There is no clear champion when it comes to the challenges an expat partner faces through the course of relocation. Different individuals react differently when confronted with the tasks and circumstances of moving abroad — many find the process to be stressful and emotionally draining, others have an easier time. However, when the relocation dust settles and the partner has had a chance to reflect on, and sort out, their own feelings, physical and social isolation is one of the biggest pain points you hear about — across the board.

Scholars and researchers are quite unanimous in the assessment that learning the new language, or at least taking the first steps to learn it, is the most effective and easy way to adapt to a new culture, this goes for employee and partner alike. It gets you on a clear path to start bringing down the cultural barriers and get going towards finding a new social environment. As is often the case in all things cross-cultural, whether the goal is to achieve personal satisfaction in a new location or business success, or anything in between, communication is the key.

Then why? Why do the expat partners, who will typically dedicate endless energy to supporting the employee through the transition and helping their kids get settled and connected to their new life, often ignore this important step for themselves? Is it a lack of time? A lack of resources? Time can be an issue, especially at the early stages of relocation, however, for many, that changes once the family is settled. Access to resources vary of course, but in many locations, there is everything from private tutors, to traditional “second language learning” classes, to corporate learning tools. And if none of those are available or viable, there is a number of language learning apps that are effective when first starting out. And then there is this — what better place is there to learn a language than in an environment where the native speakers are all around you?

Yet, many report having a hard time getting started with language learning. So then could it be something as simple as fear holding us back? The human insecurity heightened by the experience of being away from the familiar, safe and “normal”? Is it because we are afraid of being discovered as different: the accent, the grammatical mistakes, the complete loss at how to use slang terms. Are we afraid to be funny, strange, foreign, misunderstood? Just afraid…?

The most successful expats I have ever known were fearless. I remember my shock (backed by a rather decent command of English since my early teens) at a friend who showed up in London with about 100 English words in his vocabulary. He would engage in every conversation he could. People raised their brows at his absolute mutilation of the language, he often totally failed to get his point across, but he connected with people. Over and over again. Within a year he had a city full of friends and he was fluent. This recipe never fails. 

People tend to be curious about newcomers, especially when the newcomers are showing an interest in learning the language. So, perhaps the best thing one can do is to step out and lean into being different. To embrace your accent. Gather every word you know and start engaging. Speak to the server at your local café, to the lady in the grocery store check-out line, to your spouse’s co-worker at a social event. Take the time to meet with other relocated people around you and practice speaking together. You will then discover that the world is waiting to meet you. With a smile, and with a myriad of accents of its own. 

By: Elena Mosko

Each year corporate travelers take some 480 million business trips and there are an estimated 56 million business expats worldwide. The cost to a company when these globally mobile people are not performing, or even worse, are doing harm by not knowing the cultural codes of their business counterparts, is great. To be successful in a cross-border, multicultural business world, you simply can’t afford to be unaware of the underlying culture. Globiana’s COO Steffen Henkel has been engaged in the field of intercultural communication and cooperation since 1997, and when asked to describe the program he manages he sums it up with these three words: “Global Competence Training”.

What is Global Competence Training?

Steffen explains that global competence training encompasses many different things, but at its core, it has to do with gaining awareness and learning how to apply said awareness to build skills — skills that can be used to handle everything from business meetings to cross-cultural knowledge for salespeople, to collaboration in a multicultural office environment, to expat transition. The training programs Steffen develops are rooted in the knowledge that culture — our own and our counterparts’ — dictates how we function in a given environment and a given situation.

He says: “Understanding that your culture isn’t ‘normal’, or the norm, to those from other cultures is a very important realization.” He gives the example of a German company hosting a potential business partner delegation from South Korea. The pitfalls are many because the two cultures are very different from each other — they have disparate hierarchical structures, visual languages, and social habits, for example. You can get off to a bad start simply by choosing the wrong type of hotel for your business partner. You can offend people by addressing questions to the wrong person, and you can sink a presentation by using the wrong colors and pictures — all in spite of best intentions. All because of a lack of cultural understanding.

What About ROI?

