CHAPTER 6

BUILDING THE FOUNDATION FOR CULTURAL AGILITY WITH CROSS-CULTURAL TRAINING

Asif Zulfiqar is a culturally agile professional from Pakistan who has lived and worked in the United States, Finland, and the United Kingdom. Asif understands the subtle power of country-specific differences, noting that “even basic behaviors, such as saying ‘hello,’ can be culturally bound and can be misinterpreted if not done correctly. For example, American colleagues don’t shake hands every day—only after not seeing each other for a long time; a subtle nod or simple ‘hello’ would suffice.” He adds that this same behavior would be rude in his home country of Pakistan, where “it is polite to acknowledge another person with a handshake and a verbal ‘Assalam-o-alaikum’ every time you see him throughout the day—even if it’s the tenth time you’ve seen him.” When his American colleagues pointed out the difference, it was easy for Asif to adapt his behavior. However, Asif added that “it took a few months before my mind allowed me to feel comfortable with the behavior. It was still signaling that I was being rude when I was acting appropriately.”

In preparation for relocating from the United States to Finland to work for Nokia, Asif received a one-on-one orientation session with a cross-cultural trainer. In this training, Asif learned that Finns are highly egalitarian, honest, direct, reserved, and soft-spoken, and that they prefer not to engage in small talk, even in social settings. There is one exception: saunas, a staple of Finnish personal and, in some situations, professional life. The cross-cultural trainer had shared with Asif that he should expect different—more expressive—conversations in the sauna. Just as the Finnish social norm is to be physically naked in the sauna, conversations and emotions are also “naked” in that setting. As an expressive and talkative person, Asif thought this would be an easy adjustment to make.

A few weeks after starting to work in Finland, Asif recalls, “At the end of a long day of meetings, some colleagues—men, thankfully, for the sake of my modesty—decided to go to the gym downstairs and finish up our business conversation. While I had been a regular at the Nokia gym, I never used the sauna because I was a little shy about the ‘dress code.’” The cross-cultural trainer was correct. Asif observed that his Finnish colleagues were more relaxed, humorous, and very talkative when in the sauna; he shared that “once I adjusted to the ‘dress code’—which took a few minutes of self-consciousness—I came to appreciate this and all of our animated sauna conversations. We always had great conversations about work—and usually laughed a lot in the process.” Asif deeply appreciates the Finnish culture, their reserved, honest, and direct communication style—and now appreciates the health benefits of going to the sauna from time to time.

Asif’s cultural agility is evidenced by the fact that he can now easily overcome the feelings of psychological discomfort with culturally appropriate behaviors—whether greetings or the sauna dress code. He now makes psychological adjustments quickly and comfortably. His brain is trained, if you will, to ascribe multiple meanings to the same behaviors. Although cross-cultural training programs cannot retrain one’s emotional responses, they can explain the process of cross-cultural adjustment. This type of cross-cultural training offers the “fair warning” that there will be some disconnect between physical behaviors and psychological responses for some period of time. Knowing is different from experiencing. Even so, it helps to know that the feelings are normal and that becoming culturally agile requires some mental conditioning.

As Asif’s example illustrates, cross-cultural training can be a very valuable first step in developing cultural agility—provided that the training covers the right content, is delivered in the right way, and is offered at the best possible time. Even if one possesses the best set of predisposing personality traits, as Asif can attest, knowledge about how cultures differ is important. Cross-cultural training is any instructional method—such as instructor-led courses, one-on-one orientations, videos, cultural coaching, online tools, or older siblings with content knowledge—designed to impart knowledge about the ways in which cultures differ (generally) and the differences one might experience when working in a given country or culture (specifically). Cross-cultural training can help build a pipeline of successful global professionals by helping them learn to interpret behaviors and respond appropriately in a cross-cultural context. It can also help professionals form realistic expectations with respect to working in a different country or with people from different cultures.

Cross-cultural training is a very common practice, but one that is still largely available only to professionals who are living and working internationally. Brookfield’s 2011 Global Relocation Trends reported that 74 percent of organizations offer cross-cultural training for their international assignees, with 25 percent of the companies making it mandatory.1 At a minimum, your company should be offering cross-cultural training to international assignees who will be spending an extended period of time in another country. Duration, however, should not be the only factor determining who will receive training. Although often offered to international assignees, cross-cultural training is even more important for professionals who are taking important business trips or working on short-term projects with those from different countries. They need to arrive with the knowledge already in their toolbox; unlike international assignees, they will not have the luxury of taking time to learn through observation. I strongly recommend that you offer cross-cultural training to the widest possible swath of professionals engaged in cross-cultural interactions.

