Conference 2010 IMQ by Intercultural Management Institute

Intercultural Management Quarterly Integrating Culture and Management in Global Organizations

In This Issue...

Spring 2010 Vol. 11, No. 02

Tango to Intercultural Integration: Reconciling Cultural Differences in Mergers, Acquisitions, and Strategic Partnerships...............................................................3 by Fons Trompenaars and Peter Woolliams iMuslims...........................................................................................8 by Mona Eltahawy The Role of Cultural Value Dimensions in Emerging Markets............................................................................................10 by Nicole J. Barile Coaching for Effective Leadership in the Multicultural Workplace: Application of the Situational Leadership II速 Model......................................13 by Ursula Leitzmann American Cultural DNA...........................................................16 by Dorothy Guy Bonvillain and William Gary McGuire Strengthening Intercultural Effectiveness Among the Millennials............................................................................20 by Amanda White

From the Editor Welcome to the Annual Conference on Intercultural Relations edition of IMQ! In this issue we are pleased to have six thought-provoking articles by some of our distinguished conference presenters. These pieces provide only a small sampling of the many different topics that will be addressed by this year’s speakers. Fons Trompenaars and Peter Woolliams start things off with a preview of keynote speaker Trompenaars’ new book, The Global M&A Tango: How to reconcile cultural differences in mergers, acquisitions, and strategic partnerships, with an article on incorporating the practices of different business cultures when companies combine. Next, our other keynote speaker, Mona Eltahawy, describes the innovative ways Muslims are using Web 2.0 technology to effect social change. Nicole J. Barile follows by discussing the importance of being aware of cultural values when doing business with emerging market countries. Ursula Leitzmann details the application of the Situational Leadership II® Model for coaching individuals across different cultures. Dorothy Guy Bonvillain and William Gary McGuire tackle the controversial topic of innate vs. learned behaviors in their article on Cultural DNA. We hope this piece will raise awareness of this issue and encourage thoughtful discussion and debate.

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Publisher: Dr. Gary R. Weaver Managing Editor: Kathryn Schoenberger

Editorial Review Board

David Bachner, Dan Deming, Annmarie McGillicuddy, Adam Mendelson, Darrel Onizuka, Chris Saenger, Karen Santiago, Gary Weaver, Sherry Zarabi The Intercultural Management Quarterly (IMQ) is published by the Intercultural Management Institute at American University. IMQ combines original research conducted in the field of interculutral management with the applied perspectives of industry experts, professors and students.

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Professionals, scholars, and students are invited to submit articles of 1,000-2,000 words on issues related to the study and practice of intercultural management. Articles must be innovative and contribute to the knowledge in the field but should avoid overly academic jargon. Footnotes or endnotes are discouraged except for direct quotes or citations. Each submission is refereed by the members of the IMQ editorial review board. Accepted pieces are subject to editing.

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Finally Amanda White looks to the future with an article on the intercultural learning skills of the Millennial generation through a case study of a Canadian student exchange program. We hope you enjoy this issue and the conference. As always, we would love to hear your feedback. We might even publish it! Kathryn Schoenberger, Managing Editor

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Tango to Intercultural Integration: Reconciling Cultural Differences in Mergers, Acquisitions, and Strategic Partnerships by Fons Trompenaars and Peter Woolliams

ealizing the business benefits and creating wealth in an integration process is not easy because it demands the joining of values that are not easily joined. After all, if it was, it would often have been achieved readily in the past and yet it is well known that the majority of mergers and acquisitions fail to realize the expected benefits that were the original motive for doing them in the first place. Plenty has been written about the challenges of pulling off a successful merger or acquisition, and the key issues are well known. What organizations need though is a practical framework for identifying the real issues and then resolving them in a structured and disciplined manner that satisfies all stakeholders. This is not simply to overcome cultural differences in the legacy organizations but to positively revel in these differences and to harness them to even greater performance by integrating the best of both. During the last twenty years it has become increasingly recognized that both national and organizational cultures need to be considered in modern business management. And furthermore, leaders, even in local companies, will find they are leading and managing multicultural workforces. Many of the existing cultural conceptual frameworks describe how different cultures give different meanings to relationships with other people, their interaction with the environment, to time and to other similar cultural dimensions. We have learned to recognize and respect cultural differences. However, if we stop at these initial stages when trying to combine organizations, we run the risk of reinforcing cultural stereotypes. At present there is a lack of a consistent, reliable and generalizable process to create sustainable and integrated value from separate cultures.

The findings from our latest research enable us to present leaders and managers with such a process. It is based on the proposition that cultures require commonality of vision, mission, strategy and values to create the trust, which can deliver economic value from the relationships. There are non-stop culture clashes, and by culture we mean not simply the cultures of different nations, but those of different disciplines, functions, genders, classes, etc. Eliciting and analyzing the challenges that integrating parties generally face has become the particular area of interest and we have developed a number of practical, research-based tools to assist in the endeavor of building human synergies. While any integration program should include fundamental operational matters, we need to attend much more to managing the elements the new partners already share and to what divides them culturally. We also need to consider the leadership behaviors that are required to drive change and integration. Modern global businesses require a lot of “effort” and understanding before they develop trust in one another’s words and bonds. Many stakeholders are involved, from shareholders to employees, clients to management. Intercultural alliances involve differences in corporate cultures as well as national cultures and even differences in the cultures of competing functional disciplines like R&D versus marketing. More or less overt cultural differences can cause problems, but so can perceptions about each other’s corporate and national cultures. Ultimately success depends on our ability to enable people with different cultural perspectives to engage in meaningful and valuable discussions about the new business. The new approach we offer focuses on the value of the integration that stems from fusing two seemingly

Fons Trompenaars, PhD, is CEO of Trompenaars Hampden-Turner Consulting, a firm focused on intercultural management. He is the author of many books and related articles including Riding the Waves of Culture, Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business, Seven Cultures of Capitalism and Mastering the Infinite Game, Business Across Cultures. He will be a keynote speaker at the 11th Annual IMI Conference on Intercultural relations March 11-12, 2010. Peter Woolliams, PhD, is emeritus professor of international management at Anglia Ruskin University, UK and is an owner/partner in Trompenaars Hampden-Turner Consulting. He is co-author with Trompenaars for Business Across Cultures and Marketing Across Cultures.

