CHAPTER 3 – COACHING IN DIFFERENT CULTURE
Here are some general rules which highlight the significant, unavoidable differences in coaching conversations between the East and the West. Be open and non-judgmental.
- While the West is a noise-oriented culture, the East is silence-oriented. Therefore people behave differently in human interactions. Some are speaking up and expressive, while others are quiet and passive.
- The East holds respect for status, whereas the West holds respect for results. The coaching conversation with powerful questions would be seen as challenging status and lack of respect for people from the East. The conversation tends to be conducted in a more subtle and indirect style.
- The East values modesty and harmony, while the West values winning and achievement. People from the East appear not be action-oriented and lack of commitment. This may create challenges and frustrate coaches when they see little ambitions from the clients moving forward.
- Communication in the East is indirect, compared to the directness of the West. Communicating across cultures means that languages and concepts can have different meanings. It is always important not to react to the message but check in first for its meaning as intended by the transmitter. This can prevent a lot of misunderstandings.
CHAPTER 4 – CONCLUSION
Coaching during change management provides a venue for one-on-one and group meetings between employees and the people they trust the most, their immediate supervisors. This environment allows employees to ask questions and receive clarifications about the change and to comment on their specific worries and concerns about the change. It is also an opportunity to gather feedbacks from employees about the change and the change management efforts. Effective coaching can alleviate many of the reasons for resistance, engage heads, hearts and hands to enable people to bring their best brains to work and build support for the change throughout the organization.
Coaching is an effective means to create desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement within employees. Having employees that desire to participate and support the change, have the knowledge on how to change, have the ability to implement required skills and behaviors for the change, and receive the reinforcement to sustain the change are invaluable to the success of an organization going through its change.
A crucial implication of the change face of leadership is that collaboration is right at the core of how work gets done and of how leaders need to lead. With more sophisticated kinds of collaboration needed, the ability to have effective conversations across a wide range of situations offers leaders, teams, and organizations a distinct advantage.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
“Seven Strategic Actions To Deal With Change And Uncertainty In Business And Life From Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach” By: J. Glenn Ebersole, Jr., Chief Executive of J. G. Ebersole Associates and The Renaissance Group ™
“Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman
“People Dynamics Learning” by Melinda Sinclair & Dorothy Greenaway
“Cropley Communication” by Adrian Cropley
Prosci's 2012 edition of Best Practices in Change Management