Responsables RH et de mobilité internationale : Venez rencontrer AUJOURD'HUI et DEMAIN notre équipe Intercultural & Mobility Coaching - IMC-Coaching, représentée par Andra Morosi, Manuela Marquis, Thierry Lambourg et Denis 聂 得力 Niedringhaus au salon des « 24 Heures de l'International » à Paris.
Rendez-vous au salon les "24 Heures de l'International" à Paris le 14 et 15 novembre - avec mes collègues Andra Morosi, Thierry Lambourg, Manuela Marquis et Denis 聂 得力 Niedringhaus de notre collectif Intercultural & Mobility Coaching - IMC-Coaching. Ils emmènent dans leur valise : "Choc culturel : mythe ou réalité ?", une conférence à ne pas louper.
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Keeping the memory of the great joint event in Basel alive a little longer... The idea of this ICF and Sietar event was to build bridges between coaches and interculturalists and create a mutual learning experience.
I am very pleased having delivered this workshop together with my colleague Veronica De la Fuente ACC ICF. Many thanks to our wonderful audience and the ICF Basel Team and Christiane Kosub, PCC for their warm welcome.
A unique opportunity is coming up next Thursday, 27/09, in BASEL: ICF and SIETAR Switzerland host a JOINT EVENT: Exploring the impacts of culture in coaching settings & the impacts of coaching in intercultural trainings. Veronica De la Fuente ACC ICF and myself will guide you through an evening workshop full of insights, examples and hands-on tools. For everyone working in international and multicultural contexts.
Find out more
Come, learn, exchange with us and REGISTER HERE
Un regard sur la diversité des styles de management qui s’appuie sur les schémas de Richard Lewis.
Une découverte fascinante pour tous ceux qui travaillent dans un contexte international et une bonne piqure de rappel pour les interculturalistes:
Les 50 styles de management et de leadership dans le monde
I was very pleased to talk about values, human qualities and driving forces for our behavior at the June's chapter meeting of the ICF Suisse Romande. We explored this field thanks to a coaching model – well known in Germany, but that hasn’t conquered the French nor English speaking coaching world (yet). Many thanks to all the coaching enthusiasts who made it out to Webster University Geneva to attend this workshop despite my serious competitors – amazing summer weather and the World Cup ;-). Thanks to Veronica De la Fuente ACC ICF, Catherine Hickel and the ICF Switzerland Team for inviting me. Great learnings and discussions.
I am delighted to be the guest speaker for tomorrow's ICF Suisse Romande chapter meeting organised by ICF Switzerland Team at 6:30 pm at Webster University in Geneva Bellevue. Let's learn, share and exchange about how seemingly opposite or contrary driving forces may actually be complementary - and how to apply this in coaching settings.
Please register here
Ensemble avec les coachs d’IMC-Coaching, nous avons participé à la journée découverte de la méthode VaKE, conçue à l'Université de Salzbourg, qui privilégie la collaboration entre pairs, les valeurs et l'adoption de perspectives multiples - un outil flexible et particulièrement utile pour le développement des compétences interculturelles. Merci à Jimena Andino Dorato, Bénédicte LEGUE, Grazia GHELLINI, François Brossard et Frederique Brossard Børhaug pour cette journée riche en partages, apprentissages et rencontres à Paris.
Working behind the scenes on our vision, mission and ambition to best serve our coaching clients, with Manuela Marquis, Caroline Pensier, Jimena Andina Dorato, Guillaume Sarrazin and Thierry Lambourg.
I was pleased to do a workshop on behalf of Sietar Switzerland in Zurich. After an energizing congress in Lugano, the participants and myself were thankful for another insightful learning and sharing experience. We explored the driving forces of our behaviors, and applied the Square of Values and Development, a model developed by the German communication psychologist Friedemann Schulz von Thun, to intercultural contexts. We agreed it helps to raise awareness for supposedly opposing values, paving the way for making a step towards each other to co-create and co-work constructively.
