French and American management cultures

By John Gaynard, November 13, 2000

"It is becoming a fairly common occurrence to read newspaper articles about French companies making acquisitions in the U.S. Indeed two companies [Suez-Lyonnaise des Eaux and Vivendi] seem to be making something of a competition out of who can buy the biggest part of the North American water distribution market. Suez recently purchased Calgon Corp. and Nalgo Chemical Co. while Vivendi bought the California company U.S. Filter. Interestingly, however, until Rhone Poulenc Chimie acquired Union Carbide in 1987, French purchases of American companies were very rare. Since then more than 20 big French companies have made forays into the U.S. corporate scene. A book written recently by Guillaume Franck, who is a professor of international management at HEC, an influential French business school, takes a searching look at French acquisitions in the U.S. The book should be required reading for any French company wishing to buy into the U.S. or any American company wishing to buy into France. The book's title is Conquering the American Market, [Editions Odile Jacob].

Conquering the American Market

The book is full of serious research. It is also rich with anecdotes: such as the one about the French “managers” sent to the U.S. by the parent company with high-level technical skills and non-existent people skills."...

If you want to read the whole article, written by John Gaynard, management consultant, please click here:

• French and American management cultures - part 1
• French and American management cultures - part 2
• French and American management cultures - part 3
  

What are the next steps if you want to be coached by me?

I spend a lot of time answering inquiries about my coaching services, usually with more or less the same questions. Therefore I attempt here to summarize the most usual answers that I provide to these questions.

Where have you been trained as a coach?
What is your academic and professional background?

You'll find (almost) everything on my Linkedin profile.

What kinds of clients do you coach, and in which format?

I coach specifically these target groups:

• Expatriate executives or diplomats (individual coaching / group coaching / teleclass programs).
• The accompanying spouses of expats or diplomats (group coaching / teleclass programs). Please note that I provide individual coaching to a trailing spouse only if he/she is an expat executive or an entrepreneur.
  
• Multicultural teams, who can also be virtual teams at the same time.
  
• International entrepreneurs / solopreneurs / infopreneurs - mostly in the various areas of information and knowledge transfer: coaches, trainers, writers, speakers, therapists, etc. The coaching takes place in the form of individual coaching. Teleclass programs and coaching groups will be launched in 2009.
  

Please note that I don't coach persons who don't belong to these categories, but I can sometimes provide a referral to another coach.

You can find information about my coaching groups and teleclass programs on every specific blog. The list of all my blogs can be found at the bottom of every blog, like this one.

Can you send names and contact information of clients and explain on which projects or in which areas you are coaching them, or which results they achieved thanks to the coaching?

Absolutely not!

First of all, I take the ethics in my profession extremely seriously. Therefore I never provide the names and contact information of my clients to anybody for whatever reason. This applies to current and past clients alike. I never talk to anybody either about the individual projects or issues that my clients deal with through my coaching, as they are alsmost always very personal or business sensitive ones. I never do any exception with these ethical principles - otherwise it wouldn't deserve to be called ethics.

Coaching is a very individual process and a coach can be a good fit for one person and not for another one, or for a person dealing with an issue in which the coach is not specialized or knowledgeable enough. On the other hand, I also choose my clients. For example, I don't accept clients whom I consider as not coachable, who deal with issues that are of a therapeutic kind, or who have unrealistic expectations. That is why I request that potentiel clients have 3 individual coaching sessions with me before we sign a coaching contract together (see below). These 3 sessions gives also the potential client the opportunity to test if they like my coaching.

In order to be "coachable", you must be able to set up your own mind as a self-sufficient human being, recognize and accept your own feelings fully, and deal accordingly. This is also another reason why I don't provide the names of my clients. I want to work only with people who don't need external advice to act and move forward.

Coaching is about finding your own solutions, not copying what other people do.

Anyway, as I only want to work with satisfied clients, any client who wants to cancel a coaching or teleclass subscription can do this anytime (see below).

In which languages does the coaching take place?

I totally trilingual French / English / German. I coach my clients mostly in English or French, but I am glad about any new client in German!

