International assignments are costly investments, and cultural support helps insure the return on that investment. Good cultural training addresses the single greatest reason for costly failed assignments (premature returns, under-performance, increased adjustment support): an inability to manage the cultural differences that are inherent in global work.

“Cultural Competency” is a critical skill not only for international assignees (and their families), but also for anyone who is working in a global organization. Every individual working today, at any level in the organization, needs to work with a global mindset that provides them with the global information and skills necessary to productively leverage the inevitable cultural differences they encounter in order to succeed in their global work. There is no longer wiggle room for cultural ignorance. Those who understand how to work with cultural differences will succeed, and those who don’t—as organizations and employees—will simple fade away. Technology provides us with opportunities to fine-tune how we deliver effective cultural support, targeted to the different needs of increasingly varied audiences, situations and issues, within global organizations.

So, how are we, the intercultural industry currently doing? It used to be, when cultural training began, that the goal was “cross-cultural awareness” and “overcoming differences.” Today, or course, goals and strategies for achieving them have matured and refined: for one thing, the goal is no longer to “overcome” cultural differences, but rather to understand them well enough to use them as tools for accelerating success in global teams, on global work projects. When cultural differences are managed productively, global work proceeds at lower cost, with fewer difficulties, and at greater speed. And creating “awareness” is also certainly not enough. Today we know that cultural support must have “global agility” as the end goal: programs need to take participants through three developmental steps that lead to “cultural agility”—the ability to remain authentic and genuine while recognizing and successfully managing the cultural differences one encounters, in and with any culture:

• Awareness: That cultural issues are “on the table” when we live and work globally

• Understanding: Specifically, what those cultural difference are that we will experience

• Managing: What do we do about these differences in order to succeed?

As organizations have become more global, their need for developing global agility and culturally competent managers and teams has also grown—no longer is it just an expat skill, all levels in the organization need to be able to be culturally competent. Leadership needs to understand how to create strategy that works around the world in a variety of local cultural environments, managers need to manage the cultural differences that strategy requires them to implement in day-to-day work in specific cultures, and staff needs to understand cultural differences so that global daily communications across cultures can succeed effortlessly and seamlessly. This means that there needs to be different ways of creating culturally competent individuals based on their responsibilities, be it leadership, management or staff, which means, in turn, different kinds of intercultural support: different programs for different audiences, with different needs.

Based on the different needs of various audiences for cultural support, programs should be available that achieve different goals that combine:

• Learning (information access)

• Skills (application of information learned)

• Support (applying information to participant concerns and abilities)

Historically, cultural competency has been taught through “classic” training and learning, between an employee and partner and a trainer, in an in-person training environment, or 1-2 days’ length. The training provides both in-depth knowledge and skills. This “gold standard training” intervention was the initial form of intercultural support, and it still provides the best mix of information, skills-building and support. Learning can be accomplished through information access and self-paced programs; skills-building is accomplished through learning plus training (real-time, trainer-driven skills development); and on-going support is accomplished through after-training intercultural issue-specific coaching.

Intercultural support today should provide a variety of program options that achieve the specific goals for each individual with global work responsibility: the organization needs to ask itself, “What kind of intercultural support is needed for this particular individual? Do they merely need access to information, or do they require the development of immediately implementable, on-the-ground skills? Do they need access to on-going support? Would their needs be better served with access to information and curative coaching, or skills-building training designed to prevent issues from arising in the first place?” And in all cases, these questions need to address their requirements: are they personal, as might be the case for relocating international assignees and their families, or are they professional, as might be the case for anyone working globally today?

Needs, and ways of addressing them, have certainly grown since the early days of cross-cultural training. What was once the only way of describing and addressing the need to develop cultural competence has now become just one of many ways to provide a variety of more finely targeted “intercultural support services.” What was once an awareness-building event dedicated to “ah-hah” moments of understanding now must provide solutions-based best practices for managing the cultural differences one has been made aware of. And what was once viewed as an attempt to overcome the differences that exist between two specific cultures has now evolved into a sophisticated endeavor to leverage the complexities of multicultural global teams.

Today, there are many different ways of providing cultural support, achieving different goals, for different needs. There is no reason to believe that these needs will stop growing: as the world becomes more global, new needs will surface. And no doubt, new intercultural support services will evolve to successfully address them.

Click here to read more intercultural blog posts. Or, read our article about Destination Services Consultants receiving Intercultural Training.