« Succès collectif grâce à l’intelligence culturelle » - Congrès Sietar à Lugano
Cinq membres d’IMC Coaching ont participé au premier congrès organisé par Sietar Suisse (Society for Intercultural Training and Research) à Lugano. Un évènement avec plus de 80 participants venant de 16 pays différents riche en apprentissage, rencontres, échanges, inspirations et antipasti.
Nos coups de cœurs :
Prof. Christoph Barmeyer et son approche de Management Interculturel Constructiviste pour répondre à la question : Comment gérer les défis interculturels afin de pouvoir bénéficier de la diversité dans une organisation ?
Sur notre liste de lecture pour approfondir : « Intercultural Management - A Case-Based Approach to Achieving Complementarity and Synergy », Barmeyer /Franklin, Editions Palgrave Macmillan
Les nouveautés sur le sujet de la « Diversité et Inclusion » – une réunion-débat avec des perspectives différentes :
Le rôle des RH dans le développement de la diversité culturelle dans les organisations
Perspective «globale» : comment respecter et intégrer la culture locale en respectant une approche plus holistique qui permet d’aller au-delà des stéréotypes et de créer des meilleures pratiques
Perspective académique : préparer les professionnels de demain à développer un état d'esprit global liant réflexion et action
Perspective leadership : préparer les managers et dirigeants à l'intelligence émotionnelle et à l'intelligence interculturelle
Prof. Yih-Teen Lee nous a proposé un nouveau cadre de réflexion autour de la complexité de la notion d’identité culturelle, en contrastant les besoins de « cultural adaptation » et « cultural bridging» et en soulignant la nécessité pour les global leaders d’un regard plus introspectif, plus nuancé, faisant les liens avec la psychologie polyculturelle et la définition de SOI. Son projet de recherche autour du «Comprehensive Global Acculturation Model» avec les étudiants de la IESE Business School de Barcelone a suscité beaucoup d’intérêt et donné naissance à un groupe Mastermind avec plusieurs coachs IMC.
Exposé du contexte migratoire actuel en Europe par Joe Kearns. Durant cet atelier, nous avons pu prendre conscience du potentiel besoin d’accompagnement en interculturalité des associations et ONG européennes œuvrant auprès des migrants. En effet, en France, si nombre d’entre elles proposent à leurs bénéficiaires une aide administrative et des cours de français dans le cadre du «Contrat d'Intégration Républicaine», il semble aujourd’hui important de donner à leurs actions et pratiques une dimension interculturelle. Une orientation pertinente pour IMC-Coaching dans le but de soutenir ces organisations dans leurs missions.
La possiblité de tester en exclusivité le nouveau jeu trilingue anglais, français, arabe « Diversophy® Migration Game » - un jeu pour faire connaissance, apprendre l’un de l’autre et résoudre des malentendus éventuels.
Matthew Hill nous a inspiré avec de nouvelles idées marketing pour encore mieux promouvoir notre métier de coachs interculturels.
Apprentissage par les émotions et l’expérience – Samuel van den Bergh nous a présenté les éléments clés d’un bon processus d’apprentissage ainsi que les jeux de Thiagi pour des formations riches et à grand impact.
Merci Sietar Suisse. Ciao Lugano. Nous reviendrons volontiers.
Article paru également sur le blog d’IMC-Coaching.
Les cinq membres de Intercultural & Mobility Coaching - IMC-Coaching qui se sont retrouvés à Lugano: Veronica De la Fuente ACC ICF, Andra Morosi, Caroline Pensier Filis, Deborah LALLOUETTE-MAYZOUE et Eva-Maria Hartwich.
Nurturing Diversity for Societal Advancement, Creativity & Innovation
“Over the years, the intercultural field has revisited the notion of culture and the impact of different norms on human exchanges, focussing on the issues impacting intercultural interactions.