Steffen acknowledges that ROI questions are difficult to answer with cut and dry numbers. But the above example gives an idea of what some of the issues are when doing business globally across cultures. Bottom line is — cultural unawareness can lead to ineffective workgroups, incompetent presentations, mishandled sales interactions, failed expat assignments, and ultimately lost business opportunities. Any of these failures can present a major cost to a company.

Global competence training is an effective method to mitigate these risks and costs. Steffen says: “People tell me all the time that they wish they had done our training program earlier because that would have helped make sense of a business negotiation, a new office environment, or a colleague’s way of interacting.”

The Trainers

Trainers are the backbone of global competence training and having the right trainer for the right assignment is crucial. Steffen hires trainers based on a few well-defined criteria, such as training methods and how up-to-date and active they are in the training community. The most crucial “skill”, however, is that they have lived and worked in the country they provide training on.

What trainings look like vary depending on customer need and the individual trainer. Actual sessions can be done virtually or in a classroom, or by using a hybrid format of the two. They can include everything from traditional cognitive learning, to simulations, to games, and they can span just a few hours to several sessions over a period of time.

By now, Steffen has built up an international trainer pool of over 450 people, which means he can assign specialized trainers to fulfill specific training requests around the globe. “One of Globiana’s strengths is our trainers,“ says Steffen and continues: “we can tailor a program to suit a client based on need, whether it’s cross-cultural team building exercises, preparing a family for expat assignment, or to help shape a business presentation so that it most effectively speaks to the culture your company is presenting to.”

The Future

Looking forward, Steffen sees a trend of blended and bite-sized learning increasing in demand. He believes there will always be a need for some kind of a 1-day training program, but millennials, for example, are more interested in learning in chunked up sessions, using a combination of formats and tools. Technology makes this possible, as you can combine virtual training with in-class sessions; you can access materials in multiple formats, interact in groups online, etc.

“This is a good development. It’s interactive and it’s reflective — it’s a process, which is what learning should be,” says Steffen and continues: “Globiana is well positioned to meet the demands of the future, as it has a digital learning platform which offers several different learning formats, as well as unique content along with the training programs.”

Steffen has spent his entire career in global competency training. When answering the question on how he got started in the field, he tells the story of watching the movie the Jungle Book as a young child and being so mesmerized by the monkey temple scene that he decided he’d go there one day. Years later, when it was time to choose a university degree, he stumbled across a program that combined business with cultural studies. He picked Southeast Asian cultures to go with the business studies, thinking it might eventually take him to a place like the one in the movie — a year later he was on his first excursion.  

The reason he has stayed in the field is simpler; he says: “It’s satisfying to help people see the world through the eyes of others — it’s something we’re in need of.”

By: Felicia Shermis

Sources:

DCS

Paragon Relocation

There is a simple reason why the term Executive Coaching is still being used to describe leadership development programs — tradition. It used to be that this type of service was available only to executives in an organization. In today’s business world, executive coaching is applied increasingly to emerging talent and new managers as well. At its core, executive coaching has everything to do with unlocking potential and developing leadership skills — at all levels of an organization.

Why Executive Coaching?

There is a convincing business case to be made for having a strong coaching program — it’s associated with both higher employee satisfaction and better employee performance. An ICF (International Coach Federation) study shows that 60 percent of companies with strong coaching cultures report having revenue above average for their industry. The same study says that 65 percent of employees from companies with a strong coaching culture rated themselves as highly engaged in their company. 

A Gallup report on the state of the American workplace has the range of engagement between 25 and 38 percent, depending on occupation. The report goes on to say that lack of development and career growth is the number one reason employees leave a job — it states: “Employees need help navigating their career, whether that is through coaching, exposure, and visibility, or challenging work assignments.” 

When asked about the return on investment value of executive coaching for emerging talent, Trixi Menhardt, a lead coach from Globiana, points out that this stage of someone’s career is a good time to take advantage of coaching. There are a few reasons why this is true. Trixi says: “The older you get, the more responsibilities you have, both at work and at home, which means that it’s harder to make changes. In addition, new managers typically get promoted because they are high performing individual contributors (ICs). As managers, they need a very different skillset from their IC skills.”

