PREFACE
If cultural agility could be traded as a commodity, it would be white-hot right now. The current supply of culturally agile professionals is meager compared to the burgeoning organizational demand. In survey after survey, business leaders from CEOs to CHROs express the need to compete aggressively for cross-culturally competent global business professionals.
As a person who has chosen to read this book, you are probably aware of the challenges posed by the global environment. Drawing from your own experiences, you can probably provide some illustrative examples of why a more robust pipeline of culturally agile professionals is needed in your organization. You might tell me about a business unit that has been stalled trying to enter an emerging market, mired in bureaucracy and draining valuable resources. You might cite a costly example of a high-profile global innovation team whose members cannot catch a collaborative stride and are missing critical performance goals. You might share stories of international assignees who were brilliant in their functional roles domestically but unsuccessful when living or working internationally. You might also have a story about a bungled global technological implementation, a misguided attempt at offshoring, or a high-profile foreign acquisition that ultimately fell far below its expected return on investment.
If any of these challenges sound familiar, you are not alone. They are playing in an almost continuous loop in organizations around the world. This book is for managers and leaders who understand all these challenges and know that building a pipeline of culturally agile professionals within their organizations will help address them. The book is also for HR professionals tasked with delivering talent with increased cross-cultural competencies and cultural agility to their organizations, but concerned about their lack of available developmental options. These HR professionals understand that cross-cultural training and international assignments cannot build cross-cultural competencies effectively or efficiently enough to provide a workable solution.
These concerns are justified, because cultural agility is not developed in the way most people believe it is. Employees cannot “take the training course” or “go to the residential program” to gain it. It is just not that simple. At the same time, it really isn’t all that complicated. You can build practices into organizations to increase cultural agility at a much faster rate than you have been doing. By fully understanding how cultural agility is attained, you can identify those who will experience accelerated development through their work in international and multicultural environments. You can help your organization win the future by effectively building the best possible pipeline of cross-culturally competent and culturally agile professionals. I am certain that we can do much better in fostering cultural agility, because we now have a significant knowledge base on the best practices. We know who will gain cultural agility—and how.
WHY I WROTE CULTURAL AGILITY
In a world that is easily interconnected through cyberspace and international airports, it is easy to forget that global success takes more than a passport and a plane ticket. I wrote Cultural Agility because in the two decades since the Berlin Wall fell—the symbolic start of the era of globalization—individuals, teams, and companies continue to struggle with the human resource challenges related to globalization. The many technological, communications, and transportation advances have masked the fact that success in global endeavors remains, more often than not, dependent on individual professionals with an ability to operate effectively in intercultural situations. These professionals have cultural agility.
I wrote Cultural Agility to share the insights I have gleaned from two decades of research and consulting dedicated to helping students, individuals, companies, teams, and executives become effective in today’s complex global environment. Since the late 1980s, I have been studying what it takes to succeed globally—identifying the qualities that characterize those with cross-cultural competence and helping organizations build cultural agility in their respective workforces. The time has come to share what I’ve learned.
HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED
Part One, Introduction: The Basics of Cultural Agility, comprises Chapter One (What Is Cultural Agility—and Why Is It So Crucial Today?), which defines cultural agility and underscores the immediate need for organizations to build a pipeline of culturally agile professionals. It outlines several erroneous assumptions that can create barriers to the development of cultural agility in organizations.
In Part Two, Who Is Culturally Agile? Chapters Two and Three examine that question through the lens of the Cultural Agility Competency Framework, a model of twelve cross-cultural competencies that sets the foundation for strategic talent management to build a pipeline of culturally agile professionals.
Chapter Two (Three Cross-Cultural Competencies Affecting Culturally Agile Responses) delves deeply into the first three of these competencies, citing supporting research and practical examples to demonstrate their importance. Chapter Three (Nine Cross-Cultural Competencies Affecting Success of Culturally Agile Professionals) discusses the remaining nine competencies of the Cultural Agility Competency Framework. It presents validity evidence for the competencies and offers illustrations of culturally agile professionals operating with these competencies.
In Part Three, Attract and Select the Most Culturally Agile Talent, Chapters Four and Five focus on strategies for staffing the organization with the needed culturally agile professionals.