In parallel, the drive towards uniformity for the benefits of globalisation has clearly shown its limitations and the positioning of man at the centre of the ecosystem we occupy, demonstrated its incoherence with sustainability.” (Sietar Switzerland)
Over 80 interculturalists from various countries listened, learned and exchanged successfully and happily on SIETAR Switzerland’s First Congress in lovely Lugano. Thanks to Anne-Claude Lambelet and the SIETAR Switzerland Board for this inspiring congress!
This is the topic of my interactive WORKSHOP next Wednesday, June 6th in ZURICH on behalf of SIETAR Switzerland. Join us and get to know a powerful and easy-to-use coaching tool and learn how apply it for yourself and multicultural settings.
Read more and REGISTER HERE until June 3rd
It was a pleasure to kick off this month as visiting lecturer at the Geneva Business School. Together with a multicultural group at its best (with more than 15 languages represented), we filled the room with action, practical cases, some theory, valuable exchanges, debates and laughter to learn about the power of self-awareness and the driving forces in intercultural communication. Thank you Frode Hvaring for the invitation.
Should I stay or should I go? – Intercultural coaching to support and empower partners on international assignments
Global relocations are great career opportunities offering travel and inspiring life-changing experiences in a new cultural setting.
But they can also be a challenge for the whole family moving places.
“Statistically, families’ inability to adapt to the new environment is the largest cause of assignment failure, and most HR departments consider employees’ families a risk”, says Evelyn Simpson from U.K.-based consultancy Thriving Abroad in an interview with SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management).
Here is the fallacy: A lot of these challenges are not visible right at the beginning (when assignee and spouse are prepared thanks to cross-cultural training and coaching), but pop up or creep in slowly months after the arrival. While many assignees face complex work situations, some of the real assignment blockers come out of the ordinary everyday life.
These issues need and can be addressed with intercultural coaching to ensure the success of international assignments – for the assignee, the accompanying partner, the children and the assignee’s company.
Let’s zoom into one classical example:
Anna, a Swedish native, 35 years old, married, has been living with her husband and their 3 year-old boy in France for the last 10 months. In her Swedish hometown, she used to work for a big company as a graphic designer. She now tries to set up her freelance graphic design business. But she lacks the energy to do it. Despite her French language knowledge getting better and better, she has a hard time integrating. She misses her friends and her parents, too far for helping out with the toddler. She feels lonely and at the same time ashamed that she feels that way because they live in a very pretty town a few minutes away from the beach.
Her husband Martin enjoys his work in the French headquarters of his company. He loves the French life style and the possibility to ride his road bike during lunchtime with his fellow sporty colleagues. He is responsible for launching an important project and his one-year-assignment needs to be extended for another year. Anna is far from enthusiastic about that. She would love to move back home and wonders:
“Should I stay or should I go?
Should I remain loyal to my husband and neglect my own career ambitions?
Should we consider a split family set up with me and our son back home and Martin working in France during the week?
What other options do we have?”
The last 10 months were tough on their relationship and family dynamics. Martin does his utmost to perform at work, and also to be a good husband and father. His private situation adds tremendously to his stress level at work. To simplify: One happy person goes badly hand in hand with an unhappy one.
Anna eventually seeks a way to get out of this dilemma and to transform this unhappiness into new energy. The first and most important step is done! Suddenly there is the willingness for not remaining in this state but move on. This is the key ingredient for our coaching process.
Actually, the question is not: Should I stay or should I go? But rather:
If I stay what do I need to set up for happiness?
Or if I go what do I need to do to maintain a healthy and happy family life?
We take a systemic approach. We identify the most important pillars of Anna’s life and their impact on her identity. We analyse what is working well and what is missing in each of those pillars. We recap French and Swedish cultural differences, their underlying values and put them in context. We visualise a lot. We change perspectives. We reframe. We hear all her inner voices and make sure they all get a chance to speak up. We identify them, we find out what drives them, we also get to hear the quiet voices, and we structure them.