Executive coaching can be particularly impactful in the global business world. Managing a multicultural team presents challenges beyond the ordinary. Coach Menhardt points out that whether you have a multicultural onsite team, or people spread out all over the world on a virtual team, you need the communication skills, and the cultural awareness, to bridge both the national culture, and the work culture of all the employees, in order to be successful. 

What is Coaching and how do you Build a Strong Coaching Culture?

Coaching programs vary depending on goals and resources. Some organizations use descriptive and guided development programs, where there is mandated reading material and milestones to reach, for example. Other executive coaching is based on the individual as the driving force and the one who sets the agenda. The coach is the facilitator in each instance, making sure conversations move forward, and that goals are kept in sight.

A strong coaching culture starts with the corporate leadership recognizing that coaching is a strategic business driver and a critical management tool. In addition, there needs to be clear ownership of the program. ICF’s survey reports that 82 percent of companies have HR as the originator of executive coaching programs.

The Coach

Most corporations only hire executive coaches who are ICF certified. In addition, some coaches have specialty skills, such as training in assessment tools like Myers-Briggs. Also notable — a coach hired as a benefit to the employee is effectively in the position of having two equally important clients: the buyer (the employer), and the coachee (the employee), making confidentiality an important issue.

The ethics guidelines from ICF clearly state that information shared between a coach and a coachee is confidential. Confidentiality is important because it ensures the employee can bring all aspects impacting their professional life to the table, whether those are personal issues or work-related, without fear of judgment, or career implications. 

Evaluating Success

To some employers, the issue of confidentiality may seem like a hurdle in evaluating the success of an executive coaching program — if you can’t get information about what’s going on, then how can you determine its progress? Traditionally, ROI is measured and presented in neat numbers. In executive coaching, there are additional aspects to consider.

Although surveys measuring the success of coaching programs indicate highly engaged employees, and higher than average revenue, the real measure of a successful coaching program will be the day-to-day effects it has on the organization as a whole — leaders that are better equipped to lead, workgroups that are more creative and functional, higher employee satisfaction and retention, as well as positive business outcomes.

Any organization interested in retention and long-term development of employees should be interested in executive coaching as a tool, not just for executives, but for emerging talent as well. 

By: Felicia Shermis

Sources:

TED Talk, Atul Gawande

Gallup

ATD

The Psychologist

The Balance Careers

It’s well established by now that multicultural teams, and collaboration across borders is a boon to innovation and productivity. However, the boon can just as easily be a bust on a multicultural team that lacks clear leadership and understanding of the individuals that make up the group. While common sense good management practices apply to multicultural teams in much the same way as they do to a “regular” team, it’s also the case that a multicultural team tends to require more attention to the individual, as well as a greater awareness of the composition of the team. Leading a multicultural team means being more deliberate and active, and it all starts with good communication. 

Since the beginning of the year tends to be a good time to look over what it is that has worked/not worked in the past, here are some ideas for areas to reflect on:

• Who are the individuals on my team?
• What do work/life balance needs look like on my team?
• How can we improve team building?
• How can I communicate more effectively — with individuals, team as a whole?

Individuals make up the group

Because cultural background impacts everything — from how you see your role in a group, to how you make decisions, to your understanding of hierarchy, and how you give and receive feedback, it’s important to listen to the individuals and then forge a plan for the group as a whole. For a multicultural team to function well, there must be clear expectations and rules, the goal being that there is a shared understanding of how the group functions. For the manager setting the course, this means staying away from cultural stereotypes while acknowledging the fact that there are cultural differences.

As a matter of fact, in multicultural team management, it’s not uncommon to hear the need for spelling out what the ground rules are — as in writing them down for the whole group to see, and agree to. This can include everything from hierarchical structures to communication flow, to rules for bathroom cleanliness. 

What about work/life balance?

Another big-ticket item on the multicultural team is work/life balance. Living and working in a foreign country means being away from your regular support system at home, all the while trying to adapt to a new society and way of life — that’s not always easy. Add language barriers and practical matters, such as setting up house in a place where you don’t know how things work, and the stress is real. If there is an accompanying partner/family, there are even more considerations in this area. 

