Cultural awareness in coaching and mentoring

Coaching and mentoring provides great opportunities for all parties in the relationship to develop their cultural awareness learning about cross-cultural issues and enhance their understanding and skills.

At the same time, cross-cultural developmental relationships pose special problems. One or both parties may feel out of their comfort zone – afraid they will do or say the wrong thing; words and ideas can carry very different meanings in different cultures; and people vary substantially across cultures in how they perceive and interpret the world around them. As a result, people in cross-cultural developmental relationships often need to pay a lot more attention to building and maintaining trust (we tend to trust people much more, if they seem to be culturally similar to ourselves, and to attribute more positive motives to what they say and do).

Studies by two professors at French business school identify seven characteristics of a multicultural manager:

1. Sensitivity to one’s own and other cultures
2. Cultural awareness and curiosity
3. Cultural empathy
4. Multilingual skills
5. Contextual understanding and sensitivity
6. Semantic awareness
7. Ability to switch among cultural frames of reference and communication mode

Their observations and analysis provide a valuable foundation for selecting and developing mentors and coaches for cross-cultural learning alliances. In selection, it is logical that relationships are likely to have higher rapport and greater intensity of learning, if mentors and coaches are able to recognise and value the cultural perspectives that mentees bring to the mentoring conversation, to empathise with different ways of interpreting events and to recognise when linguistic differences may lead to divergent interpretations of meaning.

One of the foremost authorities on cross-cultural issues is Fons Trompenaars,

who builds on the work of Dutch psychologist Geert Hofstede. Trompenaars maintains that culture has three layers. The outer or explicit layer concerns the visible signs of difference – what people wear, their behaviour, language and so on. The middle layer refers to norms and values of their organization or society — what is considered right or wrong, or good and bad. The third, innermost layer is implicit.

Cultures differ on seven key dimensions, each of which has a potential impact on

the coaching or mentoring relationship. These are:

• Universalism v particularism. Universalist cultures rely heavily on rules and dealing equally and fairly with everyone. Particularist cultures prefer more flexible approaches to situations – bonds of friendship and family tend to override abstract rules.

• Individualism v communitarianism. Individualist cultures emphasise freedom of the individual; communitarian cultures emphasise the collective good.

• Neutral v affective. Do you control emotions or display them openly?

• Specific v diffuse. In specific-oriented cultures people separate out their business and social lives, often very distinctly. In diffuse cultures, there are few, if any boundaries between them. Diffuse cultures require time to build a relationship, before they can get down to business; specific cultures like to get down to business, and allow relationships to grow if they will.

• Achievement v ascription. Is power based on performance or merit; or is it based on factors such as age, social connection, gender or family background? (Think of this as advancement through doing, versus advancement through being.)

• Sequential v synchronous. People in sequential cultures like to organise tasks one after another; those in synchronous cultures prefer to tackle multiple tasks at the same time. Different cultures may think of time as a series of sequential events, from past to present to future; or in a much less structured way, with past, present and future being interrelated.

• Internal v external control. Do you have a sense of being in control of the

world around you (directing it from within), or needing to control it; or do you feel you have to or prefer to adapt to events outside your control?

• All of these different perspectives have the potential to cause misunderstandings and breakdowns in communication within the coaching/ mentoring relationship.

• An additional complication may be the corporate culture, which may reflect

elements of more than one national culture. Participants in cross-cultural

developmental alliances can improve the effectiveness of their relationships by:

• Talking about their respective cultures both at the start of the relationship

and as it becomes appropriate thereafter. Using the seven dimensions of

culture as a framework for the conversation can help them achieve

considerable depth in these conversations.

• Using story and metaphor to explore issues – this typically gives rise to

insights and nuances that might otherwise have been missed.

• Viewing the differences in culture as a valuable opportunity to expand

one’s own understanding

• Recognising that unconscious assumptions are a potential barrier to one’s

own fulfilment and valuing the opportunity to bring these into the open for

discussion and evaluation.

Further reading

Hofstede, Geert (2001) 2nd edition Cultures consequences: Comparing values,

behaviours, institutions and organizations across nations, Sage

Trompenaars, F and Hampden-Turner, C (1998) Riding the Waves of Culture,

McGraw-Hill

© David Clutterbuck, 2014

Prof David Clutterbuck
Coaching and Mentoring International Ltd
Woodlands, Tollgate,
Maidenhead,
Berks, UK. SL6 4LJ

www.coachingandmentoringinternational.org
e-mail: info@coachingandmentoringinternational.org
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