Training International Managers

Designing, Deploying and Delivering Effective Training for Multi-Cultural Groups

Alan Melkman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138623026
• eBook ISBN: 9781351144308
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Training across borders is complicated. The advent of large and diverse global organizations, and the opening of markets and opportunities right around the world have introduced a whole new level of challenge for management trainers. You may be trying to roll-out programmes to sites in different countries or perhaps you need to bring together managers from different cultures on one site; how do you do this most cost-effectively, and how do you design and deliver a programme that will reflect their cultural and communication styles and their learning needs? Alan Melkman and John Trotman's Training International Managers mixes a variety of cultural and learning models with anecdotes and examples from 30 years' experience of working with organizations and cultures in every continent. There's advice on cross-cultural issues; learning design, delivery and evaluation as well as the practical issues around the economics and administration of training international managers. You'll find advice to prepare you for what to expect from different groups and different cultures in the training room and how to adapt your own training styles to the groups that you are working with. Management training can be a challenge at the best of times; read Training International Managers and use the models, ideas, tools and techniques advocated by the two authors and you can be reassured that geographical distance, culture and even language need not derail your best efforts as a trainer.

PART I
The Context of International Management Training

The book opens with an introduction to the challenge of training international managers who come together from diverse cultures to participate in learning experiences. It uses work that has been previously carried out on understanding cultural diversity and different learning styles, in order to consider how trainers need to approach the challenges posed in leading learning events for international managers. It also looks at the learning challenge from the point of view of the client who is going to commission a suitably qualified trainer to manage an international training course. It then discusses the considerations for trainers who need to be able to agree the principles and details of training with clients. Finally, the book reviews the economics of international training and how it differs from training that takes place near to the workplaces of participants. This chapter focuses on the need to deliver maximum value from training in terms of helping participants on multi-cultural courses to develop competencies and behaviours that they can use effectively in the workplace. In this way it sets a context for Parts II and III, which consider in detail a process for developing, deploying, implementing and evaluating training for international groups of participants.

CHAPTER 1
Introduction

You are standing in front of a group of international managers at the beginning of a training course. You are the trainer, the course leader. As you look around you see the usual mixture of facial expressions and body language - anticipation, hope, cynicism, boredom, and preoccupation. Some are chatting to their colleagues in German, French and other languages. Others, clearly too busy to socialize, are on their mobiles or deeply absorbed in their e-mails.

How are you going to cope? Will they all be familiar with the English language in which the course will be run? How will you understand them when they speak in their own language in the breakout sessions? Will they understand your jokes and witticisms? How well will they contribute? Will they express their real concerns and opinions? Will they expect you to come up with all the answers or will they want to work them out for themselves? What about sticking to the timetable - will they want it to go like clockwork, or to be flexible in order to reflect the course of the discussion or their daily routine in their own culture with breaks for coffee, prayers and a variety of starting and stopping times? Will they understand you? Above all, what assumptions are you making, based on your own culture and experience, that you do not even think about that may alienate, distract or antagonize your participants and detract from the achievement of the learning objectives? These are some of the many questions that this book attempts to answer.

The global perspective

The increasing speed of communications is enabling organizations to extend their influence across the globe. Electronic communication allows us to send messages across time zones, so that the sender can despatch a message at the end of the day to be opened in another part of the world at the beginning of the next day. Such ease of communication brings peoples from different cultures closer together.

In many fields, certainly in business and academia, English has become the common tongue. Businesspeople and academics are motivated to learn English as a second or third language in the same way that they have been motivated to develop computer skills. This combination of skills has dramatically increased the ability of people from different corners of the globe to share information.

Organizations, which already considered themselves as having an international outlook, are now able to easily and frequently keep in touch with their counterparts on different continents. They are able not only to exchange information but they can also trade ideas and knowledge electronically. Taken together, these developments mean that most managers are exposed to the thinking and approaches of managers from different cultures on an increasingly frequent basis.

These technological developments are being reinforced by the greater volume and lower costs of air travel. This is exposing individuals to an increasing diversity of cultures and encouraging travel to far-flung, as well as nearby, destinations.

Vast trading blocs such as the European Community (EC), North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and others have been created and trade barriers are reducing, increasingly leading companies to align language and vision and develop a common corporate culture that overlays any stereotypical perceptions of nationalities.

At the same time the different cultures are becoming more similar. Whether it is CNN, McDonald's or Coca-Cola, Sony, Mercedes or Phillips, foreigners find themselves confronted by increasing numbers of offerings they recognize from back home, wherever they are. This is not to say that significant differences do not exist. Indeed, for a trainer to assume that just because the Vodafone logo appears on their mobile phone when they get off the aeroplane and the bar serves Carlsberg that there is little difference between how people operate and respond is a cardinal error.

Cultural challenges for international managers

Organizations of all types need to manage this extension of their global reach. Even in organizations that have operated worldwide for half a century there is a need to equip them to manage larger regions, encompassing more diverse cultures. In many other organizations managers are having to learn how to operate across different cultures and even local managers are finding it necessary to learn how to contribute to multi-national teams. Managers in this environment have new and more effective tools for communication and soon find they are working in a world where there is a common language and common technologies but a great diversity of cultures. The challenge presents itself as soon as communication begins. Even within Europe there will be a difference in perception about establishing a meeting at say, 11.00 am, and this is not because of time zones. As a generalization, people of Northern European origin will understand 11.00 am to be within five minutes of that time and people of Latin origin will have a more elastic concept of 11.00 am.

In large multi-national companies young managers will often find themselves working in virtual teams with colleagues from all over the world, sometimes without ever meeting face to face. They will be expected to agree objectives, develop a project plan, implement agreed actions and review results with colleagues who are from societies with different values, religions, beliefs and priorities. They will have different understandings of the role of a leader, how to measure success and other critical factors that they may never discuss, but which will drive their behaviour in ways which will often surprise and sometimes frustrate their distant colleagues.

Learning events in the early twenty-first century

One opportunity to deepen individual managers' understanding of the cultures of their colleagues, peers and opposite numbers from different regions is to share a learning environment. The need to appreciate cultural differences and the relative speed and lack of expense of modern travel is increasing the frequency with which learning events are arranged that are attended by managers from a number of different countries and sometimes different continents. These events can take place within multi-national organizations or they can be arranged by specialist providers for managers with similar learning requirements, from diverse organizations.

In this book we are concerned about learning events for managers. These events often have objectives that are aimed at increasing knowledge, developing new skills and modifying personal behaviours. If they are very ambitious they may also aim to change attitudes as well. Trainers have long recognized that increasing the knowledge of participants is a reasonably attainable goal, although there are of course more and less effective ways in which it can be done. Developing skills requires practice and is more challenging in the learning environment. Changing personal behaviours of participants on any sort of permanent basis is extremely challenging, and changing attitudes is something trainers will only believe can be achieved as a result of a learning event in their most optimistic moments. This is our mature perception when we are thinking of a group of participants from a single culture. It is many times more challenging when we are considering a group of participants from many and varied cultural backgrounds brought together in a group for the purpose of learning and development.

The main purpose of this book

The reasons for it being so much more challenging to train participants from varied cultural backgrounds will be explored throughout the book. The main purpose of the book is to extend our understanding of what the challenges are and how the trainer can attempt to meet them so that not only is it possible for effective learning to take place within multicultural groups of participants, but also that it is poss...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• PART I THE CONTEXT OF INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT TRAINING
• PART II TRAINING DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING PROCESSES
• PART III MAKING THE TRAINING SPARKLE
• Further Reading
• Index