Do you have the cross-cultural competencies necessary to meet the global challenges facing your organization now and in the future?
Training and development (T&D) professionals in global organizations are required to balance the myriad differences in various countries' legal, educational, labor relations, and labor economic systems. There also are differences in cultural values affecting how to best communicate, earn trust, motivate, and influence colleagues from different cultures. Understanding and adapting to these differences can be critical.
Culturally agile professionals, however, know that cultural adaptability is only a piece of the challenge. They understand that there are times when strategic necessity dictates a single enterprisewide standard—not adapting to the local one. Safety, ethics, and quality are a few salient examples. They also understand that there are other circumstances when the best approach is to take the time to create a new approach, one that does not represent any one culture completely.
T&D professionals with a high level of cultural agility know when to adapt, when to persuasively override, and when to integrate culturally diverse norms, practices, or perspectives. They leverage each of these three, when needed and when appropriate, without losing their personal or professional balance (so to speak).
Culturally agile professionals have competencies that enable them to work quickly, comfortably, and effectively in different cultures and with people from different cultures. As with any competency, the more mutable aspects of cultural agility can be developed. However, the methods for developing cultural agility are more complex than many business leaders have traditionally assumed.
Regardless of what one's well-worn passport and elite status might suggest, breathing the air of another country during an international assignment does not necessarily make people more culturally agile.
Developing your cultural agility requires you to actively engage in knowledge acquisition, experiential learning, and personal reflection. Here are seven road-tested approaches to try.
Question your own assumptions about culture
Having the same style briefcase, degree, or favorite tailor in Hong Kong as your culturally diverse colleagues does not mean that cultural differences have vanished universally. As a T&D professional, you need to question your own assumptions about cultural similarities.
Although there are real similarities globally among the well-educated, well-traveled, and cosmopolitan business professionals who have, after all, been socialized by common agents (for example, MBA programs and corporate headquarters), cultural differences still exist. They are just more difficult to observe.
Consider the people within the units you support. Across many industries, the majority of employees around the world have not seen the inside of airline clubs, business class cabins, or gated communities. These employees who are living and working locally have been socialized in a local context. For them, cultural differences are alive and well—and will surprise you if you ignore their existence.
Learn how to learn about specific cultural differences
There are more than 190 countries in the world with thousands of regional nuances. It would be impossible for you to understand every possible factor affecting the practice of T&D around the world. You can, however, learn how to gather credible information quickly. Online cultural training tools, such as RW3's CultureWizard or Living Abroad's Culture Compass, are useful and convenient resources to readily access important cultural and country-level information.
You also should build a network of "go-to" colleagues in key markets around the world to help you navigate the differences in cultures and T&D systems. They should be reliable professionals who are practicing in your same functional area but in different countries. Try to push your network beyond solely the T&D professionals in your own organizations by joining globally oriented functional groups on networking sites such as LinkedIn.
Build deep knowledge about (at least) one other culture
Online tools and professional networks will help you access information about any country specifically. At the same time, you need to know what questions to ask. To do so, you need to understand how countries differ generally, and how those differences affect T&D.
To gain this knowledge, select a target country other than your own and become an insatiable consumer of knowledge about that country. Read about the country's laws, history, politics, current affairs, unionization, educational system, religion, natural resources, business practices, and national bird.
Most important, reflect on how these dimensions compare with your country and how they affect the practice of T&D. Use your knowledge of one country to understand the general way countries differ and how those differences affect T&D and human resource management.
Become comfortable being uncomfortable
If you've ever traveled internationally and had your luggage lost, you know that being in another country exacerbates the anxiety. The ambiguity created by an unfamiliar culture is a constant. However, individuals' responses to that ambiguity will vary. Those with greater emotional stability (usually combined with humility and a healthy ability to laugh at oneself) are those most comfortable and effective working in another culture.
You can practice operating in high-ambiguity situations. For example, if you live in a big city, there is a good chance that you can safely and respectfully participate in cultural experiences. Reflect on how it feels to not fit in and how you are responding. Practice asking for assistance on how things should be done. Practice learning new behaviors.
Ignore your passport stamps and frequent flyer miles
Your international business trips, global project teams, and international assignments can be developmental when structured with certain development qualities in mind. Unfortunately, often the opportunity doesn't present itself as you move from car service to hotel to office.
For your global experiences to be truly developmental they should possess certain features, including meaningful collaborations with peer-level colleagues from different cultures; opportunities to use knowledge, skills, and abilities in different cultural contexts; and opportunities to receive feedback on your performance in different cultures.
Assess your cross-cultural experiences for these developmental qualities and be honest with yourself about the quality of your experience. On your next business trip, when safe and possible, get out of the hotel and the local corporate office and spend time with your host national colleagues. Ask questions. Build professional relationships. Observe.
Cultural agility is built over time through these progressive, high-quality, and developmental opportunities.
Get some passport stamps and frequent flyer miles
If your organization is like most, it has concurrently invested in technology to facilitate collaboration while shrinking travel budgets. Technology is helpful, of course. It has made all of our global professional lives easier and more efficient.
Remember, however, that a major tenet of developing cultural agility is through meaningful cross-cultural collaborations. These collaborative opportunities are more difficult to have if the professional relationship is solely built on email and conference calls.
Be honest with yourself
Cultural agility is a skill, a practiced act, which builds from individuals' natural abilities and characteristics. Many people can gain some level of cultural agility when placed in high-quality developmental cross-cultural opportunities. For some, the gains are rapid. Personality characteristics, such as emotional strength, openness, and extraversion, accelerate the development of cultural agility.
These same personality characteristics also predict those who are effective in intercultural work settings. The way you are hardwired predicts both your cultural agility and your propensity to gain cultural agility.
It helps to be honest with yourself and understand your own dispositional traits that can facilitate (or possibly impede) your own development. This awareness can help you see blindsides and overcome the factors limiting your development. At the same time, this awareness also can help build a level of appropriate self-efficacy for working in—and developing from—cross-cultural settings.
It is a competitive advantage for organizations to build a pipeline of culturally agile professionals who are able to execute the firms' strategies for global growth, lead in a multicultural or cross-cultural context, and operate successfully anywhere in the world.
Turning inward, T&D professionals who can successfully deliver a culturally agile workforce will, themselves, need cultural agility. Are you ready?