Do you provide free coaching sessions or free interviews?

Absolutely not, for many reasons:

• I don't need to prove that I am a good coach, as my clients and partners confirm this everyday.
• My time is very valuable and I am not interested in spending it with people who cannot afford individual coaching (they can participate in my group programs anyway) or who are not motivated enough to pay for 1, 2 or 3 individual sessions first.
• I provide a lot of added value already in the first individual coaching sessions.
• I am not desperate to find new individual clients. I want only very few individual clients - but only extremely motivated and competent ones. The rest of my business is focussed on the creation of group programs, e-learning and ebooks.
  
• People who want to get acquainted with me as a coach can read all my 18 blogs and websites and subscribe to my newsletters.
• If, after that, they want to experience my coaching "live", they can participate in my free teleconferences, my coaching groups or my teleclass programs.
  

But if I want to test your individual coaching, what can I do?

It is normal for potential clients to want to test my coaching and if they feel that I am a good fit for them.

At the same time, I select my clients and choose to work only with those who are extremely competent and highly motivated, as I want to work only with people who have the potential to achieve outstanding and long-lasting results quickly.

For all these reasons, I ask the interested persons to subscribe to one invidual coaching session, using the "Buy Now" button on the right of each blog. If both parties, the client and I, are interested in continuing to work together after this initial session, I ask the potential client to subscribe to 2 further individual sessions. At the end of the 3rd session, I'll propose a contract to the person or not, and this person will be free to sign up or not. It is a bidirectional testing process.

Another way to get acquainted with me as a coach, and as an expert in expatriation, intercultural communication and the various aspects of entrepreneurship and marketing, you have the possibility to participate in my teleclasses (for free or for a fee) and coaching groups first.

In the future, as the number of my teleclasses, coaching groups and e-learning programs will grow, I intend not to accept individual clients any more who haven't taken at least one of my group programs first.

How does the coaching take place?

The individual coaching takes place through the telephone, the Internet and an exchange of emails and electronic documents (assessments, questionnaires, ebooks, articles, and various other resources).

The client can choose between the coaching with a webcam, which is particularly useful for people who are very visual or kinesthesic (feelings oriented), and the coaching through a teleconference bridge, which allows to record all the sessions. The clients receives the recordings in MP3 quality a few hours after the session, without any additional cost. This is particularly useful for auditory people, or for clients with very challenging issues (for ex. entrepreneurs), who want to hear the sessions again in order to get all the "juice" out of the sessions.

Coaching is not about quick fixes, but a way to achieve deep and long-lasting results, even if the first positive results usually appear within the first weeks. Therefore I can accept only clients who, from the beginning, are willing to invest in at least 6 to 12 months of coaching. The coaching contract is on a subscription basis and not limited in time. The client and the coach can cancel any time though (see below).

What does the coaching cost?

I provide a few 1-hour teleclasses or "Ask the Expat Coach" teleconferences for free. They are announced on my blogs.

Group coaching and teleclass programs are usually paid on a monthly subscription basis. The fees are always announced together with the program.

The fees for the initial individual sessions can be checked by clicking on the "Buy Now" button on the right side of the relevant blog. They are higher for entrepreneur (see my Expat Entrepreneurs blog).

Individual coaching above the 3 initial sessions is paid on a subcription basis. The monthly fees can be seen by clicking once on the "Payment Plan" button on the right side of each blog.

The fees for the coaching of entrepreneurs are higher than my fees for expatriates and diplomats. It can be found on my Expat Entrepreneurs blog.

Please don't subscribe to a payment plan for individual long-term coaching before the end of the 3rd initial session and before we have agreed upon a contract together!!!

All the coaching fees are paid exclusively per credit card on Paypal, which is a totally secured, international payment system. Paypal also manages the monthly payments on a subscription basis.

Please note that different conditions apply to the coaching for corporations (coaching of expatriates and multicultural virtual teams).

Can I cancel before the end once I signed up a coaching contract, or subscribed to a group coaching or teleclass program?