Although often offered to international assignees, cross-cultural training is even more important for professionals who are taking important business trips or working on short-term projects with those from different countries.

WHAT TO INCLUDE IN A CROSS-CULTURAL TRAINING PROGRAM

When offering cross-cultural training, it is important that the training begin with the general cultural differences—a cultural framework. This cultural framework provides the professionals in your organization with a mental filing cabinet, if you will, a method to sort and store the future information they acquire about cultures. Another learning goal for cross-cultural training should focus on culture-specific knowledge: the behaviors, norms, attitudes, and values that can potentially influence professionals’ success in a given context. The third learning goal is methods for discovery, or ways in which professionals can build their knowledge store by interacting with people from different cultures and in different cultural contexts. In a sense, the goal for this aspect of cross-cultural training is to help professionals “learn how to learn” from their experiences. The fourth common learning goal of cross-cultural training is an understanding of the adjustment process to help professionals prepare for what they might experience as they interact in an unfamiliar culture.

Learning Goal 1: Build a Framework for How Cultures Differ

Regardless of the delivery method and whether the provider is internal to your organization or an external vendor or consultant, the cross-cultural training offered should begin with a solid cross-cultural framework, a basis for understanding the ways in which cultures differ. Ask to see the provider’s cultural framework and evaluate it: Is it comprehensive (but not too academic or theoretical)? Is it logical and useful?

An effective cultural framework will serve as the platform for discussing the cross-cultural differences affecting how global professionals gain credibility, communicate effectively, and collaborate. Figure 6.1 offers a cultural framework from RW3 CultureWizard, one of the popular providers of cross-cultural training.

FIGURE 6.1 A Sample Cross-Cultural Framework

Used by permission of RW3 CultureWizard (RW-3.com)

All cross-cultural frameworks have their roots in anthropology and sociology. Those written for professional audiences will emphasize the dimensions most relevant in professional and business contexts.

Learning Goal 2: Gain Culture-Specific Knowledge

An effective cross-cultural training program will equip the professionals in your organization to understand specifically how cultural dimensions in a given context could affect the outcome of their work. Training on culture-specific knowledge before international business trips, negotiations, global team meetings, and other cross-cultural endeavors will lay a foundation for your colleagues to be more successful in a specific cultural context. Over time, when this training is successfully put to use, a repertoire of behavioral responses are built that can, in turn, be leveraged in subsequent professional cross-cultural situations.

To illustrate culture-specific knowledge, let’s take the example of “establishing credibility” as a critical starting point for many intercultural interactions (and one that is laden with potential cultural nuances). I often joke to my students that I lose credibility in some parts of the world by merely “showing up” as a woman and appearing younger than expected (although the latter problem has resolved itself over the years). I also lose credibility in certain countries by sharing that I was born into a blue-collar family in which my parents worked hard to send their five kids to school, each of us achieving advanced degrees and professional occupations. Although that personal fact is admired by some, a portion of the world would downgrade my credibility for my not being “born well”; in their eyes I am a person who inappropriately tried to overcome her lower-class destiny.

I’ve worked all over the world—even in some countries where I have had to overcome a sex-age-birthright “triple whammy.” How have I managed to work effectively? Not by changing the “skin suit” I wear in different countries. Rather, through training, coaching, and experience, I have learned the culture-specific ways to negotiate around these cultural differences in expectations of how experts should look, to mitigate the effect of first impressions associated with age and sex, and to highlight different aspects of my biography as the cultural context demands. These are tangible skills that can be learned the hard way through reflection on one’s mistakes. But, having tried this, I would not recommend it as a human talent development strategy. Instead, it is much more effective and efficient for these skills to be taught via culture-specific cross-cultural training. To work with this example for your own personal case, review the questions in the box “Cultural Factors in Building Credibility” to determine the factors that might affect how your professional credibility is established in a given culture.

Establishing credibility is merely one example of a situation where country-specific knowledge is relatively easy to impart via cross-cultural training, and where a lack of knowledge can be professionally devastating. Another example is the difference in communication styles across cultures. Cultures vary on what their words connote (as opposed to what is literally said) and how speech is interpreted. In cultures with more indirect or high-context communication, many things are left unsaid, as people expect the context to fill in the true meaning of what was intended. Communication in high-context cultures is subtle and nuanced; an outsider who doesn’t know how to read the cues can find it difficult to interpret.

