Intercultural Training and Coaching

Your company may have opened an office in a new country. You might have been posted to an overseas branch and need to manage a team of local employees. How do you deal with the cultural differences? How do you avoid misunderstandings that can arise? And how do you meet different expectations? A lot of cultural training doesn’t go beyond the dos and don’ts. To help people from different cultures work together effectively, I take a two-step approach.

Understanding what drives cultural behaviour
First, I make people aware of what might be driving particular behaviour. Together we focus on factors that have a particular impact in the workplace. How much is people’s self-image defined in terms of ‘I’ or ‘We’? How important is it to be the best? How do people deal with the unequal distribution of power? How do people handle uncertainty? The answers to questions like these vary from culture to culture.

Working productively with the differences
Once people become aware of these factors we move on to the second step. We examine how cultural differences may be manifesting themselves in day-to-day work. But knowing about the differences is just the beginning. We then explore ways to leverage these differences and work productively as a team.