As with so much else in the world of multicultural collaboration, the topic of work/life balance also comes down to communication. Do you know what the needs of your team members are? What kind of support does the company offer its global talent in order to facilitate both the process of settling in a new location and then living in that place? What flexibility can you as a manager offer? Perhaps the most important question of all here: are your team members aware of resources and support available to them? 

Team building

Yet another area to consider is team building. Team building can be tricky, especially if part of the team is working remotely, or if there are cultural barriers to how colleagues view one another and the workplace. In some cultures, eating several of the day’s meals together with your coworkers is commonplace, whereas in other cultures sharing meals is limited to an occasional social event or celebration. In some places, getting together with colleagues after work is par for the course, elsewhere this is hardly ever done. What’s your office like? More importantly, how can team bonding be improved based on the composition of your specific group? 

Communication and feedback

Being an effective manager also means giving feedback and making sure your talent is living up to their potential. In order to give feedback effectively in a multicultural environment you might need to spend a little more time learning about the cultural background of your employees, and how where they come from informs their style of communication and their work habits.

The way feedback is given and interpreted varies widely in different cultures. Erin Meyer gives a classic example in her book The Culture Map where she tells the story of a French manager working in the US at an American company. When receiving feedback from her American boss during a performance review, the French manager hears only positives and is under the impression that everything is going great. The American boss has several areas of concern that he feels he communicated clearly during the review. How come they have completely different views on what was said in the performance review? Erin explains that there is a cultural disconnect between how the French and Americans give feedback. She says: “In a French setting, positive feedback is often given implicitly, while negative feedback is given more directly. In the United States, it’s just the opposite. American managers typically give positive feedback directly while trying to couch negative messages in positive, encouraging language.”

To someone accustomed to the French way of giving feedback the impression would be that everything was going great and that there is no need to make any changes. The American boss, on the other hand, thought he had outlined several areas that needed improvement. In this example, not knowing the cultural background and communication style has a direct effect on the performance of the individual, which in turn has consequences for the team she is leading. 

How a team is managed can have a great impact on the success and health of the individuals on the team, as well as the productivity and output of the team — in the end, how a team is led is what sets the course — to success, just plodding along or even failure. The starting point in multicultural team management is always communication. As Erin Meyer says: “When interacting with someone from another culture, try to watch more, listen more, and speak less. Listen before you speak and learn before you act.” 

By: Felicia Shermis

If your business success hinges on how you work with people from around the world, then learning about the cultures of your global business partners is crucial. The reason is simple: it makes good business sense. As a matter of fact, failing to understand the culture of your international counterparts can have consequences far beyond simple miscommunications and mild frustrations — there can be long-term damaged relationships, botched projects, and real lost business opportunities.

It’s not news to anyone with international experience that leadership styles vary depending on where you are from, that decisions are made differently in Korea compared to Scandinavia, or that business relationships are forged based on different grounds in countries like the United States and China. However, simply recognizing that there are differences is not the same as understanding what they are, and how they will impact your cross-cultural teams and the results they deliver.

This article is not about international business etiquette (which is important in its own right) but focuses on the importance of understanding how your international counterpart approaches and addresses business decisions and collaborations. The goal is to foster better cross-cultural relationships, and to ensure the best possible business outcome.

In her book “The Culture Map” Erin Meyer outlines eight scales that map the world’s cultures on such traits as communication: is it a high- or low-context country, decision making: is it consensual or top-down, and time: is it a linear-time or flexible-time society. The scales place countries in relation to each other from one extreme to the other — they function as a visual clue to where you are in relation to each other.

One of the most basic examples of how the cultural environment will impact a business collaboration is when a company from a consensus based decision making culture is working with a company from a top-down tradition of decision making.

In simplified terms, something like this is likely to transpire: The company that works by consensus will launch a collaborative effort, where everyone is heard and where different avenues are explored. A decision will come, but not until all information has been gathered and everyone has had a say. Once the decision has been made, it’s pretty fixed and the team moves on to implementation, which is usually swift, as the whole team is already on the same page.

For the top-down company, the process is different. Here, the decision will be made pretty quickly by the person in charge and then as the project continues and more information becomes available, the decision can be revisited or altered — the decision is flexible, which means that implementation can take quite a long time accomplish.