Absolutely, because I want to work exclusively with extremely motivated and highly satisfied clients anyway. You can cancel your coaching subscription on PayPal anytime. Please note that if you recently paid for a month in advance, I'll provide the remaining paid sessions if you want them. Otherwise, they cannot be reimbursed.

This cancelling policy applies not only to invididual coaching subscriptions, but also to teleclass or group coaching programs.

I am eager to start individual coaching with you as soon as possible. I have read everything above. Now, what are the next steps?

If you belong to the target categories of clients that I mentioned, the next step is to subscribe to your first initial test session using the 'Buy Now" button on the relevant blog.

I also ask test clients to send, prior to the initial session, an email to me answering these questions:

• What are the 3 main goals that you want to reach within the next 1 or 2 years, or the 3 key areas of your life that you are currently trying to develop or improve? If you have more than 3, please choose the 3 that would make the most difference in your life or in your business once you have reached a positive outcome.
• Which steps or actions are you already undertaking in order to achieve these results?
  
• In which areas or for which specific steps (among the above) are you stuck or do you think you need my coaching most urgently?
• Once you have reached these 3 main goals or objectives, or improved these 3 areas, which difference will it make in your life or business? What will you see, how will you feel, what will you do?
  

Please send your résumé, links to your websites or blogs, and an electronic picture, together with your answers to these questions.

Please note that this article applies to invididual clients, not to organizations or corporations who want to hire me as a coach.

What kinds of results do my clients achieve?

I have different types of clients:

• expatriates, diplomats and their trailing spouse
• international or mobile entrepreneurs (who are often expats wanting to become self-employed in their new country, or expat spouses).
  

I have helped my expatriate or diplomat clients achieve consistently the following results over the years:

• prepare for and manage the physical and psychological aspects of the relocation, the transition into a new culture (culture shock) and the integration process - together with their family
  
• become immediately efficient at work in the crucial but stressful first 100 days
  
• master the challenges of intercultural communication and leadership
  
• lead multicultural and remote (virtual) teams successfully
• learn the new language quickly and efficiently by using their own learning styles and NLP techniques
  
• master the hurdles of intercultural communication at work (colleagues and team) and in private
  
• create and develop new professional and social networks, make friends quickly with local people & maintain long-distance relationships (private and professional ones)
  
• maintain a solid personal foundation despite the stress of coping with new environments, a new lifestyle, new relationships and a foreign culture
• develop a good work/life balance an, in particular, find the time to discover the new country and culture
• master the different phases of culture shock and integration
  
• plan the next steps of their international career
• find a new job abroad or at home
  
• manage the often ignored difficulties of impatriation.

My entrepreneurial clients are mostly self-employed service professionals who are creating, or have already created, their own business based on their specific expertise, in the area of information management and knowledge transfer. They are trainers, consultants, coaches, writers, speakers, etc. Although working usually from their home-office, they develop their business internationally, based on the Internet, e-marketing and the NTIC (New Technologies of Information and Communication).

I help them

• make the shift from being self-employed and trading their time for money, to being successful business owners
• develop their business around their own values, their vision and their mission
• identify their unique expertise and specialities
• define 1 or 2 specific niches in which they become the absolute experts and which bring high revenues
• create and develop programs and info-products, for ex. ebooks, teleclasses or teleconferences, audio and video recordings, seminars and events, etc.
  
• identify and apply systematically the marketing methods that are the most appropriate to sell their products and services, and fit their personality
  
• leverage everything they do in order to develop multiple streams of income
  
• multiply their revenues through residual (recurring) income and even through passive income
• develop their business as a "portable business" that can be run from anywhere in the world
• automate, delegate or delete, in order to bring their business to the next level - so that it can ultimately be run and provide revenues even without them
• use strategic partnerships to develop their business
  
• develop an international strategy in order to leverage what they do in different languages.
  

I strongly believe that a service business can be successful only if it is based on excellence in the following areas:

• skills and expertise of the business owner
• management (even a home-business requires strong management skills)
• technique (Internet, organization of virtual trainings and events, use of software, etc.)
• marketing (including all the new methods of marketing that are constantly being created, like social networks).
  