Spring 2010

Tango to Intercultural Integration... opposing value orientations into one and benefiting exponentially from this fusion. The process starts and ends with our ability to recognize and respect differences from the outset. This approach internalizes and reconciles these differences to realize benefits that go well beyond the traditional merged value. Consequently it harnesses the organic growth potential and the innovative capability of the newly joined-up entity from the outset. Looking ahead, many pundits are predicting two conflicting trends, which have their origins in 2009. On the one hand we can observe a plethora of divestments and de-integration processes going on, in particular in the financial services industry. On the other we can see a round of increasing integrations and reorganizations under the pressure of global sustainability while global competitiveness increases. Bigger companies will abound, but their strength will lie in their nimbleness and agility, not simply their scale or scope. Companies are realizing that they have to operate within a business ecology where interdependence, not independence or singular dependence, is the name of the game. Emerging markets will find more flexible capital sources and conglomerates will leverage and alter their strategic approach to markets forcing others to make rapid adjustments. Even the big US based companies employ more and more people outside of the US and many generate more than half their income overseas (GE, Corning, IBM, J&J, etc.). Indian, Chinese, and South African corporations are acquiring and integrating companies in the UK, the US, and across various parts of Asia, and Africa (Old Mutual, Lenovo, Haier, Tata, Mahindra etc.). Constant change, economic waves, financial bubbles, ambiguity, and risk measures will put a greater emphasis on the ability to increase capacity, influence employees, collaborate with other entities across borders and boundaries, and integrate with former challengers. We have found, in our own work on merger success, that all of these elements have a primary role to play in supporting success and enabling goals to be achieved. However, these key elements cannot maximize the potential benefits in isolation – the activities must be brought together in a single integration process that enables the new company to maximize its post merger success. A successful merger requires the same processes that any

individual company requires: • A vision and mission that indicate what the aims of the merger are • A purpose that indicates what the merged companies stand for • A strategy that identifies how the goals will be achieved • Strong values that direct the all-important relationships within and outside the company The many dilemmas and challenges that individualize the merger process make each merger unique. We need to acknowledge these particular cultures and dilemmas while providing a consistent, reliable and repeatable process to drive merger success. We can’t talk about merger success or failure without addressing the measurement of success and failure. Most research organizations focus primarily on shareholder value as the ultimate goal and measure of success. But if we focus exclusively on the financial benefits of the merger within a relatively short time frame using precise financial indicators such as the stock price and shareholder dividends, we overlook the various levels of complexity that provide more sustainable shareholder value. We have interviewed thousands of international business leaders and extensively reviewed the management literature and have found that many organisations are simultaneously managing at least five parallel goals at all times in their business cycle (3–7 in the list below). These five goals are contextualized by the overarching goals of the organization’s vision and values, and the strategic purpose that supports this (1 and 2 below). 1. Achieving the (joined) vision 2. Reaching strategic goals after the merger 3. Improving overall business processes 4. Being regarded as a “best place to work” in our industry and beyond 5. Increasing and maintaining customer satisfaction ratings throughout the merger and beyond 6. Maintaining and increasing overall contributions to society and general social, political and economic recognition 7. All of which will result in increasing shareholder value These parallel goals create dilemmas and value tensions for the new company that need to be resolved in order to Intercultural Management Quarterly

deliver the business benefits of the merger. The human relationships part of the merger is generally underestimated and few due diligence methods assess the value of power and trust, or adequately map out the new and old stakeholder relationship management processes, either inside or outside the newly created company structure. We appreciate that this trend may change as talent management teams take on more global roles and have their strategic growth goals linked to expansion and integration targets.

of joint goals and the creation of a common language – both crucial to achieving success in any type of business integration. We have found that aside from engaging in a consistent process, the most important elements of integration success are a sense of urgency and executive leadership and commitment: Without these two it is hard to accomplish anything in an organization, let alone something as complex as an integration.

One of the great advantages of our work is that all Today’s business world is complex, and simplistic leaders grasp the dilemma approach as soon as they are approaches to integration do not work, which is why too engaged in the initial phases of the process. Leaders are many mergers fail to realize the expected benefits. We beset by dilemmas and are often quite skilled at resolving have developed a portfolio of comprehensive solutions them. However, their skill is leveraged and exploited in to help client organizations truly reach their maximum our approach and we apply a multiplier to this ability. performance (what we term their hyper-culture) and Another strong part of our process is the inherent need to thus realize and sustain the business Today’s business world is complex, and simplistic apbenefits of their merger, acquisitions proaches to integration do not work, which is why too and alliances. All many mergers fail to realize the expected benefits. our consulting and leadership learning approaches are cocreated with our clients using codified process steps redefine some of the fundamental elements of the strategic that are tailored to our clients’ specific needs. We aim process of an organization, such as rebuilding the vision to transfer the knowledge embedded in this process to and re-establishing the values as well as expressing these in our clients so that their ongoing and future operations explicit and “measurable” behaviors. As all this happens continue to benefit under their own leadership and in a consistent manner, the process can serve multiple management. purposes, and is not exclusively beneficial to mergers and acquisitions. The dilemma reconciliation process is We want to emphasize that this approach is not frequently practiced in strategic leadership development simply a matter of avoiding conflict, misunderstanding, sessions in an action learning approach to point out the and embarrassment, but a method of using differences various tensions underlying organizational challenges. to reach a higher level and deliver business benefits through connecting different cultural viewpoints. The We have found that a genuine and successful integration task of leaders is that of continuously co-creating with process requires four components: recognition, respect, management and connecting viewpoints that are hard reconciliation (of both the business and cultural dilemmas to connect. We need to identify the underlying value resulting from these first two components) and finally orientations of such viewpoints and the natural tensions realization, in which the business benefits of connecting between these that need to be recognized, respected, different viewpoints are embedded throughout the and subsequently reconciled to obtain and realize the organization. required benefits from the integration. Being able to map these tensions on reproducible strategic grids that When strategic, structural, systemic, human resource, actually measure the value delta and are very intuitive, supplier and client processes are aligned maximum value helps to move organizations towards an understanding will be obtained from the merger. Within this wider Spring 2010

Tango to Intercultural Integration... context, our approach can be defined as a process of reconciling divergent goals, values, structural, functional and cultural differences for maximum performance. As a result, the human (relationship) side will be fully integrated with the more technical aspects of the process. Our process is supported with a number of validated instruments and tools that provide quantitative and qualitative diagnosis, monitoring of progress and hard evidence to inform decision-making and resource allocations. As a result we work on assessed and elicited rather than assumed needs.

The challenge can be summarized in the format of a dilemma as follows: On the one hand

On the other hand

The failure of a merger to deliver the anticipated benefits can be tied to two main problems: payment of an over-optimistic price and the absence of a systemic and structured methodological framework for integration. The framework provides a means of delivering the core business value of human resources. How do we assess the power and value of human interactions in the business context? Without a framework that answers this key question, senior managers have no rationale for allocating human resources, prioritizing actions or achieving synergies, except as they match these against financial and capital resources. However, as we have already pointed out, on a strictly financial or capital basis most mergers and acquisitions actually lose money and destroy capital over time.

The extremes of this dilemma are effectively pathological manifestations of the underlying value orientations and are unsustainable, as each entirely rejects the alternative. The compromise position is what actually happened in this case. The US entity bought the third party and sold it on instantly to another buyer without further content benefit, but with a financial gain from the transaction.

Measuring the financial value of the human resource is fraught with difficulty as humans are invariably more dynamic and versatile than financial or capital resources. Hence it has proven difficult to measure the return on investment in human capital, although many have tried. The measurement itself is also a problem. How do you measure elements that are largely non-linear, intangible, and difficult to put on any metric scale in the first place, and subsequently measure the increase or decrease of their output over time?