This challenge works in the other direction, too: people from high-context cultures may find the communication of those from low-context cultures inappropriately direct and abrupt. In a training class for English-speaking computer help desk employees in India, the global IT services company Wipro Technologies observed that “as a high-context culture where what is communicated is more internalized (say, in a family), Indians can seem to be beating around the bush to Americans, who are part of a low-context culture in which communications need to be more explicit. ‘If you like to talk and you’re dealing with a low-context person,’ explains the instructor, Roger George, ‘you might want to keep it simple and get to the point.’”2

Languages, like cultures, vary in their formality. Even when professionals are speaking a lingua franca, such as English, the language is used and interpreted in different ways. In cultures that are more formal, people are often called by their title. In these cultures, there is little discussion of personal issues at work, a greater use of formal greetings, and stricter observance of the rules of etiquette. Cultures also vary in the extent to which communication is expressive and emotional or unemotional. Passionate speech denotes enthusiasm in more expressive cultures, but it may be considered bombastic in less expressive ones. Speakers in more emotional cultures will use higher volume, more gestures, and greater vocal modulation compared to those in less expressive cultures.

The list of culture-specific “good to know” factors could continue at some length. It would include how individuals integrate and balance their work with their personal lives—do they “live to work,” or do they “work to live”? This dimension will manifest in the amount of effort expended for work-related activities at the expense of a personal life and vacation time, whether work will be brought home or done over the weekend, and the like. The list would also include the extent to which time within a given culture is controlled and treated as a commodity (“time is money”) or with a more fluid approach. This will manifest in adherence to deadlines, punctuality, and the extent to which long-range planning is conducted. Your professionals should also know whether their colleagues from a given culture value the group’s needs over one’s individual needs or vice versa. This difference will manifest in the ways teams work together and are rewarded, the way promotions are awarded, and the way work is prioritized.

Your organization’s cross-cultural training programs should enable professionals to learn about culture differences for the contexts in which they will be expected to work. The broader learning goal for culture-specific training is that your professionals are able to correctly read a situation and accurately assess the meaning of another person’s behaviors. An accurate understanding of the situation enables professionals to make better and more strategic decisions regarding the most appropriate behavioral response. As discussed in Chapter Two, engaging in the most appropriate cultural response—adaptation, minimization, or integration—will require professionals to first understand the potential cultural influences of a situation and then determine the extent to which culture will affect the best way to respond.

Learning Goal 3: Learn Methods for Cross-Cultural Discovery

Imagine that you are single and on the dating scene. You walk into a bar, and a good-looking person makes eye contact and then looks away. The interpretation of the brief gaze will depend on a myriad of contextual features: Is he or she with a date, alone, or with friends? Did a smile accompany the eye contact? Is the place crowded, or are you the only two in the bar? Did you trip over a chair, creating an attention-grabbing crash? In evaluating this scene, you are reading the contextual cues through your personal lens. The ability to accurately read contextual cues is exactly what culturally agile professionals are able to do. The difference is that they are able to change lenses and continually reframe and reinterpret social cues, depending on the cultural context. Accuracy in any given cultural context should improve over time as the professionals in your organization discover and internalize the new meanings for behaviors across contexts.

Although personality and culture-specific knowledge will accelerate the process, discovering the nuances of an unfamiliar culture comes down to one thing: repeated interaction with (and observation of) people from that culture. Riall Nolan, a cultural anthropologist from Purdue University who has spent much time living and working in Senegal, described to me how this discovery process works:

The way in which one uncovers a new culture is similar to the way one would learn about a new neighborhood. You meet people and start asking questions. You put the pieces together. Eventually, you start to see some patterns about what is important in the community, preferences, and values. At that point, you become more discriminating in your observations, and your questions become more precise. The answers are more helpful to you. Many people have engaged in this process of discovery previously in their lives, if they have ever moved, gone away to school, or started a new job. With every new move, you need to discover and learn how to read the unfamiliar culture.

Truly cultural agile professionals know and use these discovery methods effectively. They are keen observers who can quickly “read” any new cultural context. Cross-cultural training can provide a structured way for the professionals in your organization to use these discovery methods to focus observations, interpret cues, ask the right questions, and, when ready, see the patterns inherent in the culture (without jumping to hasty inaccurate conclusions). This type of cross-cultural training offers the professionals in your organization the methods for how to observe to accurately read the situation. The goal of this type of cross-cultural training is twofold: both to structure observations and to give professionals a way to categorize the observations so that they can use them effectively and in a logical manner.

The use of these discovery methods is a skill. As is true of all skills, it requires practice. You will need to give the professionals in your organization an opportunity to learn these discovery techniques and then build their skills by applying them. The learning goal is to enable professionals to continuously build their understanding of cultures and effectively read them more quickly and more accurately with each successive experience. As an example, the box “Do You See What I See?” offers a list of five possible observations (of hundreds) that professionals can make when entering an unfamiliar country or culture for the first time, to help them read a culture more accurately.