Both of these styles can get the job done. However, were the two groups to collaborate without first addressing their differences, they would be out of sync most of the time over the course of the project. In addition to being out of sync, because they go about arriving at decisions in such contrasting ways, they are also likely to question each other’s capacity for making the right decisions. Also, because they view the roles of teammates differently, their respective communication flows are conflicting, which can cause confusion, uncertainty and hurt feelings.

This is just a simple example. The reality is that these kinds of scenarios play out to varying degrees in international business all the time. They can be disruptive, costly, and damaging to future relationships.

As with most things cross-cultural, awareness and open communication go a long way toward deterring conflict and ensuring a successful collaboration. But, without underlying knowledge it’s hard to know where there is room “to meet”. There are no shortcuts when it comes to cross-cultural knowledge. Doing the groundwork and educating your teams really is the only way to come out ahead, the stakes are simply too high not to. And in a world where cross-border assignments and cross-cultural teams are becoming more and more common, it’s not a matter of if you should invest in this kind of education, but how.

By: Felicia Shermis

Sources: “The Culture Map” by Erin Meyer

Innovation is a must to be successful and stay relevant in any business and there is plenty of research supporting the claim that having a multicultural team boosts both creativity and promotes problem-solving. And it makes sense, a diverse team naturally has more points of view and experiences. However, a diverse team can only function well if the team members have an understanding of how to communicate with each other — false assumptions and conflicting norms can derail a multicultural team and become a barrier to team effectiveness. Simply having a multicultural team does not automatically mean having a creative, or creatively successful, team.

Sujin Jang (Assistant professor of organizational psychology at INSEAD) has studied the subject of multicultural teams and she asks the following question: “How do multicultural teams leverage diverse knowledge, ideas, and resources to generate creative outcomes while avoiding the pitfalls of cultural diversity?” The short answer is “cultural brokerage”.

Understanding the concept of cultural brokerage can be an important tool in evaluating and fine-tuning how multicultural teams within a given organization function. Jang defines cultural brokerage as “the act of facilitating interactions between actors across cultural boundaries”. In practical terms, this means taking stock of who is facilitating information exchange in a group and how that information flows within the group, as well as within the organization.

Jang conducted two studies, one using archival data and the other experimental data. The basic findings were that having multicultural team members can significantly enhance team creative performance, but that a multicultural team is not inherently more creative.

One of the challenges when working across cultural boundaries is identifying relevant information and communicating it between different groups. This is where facilitators are needed, and according to Jang, there are two types of facilitators: cultural insiders and cultural outsiders. Both play an important role — by improving team processes and by their ability to enhance team dynamics.

Jang introduces the concept of cultural overlap to explain how cultural insiders and cultural outsiders go about facilitating communication within a group. Cultural insiders have direct insights into the cultures they are bridging, whereas the cultural outsider has multicultural experience, but it’s not directly represented on the team. The two types of brokers work differently in bridging gaps on the team. The insider brokers by integrating his or her own knowledge from the different cultures, whereas the cultural outsider brokers by eliciting knowledge from the other team members by asking questions. In both cases, the communication flow is opened, making collaboration easier and innovation more likely.

In her study, Jang points out that she suspects that the idea of cultural brokerage extends beyond national culture dynamics to include gender, race and even diversity in work roles. And, as mentioned before, there are a variety of studies that point to the benefits of having diverse teams, such as a 2015 McKinsey study which reports that companies in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management were 35% more likely to have returns above their industry medians. The same study concluded that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15% more likely to have higher financial returns than their industry medians. All the while, companies in the bottom quartile are less likely to achieve above-average financial returns.

Most organizations have work to do if they want to take full advantage of the benefits that multicultural teams can bring and in an increasingly global business world, the importance of multicultural team dynamics should not be underestimated.

By: Felicia Shermis

Resources:

https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/orsc.2017.1162

https://qz.com/work/1340876/the-most-creative-and-diverse-teams-have-cultural-brokers/

https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-most-creative-teams-have-a-specific-type-of-cultural-diversity

https://hbr.org/2018/07/the-other-diversity-dividend

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/why-diversity-matters

https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/organization/our%20insights/why%20diversity%20matters/diversity%20matters.ashx