After this event, the parties got together to frame and resolve the tensions that were revealed in the process of the deal. As the parties explored the dilemma they realized that the synergy of their opposing value orientations could reap huge benefits for the company. Now this is an excellent way of assessing the synergistic value of human capital. When leaders are working from the same map, and have a process for recognising, respecting, and reconciling the challenges between them, integrated value can be attained and measured.

Our solution is an approach based on a dynamic measure on a dual axis grid of two opposing value orientations that describes the value (current and ideal) of human decision making ability.

The above noteworthy example is based on two seemingly opposing value orientations. Such value orientations can be organized into differences/dualities, and as long as we put the dualities of value orientations together into “couples” where both sides are stated positively, we can measure the current status of the tensions between the two seemingly opposing values and “score” these on the dual axis grid.

For example, when a German mining giant merged with a US based mining company, the control over decisionmaking imposed by the German leadership stifled US flexibility and autonomy. The US based leaders wanted

to execute a quick deal with another US entity that would enable them to buy in much needed technology and thereafter sell the mine onto a third party in the US. Their efforts were thwarted, as they required approval from the slow and steady German decision makers, who required input from a number of stakeholders including the employee council.

We need a fast decision making process if we are to benefit from rare market opportunities.

We need a secure and steady decision making process to build consensus amongst the various stakeholders.

Intercultural Management Quarterly

Once we have established our starting point, we can also indicate an ideal point and potentially even indicate the path from current to ideal (figure on the next page). Using a dual axis grid allows us to measure the score differentials in blocks and place a value on the increase over time. The central thing to understand here is that values are differences and stem from tensions between two positive orientations towards, or interpretations of, a core value. Being able to dissect human activity and communication (decision making, negotiation, and presentation) and organize its intent and results on a map created on the basis of seemingly opposing value orientations is not just instructive, visionary and motivational but is also a serious attempt to identify and measure the value of human relationships and trust in merger and acquisitions and many other reorganisations and human relationships. Mapping and measuring a human integration approach in the context of complex organisational changes has proven invaluable to the process of ultimate value creation, for which human interaction is responsible. Spring 2010

The ability to integrate and multiply this effect across an organization in a consistent, reliable, and repeatable manner frequently leads to a competitive advantage for our clients. We spiral around like dancers on the dance floor. The Tango concept originally evolved to help people realize their potential through dance, but also to recognize the way they connect to their partner in a unified physical and mental couplet for the benefit of their relationship through their physical intimate movements and the hidden meanings of their long-term rapport. As they say, â&#x20AC;&#x153;it takes two to tangoâ&#x20AC;? and mergers and acquisitions need to be in the business of marriage and not simply weddings. i The ideas discussed in this article are explored in the new book The Global M&A Tango: How to reconcile cultural differences in mergers, acquisitions, and strategic partnerships by Fons Trompenaars and Maarten Nijhoff Asser, scheduled to be published May 31, 2010 by Infinite Ideas Limited (Oxford, UK).

iMuslims by Mona Eltahawy

ou’ve seen their mug shots: a Nigerian charged with trying to blow up a plane on Christmas Day; five young American Muslims detained in Pakistan, apparently desperately seeking jihad. You’ve heard they used the video-sharing site YouTube in search of Muslim militant groups fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan or to find “internet imams” spewing hate. Already we’re hearing dire warnings that radical groups are recruiting every Muslim within a foot of an internet connection. I bet you haven’t heard of these mug shots: Iranian men in chadors and headscarves. As part of the “Men in Headscarves” campaign, Iranian men – inside and outside Iran – have been posting pictures of themselves wearing the head and body coverings the Iranian regime imposes on women. Their pictures – one was even taken in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris have spread on the social networking site Facebook and YouTube in support of Iranian student activist Majid Tavakoli. Authorities arrested Tavakoli in December after he called for more democracy and urged his fellow students to reject “tyranny.” The next day, government newspapers published pictures of Tavakoli dressed in a chador and claimed he had tried to escape arrest disguised as a woman. The Iranian regime was trying to humiliate him but the “Men in Headscarves” had the last laugh. Like everybody else who uses the internet, Muslims shop online and post embarrassing pictures of themselves on Facebook. Undoubtedly, violent radical groups such as al-Qaeda and others have used the internet to their advantage. That is not new, as U.S.-based monitoring groups who follow such sites will tell you.

But what is new is how young people have been using the internet to challenge authority (political, social as well as religious) in Muslim-majority countries or where Muslims live as minorities. The attempt to humiliate Tavakoli backfired as dozens not only rushed to his defense but used their pictures in headscarves and chadors to criticize the dress code Iran imposes on women. I research and teach graduate-level courses on the impact of blogging and social media on mainstream media and society in the Middle East. Such new media offer unprecedented platforms for self-expression. Harvard University’s Berkman Centre for Internet and Society estimates there are 60,000 – 100,000 blogs in Iran and around 45,000 in the Arab world. My students have interviewed bloggers and online activists whose exciting work is invariably overshadowed by news of angry, young Muslims online. Do you know of the Egyptian blogger who helped convict police officers for the sodomy of a bus driver by posting footage of the crime on YouTube? How about the Saudi woman blogger who challenges her country’s restrictions on women (she is married to a former officer of the morality police, who often enforce those restrictions). Or the lesbian blogger who runs a support site for lesbian and bisexual women and the transgendered in Lebanon? And have you heard of the young Bahraini activist and blogger who champions the rights of migrant workers in a region where they are largely invisible? Pick up Gary Bunt’s “iMuslims: Rewiring the House of Islam” and learn that for every online al-Qaeda recruiter there are thousands more Muslims reforming Islam online. In recognition of the power of the internet, religious institutions such as Sunni Islam’s al-Azhar in Egypt and Shiite Islam’s schools in Qom, Iran, have websites. Interpretations and commentaries on the Quran fill the internet and recreate the vibrant intellectual atmosphere

Mona Eltahawy is an award winning syndicated columnist and international public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues. She writes for Qatar’s Al Arab newspaper, Israel’s The Jerusalem Report, Denmark’s Politiken and Metro Canada. Her work has also appeared in the Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune. She has been featured as a guest analyst and commentator on a number of media outlets, including National Public Radio. She will be a keynote speaker at the 11th Annual IMI Conference on Intercultural Relations, March 11-12, 2010. This piece was originally published in Al Arab and The Jerusalem Report on January 14,2010. It was reprinted here with the author’s permission.