Give the professionals in your organization an opportunity to learn these discovery techniques and then build their skills by applying them.

Learning Goal 4: Understand the Cross-Cultural Adjustment Process

At the beginning of this chapter, I described how Asif Zulfiqar adjusted to the casual style of greeting that was the norm among his U.S. coworkers. As you recall, he was able to readily adapt his behavior and abandon the handshake and formal greeting he had been brought up to use in his native Pakistan. Behaviorally, the change was easy, but at the emotional level he felt uncomfortable with the U.S.-style informality, and his discomfort persisted for months.

What Asif experienced in the subtleties of greetings is an issue whenever your professionals move from learning about behaviors to actually living them. Cognitive understanding—knowing that a handshake is considered overly formal—is only the first step. Changing one’s behavior to fit the host culture is different from emotional adjustment and feelings of psychological comfort with the new behavior. Christopher Earley and his colleagues would describe Asif’s experience as a demonstration of his cultural intelligence (CQ) and note that Asif engaged his mind, body, and heart in the process.3 Asif’s experience illustrates how CQ is a combination of cognitive understanding of the differences (his mind observed the differences between the Pakistani and American greeting styles), the ability to change behaviors (his body used the U.S. greeting style), and feeling comfortable with the differences over time (his heart accepting the U.S. greeting style as an appropriate method for greeting in that context). The box “Developing Cultural Intelligence” offers information about further reading in becoming more culturally intelligent.

If your organization’s cross-cultural training program includes building understanding of this aspect of the adjustment process, professionals will realize that a certain amount of psychological discomfort is normal. This realization is an aid to emotional regulation. Instead of being frustrated or perplexed, professionals who understand the process will be more likely to give themselves time to settle into the new behavior and allow their emotional responses to catch up.

DELIVERY METHODS FOR CROSS-CULTURAL TRAINING

As we saw in the preceding section, developing cultural agility in the workforce requires employees to have four kinds of tools in their cross-cultural toolbox:

Some methods for delivering this cross-cultural training are Web based; others are person led. Many organizations use a blended approach, combining the convenience of the Web-based tools with the tailored approach of person-led instruction and coaching.

Web-Based Delivery Methods

With the inception of e-learning in many organizations, cross-cultural training programs are beginning to be delivered via the Internet, mobile device applications, and organizations’ intranet systems. According to the Brookfield study, roughly 32 percent of organizations are now offering cross-cultural training for their international assignees through a Web-based program, a number that is steadily increasing each year.4 The use of Web-based cross-cultural training is scalable, making the training affordable for business travelers and members of global teams, rather than being limited to international assignees, as the more expensive face-to-face training often is.

These Web-based training tools can be a cost-effective way to build cross-cultural training into your organization’s learning system. They are rarely homegrown. Rather, organizations offering Web-based training tools generally purchase access to existing tools from providers specializing in cross-cultural training. When evaluating the best possible Web-based cross-cultural training tool for your organization’s professionals, remember that not all tools provide the same level of utility. (See the box “Web-Based Cross-Cultural Training Tools” for a list of some popular providers.) Consider the strategic needs of your organization with respect to countries covered and the focus of the employees to be trained (for example, business travelers, members of global teams, international assignees). Web-based cross-cultural training tools should be assessed and compared on the following ten features:

Person-Led Delivery Methods

Otis Shepard is an American culturally agile professional who has been on both sides of person-led cross-cultural training when working in Europe and Asia. Before his international assignment in Poland for PepsiCo as division training manager for Eastern Europe, Otis received person-led cross-cultural training. Since he had not yet worked in Poland, he appreciated the culture-specific knowledge he received from international colleagues currently on assignment in Poland, and some strategies for communicating effectively with Polish colleagues from his assigned coach, who was based at the Polish head office. The coach advised Otis on business protocol and important country customs, such as the focus on relationships and more formality, especially at first.

This was good advice. Within days of arriving in Poland, Otis recalls that “the advice of the cultural coach took shape when I started working. Exactly as he advised, I adapted to a more formal and more relationship-oriented style—and even tried to use the words of Polish I was learning.” Following the norms of the Polish culture to develop collegial relationships helped Otis readily become effective. He credits his Polish colleagues, saying that “since I took the time to build the relationships, my Polish colleagues supported me, enabling me to adjust to business and personal life in Poland.”

