Intercultural skills for trainers and coaches

Are you a coach or trainer? The Culture Mastery 4C’s Course™ may be the next step to elevate your intercultural skills and empower your clients or employees to do the same.

Whether you work independently or with a team, this course can be attended by individuals or as a train-the-trainer program.  In many cases, professional such as talent development participate through their organization. The course is joined by other participants of various nationalities and cultural backgrounds.  Also, the facilitator uses breakout room exercises and encourages conversations that are rife with seasoned experiences across the globe.

The Culture Mastery 4C’s Course™ is comprised of the following elements:

– 2-3 hours of pre-course work (including preparatory readings and corresponding critical questions)
– Four 90-minute synchronous Zoom sessions
– 3 hours of post-course work (including a mock coaching session using our cultural self-assessment, the ICBI™)

This course can be completed in as quickly as one week. Not to mention, the course is accredited by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and the Association for Talent Development (ATD) for those looking for continuing education credits.

What is Culture and How is Connected to Our Emotions?

Culture consists of many things. It encompasses tangible elements such as food, language, customs, religion, and dress as well as intangible elements such as values, beliefs and traditions. These intangible elements are often full of emotions. The emotional component frequently gets overlooked in most models and informational cultural presentations. However, emotional understanding is critical to succeed in interactions across cultures. Emotional undertow is often what makes adjusting one’s own values, beliefs, and behaviors so difficult when interacting with a different culture.

This Culture Mastery 4C’s™ helps you understand the “why” behind your emotional response to working and/or living in another culture. Once the “why” has surfaced, the course’s tools will help you enhance your emotional intelligence and intercultural skills.

Intercultural Skills 4C’s Course Description:

The training is centered around Culture Mastery 4C’s Process to approaching intercultural dilemmas. Each synchronous session will focus on one of the 4C’s, Calculate, Choose, Change, Create.

This four-step cross-cultural blended learning program teaches coaches and trainers to guide their clients on a journey of identifying cultural preferences to establishing practical solutions.

To provide you with a better understanding of what exactly you will learn in the Culture Mastery 4C’s Course, I have outlined each of the 4C’s below.

1. Calculate

Before the course begins, each participant is asked to complete our cultural self-assessment called The Individual Cultural Blueprint Indicator™ (ICBI™). This 15-minute assessment calculates your cultural preferences on sixteen different cultural dimensions.

Please find the dimensions below:

Thinking
Change
Motivation
Rules
Self-Identity
Power
Space
Communication – Protocol
Communication – Conflict Management
Communication – Expression
Communication – Context
Action
Time – Orientation
Time – Nature
Time – Focus
Environment

The ICBI™ has the unique ability to compare your own score on each cultural dimension to that of other individuals and national cultures. Each cultural dimension is evaluated on a 1-5 point scale with the understanding that the numerical score is only meaningful when relative to other individuals or cultures.

2. Choose

Once participants have calculated their cultural preferences and any cultural gaps between their own scores and that of other national cultures, it is time to choose the negotiable and non-negotiable variables. Determining which cultural preferences are negotiable and non-negotiable is at the foundation of the adjustment process. This is conducted through various coaching exercises that determine the habits, beliefs, and values at the core of the variable.

What you discover might even be unexpected.

When asked what she was surprised by during the course, one German participant said, “how ingrained my German roots are in some of the cultural] dimensions even after so many years of living and working in the U.S.”

If you are experiencing tension when living in or working with another culture, chances are something is not aligning with your values. It is important to understand what those values are in order to create positive changes in your life. When we are aware of our values, we have a map that guides us through all decisions and paths in life.

Typically negotiable variables are closely tied to our surroundings, behaviors, and skills. Whereas non-negotiable variables are closely tied to our values, identity, and life purpose. The exercises that we utilize during this session enables participants to uncover their values through past life experiences.

3. Change

Now that participants have chosen their negotiable variable, the 3rd C focuses on how to change our negotiable variables to work more effectively with a person of different cultural preferences. We determine strategies of change by identifying the impact of the cultural gap on behavior, beliefs, and emotions.

The ‘Cultural Saboteur’

A concept we introduce during this session is the concept of the ‘cultural saboteur,’  This is a negative internal voice that insists on maintaining the status quo rather than initiating change. The influence of the saboteur is often so deep-seated in our subconscious that we follow it without question. To reduce the negative energy of the saboteur is to recognize it. If we are aware of our reactions, we can examine them, grow from them, and eventually transcend them to enact change.

To combat the cultural saboteur, we encourage participants to be mindful of “should” statements and expectations that are deeply tied to their personal context rather than the context of others involved.  This is part of improving intercultural skills.

4. Create

In this session, we focus on the cultural variables that participants consider non-negotiable. These are the variables that you find extremely close to the core of who you are. As a result, you (or your client) are unwilling or unable to adjust your behavior.

In cases like these, it is recommended to engage in cultural negotiations with the other party in order to establish a new understanding, or create a shared foundation for both thinking and acting.

There are two primary types of cultural negotiations: cultural alliance and troubleshooting. A cultural alliance occurs at the onset of a multicultural working relationship. The alliance establishes awareness of any cultural differences present and a mutual understanding of how to proceed accordingly. Troubleshooting is designed to address tensions and issues related to cultural gaps as they arise. This strategy identifies the cultural underpinnings of specific challenges that negatively affect collective performance.

Participants can utilize these cultural negotiations to create harmonious working relationships with others of different cultural backgrounds.

What is required in the Culture Mastery 4C’s Course?

In conclusion, participants of the Culture Mastery 4C’s Course will walk away with a strong understanding of the 4C’s process to navigate and resolve cultural dilemmas.

Once participants have completed the four synchronous Zoom sessions that cover the 4C’s, the post-course work begins. To finish the course, participants will invite a family member or friend to act as a mock client for a simulated coaching session. The mock client will take the ICBI™ and then the coach will plan and facilitate a 60 minute coaching session that utilizes the 4C’s process and any exercises introduced during the course.

After the mock coaching session has been reviewed by the master facilitator, the participant will receive his/her certification of completion of the course.  Each participant will also receive an extensive digital manual which outlines intercultural skills exercises, concepts, coaching exercises, and top tips discussed throughout the course.

Coaches/Trainers use the Global Business Compass

As an additional resource, participants will gain an annual access to the Global Business Compass™. This is our online learning platform that contains asynchronous courses on working in international environments and country-specific cultural courses. There are also comprehensive country profiles on over 40 countries from which coaches can quickly find accurate cultural data that may be relevant to a coaching or training session.

What’s next? After the course, coaches are able to utilize the ICBI™ with their clients to guide them through intercultural challenges. Not to mention coaches are able to use the numerous tools and exercises throughout their sessions.

Culture is often compared to an iceberg: the things that you can see/observe (clothes, language, etc.) exist on top of the water while deep-seated values and beliefs are submerged under water and out of sight.

Similarly, the Culture Mastery 4C’s Course provides the opportunity to explore all parts of our cultural profile and cultural leadership style, but it is just the tip of the iceberg. It serves as the starting point of a life-long journey to understand ourselves and others.

For more information on the course to improve your intercultural skills, please click here. We hope to see you in the course soon!