L & B: Ms Wirths, in your company CultureWaves, you work with 50 coaches and consultants. What do you look for when you select staff for your team?
Christine Wirths: First of all, they should have lived and worked abroad for a long time and as such, should have experienced the ‘culture shock’ firsthand. I also expect the coach to be able to adopt different views, explain them, and always be willing to learn more and take on new cross-cultural challenges.
Although I have worked in this field for 15 years, have lived abroad and have gained considerable experience at home and abroad, I always notice how broad and dynamic this work is. I am sceptical when people apply to me as a cross-cultural trainer without speaking any foreign languages. Even if cross-cultural training and workshops are primarily about values, attitudes and behaviour, there are so many misunderstandings that can arise through translation, i.e. through the choice of words or connotations or codes which are not understood.
L & B: What is particularly important for you?
Christine Wirths: The ability to put critical assumptions into perspective and to deal with resistance and prejudice in coaching situations. I value employees who bring sensitivity and confidence with them and can deal constructively with very heterogeneous groups and different personality types. Often, our business is also about addressing and integrating people who are introverted or go into coaching sessions with certain reservations and resistances. The aim must be to involve all seminar participants after a certain period and to enable them to contribute to a constructive learning atmosphere.
I apply the following: I always try to create my own ‘Living Learning Laboratory’, i.e. to work with coaches and consultants from different cultural circles. I cannot expect that clients would feel comfortable if I were to say ‘Now go and do business with your foreign business associates’, if I were not prepared or able to do it myself.
Sure, there is the Internet and many books which could theoretically help me here as a coach. However, these cannot replace the wealth that comes from own experience. Coaches have to be authentic and be able to supply their own practical examples.
L & B: Doesn’t it very much depend on the client and their requirements?
Christine Wirths: Yes, absolutely, depending on the starting point. A client might say ‘We would like a kick-off workshop for a newly formed multicultural team’ or ‘employees will soon be posted abroad, please support us in preparing them for their work’. On other occasions, it’s like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted: A team may have worked together for a couple of months, six months, a year or even longer and there are worrying tensions. Often there is a lack of sufficient confidence. In such cases, we must be very careful when clarifying the task and analysing needs: We need to ascertain what kind of problems there might be. These can also relate to structural factors, management style, difficult framework conditions or an ailing system. Cross-culturalism cannot explain or provide an excuse for everything. As such, additional expertise is required; something which is actually becoming even more indispensible. Today, coaches have to be able to think and work systemically and look at things in detail: In what context would I be involved with the client?
L & B: Can you provide an example of when systemic thinking is necessary?
Christine Wirths: In a two-day workshop for a European project team with non-European suppliers, a lot of energy was used in the first day to raise cultural differences, similarities and misunderstandings. On the second day, enough openness and trust was established that the partners could go on to discuss what they needed from each other in order to work effectively. At this point, it turned out from a stakeholder analysis and a comparison of the respective expectations that, as far as the customer was concerned, the payment methods had not been clarified and that the suppliers had been waiting for their payment for quite some time. The argument was that this was due to alleged culturally-determined quality deficiencies on the part of the supplier. Then everything went quiet for a moment and there was a chill in the room. The coach then had to apply a high level of presentation expertise and re-create an atmosphere in which dialogue and exchange was possible. This was a situation that called for systemic thinking and action in order to uncover the real problems that the team was facing and to work on them.
L & B: In what cases would you clearly speak of cross-cultural problems?
Christine Wirths: There are of course countless examples, which vary from culture to culture. To conclude, let me cite one small example from many, which relates to culturally-determined behavioural preferences within international working groups, in this case, within a German-Indian team. Indian professionals come to Germany for a few weeks. They are introduced to client-specific systems and then, they go back to India in order to program for a European project. This situation may raise some questions based on different cultural backgrounds, e.g., a different feedback culture or different form of communication. Whereas German business associates are accustomed to pointing out errors or defects directly, Indian business associates often find it difficult to proactively draw attention to possible delays in delivery, etc. They expect the managers responsible to enquire about the status at short intervals, not just when a deadline is reached. Moreover, many Indian professionals often work more closely in teams and when it comes to problems - especially when faced with a foreign client - place a high value on saving face. Unlike the Germans, they do not try to work out who made the mistake, and do not speak to the person directly about it in front of others and hold him/her to account. As coaches, we are asked to provide the affected persons in the team workshop with space to understand the different attitudes and expectations and to jointly negotiate solutions for future cooperation.
Ms Wirths, many thanks for your time!
April 12th, 2010
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