Otis, in turn, became the in-house cultural trainer for non-Polish colleagues arriving in Poland, whether for international assignments or business trips. He recalls providing colleagues with instrumental support (for example, helping them learn how to get around the city, rent an apartment, find a medical doctor, shop for food and clothing) as well as emotional support (helping them deal with their frustrations with delays and bureaucracy, vestiges of Poland’s former Communist years). Otis coached them on how to build relationships, negotiate, communicate, and lead in the Polish context. This in-house coaching paid dividends for PepsiCo; Otis was able to help colleagues quickly and effectively negotiate the Polish business landscape, operate with less stress in the Polish culture, and achieve their business goals.

Although Web-based tools’ being real-time and 24/7 makes them particularly convenient for busy professionals, Otis’s example illustrates that there are times when a “live person” is the most effective way to help the professionals in your organization navigate through a specific context. Cross-cultural coaches work with professionals directly to build country-specific knowledge, usually in preparation for a specific work-related activity. They guide professionals on how to modify their behaviors to be effective in a specific task, such as delivering an important speech in another country or negotiating an international joint venture.

In addition to role-specific cross-cultural training designed to help employees accomplish a specific task, organizations also offer cross-cultural training to their international assignees to help assignees and their family members live and work in a host country. Over 70 percent of organizations offer person-led cross-cultural training to international assignees and their families prior to their relocation to another country (predeparture cross-cultural training) or upon arrival. This tailored and often family-oriented cross-cultural training is designed to facilitate assignees’ success and the entire family’s adjustment to life in the host country. However, as anyone who has relocated to another country or around the block can attest, the weeks immediately before, during, and immediately after the relocation are stressful and busy (to say the least). Not surprising, the cross-cultural training offered for international assignees and their families often remains unused, given the many other conflicting demands on the international assignees’ and their families’ time. For the person-led cross-cultural training to be useful, the international assignees would need to view the training as a tool essential to their effectiveness on the international assignments.

Blended Learning

Both Web-based and person-based cross-cultural training programs have their pros and cons. Web-based programs might not be able to address the specific nuances of a given colleague’s situation, and person-led training might not be cost-effective or logistically practical. The best of both worlds is sometimes a blended learning approach that mixes online e-learning tools, simulations, exercises, and modules with personal coaching, instructor-led training, seminars, and action learning projects. This blended approach is gaining favor as the “best practice” across organizations. Brookfield’s 2011 Global Relocation Trends reported that roughly one-third of companies used a Web-based cross-cultural training platform; among them, nearly 30 percent used the Web-based training in conjunction with person-led training.5

Blended learning is typically structured according to the following protocol: the basics of cross-cultural differences are taught online as prework before the more expensive and time-intensive person-led training begins; the face-to-face portion of the instruction is then targeted to the specific situation of the global business professional’s need, such as an international assignment in Singapore, a business negotiation in France, or a global team distributed across five countries.

Many organizations use blended approaches to reinforce cross-cultural learning and ensure that employees have the cultural knowledge necessary to achieve their performance goals. For example, a global financial information company, opening offices in Asia, Europe, and Latin America to support a major new global product initiative, engaged in blended cross-cultural training. In this company’s case, cross-cultural understanding was of strategic importance because team members from these three regions needed to be able to communicate effectively regarding complex technology issues. The communications were mostly generated through teleconferencing and emails, with the team leaders also having face-to-face meetings. At the onset, these multicultural groups, which were operating virtually, experienced many communication problems leading to frustration, resentment, and some failures. Their solution was to combine the RW3 CultureWizard Web-based cross-cultural training tools with in-person team training. The participants were able to identify their own cultural values, their colleagues’ cultural values, and how these differences affected collaboration. Ultimately, as a great example of cultural integration, the teams developed their own standards for team communication and interactions.6

LANGUAGE TRAINING

Whenever professionals will be working in a country where another language is used, language training is an essential complement to cross-cultural training. Professionals can hardly be expected to succeed without the language skills they will need to communicate with colleagues who speak the target language. However, much like cross-cultural training in organizations, language training is usually reserved for professionals on international assignments. Whether Web or classroom based or with a private instructor, instruction in the host-country language is typically provided both before and during the international assignment. Language instruction is also generally extended to the family members of international assignees to help smooth the transition to the host country.

The other pockets of language training activity are the courses offered company-wide to train employees globally in a lingua franca, the common company language. The lingua franca in some cases is not the language of the headquarters country, but rather the language most useful for the business from a strategic perspective. The Japanese retailer Rakuten, for example, decided to adopt an English-only lingua franca policy throughout its organization; signs, meetings, communications, documentation, and even its cafeteria menus in Japan are written in English.7 Rakuten has over seven thousand (mostly Japanese) employees who are actively learning or improving their English skills, some of whom are enrolled in English language classes. Managers are expected to pass an English proficiency test to be promoted. As a part of the company’s globally oriented business strategy, language skills training helps Rakuten improve its cultural agility at the organizational level, facilitating communications among associates and clients outside Japan.