Step by step, Anna’s mental mess that kept her awake at night turns into small objectives. The small objectives become part of a bigger action plan. Anna has a vision for herself.
And suddenly, the answer to the “should I stay or should I go” question becomes a no-brainer. These answers and strategies that Anna found and that we assemble into a clear action plan fill up her empty energy batteries. Reenergized, she is ready to move on. She is ready to keep on supporting Martin’s career choice while working on her own career.
Is it that simple? No, if you are on your own. Yes, if you seek support. We are curious to hear your story.
This article was also published on the IMC-Coaching blog.
In an interview for Sietar Switzerland, Arjan Verdooren told me more about this newly published book by him and Edwin Hoffman – for all those interested in intercultural communication and new food for thought:
An Interview with Arjan Verdooren By Eva-Maria Hartwich
What started your interest in intercultural issues?
It’s difficult to mention one specific experience, but I guess it had to do with how I grew up. I was raised in a suburb of Amsterdam with people of over 150 nationalities. In primary school, I was at one point the only pupil with at least a partly Dutch background (my father has Indonesian roots). My ‚culture-shock’ came later when I realised that this situation was not normal for many other people. What this taught me is that you can always find commonalities with people, no matter what their backgrounds are. And that differences between people are not necessarily tied to nationality, ethnicity or religion. Since then I’ve also spent quite some time abroad (i.e. in Mexico and in Sweden, where I live nowadays), but my perspectives on interculturality haven’t fundamentally changed.
I studied communication at university, and that is where I first learned about the study of intercultural communication and diversity. At that time, an intense public debate had started about multiculturalism and globablisation, and I realised this was a topic that I found both personally and intellectually compelling. I ended up working as an intercultural trainer for KIT – a knowledge center in Amsterdam – for over ten years. A year and a half ago I moved to Sweden, which gave me the opportunity to write a book.
Diversity competence – Cultures don’t meet, people do is the title of the book that you co-wrote with Edwin Hoffmann. What motivated both of you to write this book?
Several things contributed. First of all, we felt there was a need for a book with a modern approach to culture and interculturality that was theoretically grounded but also provided practical guidelines. A lot of the literature is either quite theoretical or very practical, and we hoped to bridge that gap somewhat.
Additionally, we really wanted to focus on intercultural interactions in today’s world. A lot of methods and models, explicitly or implicitly, focus on cultural transitions – people moving or travelling to other countries. There is nothing wrong with a focus on cultural transitions, but in today’s world, the context of intercultural contact is often a different one. People meet in ‘superdiverse’ societies with differences between communities and within them, in organizations with people of dozens of nationalities, or while doing business or cooperating in a variety of settings and constellations. In those situations, the challenge is not so much to adapt to another culture but to build connections and set and reach mutual goals.
Last but not least, we felt that a lot of the traditional literature on interculturalism overlooks critical issues in intercultural contact like power and ethics. So we wanted to mention those issues explicitly and integrate them into our approach.
Why do you suggest that intercultural communication should go beyond the simple knowledge of cultures and cultural differences? In what sense can knowledge like this even be counterproductive?
First of all, such knowledge can be helpful, for example by helping you to ‘decentralize’ your own perspective and be more open to others.
But it is of limited usefulness for interaction: We’ve established a difference, and now what? So we need to look at how to respond to challenges, misunderstandings and dilemmas as they occur in encounters. A key question is then: What cultures are we taking into account? It’s widely accepted that culture is a characteristic of any group; cities, professions, generations, etc., all have a certain culture. Hence people are always members of several cultures. So even if we want to focus on interactions between people of different nationalities, ethnicities or religions (which is generally what we do as interculturalists), we should take other group memberships into account.