Intercultural Management Quarterly

that many Muslims lament we’d long ago lost. Bunt says many Muslims identify more with a website than with a mosque or a particular sect. I know exactly what he’s talking about. The majority of American Muslims don’t go to mosque. Soon after I moved to the U.S. from Egypt, I found my community through the now defunct website MuslimWakeUp! which became a virtual home for liberal and progressive American Muslims. The site inspired progressive Muslim meetups in several cities across the country and new groups such as Muslims for Progressive Values. Not every Muslim online is learning how to make bombs or looking for jihad. If anything, by loosening the chains of authority the internet deals a blow to radical violence: it gives anyone online the chance to answer back. For every Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, there are dozens of Iranian men taunting the regime at the helm of the Islamic Republic of Iran. I have almost 5,000 “friends” on Facebook. We argue over polygamy, burqas and being gay and Muslim. Every day I avidly follow several threads of comments running on my Facebook Wall, all showing a diversity of opinions you rarely see in news reports on Muslims: just today, several Pakistanis from around the world responded to an article I posted in which I cursed the Taliban for the bloodletting they’ve unleashed on Pakistan. The micro-blogging site Twitter is equally vibrant. An American Muslim I follow summed up the sentiments of many towards the five young American Muslim men from Virginia: “I say we welcome these kids home from Pakistan with a swift kick in the a**. Who’s with me?” Join us on Facebook: I promise we won’t blow you up! i

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Spring 2010

The Role of Cultural Value Dimensions in Emerging Markets by Nicole J. Barile

oing business with emerging market countries (EMCs) is nothing new. MBA classes and corporate trainers have been speaking to this topic for years. However, most training programs and business courses geared towards working with emerging markets omit the study of values and cultural dimensions as important factors in understanding new cultures. Existing business programs concentrate on the dos and donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ts of working across borders without ever mentioning values. While some programs offer sage advice by instructing their learners to respect other cultures and be open to differences, few offer in-depth cross-cultural information which would enable people to fully understand the cultures they are dealing with, and in turn, help them be more successful. Cultural value dimensions gained popularity in the 1970s and have since been used to conceptualize, categorize and compare values of different countries. However, the role of value dimensions in working with emerging markets has not been thoroughly examined. There is a great need to understand EMCs and their values as an increasing number of US-American companies expand into countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Although there are studies on value dimensions of individual emerging market countries, few, if any studies exist that look at cultural values of emerging markets as a group in order to see what correlations and patterns may exist and what can be learned. Researchers such as Hall, Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, and most notably, Hofstede, have conducted research on values and cultural value dimensions in an effort to examine the ways in which values underlie behavior and culture. Most recently, the GLOBE Study of 62 Societies was created to examine value dimensions in the light of globalization.1 Nicole J. Barile is Director of Program Development and Senior Program Manager at DFA Global Intercultural Solutions, New York. She holds a BA in Global Economic Relations from the University of the Pacific in Northern California and is currently pursuing her MA in Intercultural Relations.

Specifically, the study attempts to understand culture as it relates to leadership and organizational behavior. The study also examines countries as clusters and identifies ten regional groups: South Asia, Anglo, Arab, Germanic Europe, Latin Europe, Eastern Europe, Confucian Asia, Latin American, Sub-Sahara Africa, and Nordic Europe. Much like each of the GLOBEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ten clusters, EMCs too share great cultural similarities. In addition to academic researchers, many intercultural and cross-cultural companies have conducted their own research and created their own assessment tools to study cultural value dimensions; one such study is the Culture Compass from DFA Intercultural Global Solutions.2 The Culture Compass is a 40-question survey that uses twelve cultural dimensions to assess an individualâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s preferred set of values at work. The survey allows participants to compare their scores for each dimension to the scores for any country they might be working with. The 12 dimensions are (1) individualism versus collectivism, consensus; (2) hierarchy, status-rank versus egalitarianism; (3) transactional, task versus relationship, trust; (4) situational, subjective versus rule-based, objective; (5) monochronic versus polychronic; (6) external control, fate versus internal control, change; (7) risk-avoidant versus risk-comfortable; (8) details, process, deductive versus decisive, results, inductive; (9) high-context versus low-context; (10) harmony, indirect versus confrontation, direct; (11) formal, ritualistic versus informal, efficient; and (12) achievement, task versus balance, nurture. When examining EMCs across all twelve dimensions, many similarities are found. The term emerging markets was coined in the 1980s by then World Bank economist Antoine van Agtmael and is used to describe countries undergoing economic reform and steady growth.3 According to Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) there are a total of 28 emerging market countries; the Economist lists 31 EMCs and the FTSE Group lists 22, although these numbers are constantly changing.4 The EMCs used here were taken from all three lists, for a total of 31 countries. This list includes the commonly discussed EMCs such as China and Brazil, along with some unexpected markets, including Colombia and Hungary. When using the cultural value dimensions of the Culture Compass to specifically study EMCs, strong patterns and Intercultural Management Quarterly

Figure 1 Monochronic Neutral

23%

70%

Polychronic

Figure 2 Low Context Neutral 19%

78%

High Context

correlations emerge. It becomes evident that EMCs have similar value scores across several dimensions, meaning that one can generalize that many, and in some cases, most EMCs share similar values; the same generally holds true for the BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. For example, Figure 1 illustrates that 70% of EMCs are polychronic, with Brazil, Russia, India, and China all scoring high for polychronism. Figure 2 shows that 78% of EMCs are high-context; again with the BRIC countries sharing similar scores towards a highcontext preference. Further findings include: • 70% of EMCs are relationship-oriented (as opposed to transactional cultures) • 70.9% of EMCs are harmony-oriented (as opposed to confrontational cultures) • 70.9% of EMCs are formal (as opposed to informal) • 67.7% of EMCs are situational (as opposed to ruleSpring 2010

based cultures) • 64.5% of EMCs are external control-oriented (as opposed to internal control-oriented cultures) • 58.06% of EMCs are hierarchical (as opposed to egalitarian cultures) Cultural value preferences for the United States are generally the exact opposite of the values of the EMCs. While the BRIC countries score high for collectivism the US scores high for individualism. While the BRIC countries score high for hierarchy the US scores high for egalitarianism. So what do these differences mean for those USAmericans working with EMCs and the BRICs? I argue that both the similarities among EMCs and their differences to the US reinforce the fact that values and

Cultural Value Dimensions... cultures need to be studied when working across cultures. These findings demonstrate that cultural value dimensions clearly do play an important role in doing business with EMCs. EMCs share common value preferences in almost every category, and an understanding of these similarities may help researchers and businesspeople alike gain more insight into working with these countries and emerging markets in general. Furthermore, a training program for those working with EMCs which highlights values and cultural value dimensions would make businesspeople, US and otherwise, aware of differences in values and communication, and will equip them with the strategies they need to work through these differences. A comprehensive training program should include an overview of the following: • Understanding of self – One cannot begin to understand another culture if he does not first understand his own. • Perception of others – Perception of those different from you is subjective and not necessarily reality. • Differences in human behavior – Behaviors are influenced by values and are often explained by understanding one’s culture. • Communication styles – Both differences in verbal and nonverbal communication should be addressed. • Time management – How people view and manage time varies from culture to culture.

