Cross Cultural Training, Education, and Coaching
Cross cultural training is much more than merely understanding the words spoken in another language. And every enterprise worth its bottom-line is aware that attempting to conduct international business without cross cultural training is equivalent to financial hara kiri (that’s Japanese for ‘belly cut’ or ritual suicide). In fact, when large companies become cross-border and multi-language entities, cross cultural issues start affecting every aspect of the business. Therefore, cross cultural training is aggressively adopted by several large and medium enterprises in order to arm their teams, clients, and vendors with the requisite abilities to conduct global-level business in a multi-cultural environment.
What Does Cross Cultural Training Encompass?
Other than appreciating the rudiments of an alien language, cross cultural training also increases an employee’s sensitivities to the values and ethos of another culture. And before one can appreciate another culture, an employee first has to begin understanding their own roots and cultural heritage. Once they can have grasped the subtleties of their own culture they might be able to examine and understand the overviews of other cultures as well. For example, imagine an all American team working on-site in another country which has a very different cultural ethos in comparison to their native country, for instance Greece. How will this team function – or rather, how will they dysfunction – if they are unaware of a simple Grecian culture … the Greeks indicate a ‘no’ or a ‘negative’ while moving the head upwards? Now imagine if a large enterprise has outsourced a bulk of their knowledge processes to a country widely acknowledged as the ‘back-office of the world’, India. How will work ever get done without cross cultural training for both the Indian as well as the American team? For example, an Indian team may say ‘Miss’ or ‘Mister’ as a sign of respect while an American might misinterpret this title otherwise.
Such misconceptions are magnified several fold when teams from two diverse and often conflicting cultures are expected to intermingle and produce mutually profitable relationships. Business Process Outsourcing and knowledge outsourcing have forced forward-thinking companies to adopt and implement cross cultural training on both sides of the border. Therefore, cross cultural training helps –
- internal teams working in different geographical locations
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- international teams collaborating on the same project
- different departments located in separate countries but part of the same organization
- vendors to whom key processes have been outsourced
- clients located overseas
- collaborative partners and strategic alliances
Stages of Cross Cultural Training
Broadly, cross cultural training can be classified in 3 different stages, namely –
Cross Cultural Awareness: Exposure to information about cross cultural issues creates overview level awareness about other societies as well the individual culture of the employee. With awareness about one or more cultures, comes an understanding about cultural differences and its impact on the individual, the company, and therefore how it impacts the specific activities and projects undertaken by the employee. Since work preferences are culturally dependent, it becomes important for an employee to first learn about their own culture and then compare and contrast their own cultural profile in context to another culture, highlighting the similarities and the differences. This throws into focus personal attitudes and values that might be downright offensive or demeaning in another cultural context. For example, imagine a European manager, working for an American company and holding a workshop for his Asian teams. In some Asian cultures, asking questions shows disrespect. So the manager might misinterpret lack of interactivity during the workshop as a sign of, perhaps, boredom. Therefore, cross cultural education helps foster mutually beneficial cross border working partnerships.
Cross Cultural Education:It increases awareness of how companies in various countries and cultures manage their employees and projects. It also encompasses different methods and management processes adopted by companies in different countries and how cultures in such countries affects the way people speak and behave at work. It shows how the differences in the cultural sensitivities also impact project outcomes and therefore, the bottom-line of any company. This helps provide a springboard which is useful in assimilating and absorbing facets of a rich but an alien cultural tradition.
Cross cultural education also highlights the fact that while cultures are different, none are superior or inferior in comparison to one another.
Cross Cultural Coaching: This aims to bring about changes in thinking, attitude, and problem-solving vis-à-vis cross cultural issues. This also involves consultation about cross cultural issues that might become bottlenecks during live projects or integration of cross-border acquisitions. For example, learning and training is imparted differently in various cultures. Tech-savvy Americans prefer self-paced and web-based education whereas in some Asian cultures, people prefer instructor-led and classroom based training. Therefore the manner in which cross cultural training is imparted also varies from one culture to another.
Cross Cultural Training and Solutions from ABPT
Under the broad umbrella of cross cultural awareness, education, and coaching fall several minor, but distinct types of training. Each type of cross cultural training has a single objective – to inculcate demonstrable levels of cultural awareness in employees where a common cross cultural reference point is not present or doesn’t exist at any significant level.
This objective can be fulfilled in several ways and either of the methods mentioned below can overlap or can be implemented simultaneously or in parallel.
Training in Cross Cultural Challenges – This basic training highlights the existence and the practice of different cultures in a cosmopolitan or a cross-border work place. It explores the challenges that arise due to cultural differences, the ways in which such challenges can be tackled, and some pertinent solutions to specific cross cultural problems. For example, the end result of such a training exercise shows how cross cultural awareness encourages mutual trust and cooperation amongst team members and peers. This, in turn, results in smoother, clearer, and quicker communication.
Training in Cross Cultural Management – This type of training aims to increase the cultural sensitivity of the executive and the management staff so that they are better able to manage and supervise their multi-language or cross cultural teams.
Training in Cross Cultural Negotiations – Arbitrators and negotiators who need to multi-task and handle two or more teams from diverse cultural background require special type of training. This training aims to equip them with the requisite negotiation skills that are culture specific and help conflicting teams, clients or vendors reach a conclusive settlement or an agreement about terms and conditions and so on.
Training in Cultural Diversity – This is especially useful for the Human Resources (HR) staff and executives responsible for personnel from diverse ethnic backgrounds. It aims to achieve a harmonious and culturally sensitive working environment which helps nurture individual ethnicity without allowing it to affect inter personal relationships negatively at work.
Country Specific Cultural Training – This is specially designed for teams and personnel who need to visit overseas countries and interact with clients or teams from foreign cultures. This training covers, in details the particular values, ethos, morals, behavior and business practices and customs of a particular country or an ethnic group.
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