By Catherine Tanneau and Linda McLoughlin
Newly appointed chief engineer “Amina” opened her third monthly virtual team meeting by stating that she welcomed everyone’s input and valued all ideas and feedback—especially innovative and creative thinking.
But the meeting didn’t go as she had hoped. She sensed low engagement and a reluctance to brainstorm and share information on projects. Recalling her former colleagues’ vocal and robust exchanges, she began to doubt her team’s performance—and her fit for this role.
This hypothetical challenge will be familiar to leaders of cross-cultural teams with varying patterns and styles of interaction based on various value and belief systems around power, authority, and courtesy.
Amina will need to master essential coaching skills to cope with this situation, especially to build strong self-awareness, presence, listening, questioning, and creating accountability. Companies with a coaching culture are more than twice as likely as those without it to be high-performing organizations.
Coaching Skills in a Changing Environment
The move to virtual workplaces and the associated shift in talent acquisition and digital nomadism present a real challenge in managing organizations and teams with greater diversity than ever before.
Remote workplaces support more remote hiring, with expanded access to a global workforce. In addition, rising social consciousness on issues of ethnicity, social justice, and belonging has carried over to workplaces, and leaders need to role-model authentic inclusion. Cross-cultural awareness and sensitivity are key to navigating this rising workplace diversity with both ease and authenticity.
Effective global leaders need to be culturally competent—able to function in cross-cultural situations by valuing diversity and staying aware of others’ cultural identities and their own. This ability requires deep self-awareness of their own cultural biases, along with the ability to manage these biases and strive for inclusive action at work. Coaching as a leadership toolkit, with its emphasis on active listening, non-judgment, and curious questioning, supports cross-cultural working as it promotes trust, empathy, and clearer communications.
Cultural Competence vs. Political Correctness
Diverse workplaces are likely to be developmental. Female and ethnic-minority CEOs at Fortune 500 companies have a major impact on business practices and diversity initiatives, which suggests that these leaders demonstrate both cognitive and emotional competence.
Gender-diverse boards attract talented atypical individuals who value a culture of inclusivity. Generations Y and Z—digital natives who represent more than 50% of the workforce—expect leaders who can articulate a meaningful purpose, provide autonomy of action, help diverse teams and individuals grow, and care about social and environmental impact.
While diversity offers real benefits to organizations by creating a growth mindset, innovation, a broad talent pool, and stakeholder alignment, leaders may see diversity goals as being more time intensive, with slower decision making, than working with a homogeneous team sharing a common frame of reference. Employing diversity standards requires leaders to consciously commit to developing cultural fluency and to appreciate the effects of cultural background on team dynamics and communications.
Many organizations have established diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. But these declared values may be inconsistent with leaders’ actions—and the resulting dissonance can undermine efforts to promote cross-cultural workplaces.
Although unconscious bias training may increase awareness of leaders’ blind spots, executive and team coaching provides a sustainable process for adaptation. Both coaching and coaching -skills training help leaders and teams align DEI policies with leadership cross-cultural practices by raising their inter- and intrapersonal awareness, identifying conscious options and skills for inclusion, and taking targeted actions.
Research has shown that what is known as “political correctness” in the workplace inhibits cross-cultural interactions, when leaders struggling under the pressure of rigid PC rules and regulations limit contacts with diverse staff for fear of causing any unintended offense. A coaching culture, on the other hand, promotes mutual respect and inclusion in a way that fosters leaders’ engagement naturally and spontaneously.
A Coaching Culture for a Global Environment
Coaching can support workplace leaders to become more cross-culturally savvy by helping them explore and challenge their own embedded assumptions, perceptions, and belief systems—and those of their organizations.
As experienced executive coaches, we might invite a leader like Amina to reflect on several factors:
- How do you define your meeting’s success, and what other beliefs and criteria might others use to define its success?
- How aware are you of your team’s experience of meetings and of their expectations and preferences?
- What is the team’s cultural and context mix, and how might you account for and manage its cultural differences?
- How can you boost trust and safety within your team?
- How might words like “innovation” and “creativity” land with a diverse team?
- How can you encourage yourself and your team to boost your empowerment?
Leaders like Amina can use coaching skills to develop rapport, trust, and clarity with and among their own teams. The essential coaching skills of listening actively, asking open and curious questions, and displaying empathy without judgment can help a leader support and build cross-cultural fluency.
Ninety-two percent of organizations with strong coaching cultures use three coaching modalities: internal coaches, external coaches, and managers and leaders who use coaching skills within an allied ecosystem that invests in employee development, internal mobility, DEI, and social justice.
Leaders using coaching skills will help create a workplace coaching culture—developmental in its essence and proven to add to the bottom line. Global leaders who use coaching skills consistently will ensure leaders walk the talk and, by bringing DEI policies and procedures to life, help their organization retain talent and become an employer of choice.
To learn more about professional coaching and its organizational benefits, visit the International Coaching Federation.
Catherine Tanneau is Chair and Linda McLoughlin is Vice-Chair of the International Coaching Federation Professional Coaches Board. Both are ICF Master Certified Coaches.
Read more from the International Coaching Federation:
The International Coaching Federation is the world’s largest organization for the global advancement of the coaching profession and fostering coaching’s role as an integral part of a thriving society. Founded in 1995, its 35,000-plus members located in more than 140 countries and territories work toward the common goals of enhancing awareness of coaching and upholding the integrity of the profession through lifelong learning and the highest ethical standards. Through the work of its six unique family organizations, ICF empowers professional coaches, coaching clients, organizations, communities, and the world through coaching. Visit coachingfederation.org for more information.