Jan 06 2008
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Intercultural coaching is an approach that helps individuals relate and successfully communicate with people from other cultures. A culture is a realm that comprises nationality, ethnicity, religion, age group and others.
Intercultural coaching can kelp the client adapt to an expatriation or a repatriation, outsource to other countries, develop business relationships with foreign countries or other cultural groups, lead multicultural teams (teams of people from different countries, ethnicities or cultural groups), smooth relationships with in-laws from other cultures or prepare for an interfaith marriage.
Coaching an individual from another country is not necessarily intercultural coaching. If such client is being coached on business development, such coaching is business, not intercultural, coaching. With the same token, coaching an individual from the same country or culture could be intercultural coaching if the client is, for example. a repatriate who has just moved back to his country of origin and needs to readapt to it; or a businessperson who wants to understand a foreign culture to be able to market to it. In other words, the content and the focus of the coaching session determine the nature of the coaching as intercultural, not the nationality of the coach or the client.
Intercultural coaching is not mutually exclusive with, and may be integrated to, other kinds of coaching. For example, we will be doing intercultural executive coaching if we are working with an executive within an organization who needs to streamline production from an array of foreign suppliers and needs to communicate effectively across borders with these vendors. Or we would be doing intercultural life coaching if our client is an individual whose child is marrying someone from a different culture and wants to be able to understand the cultural customs of her in-laws.
For more information on executive and life coaching, please look under those titles under the articles section of this website.