Endnotes Robert House, et. al., Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The Globe Study of 62 Societies (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2004). 1

Dean Foster, Culture Compass (New York: Dean Foster Associates, 2010). 2

S. Tamer Cavusgil, et al., Doing Business in Emerging Markets: Entry and Negotiation Strategies (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2002), 4. 3

MSCI Barra, “Emerging Markets”; available from http://www.mscibarra.com/products/indices/tools/ index_country_membership/emerging_markets.html; Internet; accessed 12 January 2009. : The Economist, “Acronyms BRIC out all over”; available from http://www. economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_ id=12080703; Internet; accessed 20 December 2008.: FTSE, “FTSE Emerging Markets”; available from http:// www.ftse.com/Indices/FTSE_Emerging_Markets/index. jsp; Internet; accessed 20 December 2008. 4

EMCs will soon become the dominant economies of the future, and in order to succeed in these markets one must first understand their cultures. i

Intercultural Management Quarterly

Coaching for Effective Leadership in the Multicultural Workplace: Application of the Situational Leadership II 速 Model by Ursula Leitzmann

oaching as a means to facilitate professional growth is becoming increasingly popular. Many large organizations embrace the concept of ongoing coaching as the key element of people development and improved performance. A coachee is able to achieve these goals through increased focus and awareness of choice. One of the tools often used in business coaching is the Situational Leadership Model, originally developed in 1969 by Ken Blanchard & Paul Hersey.1 Hersey continued to use the original name of the model whereas Blanchard later modified it to Situational Leadership II 速 model, SLII.* The SLII Model is applicable across cultural borders, provided users understand and reconcile its implicit cultural assumptions, in order to avoid the pitfalls of cultural misinterpretation. This article will describe the model within the cultural context of its origin, and then look at it from an outside perspective.

The SLII Model The SLII Model is based on the supposition that leadership is goal-specific, or situational, and that in order to be effective, leaders need to adapt their leadership style to match the readiness level of their follower on a particular goal or task. Situational Leadership II features four distinct leadership styles, with one of four developmental levels of the follower. The leadership styles fall into two behavior categories, * The Original Situational Leadership Model was modified with the help of Pat and Drea Zigarmi in 1985 to become Situational Leadership速 II. Ursula Leitzmann is an intercultural trainer, business coach, a former board member of SIETAR USA, Society for Intercultural Education, Training, and Research, and immediate past Executive Coordinator of SIETAR-Washington, DC. She has served as guest lecturer at American University, George Washington University, and Lesley University, Cambridge, MA. She is currently an adjunct lecturer at the Munich University for Applied Languages. Spring 2010

directive and supportive behavior. Directive behavior focuses on knowledge and skills and it helps develop competence. Supportive behavior pertains to motivation and confidence and focuses on encouragement and the development of commitment. The four Situational Leadership II styles and the matching maturity levels of the coaches are as follows: Style 1 is Directing; it consists of high directive and low supportive behavior. This leadership style is well suited to coach a person in stage D1, the Enthusiastic Beginner. Descriptors of a person in that stage are unskilled, enthusiastic, optimistic, and excited. Style 2 is Coaching; it consists of high directive and high supportive behavior. This leadership style is well suited to coach a person in stage D2, the Disillusioned Learner Descriptors of a person in that stage are overwhelmed, frustrated, demotivated, and demoralized. Style 3 is Supporting; it consists of low directive and high supportive behavior. This leadership style is well suited to coach a person in stage D3, the Capable but Cautious Performer. Descriptors of a person in that stage are capable and contributing, yet self-critical and cautious. Style 4 is Delegating; it consists of low directive and low supportive behavior. This leadership style is well suited to coach a person in stage D4, the Self-Reliant Achiever. Descriptors of a person in that stage are highly competent and committed. A D4 is also described as being both inspired and inspiring. The goal of coaches is to facilitate professional growth in their coachees so that they become self-reliant achievers, which, according to the model, happens when the coachees are highly competent and committed on each goal or task. This is not an overall assessment of a person as it may vary from task to task. Consequently, there is no best style as developmental levels may vary from goal to goal. A person can be on different developmental levels pertaining to different situations. The overall purpose as a coach is to assess the maturity level of a coachee regarding a particular goal, and then to move him through all four

Coaching... stages of development on each task or goal. In order to facilitate ongoing professional growth, the coachee should always be in the process of developing competence in at least one new task or goal.

orientation. This competence will serve them both within and across cultures as it will enable coaches to assess value and communication style preferences of a coachee, and to adapt their coaching styles accordingly.

According to the model, leadership style is defined as a behavior pattern that is used to influence others, as perceived by those being influenced. In other words, the coach needs to comprehend the perceptional framework of the coachee. Hence, in order to be effective, he needs to have the cultural awareness and competence to adapt the model across cultures.

Pertaining to directive behaviors, such as telling and showing the coachee what to do and by when to have the task completed, coaches are likely to be perceived in the way intended. Directions leave little room for cultural interpretations. The potential for cultural misunderstanding is less in the content than it is in the delivery, that is, the difference in communication style. For example, the coach articulates a direction rather softly, “you might wish to submit this report to me by Friday”. If the coachee defaults to a more direct communication style, he might think he has a choice (“I might wish, or I might not wish to submit the report by Friday”).

The SLII Model rests on the premise that needing directions reflects a low developmental level whereas being self-reliant shows a high developmental level. Self-reliance reflects independence, one of the US´s core values.2 A highly developed person can operate independently and autonomously. Going through the developmental cycle for each task and goal, coachees become self-reliant achievers—achievement being another cherished US value—which, as a result, will help them move up the leadership pipeline and to reach their highest potential.

Cultural Implications and Suitability of the SLII Model

Cross-Cultural

In order to apply the model effectively across cultures, the cultural competence of coaches needs to be highly developed. They need to be aware of their own cultural attitudes and values as well as the effect their behavior has on others, as the model postulates that a leadership style is defined by how its related directive and supportive behaviors are perceived by the coachee. Questions coaches may ask are: how do we assess individuals with a cultural background different from ours? How do we lead them through the four stages of development in a culturally competent way while keeping our business goals in mind? Reflecting on these questions, the SLII Model helps users sharpen their cultural competence by raising their awareness about which of the four distinct leadership styles they themselves tend to default to. In addition, it allows them to grow their own leadership repertoire to include additional Situational Leadership II styles when appropriate. In intercultural value terms, they need to be able to communicate effectively on the dimensions of task (direction) and relationship (support)

