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TrainTheTRAINER
AL LOCK
Twenty-five years ago, I was trained to deliver training to people of other cultures. The assumption was that the target audience would be from a single culture, and so the focus was on putting training in terms of their values.
Today, it isn't uncommon to deliver training to a group that is made up of participants from multiple cultures. In the last few years, I've delivered or supervised the delivery of training to groups that included Scandinavians, Swiss, English, Americans, Germans, Malays, Indonesians, Singaporeans, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipinos and Thais. That is a pretty broad range of cultural norms to address.
So, how do we deliver training to groups that include individuals from multiple cultures?
One of the key steps in delivering effective training to adults is to identify "what's in it for me" for the participants. Well, instead of us identifying what they can get out of the training, trainers need to allow the participants to identify what they expect to get out of the training. Once they have identified the benefit for them (which likely will be in terms that they are culturally comfortable with) the training will be much more successful.
In addition, if the programme allows the participants to find their own solutions, they are much more likely to find solutions that work for them and which they are culturally comfortable with. Programmes that focus on achieving goals and tasks rather than the method of achievement are much more likely to be successful.
Let's consider leadership training for example. If the training focuses on specific behaviours (assertiveness, co-operation, etc), it is less likely to work across cultures than a programme that focuses on outcomes (successfully completing tasks that require exertion of leadership). The outcome-based programme allows for different styles of leadership to be equally successful, but it also allows for participants to find their own solutions that fit their personal and cultural limits.
Two years ago, I was supervising a training programme being delivered to a group from a Thai company. They were divided into two groups and working on tasks that required leadership. One group had a very visible leader, who had been identified by management for potential promotion. The other group had a "behind-the-scenes" leader, who was very effective in a much quieter and less noticeable way. Management hadn't really seen her because they were more focused on style than outcomes. But in the outcome-focused task, she outperformed the visible manager.
We're all familiar with the various materials out on different management styles, approaches to life, leadership, etc, "The Seven Habits", "The Five Laws", and so on. Each of these may work very well for some people, but they don't work for everyone. And not everyone who is successful, or a great leader, and so on, exhibits those behaviours. Some highly successful people don't. Are they exceptions? Maybe. But the fact that such exceptions exist, that they have found ways to be successful, to be great leaders without following the "cookie-cutter" approach, indicates that success and leadership are not so easily packaged and are very individual things.
Effectively, people work within three cultures: their personal culture (who they are, their preferences, their value system, their perceived place in society); their business culture (the culture of the company they work in and the particular group they work with, including teamwork, attitude toward work, learning culture or not); and their national culture. So, even with a group that is all from the same country and company, there may still be some cross-cultural issues in the group. When you add multiple company cultures (which may occur even within the same larger organisation) and different national cultures, the opportunities for significant differences grow.
Given that some value differences may exist even in a fairly homogenous group, the advantages of designing and conducting training that focuses on output, that allows the participants input in choosing how they will achieve the goals of the programme and allows the participants to find their own solutions is noticeable even in a group from the same company here in Thailand. If you start looking at programmes designed and delivered to regional groups within the same company, or to groups from different companies that have significantly different corporate cultures and the advantages are overwhelming.
One more advantage that any trainer should recognise is that such a programme does not need to be constantly revised in order to work in one culture or another. A programme that is designed as I described above will work in New York or in Bangkok. The way the tasks are done may be very, very different. And that is the point. Participants influence how the programme works and as a result, the programme works for most participants.
Do you have a training question or issue that you would like to see addressed here? Please email me and I'll see what we can do.
Al Lock is the Business Development and Marketing Consultant for t+b solutions ltd. He can be contacted at al@tandbsolutions.com.
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