Too many service professionals make the mistake to believe that their personal skills and expertise are sufficient to become successful in areas where they don't event need to make investments, as they already own a computer, a telephone, a printer and a broadband Internet access. My coaching aims at developing fully the potential of the 3 other crucial elements: management, technique and marketing.

Last but not least, having an excellent work/life balance and sound personal foundations is also crucial for success as an entrepreneur. I also help my entrepreneur clients achieve this through my coaching.

Generally speaking, my clients also report a number of untangible and not measurable benefits as the result of the coaching: balance and fitness, concentration and focus on their goals, self-esteem, physical and mental dynamics, replacement of limiting beliefs by supporting ones, improvement of personal and business relationships and communication, just to name a few.

Intercultural leadership in French

Are you French, or do you speak French? If so, please note that I also run a blog in French like this one, called "Leadership interculturel". You can also subscribe to the newsletter in order to receive the new articles and resources.

Intercultural coaching

The expression "intercultural coaching" is unfortunately largely misused, because it is applied to all sorts of contexts which have very little to do with what coaching really is. Some training companies propose for example "intercultural coaching workshops", which is absurd, as coaching is very different from training. Many language schools provide another example, when they pretend to supplement the language classes with intercultural coaching. Therefore, intercultural coaching seems to be the rage of our times!

Coaching is certainly very trendy nowadays, but is this a sufficient reason for using it out of context, just plainly for marketing purposes?

In the area of intercultural training, for example, the competition is very intense, and it increases daily due to the constant arrival of new university graduates on the market. Therefore, many trainers in this area (who are often former university researchers in a situation of sporadic unemployment) propose "intercultural coaching" without having taken any coaching training, just with the hope of diversifying themselves from the offers of their colleagues. Under the term of "intercultural coaching", they propose nothing else than an individual after-training follow-up, that is split up between just a few hours. Therefore, even if it is a valuable follow-up, it is definitely not coaching.

But then, you might intend to say, what is intercultural coaching?

First of all, it is obvious that it is coaching. This means that it is a process under the guidance of a professional coach, who has been trained to provide this kind of intervention. Such a specific training lasts in general for several years, so that the trainee can assimilate a full range of techniques. Simultaneously, the coaching trainee practices coaching with "guinea pigs" first, and then with as many individual clients as possible. The coaching deals with personal and professional development and, as such, it is practiced in the form of interventions which are at the same time personal and confidential, in particular in relationship with the company of the coachee. But some coaches also practice group coaching, in the perspective of very clearly defined objectives. As an example, I am currently creating two group coaching programs, one for the "trailing husbands" of female expatriates or diplomats, who put their career aside for some time, and the other one for expatriates in Switzerland or other countries, who have reached the "glass ceiling" because, as they are foreigners, they cannot benefit from internal promotions. However, even if these groups are clearly defined, the topics that are covered within this framework are also very personal and fluctuating, according to what the participants have on their mind, or what is important or urgent for them at a certain moment of their evolution, in a context that is either professional or personal. Therefore, the coachees redefine constantly the agenda of the sessions, and not the coach. Needless to say, no predefined program is applied.

Coaching is also a process of self-knowledge and of development of yourself and your capacities. Experience shows that it must last for at least six months, on the basis of at least 3 coaching sessions a month and of a personalized support per email between the sessions, in order to be efficient - i.e. in order to bring sustainable, long-lasting results for the coachee. Therefore, any kind of support that is maybe individual, but split over only a few sessions, has nothing to do with coaching. Personally, I never accept clients who don't want to understand that coaching is a process that requires at the same time regularity and a certain duration.

That was a presentation of what coaching is. Now, what is intercultural coaching?

Intercultural coaching is a coaching process that is applied to persons that live or operate in an international and multicultural context. An intercultural coach works with at least one of these four groups of people:

• expatriates
• multicultural teams
• executives and leaders of two or several industrial groups in the context of a merger/acquisition or a joint-venture
• international executives who travel a lot abroad and lead multicultural teams or foreign subsidiaries.
  