Supportive behaviors cover the emotional aspect of leadership and are aimed at developing commitment. According to the SLII Model, this is reflected in a positive attitude of the coachee towards a goal. The cultural assumption of the model is that emotions, such as enthusiasm and excitement, which are evoked by expressive positive reinforcement and encouragement (“Great job!” “You are a star!”), create commitment. Since the degree of emotional expressiveness varies greatly across cultures, the cheerfulness and exuberance that is often used in a US business context may be perceived as superficial and “fluffy” by members of other cultures and hence would not lead to the desired result of creating commitment. Commitment, in a US context, is closely related to individualism. That is, we do things that we like, in order to advance ourselves, so that we ultimately reach a condition of self-reliance. This value set is seconded by a strong future-orientation (“It’s going to be great”) and the prospect of future achievement (“Yes, we can!”), the epitome of the American dream.3 Since these are not universal values, there is potential for cultural misunderstandings. To coach successfully across cultures, coaches need to understand the drivers for a coachee´s commitment. The drivers may be embedded in the tacit promise of the leader, as a representative of his organization, to provide stable employment, which the coachee reciprocates with loyalty. Or they may be rooted in obligation to a larger group the coachee is a member of, and hence, the degree of enthusiasm or inspiration Intercultural Management Quarterly

may not be as relevant to the developmental journey. In all cases, culturally competent coaches need to adapt their behavior to match the cultural expectations that coachees associate with each Situational Leadership II style, as it is their perception that defines the style, and not the cultural perception of the leader. Overall, the SLII Model is likely to work most successfully in organizational cultures where Western and so-called “globalized business practices” are promoted, many of which are rooted in US cultural values. It is the main purpose of the model to promote and facilitate professional development in individuals and in groups. And culture is one important aspect of that mix. Hence, in order to coach effectively across cultures employing the model, users need to be aware that the SLII Model is deeply rooted in the US cultural value system and of their own cultural imprint and reference frame. They must also identify a coachee’s cultural reference frame to sensibly manage the cultural differences while pointing out the desirable business objectives and goals and lead the coachee context-appropriately through the developmental process. i * The Original Situational Leadership Model was modified with the help of Pat and Drea Zigarmi in 1985 to become Situational Leadership® II.

Endnotes 1

Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard. 1969. “Life Cycle Theory of Leadership.” Training and Development Journal 23, no. 5, (1969): 26–34. Allyson Stewart-Allen and Lanie Denslow. Working with Americans: How to Build Profitable Business Relationships. (London: Prentice Hall Business, 2002). 2

Richard Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture since World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1997).

For a list of selected references and further readings please see page 23.

Spring 2010

American Cultural DNA by Dorothy Guy Bonvillain and William Gary McGuire

here are literally hundreds of articles, papers, and books that have been written from the view of various social scientists and other theorists to explain Cultural DNA. We are in complete agreement with many of these folks who believe culture is learned and passed down (or on) from generation to generation. Our purpose in this article is to metaphorically compare those biological perspectives to what we elect to call American Cultural DNA. Our approach is to look at American Cultural DNA components as having the same labels (or identities) across cultures in America. The difference is the way those identities operate in their given American Cultural Experience. After all, we are all the same in the United States, right? We agree that every individual has a unique DNA (biological makeup), the basic building block for cellular development in all forms of life. DNA represents the nucleus of our identity. Additionally, we propose that in today’s global system, knowledge and understanding of “American Cultural DNA” is as critical to understanding, analyzing, interpreting, and predicting behaviors of people from different cultures as genetic DNA is to cellular development. Further, when looking at the U.S. Military as a case study, the ability to understand one’s cultural DNA is a critical enabler for developing the individual war fighter and for mission success.

What History Tells Us ”History is to the nation as memory is to the individual.” -American historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Historically, America is a nation of immigrants. American culture is multi-faceted and shares so many dimensions that we often forget how different Americans really are. Like biological DNA, Americans are as different

in their own American Cultural DNA identity as they are in unique cellular patterns. When we are identified as American by people from other countries, we tend to acknowledge that the person making that particular identity statement is correct. Most people from other countries know a great deal about American history, the U.S. economy, and our political issues. They are aware of American foreign policy because it impacts people around the globe; likewise, most are able to separate the policies and behavior of the United States government from the values and beliefs of individual Americans. While it’s certainly true that their sources of information, especially movies and television, often distort their understanding of the United States, they still know more about our country than most Americans know about any other country beyond their own.

We Are What We Learn An example of cultural learning could be the way Disney World in Orlando Florida hires cast members at EPCOT? .Disney uses international exchange students to work in EPCOT as cultural representatives for the park’s country village scenes. Cast members (international exchange students) take on the roles for being the subject matter experts sharing ideas about the culture of their home country. These young (normally college level) people are surveyed prior to coming to the United States and asked to describe U.S. Americans. The comments normally received included stereotypes about being loud, pushy, disrespectful, rich, obnoxious, rude, flashy, overbearing, mean, and others. After working at Disney for a year to eighteen months, the same survey is administered as these cast members are preparing for their return to their homeland and the results are much more positive as they indicate such words as; fun-loving, honest, helpful, warm,

Dorothy Guy Bonvillain, PhD, is Chief of Partnership for TRADOC Culture Center (TCC) / SETA / ISC Consulting Group, Inc. at Fort Huachuca, AZ. Prior to taking this position, she served as a trainer / developer at the TCC. She earned a doctorate in Educational Administration / International Education at American University in Washington, DC in 2000. William Gary McGuire, PhD, earned his doctorate at the University of Florida and has studied educational, behavioral, and clinical psychology. He is currently employed by the United States Department of Defense as the Senior Research Analyst and Director of J92 at the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida and serves as the Cultural Subject Matter Expert for 3C Development in the DoD.

Intercultural Management Quarterly

caring, humble, religious, protecting, charitable, and loving to describe the same group. The cast members are asked where their comments originated and most respond with: “This is the way we have seen Americans portrayed on television and media in our home country, so it is the most prevalent way to identify or describe them.” Some would argue that culture is not depicted in this scenario. We believe that these ideas (or stereotypes from the cast members) are in fact culture or cultural components that are frequently noted by non-Americans from around the world. The components listed or described are not a total composite, but they can be included in any list that tends to build cultural identities. Likewise, if we are in the presence of other Americans that are inclusive of our particular group, we quickly accept how easy it is to identify an American; however, if we are in the presence of Americans who differ from our particular group, we might not welcome the identity that others prescribe to us. Within the United States, Americans are as different culturally as they are different in understanding their own culture and / or the culture of others. This article argues that to understand another culture we must first understand differences between Americans, as well as the basic Cultural DNA makeup of who we are within American culture, individually and collectively. Just as biological DNA patterns differ, American Cultural DNA is comparatively (metaphorically) different. The facets of American culture such as: values, family, religious beliefs, behaviors, norms, thought patterns, attitudes about what is good or bad, right or wrong, in-group, in group/out-group, social status, and many others can be patterned to show American Cultural DNA differences. So what is our American Cultural DNA? We are not born with a set of pre-programmed American cultural characteristics, e.g., mom, apple pie, and the American flag; rather we acquire our primary culture very informally growing up in a particular family and within a particular society. In other words, we learn culture and we pass it on. Whether we are Hawaiian or Floridian, Alaskan, Texan, or Californian, southern or northern, European or African, we are all culturally different. Unlike biological DNA, where terms such as cells, chromosomes, nuclei, etc, are part of the common terminology, we might look at American Cultural DNA as metaphorically similar. As Spring 2010

we look through a biological microscope for differences in DNA - with the microscope being the lens - we can say that the American Cultural lens is not so clearly or scientifically defined. Consequently, we use terms such as “We’re all Americans” or “Americans are all the same” as if everyone clearly agrees with or understands the meaning of being an American.

