Cross-Cultural Coaching in a WFH World

How does prolonged periods of working from home impact your team? For one, they’re now immersed in the domestic world they could once shut out with a trip to the office. Distance also makes it more challenging for them to gauge how their colleagues and supervisors may truly be feeling, what their reactions really mean. 

Coupled with uncertainty from the ensuing pandemic, this also means that your team, and you, need a constant reserve of emotional stamina to sustain normalcy. All this keeps adding to already complex layers of work.

As a result, you’ll find that a lot of psychological issues will come in the way of performance issues. How you approach your sessions then needs to change, as a coach. The goal of your sessions would still be to improve performance metrics – but this can no longer be your sole focus. Before you can even start exploring what the root of the problem might be, you first need to help your team member to get in the right frame of mind so that you can have a constructive discussion. 

Even if it doesn’t come naturally to you, if you pride yourself on compartmentalising your professional and personal life, you need to adapt. You need to be mindful of the mental state of the team members you’ll be talking to. To do so, you can’t keep the personal and professional issues neatly separate as you once did. The line still exists. But it’s likely you’ll need to wade through personal issues that your team member is open to share to assess how to resolve issues in their professional sphere. This shift in style is a means to an end and not a reason for you to play therapist. 

Some of your team members or new individuals you will be coaching may be based in a country or observe a culture that’s very different from yours. Take the time to learn some of their cultural beliefs. This helps you better understand what may be driving their anxieties and how they may process your words – which is especially important because you’ll be gauging all this through a screen.

For instance, the pandemic has brought about much uncertainty in terms of job security. Someone in the US may equate the loss of a job with increased financial difficulties. In Japan, this comes into play as well. But more importantly, losing a job would also mean losing prestige. Even if it was the result of economic forces beyond one’s control, simply sitting around at home every single day isn’t acceptable. An individual who loses their job would then bear the burden of putting their family members through psychological difficulty in addition to financial strain. This isn’t likely something that your team member would share specifically if you’re just starting to build rapport. You need to consider the anxieties that differ from culture to culture, country to country your different team members may be carrying.

Another cultural difference I think you need to consider is how interdependent each family unit is. In some cultures, people operate as individual units. In others, families may be dependent on a sole person. If a spouse who had historically been a homemaker started a new job for additional financial security, the degree of emotional impact on the initial sole breadwinner would also vary with different cultures. Having an understanding, or at least an awareness, of the kind of pressures the person you’re speaking to may be up against would help you to build the empathy you need to facilitate these sessions.

Warming up

Before this shift, most coaching sessions would open with questions like, “What’s bothering you? What do you want to resolve?” With added anxieties and the strain of uncertainty today, jumping straight to the point could be counterproductive. