Introducing the Fusion of Professional Coaching and Inter-Cultural Intelligence
North Point Academy (NPA) and KnowledgeWorkx Consulting (KWxC) are pleased to announce a new Certificate in Intercultural Coaching (CIC) beginning this October.
The program is a 3-month learning journey that teaches adaptable, structured methodologies for coaching clients from any cultural background.
The CIC program brings together North Point’s ICF-accredited Professional Coaching program with KnowledgeWorkx’ powerful Inter-Cultural Intelligence framework.
Why an Intercultural Coaching Program?
Based on numbers from the last ICF Global Coaching Study there are around 50,000 professional coaches globally, plus another 15,000 or so managers and executives who use coaching in their jobs.
Of these we estimate 30% work regularly with people from different cultures. This percentage is still growing because of increased mobility of workers and virtual communication allowing people to work across borders.
Cultural agility is becoming more important not just for coaches, but across the corporate landscape. Time, money, and effort are lost every day because team members are not prepared for this kind of work.
Despite a growing need for cultural agility, only a few coaching programs currently use intercultural assessments as a part of their learning journey. And of these, none actually specialize in cross-cultural coaching. The CIC training program is designed to meet this need.
Goals of the Program
The Certificate in Intercultural Coaching program has two goals: 1) For coaches to learn how to navigate intercultural coach-client relationships more effectively, and 2) to grow in equipping clients to navigate their own intercultural relationships more effectively.
North Point’s philosophy is to develop coaches from the inside out meaning that they are concerned first of all with personal transformation: helping you become more of who you truly are, and allowing the natural behaviors needed to achieve your goals flow out from this.
Over the years, they found that many existing coaching philosophies are poorly suited for cross-cultural engagement. Partnering with KnowledgeWorkx is a leap ahead on this path.
It was nearly 20 years ago that KnowledgeWorkx began developing Self-Cultural Analysis as an approach to understanding culture, born out of frustration with outdated approaches that looked at culture through the lenses of nationality and ethnicity.
The Inter-Cultural Intelligence (ICI) framework they developed is well suited for one-on-one coaching because it focuses on people’s individual cultural preferences. This allows for deep personal discovery, while also giving neutral terminology for understanding the differences in others.
Thoughts and feelings proceed from internal beliefs. The CIC program takes you to the level of beliefs, leading you to examine perspectives and assumptions about culture you may not have even realized you had. This is a foundational step in moving from a Cultural Critic to a Cultural Learner on the intercultural coaching journey.
The Partnership
Both KnowledgeWorkx and North Point were born in the emerging market economy of the UAE, in culturally mixed environments. Both have developed intellectual property because of frustration with poor cross-cultural methodologies.
Having been in talks now for 2 years, and with our directors experiencing each other’s programs fully and in person, we have found a unique synergy. We feel the time is right to offer this powerful new certificate program, making the strengths of intercultural coaching available more widely.
What a Certificate in Intercultural Coaching Does for You
The benefits of our program extend far beyond the professional coaching community. Our methodologies have been used successfully in over 70 countries and across a wide variety of industries, equipping executives of global corporations, managers of intercultural teams, and a host of other workers.
NPA coaching methodologies combined with KnowledgeWorkx’ Inter-Cultural Intelligence give you powerful tools for:
Developing great intercultural teams,
Equipping global leaders,
Managing intercultural stakeholders,
Bridging cultural communication gaps,
Developing global HR practices,
Globalizing the DNA of an organization,
Successfully navigating the landscape of mergers and acquisitions
and growing in your own self-knowledge as a cultural being
For more information on the Inter-Cultural Intelligence framework, visit KnowledgeWorkx’ page here.
For more on North Point's coach training, visit their website here.
What can a Certificate in Intercultural Coaching do for you? Send us an email, and let’s have a chat.