We Do Learn Differently We propose that American Cultural DNA would be the differences in American cultural identity groups; such things as: ideas about family, food (and the way we eat), religious beliefs (or not), how we treat each other within that particular culture (hierarchical rules of etiquette), concepts of time, how people are expected to behave based on gender, and other facets, tend to label our in-group culture as the primary ethnocentric group. American Culture is as diverse as people elect to see and define it through their individual cultural lenses. This separation of American groups is not always seen or discussed (or even accepted) in educational sessions unless the session is focused on equality or diversity. Cultures (to include American culture) are learned and evolve over time, as people tend to take on the values, beliefs, interests, behaviors, norms, mental models and information of family and community that classifies or qualifies a particular culture. It’s clear that culture is extremely complex. We unconsciously bring to any situation our own mental background, the accumulation of our life experience in the society we grew up in: everything we have been taught or picked up from the media, in turn, shapes our opinion. We struggle to understand how anyone could possibly think differently; some even label those who do as stupid, reactionary or troublemakers. American culture becomes even more complex when we start embedding that culture into, for example, our military services such as the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard (an asset of the Department of Homeland Security) – all of which have their own unique organizational cultures.

Bringing It All Together American Cultural DNA is like a container within which our values and beliefs form and fit, and which attracts and repels others, containing behavioral instructions that

Cultural DNA... are passed from one generation to the next, a bio-psychosocial-spiritual code that underlies every aspect of our lifestyle and culture and holds it together. Every form of cultural expression is a manifestation of it - our forms of government, architecture, language, religious expression, moral views, creative arts, amusements, sports and sense of identity.1 Fifty years ago Clare W. Graves, professor of psychology at Union College New York, was so frustrated by all the conflicting theories that he resolved to get to the root of what differentiates people, why they perceive the world so differently and why their reactions to physical, emotional and social challenges are so dissimilar. Decades of research followed, in many countries and at all levels of society. The result was Spiral Dynamics, a revolutionary theoretical model of the development of consciousness and human value systems.2 Understanding the progressive stages through which individuals, organizations and cultures evolve provides a key to resolving major conflicts and global problems, so many of which stem from clashes between different ways of thinking.

conceptual model for increasing cultural competence by comparing and contrasting American culture with foreign cultures. i

Endnotes Rosemary Wilke, “Cultural DNA,” Resurgence, No. 233, (2005). 1

Don Beck and Chris Cowan. Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Value, Leadership, and Change (Boston: Blackwell Publishing, 1996). 2

Wilke, 2005.

For a list of references and further readings please see page 23.

According to Spiral Dynamics, human nature is not fixed, and it changes as our life conditions change. When our circumstances change, we have the innate capacity to develop more complex thinking to handle new problems, and we change our psychology and rules for living to adapt to the new conditions. But the old ways of thinking do not disappear; we carry them within us and call on them when necessary. According to Graves’ theory, each spiral builds on the one below, and everyone has to progress through each in turn. Not everyone within a society exists at the same level. We cannot leapfrog a stage because it doesn’t appeal to us, or lift ourselves to a higher one without experiencing and learning the lessons of the ones below. Nor, significantly, can one country impose its way of life on other countries that have not lived through the stages of similar development.3 Once we decode the Cultural DNA of any given culture, we can use it to better understand behavior and shape future decision and actions. Cultural DNA provides a metaphorical framework for understanding the complexities of American culture. It’s useful as a

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Strengthening Intercultural Effectiveness among the Millennials by Amanda White

ccording to the United Nations World Population Prospects there are more than 1.5 billion people between the ages of 10 and 24, the largest generation in human history.1 This generational cohort is entering adulthood in a time of tremendous global transformations in the economy, education, communication, demographics, the environment, technologies, and culture. But are there learning needs and styles particular to the Millennials, individuals born between 1980 and 2000? In this article, we examine the Centre for Intercultural Learning’s practices and findings with regard to training in intercultural competencies in the context of a youth exchange program. We show that variables beyond demographics such as the context of training, client mandates and the recognition of youth’s prior intercultural experiences in complex multicultural environments play a vital role in shaping learning interventions.

The Millennial’s Hallmark: Globalization Each year, Canadian government departments and organizations prepare and send thousands of Canadians, including many young people in their early 20s, abroad to work or volunteer in a wide range of capacities in developing and developed countries. These capacities are becoming specialized, including work in the field of human rights, social justice, gender equality, and good governance. Indeed, the environment of international work has changed as a result of global trends and it is much more complex and multifaceted than even just a few years ago, increasing the need for training in intercultural Amanda White, PhD, is a Cultural Anthropologist, Researcher and Learning Advisor at the Centre for Intercultural Learning (CIL), a part of the Canadian Foreign Service Institute, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. She was previously primary researcher, co-investigator, and instructor at various Canadian academic and government-funded research institutions including the University of Ottawa, McMaster University, and the North-South Institute.

effectiveness for youth and professionals alike.

The Millennial Learner New information and communication technologies (ICTs) are said to have influenced core values, beliefs, and attitudes among the Millennials and speculations on the impact of mass media in the creation of a “global youth culture” abound. Research identifies a number of general core values of this generation, including: tenacity, ambition, morality, being well-mannered, caring and respectful, accepting of diversity, and dedication.2 In the literature on international volunteer experiences, Millennials are often characterized in two very opposing ways: either in derogatory terms, as “unengaged and/ or selfish” or as “vanguard activists, engaged global citizens or the generation of change”.3 But what do these characteristics and attributes mean for the training of young people in intercultural effectiveness?

Adult Learning in Context A 2009 report by the Conference Board of Canada, Winning the Generation Wars, concludes that managing a multigenerational workforce involves much more than knowing the profiles of the “typical” generational cohort. Similarly, research on adult learning in the twenty-first century suggests that trainers move beyond designing courses based on sweeping stereotypes about generational learning styles.4 The specifics of the training needs and sociocultural background of the participants are considered more important to the development of learning interventions. We illustrate this with an example below, following a brief introduction to the Centre for Intercultural Learning.

Centre for Intercultural Learning The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT), as represented by its training arm, the Canadian Foreign Service Institute’s (CFSI) Centre for Intercultural Learning (CIL) provides learning services in Intercultural Effectiveness to a variety of clientele. The core mission for the Centre is to provide intercultural effectiveness expertise at the individual and Intercultural Management Quarterly

organizational levels to support clients and their partners to help them achieve their policy and program objectives in an intercultural environment. In 2008-2009, the Centre delivered courses to nearly 11,000 individuals. More than 3,000 of these participants were trained for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Approximately one-third of this group were from youthsending volunteer organizations. The Centre’s courses build on research that identifies core behavioral-based competencies of the interculturally effective person (IEP). In a recent transfer-level evaluation of intercultural learning that involved sixtyfive development co-operants in the field, the Centre concluded that innovation skills and resilience are increasingly important competencies in today’s uncertain and complex environment of international work. How does the Centre’s training support young people in their development of these and other intercultural effectiveness competencies?

