Managers today work in a dynamic, complex, uncertain and very competitive environment. To be successful, they must attain new levels of awareness, knowledge and skills.

For those who want to achieve business success, interpersonal skills are always at the top of leadership competencies. Even when interacting with people from the same culture, misunderstandings and failures are daily occurrence. When interacting with people from diverse cultures, the scope for misunderstandings and failures is far greater, and interpersonal skills become critical to individual and organizational success.

Even if a manager never traveled abroad on business, and has no intention to, the world has come to him/her, as the company is either operating on a global stage, is influenced by global business trends or employs people of diverse cultural background.

Coaching is highly utislied by organizations and businesses, and is effective in enhancing performance and achieving superior results. However, generic coaching programs don’t always meet the needs of a global leader, requiring a skill set that focuses on intricacies and dynamics of global scene, considerably different from the local one.

Challenging Directions coaching programs are designed with the global leaders in mind, aiming to maximize the opportunities and successes of intercultural management.

Causes of failure in intercultural management:

Cultural differences are very hard to deal with, mostly because ‘what you see is not what you get’. Large part of culture is hidden and impossible to perceive with our five senses, making it difficult to detect and easy to overlook and ignore.

Intercultural business failures are caused by:

• Fear of differences – the visible differences of a person from a different culture arouse subtle feelings of anxiety in every one of us, and no matter how hard we try not to be prejudiced we find these differences more or less threatening;
• Inability to understand – when interacting with people we subject them to a ‘be like me’ template. When someone behaves differently, they don’t fit our template and we are unable to understand them, leaving us with many discrepancies and blind spots about the person;
• Enforcing ‘be like me’ – some people, particularly if they belong to the majority or dominant culture, expect others to fit in: ‘This is how it is here, so learn my way, fit in and follow the norm’. This ethnocentric approach is overlooking the benefits and limiting opportunities that diversity offers in innovation, new ways of thinking and doing.
• Not knowing self – culture is a learnt mental programming, and most of us are unaware of what our own cultural key characteristics and biases are. What seems normal to us is strange to others, just as what seems strange to us is normal to others.
• Not knowing other – no matter how much we travel and how much we interact with people of diverse cultures, if we don’t have the knowledge of our own, it is impossible to have the knowledge of other cultural mental programming.
• Lack of specific skills – the lack of awareness and knowledge results in lack of skills, manifesting itself in failure to adjust to different environments, as well as failure to interact and communicate in a meaningful way and achieve success.
• ‘To-do-and-not-to-do’ list – much information is available on world cultures and it’s easy accessible through published and on-line sources. However, cultures are not artificial, and there are many variances between people. Relying on ‘to-do-and-not-to-do’ lists is not only inadequate, but often leads to communication blunders and ultimately failures.

All of the above will result in manager’s increased stress and anxiety levels, leading to poor performance and lost business opportunities for the organization.

Coaching to success

Acquiring the basic knowledge is the very beginning of overcoming cultural differences but is still far from maximizing intercultural opportunities and achieving success. The manager of today must become culturally intelligent if he/she is to succeed.

What is cultural intelligence:

• heightened awareness about own and other cultures;
• increased knowledge about own and other cultures;
• specific skills and flexibility when interacting with other cultures.

Global leadership coaching, as a form of leadership development, will facilitate this process of becoming more aware, knowledgeable and skilled in cross-cultural interactions. Through coaching, a manager learns how to become a global leader guided by awareness and knowledge, flexible in adapting his/her behaviours to new business situations, and maximizing the opportunities of diversity.

Closely associated with emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence is difficult to put into practice without adequate support of a professional who understands cultural complexity.

Utilising the main coaching principles of enhancing performance and leadership style that gets results, coach helps coachee find adequate practical solutions to the specific challenges whilst focusing on the goal. Through coaching, successful global leaders become coaches themselves, unleashing the potential of their employees, therefore enhancing the organizational success across the boarders.

Global Leadership and Intercultural Coaching focuses on the skills and competencies necessary when dealing with people from diverse cultural backgrounds:

• understanding the complexities of cross-cultural business relationships
• in-depth understanding of cultural preferences as mental programming
• the impact of cultural differences on leadership style
• ability to lead change
• increased ability to motivate diversified employees
• learn skills to effectively delegate
• learn how to attract and retain the right people
• reduce turnover
• increase productivity
• improve customer orientation
• reduce stress and anxiety levels
• improve team leadership performance
• learn how to effectively communicate
• expand vision

The Global Leadership and Intercultural Coaching process consists of a number of one-on-one conversations, utilizing organisational objectives and goals as framework, focusing on the manager’s specific experience and context. Coaching process encourages continuing self-directed learning to ensure the manager’s ongoing growth.