Why you need the Certificate in Intercultural Coaching

Coaching Human Complexity

Over the past twenty-five years, we have had the privilege of collaborating with leaders and teams in more than seventy countries. Through our global network of partners and practitioners, we continue to see how organizations wrestle with the human side of complexity. Yet there is one misunderstanding that has remained remarkably persistent.

When people hear the words intercultural coaching, they almost immediately think about coaching across national cultures.

It is an understandable assumption. The word intercultural naturally points us towards countries, nationalities, and the movement of people across borders.

That is certainly part of our work, but it is not where we started.

From the very beginning, one of the foundational convictions behind the Inter-Cultural Intelligence framework has been that:

Every person is a uniquely wired cultural human being.

Nationality matters. Ethnicity matters. Family, education, profession, faith community, and life experience all contribute to who we become as cultural human beings. The passport tells part of the story. It never tells the whole story.

Over the years, that conviction has been tested again and again in our consulting, coaching, and certification work.

I remember one engagement in 2009 when we were preparing a South African energy company for a major gas-to-liquids project in Qatar. The South African group appeared relatively homogeneous. Most were white Afrikaners, many had lived in the same two cities for years, and they shared a long history within the same organization.

Then we unpacked their Cultural Mapping Inventory group report.

On several of the twelve cultural dimensions, the team members were spread almost across the entire spectrum. People who looked very similar from the outside showed remarkably different cultural preferences.

I remember looking at the report and thinking, this is exactly why we cannot reduce culture to nationality.

Their cultural wiring told a much richer story.

“The passport tells part of the story. It never tells the whole story.”

At the moment, we are seeing the same thing again in a very different context.

We are currently working with the leadership team of a nationwide NGO in the United States. Together they lead a network of approximately 250 partnering organizations. We are using the full Inter-Cultural Intelligence framework to help them understand one another, intentionally craft their leadership culture, and cascade that culture into the wider network.

Everybody on the leadership team carries a United States passport.

Yet this is probably the most interculturally diverse team I have worked with in the United States.

The diversity does not lie in passports or ethnicity. It lies in the remarkable variety of cultural preferences represented within one leadership team.

As we coached them through conversations around their Cultural Mapping Inventory, we saw that people who shared the same nationality often approached leadership, relationships, communication, planning, accountability, and decision-making very differently.

Once they began sharing their life stories, that variety made sense.

Each person had been shaped by a unique cultural journey. What we saw was not one American culture expressed through different personalities. We saw a group of uniquely wired cultural human beings learning to understand one another well enough to intentionally craft a healthy culture together.

That, to me, is where intercultural coaching begins to take on a different meaning.

If we reduce culture to nationality, we will probably never notice what is happening inside a team like this.

If, however, we begin with the assumption that every person is culturally unique, a very different coaching conversation becomes possible.

As coaches, we readily acknowledge that every person has a unique psychological makeup. We also know that who we are influences every coaching conversation. That is why good coaches invest in developing their own psychological self-awareness.

Yet I sometimes wonder why we have not been equally intentional about understanding ourselves as cultural human beings.

If every person has unique cultural wiring, then that is true for both people sitting in the coaching conversation.

“The coachee enters the conversation as a unique cultural human being. The coach does too.”

The coachee enters the conversation as a unique cultural human being and don’t forget: the coach does too!

It means I cannot simply become curious about the cultural wiring of my coachee. I first have to become curious about my own.

Who am I as a cultural human being?

At first glance, that sounds like a simple question. It isn't.

As soon as coaches start working with the framework, another set of questions begins to emerge.

• How does my own cultural wiring influence the way I listen?

• What behaviors do I instinctively associate with good leadership?

• What kind of relationships do I naturally see as healthy?

When two different pathways present themselves in a coaching conversation, why does one of them immediately feel more promising to me than the other?

I find that last question particularly interesting.

Experienced coaches know not to give advice. Yet we all bring our own cultural wiring into the conversation. Without realizing it, we begin to envision a direction for the conversation that reflects our own understanding of what growth and progress look like.

I don't believe that makes us poor coaches.

I believe it makes us human.

More specifically, it reminds us that we too are cultural human beings.

One of the most rewarding moments during the Certificate in Intercultural Coaching is watching experienced coaches realize that they, too, are uniquely wired cultural human beings. That awareness begins to influence how they listen, what they notice, how they interpret what they hear, and the direction they naturally envision for the conversation.

Once coaches begin to see that in themselves, something changes.

The conversation is no longer simply about understanding the cultural wiring of the person sitting opposite them.

It becomes a conversation between two uniquely wired cultural human beings, both bringing their own cultural preferences into the coaching relationship.

If there is one thing that has become increasingly clear to me over the past twenty-five years, it is this.

Human complexity is not going away.

If anything, it is increasing.

Leaders are navigating more complexity than ever before. Teams are becoming more diverse, not only because people come from different countries, but because every person brings their own unique cultural wiring into the workplace. Organizations are trying to intentionally craft healthy cultures while bringing together people who naturally see the world differently.

As coaches, we find ourselves walking alongside people in the middle of that complexity.

That is why I find the Certificate in Intercultural Coaching so exciting.

Not because it teaches coaches how to coach people from different countries.

It does far more than that.

It equips experienced coaches to better understand what is happening whenever human complexity enters the coaching conversation.

• Sometimes that complexity becomes visible through geography.

• Sometimes through organizational culture.

• Sometimes through family background.

• Sometimes through worldview.

• Sometimes through the way trust is built, decisions are made or relationships are experienced.

Whatever form it takes, the Inter-Cultural Intelligence framework gives the coach a way of illuminating what is happening beneath the surface.

That does not mean the framework provides easy answers. Initially it actually creates more layers, more possibilities.

But it results in better questions by both the coach and coachee.

It gives them neutral language to explore what they are experiencing together.

It helps them understand why a particular leadership challenge feels so difficult, why a relationship repeatedly gets stuck, why a team struggles to build trust, or why two people can leave the same conversation with completely different interpretations of what just happened.

In my experience, those are some of the most valuable coaching conversations.

Not because the coach becomes the expert.

But because both coach and coachee begin to perceive more accurately.

Ourselves.

• The person sitting opposite us.

• The relationship between us.

• The context in which we are engaging.

Once we perceive better, we almost always engage better.

For coaches who have already developed a solid coaching foundation, I believe this is one of the most valuable areas in which to continue growing. After all, every coaching conversation is, in one way or another, a conversation about human complexity.

“Every coaching conversation is, in one way or another, a conversation about human complexity.”

An Invitation to Join the Certificate in Intercultural Coaching

If you are an experienced coach (ACC, equivalent or beyond) and would like to deepen your ability to coach human complexity, we invite you to explore the Certificate in Intercultural Coaching