Leadership coaching never happens in a cultural vacuum. In fact, unless they want to become “the blind leading the blind,” leadership coaches must pay close attention to the invisible software of culture that shapes their clients.

Culture is everywhere. It is a currency so invisible at times that we can easily forget it’s even there. And that’s exactly what is so worrying.

It is imperative that all leadership coaches be students of culture. So, how exactly can we leadership coaches do that?

How Leadership Coaches Can Develop Cultural Intelligence

1. Become more self-aware of our own cultures.

One remarkable phenomenon is that many of us coaches are blind to the impact of our own primary socialization. Our own cultural values are like a pair of spectacles. We look through those lenses to help us see and understand the world, but we also forget that those lenses can blind us to important cues that lie right before our eyes.

One of the best ways to build self-awareness is to practice curiosity with people from other cultures. When we ask them about their worldview—their way of framing things, by comparison we begin to see our own primary culture more clearly, and that can help us be more aware of how our cultural codes get in the way of understanding other cultures.

2. Study what research has to say about the cultural codes of our clients.

Erin Meyer’s excellent book, The Culture Map, is a step in the right direction. But even more helpful is her website, which offers a chance to map over 60 international cultures on eight cultural dimensions:

• Communicating (Low Context vs High Context)
• Giving Negative Feedback (Direct vs Indirect)
• Leading (Egalitarian vs Hierarchical)
• Deciding (Consensual vs Top-down)
• Trusting (Task-based vs Relationship-based)
• Disagreeing (Confrontational vs Avoiding Confrontation)
• Scheduling (Linear-time vs Flexible-time).

For example, if I am a Dutch coach and my client is a Thai executive, I must attempt to understand my client’s world from a Thai point of view, not a Dutch one. And the cultural gaps are astonishing. Most Dutch are low-context communicators accustomed to direct negative feedback, egalitarian leadership, consensual decision-making, task-based trust-building, open disagreement, and a linear view of time. Most Thais are high-context communicators accustomed to indirect negative feedback, hierarchical leadership, top-down decision-making, relationship-based trust-building, disagreement avoidance, and a flexible view of time. You get the point.

In this case, it is the leadership coach’s responsibility to meet the Thai client in his or her own world by understanding hidden cultural codes that shape the contours of that client’s daily situations. Only then can the coach’s open questioning lead the client down reliable paths of speculation and ideation, resulting in culturally-sensitive specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-sensitive developmental goals.

3. Practice curiosity by frequently asking our clients open-ended questions about their own cultural assumptions.

Who better than our clients themselves to build our sensitivity to differing worldviews? Questions like, “How exactly DO Indians tend to handle confrontations? What cultural values lie behind the way you handled that situation? How do Korean values regarding hierarchy impact the range of your options? What cultural values are causing you to hesitate to bring this bad news to your manager? How do Americans build trust?”

There is an almost limitless supply of such questions available to the leadership coach who remains highly curious about culture.

The quest of an excellent leadership coach is to lead a client down a path of creative ideation that results in actions that bring healthy changes to the client and the organisation. In today’s global world, culturally intelligent coaches have a much higher chance of achieving that noble outcome.

Interested in learning more about cultural intelligence and leadership coaching? 

Connect with Dr Larry S. Persons on LinkedIn and explore how culturally intelligent coaching can create lasting impact.