About expatriates, I invite you to read one of my other blog, Expat Coaching. In fact, the majority of coaches who are specialized in the intercultural area deal mostly with expatriates. The condition for being proficient as an expat coach is (on top of the coaching training and several years of practice that I mentioned before) to have been an expatriate yourself for many years. It is necessary for example to have experienced by yourself the different phases of culture shock and integration during several expatriations - and all this while working at a high level of responsabilities as an executive or entrepreneur, just as the clients that you deal with as an expat coach. It is also important to have experienced the "impatriation" first-hand, i.e. the reverse culture schock that happens when you go back to your native country.

The coaching of multicultural teams and the intercultural coaching in the context of mergers/acquisitions and joint-ventures will both be presented later on this blog.

The last of the 4 categories deals with what the Americans call the coaching of "global leaders". Its goal is to help executives, who studied and worked only in the USA and never learnt a foreign language until recently, to think internationally and to acquire behaviors that allow them to interact at the international level. In particular, this kind of coaching helps them to communicate according to multicultural mindsets and data. For example, the use of English as the common language conceals many pitfalls for a person who believes that all the people who express themselves in this (their) language thinks, act and react in the same way, i.e. like them.

Interactive dialogue with the readers

For the last few months, I have been spending quite a lot of time creating this blog and writing articles. But a blog is also an interactive too. Therefore, all my readers are kindly invited to use the "comment" function on this blog, below this article, in order to express their impressions, wishes, etc. Are there in particular any specific subjects that you would like to be covered or developed?

Thanks a lot and "see" you soon on this blog!

Virtual Workplace Dos and Don'ts

The title of this article in Business Week can be a bit misleading. Of course, it is about remote teams. But it presents mainly some valuable tips, and the mistakes to avoid, if you allow your employees to do at least a part of their work at home. Although the traditional example that is presented here is IBM (a classic example of telecommuting or teleworking on a big scale), the tips that are provided here can also be very useful to start-ups and small companies.

Personal and cultural values

I already published two articles about The Cultural Values of Americans and European Cultural Values. Maybe I should have began with a definition of what personal and cultural values are! Anyway, Wikipedia has already done this... The article is here.

European cultural values

If you found the former article about "The Cultural Values of Americans" interesting, you will certainly enjoy this document about "European Cultural Values". It is a free ebook (167 pages!) and wan be downloaded here.

This report was published in 2007 by the European Commission. It examines the following themes:

• How Europeans conceive of the idea of culture and its importance to them.
• Europeans’ involvement in cultural and artistic activities, the place of the Internet in this, barriers towards cultural access and views on the trend towards free cultural access.
• Issues of cultural exchange, specifically its value to society, the extent to which cross-cultural contact already occurs, the willingness of Europeans to meet people from other countries and to learn a new language, ways in which cross-cultural understanding can be enhanced and actors best placed to implement these measures.
• Interest in culture both in Europe and beyond; views on whether there is indeed a European culture, its characteristics and the effects upon it of globalisation
• Opinion on key values to be preserved and reinforced in society as well as whether these are seen as particularly European in nature.

Survey about the relocation issues of expatriate families

Robin Pascoe, "the Expat Expert" who published several books about expatriates, created a survey about the relocation issues of expat families and the support that they received.

I can only encourage you to take the survey, as it will provide valuable insights from the perspective of the families.

I quote 2 paragraphS from the web page about the survey:

"There are numerous relocation surveys that examine the challenges of relocation in order to help companies and sponsoring organizations to better develop relocation policies. But, with very few exceptions, they neglect to go straight to the source—the family—for input.

Family Matters! will fill this gap by sampling only the accompanying spouse, the working partner in his/her capacity as spouse or parent, and any high school children in the family. The entire family can do this survey with lots of room provided to give us your opinions. As we are only offering one survey (instead of multiple surveys depending on where you fit in the family) do keep in mind that some questions may not apply to you. Just skip them.