TIMING AND SEQUENCING OF CROSS-CULTURAL TRAINING

Have you ever attended a training session and felt as though you were experiencing “information overload”? This might manifest as the inability to absorb more information, loss of concentration on what is being taught, or lack of connection between the material covered and its practical application to the work setting. Ibraiz Tarique and I conducted research on the issue of overload in the context of cross-cultural training, specifically on the timing and sequencing of training delivery.8 We found that when cross-cultural training is offered without context, trainees can fail to absorb the training content because it does not build on prior knowledge. Without any prior experience of cultural difference, individuals find the cross-cultural training to be too far removed from their reality. Once employees have had some cross-cultural experience, the content of cross-cultural training has heightened relevance as the individual can “feel” and internalize the differences, rather than merely learn about them intellectually. Learning in this context is more memorable because it is offered in real time. The knowledge gained in cross-cultural training will be “stickier.”

Our research found that effective cross-cultural learning systems optimize both elements:

• Sequencing cross-cultural training content to ensure that new knowledge builds on existing knowledge
• Timing cross-cultural training to ensure that content is matched to the needs and the readiness of the trainees

Brookfield’s 2011 Global Relocation Trends survey found that almost half of the responding organizations offered cross-cultural training to their international assignees once they were in the host country.9 For reasons of both timing and sequencing, this type of cross-cultural training is likely to be more efficacious in building assignees’ knowledge. Once the assignees begin to experience cultural differences in their host country, the cross-cultural training will be more relevant and useful.

However, I want to emphasize that it is not advisable to postpone all cross-cultural training until professionals are in the host country or working with colleagues from a different culture. Throwing your professionals into a new culture without advance preparation could result in some cultural missteps early on that might damage professional relationships, stunt the adjustment process, or, at minimum, bruise an ego or two. When professionals in your organization have make-or-break negotiations or business-critical presentations in a country where they have never previously worked, it is critical to provide cross-cultural training before they begin any cultural interaction. This intervention type of cross-cultural training can be timed to occur at the onset of the formation of a global team, giving the team some heightened awareness of their cultural differences and a structured way to create their team’s norms. The goal for the cross-cultural training program is to deliver the appropriate information at the right time, neither too early nor too late. Both the timing and the sequencing of cross-cultural training are important.

READINESS FOR CROSS-CULTURAL TRAINING

Arms crossed. Eyes rolling. “Who cares?” attitude. Anyone who has ever conducted cross-cultural training has had the occasional trainee in the session who, quite frankly, just should not be there and definitely should not be working cross-culturally. These individuals believe that the cross-cultural training is teaching irrelevant soft skills—skills that cannot possibly matter when they are being asked to use their technical skills in a cross-national context.

From my experience offering cross-cultural training, I find that these individuals fall into two categories. The first category is made up of those who have never worked interculturally before and underestimate the power of cultural differences. These cross-cultural newbies often believe that their company’s culture will be the same globally, and underestimate the extent to which their technical skills are bound by culture. Generally, they quickly grow to appreciate cross-cultural knowledge, usually seeing the light once they have taken a few cultural missteps. Those who underestimated the role of culture tend to become converts, seeking out cross-cultural training before their subsequent business trips.

Cross-cultural newbies believe that their company’s culture will be the same globally, and underestimate the extent to which their technical skills are bound by culture.

The second group comprises the professionals who have traveled extensively for business but engaged in little significant intercultural interaction in the process. They are more intractable. Professionals in this group rarely “come around” to grasp how much more effective they could be if they would only take cultural differences into account when working internationally and interculturally—even in professional situations which demand that they override cultural differences via cultural minimization. They are generally not given feedback on their behaviors in different cultures; furthermore, they are almost always working in situations where their seniority, expertise, or position suggest that there are few people around who could even comfortably provide such feedback. In a nutshell, they lack openness even to accept that cultural differences exist, and are much less likely to willingly adapt their behavior when needed. These individuals lacking in openness are the least successful in cross-cultural training.10 Unfortunately, they are also the ones who would benefit from it the most.

I have also observed that these two groups of employees who lack readiness for cross-cultural training are nonexistent, or nearly so, in organizations fully committed to building a pipeline of culturally agile professionals. When they work in organizations with culturally agile role models and mentors in prominent leadership positions, those without experience cross-culturally want to model their behavior after their culturally astute senior leaders. They seek cross-cultural training because they know it can help them be more effective in their roles, and the importance of the knowledge is reinforced throughout the organization. Those who truly lack openness (a personality trait that is unlikely to change, irrespective of training) generally do not make it far in the talent pipeline of organizations that place a high value on cultural agility.

EVALUATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CROSS-CULTURAL TRAINING

Cross-cultural training is an investment of organizational resources. As for all investments in human capital, organizations should look at their dashboard and assess whether their most important strategic needles are moving in the positive direction—and whether there is a return on the knowledge gained as a result of the training provided. Organizations should consider three metrics as they evaluate whether their cross-cultural training programs are helping build a pipeline of culturally agile professionals:

Let’s consider each of these in turn.

Knowledge Gained and Retained

If organizations offer foreign language training, assessing whether trainees have increased their proficiency in reading and writing in the target language as a function of having been through the language training course is relatively straightforward. We could assess their language proficiency before and after the language course to measure their knowledge gained. We could assess them again months after the language training course to measure their knowledge retained. The same is true for cross-cultural knowledge. You can assess whether the professionals in your organization who have taken the cross-cultural training course are able to identify the general ways cultures differ, the specific ways a target culture differs from their own culture, the methods for cultural discovery, and the phases of cross-cultural adjustment.

The box “Testing Cross-Cultural Knowledge” offers a sample of items from a test to assess individuals’ knowledge of how cultures differ. It should be noted, however, that these knowledge-based cultural tests will reveal only a portion of your professionals’ true understanding. The real test when evaluating the effectiveness of cross-cultural training is whether professionals are able to effectively use the knowledge in international or multicultural settings.

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Testing Cross-Cultural Knowledge: Five Sample Items from a Knowledge Test to Evaluate Cross-Cultural Training

1. The cultural dimension of “hierarchy” is characterized by which of the following?

a. The directness or subtleness of the language people use.

b. The preference for autonomy or collaboration.

c. The extent to which individual-level or group-level contributions are valued.

d. The allocation of power and responsibility.

2. Individuals who are egalitarian would tend to believe that . . .

a. Authority and power should change depending on the situation.

b. It is good to share personal information with the team.

c. The leader is the only one who should provide direction.

d. Work-life balance is important for happiness.

3. In a work setting, group-oriented teammates would likely prefer to . . .

a. Focus on personal responsibility in the context of the team’s goals.

b. Act with independent initiative to further the team’s progress.

c. Create a team identity and a shared sense of purpose.

d. Make fast and efficient decisions—and then revise them later if needed.

4. When compared with colleagues who are indirect, colleagues who are direct will be more likely to . . .

a. Use nonverbal communications.

b. Show humility and preserve dignity.

c. Prefer a more egalitarian organizational structure.

d. Openly discuss differences of opinion as they arise.

5. In a work setting, colleagues with a fluid sense of time will tend to . . .

a. Constantly bring new ideas and information to the group.

b. Create short-term goals rather than long-term plans.

c. Develop and implement timelines for deliverables.

d. Desire work-life balance

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Time-to-Effectiveness

At the start of this book, we defined cultural agility as professionals’ ability to quickly, comfortably, and effectively work in different cultures and with people from different cultures. This definition intentionally starts with “quickly”; most firms today have a sense of urgency as they compete in the global economy. Waiting for professionals to become effective cross-culturally—and allowing them to make developmental (and costly) missteps along the way—is a luxury most companies cannot afford. In evaluating the effectiveness of cross-cultural training, organizations should assess whether they are accelerating professionals’ time-to-effectiveness cross-culturally as a function of the training offered.

Professional Success

The most relevant test of whether cross-cultural training has been effective is, ultimately, whether professionals are more successful as a function of having been through the cross-cultural training program. It is with this higher-order evaluation that the return on investment can be assessed. It is also the most challenging to isolate, given the many factors beyond cross-cultural training that can potentially affect someone’s performance in a cross-cultural context. One recommendation is to measure professionals’ level of success in professional tasks requiring cross-cultural competence. With these measurements, the line of sight between cross-cultural competencies (and the cross-cultural training that helped promote them) can be more clearly compared to a financial marker or an overall effectiveness rating. You might want to assess your business managers who have received training, for example, on the sample tasks requiring cross-cultural competencies (see box).

Methods for Evaluating Effectiveness

In discussing the metrics for cross-cultural training evaluations, we also need to discuss the methods for conducting them. The most conclusive training evaluations are those that can effectively measure change on a dimension of strategic importance. For the sake of illustration, let’s say your organization is most interested in cross-cultural knowledge. To conduct this evaluation of whether cross-cultural training affects knowledge, we would need to first randomly assign employees into two groups: one group of employees will receive cross-cultural training, and another group of employees will not receive cross-cultural training. All of those participating in this evaluation would need to be assessed on their knowledge at two points in time: before the training program and after the training program. Before the training program, both groups should be the same in terms of cross-cultural knowledge because we have not yet offered cross-cultural training. This is the baseline. While the one group receives cross-cultural training, the second group does something unrelated (for example, plays Angry Birds). The employees from both groups are then tested again on their cross-cultural knowledge. For the cross-cultural training to have been effective, the group receiving the cross-cultural training should now have higher scores in cross-cultural knowledge compared with the group who played Angry Birds.