It can then be counterproductive when knowledge reduces people to their ethnic, religious or national belonging. This leads us to ‘culturalize’ situations and interpret interactions based only on ‘cultural’ explanations. We tend then to stereotype on the basis of a single group-identity, which makes us feel uneasy or even hostile to intercultural contact because these ‘cultural others’ seem so alien and different. (Supposed) cultural differences can even be abused to create us-versus-them scenarios like ‘the Clash of the Civilizations’. So all in all, I think we should be mindful if and how we mention and emphasize cultural differences.
The book describes the so-called ‘TOPOI-model’. What kind of model is this and why do you use it in your book?
This is where I really have to give credit to Edwin [Hoffmann], because he has developed TOPOI, which so far has only been published in Dutch and in relation to Dutch multicultural society. I have been an avid fan and user of his work. Part of the book is devoted to describing and applying the model to international interactions, as well as to interactions in multi-ethnic societies.
TOPOI is different from other models in that it doesn’t describe cultural dimensions or even competencies. The starting point is not culture, but interaction and communication. It describes the different areas of communication where misunderstandings or confusion can arise, and where interventions can be made. We mention different intercultural and cross-cultural theories but ‘translate’ them into communicative situations. TOPOI is based on a system-theoretical perspective that views communication as an on-going process between actors and their environment. This enables us to integrate aspects of power into the TOPOI areas, as well. And last but not least, it is an inclusive model, which means that not ‘cultures’, but people and their multiple cultures and identities, are taken into consideration. Hence the subtitle of the book: ‘Cultures don’t meet, people do’.
On top of its theory, what type of practical examples and guidelines does the book offer that are helpful for interculturalists in their daily work?
First of all, even though we discuss a lot of theory and research in the book, we provide examples and illustrations throughout all the chapters. Many of them come from our own training and consultancy practice. Additionally, there are separate chapters devoted to interventions and case discussions based on TOPOI. And there are study assignments for teachers and lecturers at the end of every chapter, with additional cases and study assignments that will be published on an accompanying website.
Apart from providing such elements and guidelines, it was our aim to describe a certain approach to intercultural communication that helps people relate to interculturality in a different way. We believe our approach can make a significant difference in how all sorts of interactions are experienced and handled.
Arjan Verdooren (1980) grew up in Amsterdam where he studied communication. As an intercultural trainer and consultant at the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), a knowledge centre of culture and intercultural cooperation, he worked with a variety of organizations, ranging from schools to corporations to professional football organizations. He now lives in Gothenburg, Sweden, where he works as a freelance trainer and researcher on intercultural issues. He remains associated with KIT around the development of methods and approaches for training. His book, written together with Edwin Hoffman, is called Diversity Competence- Cultures don’t meet, people do and was released in March.
You can find the book here
The article was published in the Sietar Switzerland Newsletter
Une petite piqure de rappel: il existe dès à présent un réseau de Coachs experts en communication et en management interculturel (Intercultural & Mobility Coaching - IMC-Coaching) qui accompagne toute(s) personne(s) en transition dans un contexte international.
Un éclairage sur le coaching interculturel pour une expatriation réussie - de Thierry Lambourg – un collègue au sein de Intercultural & Mobility Coaching - IMC-Coaching
« Quand une nouvelle personne me demande, qu'est-ce que tu fais ? Je réponds, je suis coach... coach interculturel. Immédiatement, je détecte un regard de suspicion, car (…) tout le monde se dit coach. Quand j'ajoute le mot interculturel, je peux observer un point d'interrogation sur le visage de cette personne. C'est alors que je commence à expliquer. » C’est tout à fait ça. Ma chère collègue Veronica De la Fuente ACC ICF au sein de Intercultural & Mobility Coaching - IMC-Coaching donne une excellente explication pour notre métier : le coaching interculturel. Merci!
NEW DATE for my interactive workshop “How to square values? – Getting out of the box & overcoming different concepts of value in intercultural settings”, hosted by Sietar Switzerland in Geneva on March 19th. Come and join us.