In recognition of your contribution to this important exercise, after we have collected all the responses, we will be making a donation of $2.00 CDN for each survey to a very well-respected Canadian organization which helps families in Africa called The Stephen Lewis Foundation which can be found at www.stephenlewisfoundation.org."

at any time to do the survey

The Cultural values of Americans (National Cultural Values Survey)

The National Cultural Values Survey (A Special Report of the Culture and Media Institute) is a small ebook that you can download for free here. It is a nationwide survey of American cultural and moral values. It is a very rich study. The interesting thing is that it not only provides many detailed insights about the way American think & behave, what their proclaimed values are, how their behavior differs from those, etc. For an European like me, the way the questions are formulated provides also interesting insights, as they were obviously formulated by Americans. The next step that would be to have a similar survey conducted by Europeans and/or Asians!

The world clock meeting planner

Being an "intercultural leader", or "global leader", involves quite often the organization of virtual meetings or teleconferences with participants from various countries and continents. In order to make it easier, I found a worldclock that was developed specifically for this purpose.

Intercultural etiquette around the world

An excellent knowledge of the various aspects of intercultural etiquette is very important not only for diplomats, but also for any global executive or expat. The eDiplomat website is a useful resource in this respect, although it is a bit short.

Books about intercultural leadership

I added recently a few books which are particularly useful in the area of intercultural leadership. Each book that is presented has a direct link to Amazon. Please have a look at the column on the right side of this blog! Some of them could even be the perfect present for a friend (or yourself?).

Kindle, a new electronic reader for e-books and magazines

Amazon just launched its new electronic reader, with which you can download and read e-books and American and international newspapers and magazines. This is certainly a very interesting device for expats who want to subscribe to their newspapers from home without any delay, and generally speaking for people who travel a lot around the word and who want to read the latest books without having to pack a whole library in their suitcases...

Intercultural Synergy in Mergers & Acquisitions

"International mergers and acquisitions are increasing yet the success rates seem to point to a fundamental flaw. The lack of intercultural synergy is now being viewed as one of the reasons for such poor success.

Economic pressures developed within the framework of a global marketplace have led to unprecedented numbers of mergers and acquisitions over the past decade.

The number of mergers and acquisitions involving US companies alone in 2004 reached 376 with an aggregate total paid of US$22.64 billion. In comparison, in 2003, the total amount paid was US$12.92 billion.

However, statistics show that the failure rate of most mergers and acquisitions lies somewhere between 40-80%. If one were to define ‘failure’ as failure to increase shareholder value then statistics show these to be at the higher end of the scale at 83% (Cnnfn.com 1999). The facts highlight a worryingly poor success rate for international mergers and acquisitions. Why?

Many business commentators are now acknowledging that failure does not have its roots simply in financial, monetary and legal issues but in lack of intercultural synergy. Research suggests that up to 65% of failed mergers and acquisitions are due to ‘people issues’, i.e. intercultural differences causing communication breakdowns that result in poor productivity.

A recent example of such intercultural failure has been that of DaimlerChrysler. Both sides in the partnership set out to show that intercultural hurdles would and could be overcome in their global merger. Recent articles in the Wall Street Journal and Business Week suggest however that DaimlerChrysler underestimated the influence of culture, and due to culture clash, almost two years later is still struggling to become a unified global organization.

Such discourse is highlighting the need for more intercultural training both within the framework of mergers and acquisitions and for key personnel such as managers and HR departments. In both instances culture is being ignored rather than being embraced and used positively.

Piero Morosini, author of Managing Cultural Differences: Effective Strategy and Execution Across Cultures in Global Corporate Alliances, emphasizes that "misunderstood national cultural differences have been cited as the most important factors behind the high failure rate of global JVs [joint ventures] and alliances."
Morosini argues that when intercultural differences are ignored during the evaluation and negotiation stages of a merger, integration inevitably fails. He adds that the manner in which an organization handles intercultural challenges is directly correlated with the performance of the merger in the post-integration stage and can mean the difference between long-term success or failure.

If intercultural understanding is to be recognised within the systems of processes of mergers and acquisitions, staff training is critical. It is the leaders, managers and HR personnel of companies that must have intercultural competency. However, it appears that companies are not investing enough in intercultural, or for that matter any, training.

