC4, which re-imagined the controversy faced by Monty Python over their film, The Life of Brian. It was an hilarious and witty mix of imitation, story telling, satire and flights of fancy. Then I watched a...