Cross cultural executive coaching – what is it, and how can it help me?

What is cross cultural executive coaching?

Cross-cultural executive coaching enables senior staff to identify and develop the skills they need to be more effective in achieving their goals as global operators. These may include:-

• Leadership skills when working across national, professional or organizational boundaries
• Adaptive decision-making styles depending on what is acceptable to stakeholders
• Improved skill at forming resilient relationships with business associates

A cross-cultural executive coaching relationship is a partnership, focusing on the global executive’s individual needs and supporting them in:-

• Identifying goals
• Achieving them faster
• Making good decisions
• Improving key relationships
• Realising their potential

One-to-one performance coaching is increasingly being recognised as one of the most effective ways of improving business and organisational performance.

What does cross cultural executive coaching involve?

The coach ‘stays with’ and supports the executive to :-

• Appreciate and discern a range of cross cultural engagement postures
• Work within each of theses postures and know where the limits of each lie
• Develop the skills they need to move their own cross cultural flexibility forward
• Keep themselves "forward focused" to take advantage of opportunities
• Bring out the executive’s personal best and hold their vision for their global executive future.

Having a skilled coach as a "still point" and confidante to whom a executive can regularly turn, during times of transition, is key to enabling them to improve their cross cultural competency in a coherent manner.

Contact with the coach can be a mixture of face-to-face (on-site/off-site) meetings, either within or outside working hours, together with telephone and email communication. The balance will depend on preferences and experiences as the partnership develops.

What skills will my coach have?

In order to deliver improved cross cultural performance, coaches offered through Threshold Consulting typically have the following skills:

• Breadth and depth of experience, gained over years, of working with executives worldwide
• Understanding of the executive’s environment
• Understanding of leadership and leadership development
• Knowledge of politics and systems dynamics in organisations
• Knowledge of individual learning and development styles and preferences
• High standards of personal and professional ethics 
• Advanced coaching skills and capabilities 
• Track record of working in top level businesses, including multinationals, public and third sectors

What are the outcomes and benefits of cross cultural executive coaching?

• resilient high-level global performance: facilitates appreciation; recognition; acquisition and refining of a set of skills for more consistently effective cross-cultural personal performance across a wide range of cultural differences
• improved global business performance: results from improved cross-cultural personal performance
• sustained commitment to enhanced cross cultural resilience: keeps the individual on track
• accelerated formation of key relationships with global business associates: deploying a richer palette of postures across cultural differences delivers strengthened and more resilient relationships
• positive climate for change: identifies personal pitfalls/obstacles to learning, and strategies for overcoming them
• balance, stability, and confidence: provides support during periods of business and global organisational challenge
• personal transitions: helps executives see more clearly where they are, and what they want from their life and work, enabling them to align to their values