In the Business Energy Survey, October 2004 (Adecco and Chartered Management Institute) where 1,500 managers were surveyed only a third had received training in the last 12 months. If management are receiving such low levels of support one can assume that other functions are receiving as much or even less.
Companies must start to become more aware of these deficiencies and their possible future impacts. If the mergers and acquisitions of the future are to prove fruitful , companies must design and implement comprehensive intercultural training programs for staff; assess and tackle possible areas of intercultural difficulties prior to, during and after mergers and put into place mutually agreeable intercultural frameworks of understanding to act as guidelines for post-merger synergy.

These tasks should not be seen as reactive, damage limitation exercises but as a positive, proactive means of creating cohesion, maximising efficiency and building a competitive advantage."

By Neil Payne
Published: 3/8/2005
on www.buzzle.com (Click on the title above to see the original article)

Are you an expat? Please take my survey!

I just created a survey about the challenges of expatriates. If you are also an expat, please take the survey here. It takes only between 1 and 2 minutes! Thanks!

Pascale Cotton
Coach for expat and international entrepreneurs

Global IQ Test

If you want to test your abilities to live and work internationally, this test is for you. It also provides interesting hints on how to develop these abilities.
Click here.

Worldwide Business Reports

Here you will find a series of country-specific reports on international business practices, business customs and protocol, cross-cultural communication, negotiating, international etiquette, business entertainment and much more. Worldwide Business Reports were developed by Worldwide Business Practices Report together with the leading experts in international business from around the world.

Quote of the Day

"Ideally, it seems… (a global manager) should have the stamina of an Olympic runner, the mental agility of an Einstein, the conversational skill of a professor of languages, the detachment of a judge, the tact of a diplomat, and the perseverance of an Egyptian pyramid builder.

"(And) that's all. If they are going to measure up to the demands of living and working in a foreign country, they should also have a feeling for the culture; their moral judgement should be not too rigid; they should be able to merge with the local environment with chameleon-like ease; and they should show no signs of prejudice".

- Thomas Aitken

Great speeches of the 20th century (text AND audio)

You can read speeches by great leaders of the 20th century (Nehru, Churchill, Roosevelt, Martin Luther King) and listen to the audio files on the website of The Guardian: click here.

Globalization in the 21st Century

Intercultural Leadership for U.S. Leaders...

Intercultural Leadership for U.S. Leaders - and not only them!

A summary of the Delphi Study about Intercultural Leadership for U.S. Leaders in the Era of Globalization", which was published by Eileen Sheridan in 2005 as a dissertation at the University of Phoenix, can be downloaded by clicking on the above-mentioned title.

It assesses the core competencies of the "Interculturally Competent Leader". For me, as a European and as an expat & intercultural coach, it is not a surprise to find for example "lived experiences in other cultures", "self-awareness of own background and ideas" or "intercultural perspective at all organization levels". However, what seems rather obvious also needs to be underlined over and over again. More and more managers, and not only American ones, have to do start doing business at an international level suddently as a result of a promotion in their career, without having had any international training before. If, on top of that, they have never been in a foreign country before and speak no language except their own, assuming that English is spoken anywhere in the world nowadays, it is not a surprise that they'll experience all sorts of misunderstandings, lack of motivation from their co-workers, and all kinds of other difficulties, including conflicts with their co-workers.

It is also interesting to note that building intercultural understanding is "the top priority for U.S. business leaders to lead and motivate others", which doesn't seem to have been recognized enough in previous studies in the US.

Tha main solutions that are recommended by the panel experts are ranked as follow:

1. Cultural immersion
2. Using the services of consultants and mentors
3. Formal training or education
4. Self-education.

It is interesting that the services of consultants and mentors (and above all a specialized intercultural coach...) is placed before training. This is not a surprise, as the intercultural trainings are often too general and leave the participants afterwards alone with their day-to-day intercultural issues. Of course, nothing can replace "cultural immersion" as a first-hand intercultural experience and a way to open yourself to foreign people and different cultures. But there too, specific expat coaching can be a tremendous way to make ir a more fruitful experience and to develop intercultural skills more quickly.