Chapter Four (Attracting and Recruiting for Cultural Agility) describes how organizations can attract the culturally agile professionals they need. Beyond attraction, we also need these professionals to say yes to the job offers we extend. This chapter describes ways to create a compelling employee value proposition for culturally agile professionals. Chapter Five (Assessing and Selecting for Cultural Agility) delves into the attributes of those with the greatest propensity to readily develop cultural agility. To assist you in your role as a business leader, HR professional, or team leader, this chapter will offer tools to help you assess and select those who belong in your organization’s pipeline of culturally agile professionals.
The chapters of Part Four, Train and Develop Culturally Agile Talent, focus on developing a learning system for building cultural agility in the workforce through organizational intervention. Chapters Six, Seven, and Eight describe how organizations can use experiential assignments to develop cultural agility in their workforce.
Chapter Six (Building the Foundation for Cultural Agility with Cross-Cultural Training) highlights the most important learning goals for cross-cultural training and the best way to design and deliver these programs. This chapter illustrates ways to increase the value and efficacy of cross-cultural training programs. Chapter Seven (Crafting Developmental Cross-Cultural Experiences to Increase Cultural Agility) presents compelling evidence for other developmental interventions that will result in the greatest gains in cultural agility for your employees. This chapter presents the contingencies under which cross-cultural experiences can be developmental. It also provides details about specific interventions that have worked for leading organizations in accelerating the development of cultural agility. Chapter Eight (Developing Cultural Agility Through International Assignments) focuses on the most common method for developing cultural agility: international assignments. Although this practice is indeed common, it has proven to be only partially effective. This chapter explains why and offers specific recommendations for designing truly developmental international assignments.
Part Five, Conclusion: Leadership and Organizational Factors, comprises Chapter Nine (Managing and Leading to Build Cultural Agility in the Workforce), which illustrates how business leaders can motivate and equip their workers to become more culturally agile. Even the best recruitment, selection, training, and development practices will not result in a culturally agile workforce unless the organization’s culture and leadership also support this goal. This concluding chapter guides organizational leaders in leading by example and building a corporate culture that embodies cultural agility. It also discusses the integration of the functional areas within HR necessary to implement the practices supporting the development of workforce cultural agility, namely, global mobility, talent development, and recruiting. The chapter ends by encouraging you, the reader, to turn inward, to develop your own cultural agility as you build your organization’s pipeline of culturally agile professionals.
A WORD ABOUT WORDS
In my vocabulary for this book, I opted for common usage over academic parlance. The umbrella terms I’ve adopted are consistent with the phrases used by the organizations and professionals with whom I’ve worked. Although I do not expect my use of terms to be controversial, I do believe they deserve some clarification.
I use global professional to describe any individual who is working with, for, or alongside those of different nationalities, whether in a domestic or international context. As such, a call center operator who has never left India but serves U.S. clients is as much of a global professional as the CEO of a leading Dutch organization with subsidiaries in forty countries. I use development and related terms like developmental and developmental experience to refer to the building of cross-cultural competencies, whereas in general HR usage these may refer to job competencies of any kind. This book is about creating a pipeline of those who can succeed in cross-cultural contexts; clearly, there is a wide range of situations that might be defined this way. In this book, I am taking the broadest possible view of the term cross-cultural to include multicultural, intercultural, or international tasks, jobs, roles, and assignments. These tasks, jobs, roles, and assignments might involve a business trip or a longer relocation to another country, or they might occur domestically, with coworker interactions creating the cross-cultural context. Any experience that involves working with, for, or alongside individuals from different cultures is considered cross-cultural for the purposes of this book.
Considering these examples, you can also see that I am using organization broadly to refer to the various firms, businesses, associations, and institutions that employ professionals in cross-cultural contexts. Although most of this book is written with private sector business organizations in mind, its advice applies to a wide range of organizations striving to build cultural agility. Over the past decade, I have worked with organizations ranging from Fortune 100 firms to small entrepreneurial ventures, from the U.S. military and civilian government agencies to nongovernmental humanitarian organizations. These organizations share the desire to build a pipeline of individuals who can be effective in a cross-cultural context.
Without splitting hairs too much on terminology, you get the picture: this book is for all professionals who operate in situations where culture might influence the outcome of their work.