In about twenty years of working in this area, only one client has requested (or allowed me to conduct) an evaluation this rigorous; the resistance is generally related to the fact that this type of assessment requires cross-cultural training to be withheld from a randomly assigned group of employees. Although this method remains the gold standard for evaluating the effectiveness of cross-cultural training, it is rarely carried out. The good news is that there are several acceptable methods for evaluating the effectiveness of cross-cultural training that are slight variations on this design. Most typically, organizations will pilot-test a cross-cultural training method with employees from one representative unit and compare them to the rest of the organization on some strategically relevant dimension (for example, global team effectiveness). Other organizations match two relatively comparable units and offer cross-cultural training to just one, evaluating whether the trained unit is more successful on some strategically relevant dimension (for example, cross-cultural knowledge). Another approach is to phase in cross-cultural training across the organization, assessing whether the level of success across the organization is increasing on some strategically relevant dimension (for example, international assignees’ ratings of effectiveness in the host country). See “Is It Working?” for some suggestions of other methods that could be used to evaluate your organization’s cross-cultural training programs.

Dilbert © 2010 Scott Adams. Used by permission of Universal Uclick. All rights reserved.

TAKE ACTION

Based on information presented in Chapter Six, the following is a list of specific actions you can take to begin implementing cross-cultural training strategies and placing a direct business value on them in your organization.

• Lead by example. Professionals in your organization will be more receptive to cross-cultural training if the organization’s prominent leaders support it and engage in it themselves. Use your organization’s communications to encourage prominent leaders to share how cross-cultural training has helped them succeed.
• Offer cross-cultural training to a strategically important group of employees, such as a highly visible global project team or your international assignee population. Regardless of the group with whom you start, be certain that the cross-cultural training is highly effective in making a positive difference. Ideally, this first group’s example will establish a track record and illustrate the benefits of cross-cultural training.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of your investment of organizational resources in cross-cultural training. Set up an evaluation with each training program to determine how well you are spending those resources.
• Consider the value per employee; for example, in comparison to a person-led training program for individuals, a Web-based cross-cultural training program with open access on your organization’s intranet site will enable you to train more people.

Notes

1. Brookfield Global Relocation Services, Global Relocation Trends: 2011 Survey Report (Woodridge, IL: Brookfield, 2011).

2. Jared Sandberg, “Cubicle Culture: It Says Press Any Key. Where’s the Any Key? India’s Call-Center Workers Get Pounded, Pampered,” Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2007, B1, http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB117193317217413139.html.

3. P. Christopher Earley and Soon Ang, Cultural Intelligence: Individual Interactions Across Cultures (Stanford, CA: Stanford Business Books, 2003). For a nice summary, you should also read P. Christopher Earley and Elaine Mosakowski, “Cultural Intelligence,” Harvard Business Review, October 2004, 139–146.

4. Brookfield Global Relocation Services, Global Relocation Trends.

5. Ibid.

6. RW3 LLC, “Case Study: Global and Virtual Team Effectiveness,” http://rw-3.com/tools-and-courses/tools-for-global-team-members/.

7. Wall Street Journal-Japan, “English 101, Courtesy of Rakuten,” August 6, 2010, http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2010/08/06/english-101-courtesy-of-rakuten/. Other details about the Rakuten language policy can be found at http://www.live-english.net/blog/business-english/all-english-business-meetings-are-coming/.

8. Ibraiz Tarique and Paula Caligiuri, “Effectiveness of In-Country Cross Cultural Training: Role of Cross-Cultural Absorptive Capacity,” International Journal of Training and Development 13, no. 3 (2009): 148–164.

9. Brookfield Global Relocation Services, Global Relocation Trends: 2011 Survey Report (Woodridge, IL: Brookfield, 2011).

10. Filip Lievens, Michael Harris, Etienne Van Keer, and Claire Bisqueret found that those trainees who were lower in openness were also lower in cross-cultural training performance. See Filip Lievens and others, “Predicting Cross-Cultural Training Performance: The Validity of Personality, Cognitive Ability, and Dimensions Measured by an Assessment Center and a Behavior Description Interview,” Journal of Applied Psychology 88, no. 3 (2003), 476–489.