Case Study: Intercultural Exchange between Youth The Intercultural Exchange between Youth (IEY, a pseudonym) was created in the early 1970s. The organization’s mission is to increase the ability of youth to actively participate in sustainable community-level development projects. The exchange program advocates a policy of non-formal education or learning by doing, a model in which young volunteers learn by getting involved in communities in Canada and in another country. IEY offers international educational programs for youth aged 17 to 21. The organization gives young people from different cultures the opportunity to live together for up to half a year to work on communitybased projects. The exchange program is divided into two parts. For the first few months, young people from Canada and another country live and work together in a Canadian community and, in the remaining few months of the exchange, the youth move to the partner country. At the beginning of the exchange program in Canada, IEY offers a four day Pre-departure Camp that includes a two-day CIL course in Intercultural Effectiveness. The goal of the Centre’s training is to support IEY’s mandate by increasing intercultural awareness among Spring 2010

the volunteers and helping them to further strengthen their questioning and critical thinking skills. The twoday course is designed to explore tools that will assist volunteers from Canada and the exchange country to get the most out of the intercultural experience. Half of the volunteers in the training are from the exchange country and half are from Canada. There are usually an equal number of young women and men. Typically, volunteers from the exchange country would have only arrived in Canada a day or two before the CIL training. The Pre-departure camps are usually held in rural, remote locations without access to ICTs. In most cases, the volunteers do not yet speak the language of their counterparts. This also means that although CIL delivers courses primarily in French and English, volunteers, especially from the partner country, do not necessarily speak or understand these languages well. The particularities of this group influenced the course design and facilitation process. Although the course builds on the experiential learning model of adult education and it is based on the Centre’s IEP research, it is also true that kinesthetic activities and easy-to-remember frameworks seem to work well for this diverse and multi-lingual group, which is in the beginning stages of group formation. For example, volunteers learn about one another, each other’s values and their countries through activities that require them to either draw images or physically move around the room. The activities are designed to encourage the group to apply learning tools for bridging differences and identifying similarities. Although the volunteers are similar in age, there are a number of sociocultural differences and similarities that exist between the Canadians and their counterparts and within these country groups as well. Even though there are “dominant” regional cultures in each exchange country, volunteers come from diverse communities. Most have therefore already had intercultural experiences in their home communities or countries. For example, in one activity, volunteers are asked to identify values that they hold dearly. Initially, the responses are quite similar, if not identical (e.g. respect, justice, equality, etc). When we ask the volunteers to move around the classroom to a statement posted on the wall that best captures their reaction to a situation, they respond with enthusiasm, but also surprise. The learners see that while on the

Millennials... surface they may share similar values, in practice, there are significant differences. Importantly, these differences are not solely attributed to national culture; rather they reflect diversity among the volunteers, with some sharing similar worldviews and values as their exchange counterparts and others having more in common with their country group.

What are the Implications of this Case Study for Training in Intercultural Effectiveness? The continual (re)combination of cultural practices and values among the Millennials could be interpreted as a challenge in training. Yet, as highlighted in the case study, the eagerness of IEY volunteers to understand one another’s value systems and their curiosity to learn about each other’s countries and cultural practices are opportunities to crystallize intercultural competencies. The fact that many among this diverse group are not solidly anchored to a particular framework for explaining the world suggests openness towards the discovery and eventual embodiment of cross-cultural competence.

Concluding Thoughts The collaboration between CIL and IEY shows that it is not commonly-held core values and attributes like an “information-age mindset”, or popular stereotypes that characterize Millennials as either “selfish” or as “agents of change” that shape learning interventions in intercultural effectiveness for youth. To the contrary, the Centre’s course featured in this article is influenced by multiple variables, among them: the specifics of the exchange program, the varied sociocultural backgrounds of the volunteers, and their shared enthusiasm to learn and appropriate tools to make the best out of the intercultural experience. Learning needs and styles are particular to this example but importantly these are not the sole consequence of a “typical” generational cohort. This case study of an international youth exchange challenges preconceived notions of “the high-tech Millennial learner” to embrace the rich diversity of learners’ cultural practices, lifestyles and circumstances. Time will tell whether the training in intercultural effectiveness and the experience of the exchange program will support the volunteers in their possible quest to create innovative solutions to global problems, a competency crucial in today’s complex environment of international work. i

Endnotes 1

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs: Population Division, “World Population Prospectus: 2008 Revision Population Database”; available from http://esa.un.org/unpp/; Internet; accessed 8 January 2010. Jason Frand “The Information-Age Mideset” Educause Review 35 (2000): 15-25. Diana Oblinger, “Boomers, Gen-Xers & Millennials Understanding the New Students” Educause Review 38 (2003): 37-47. Sonia A. Sobon, “Youth Perceptions of Their Future Workplace” (2002) http://www.wln.ualberta.ca/papers/ pdf/37.pdf (January 6 2010). 2

Rachel Mendleson Maclean’s (2008): 50-52; Tim Krywulak and Martha Roberts 2009 The Conference Board of Canada Report h t t p : / / w w w. c o n f e r e n c e b o a r d . c a / d o c u m e n t s . aspx?did=3285 (January 8 2010) Robin Wright, 2009 http://www.time.com/time (January 8 2010). 4 Sharan B. Merriam, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education (2008): 93-98. 3

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Selected References and Further Readings: American Cultural DNA Abbe, Allison. Beyond Cultural Awareness: Filling the Gaps in Cultural Education and Training. Inter-University Seminar on the Armed Forces and Society, Army Research Institute for Behavioral and Social Science, 8 November 2008. Lee, William R., Christopher C. Cowan and Natasha Todorovic (eds.) Graves: Levels of Human Existence. ECLET Publishing, 2002. Triandis, Harry C. Culture and Social Behavior. McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1994. Weaver, Gary and Adam Mendelson, America’s Midlife Crisis: The Future of a Troubled Superpower. Boston: Intercultural Press, 2008.

Selected References and Further Readings: Coaching for Effective Leadership in the Multicultural Workplace Blanchard, Ken, Patricia Zigarmi, and Drea Zigarmi. Leadership and the One Minute Manager. New York: Morrow, 1985. Hofstede, Geert and Gert Jan Hofstede. Cultures and Organizations: software of the mind. 2nd edition. New York: McGraw Hill, 2005. Kegan, Robert, and Lisa Laskow Lahey. Immunity to Change: How to overcome it and unlock the potential in yourself and your organization. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2009. Whitworth, Laura, Karen Kimsey-House, Henry Kimsey-House, and Philip Sandahl. Co-active Coaching: New skills for coaching people toward success in work and life. 2nd edition. Mountain View, CA: Davies-Black Publishing, 2007.

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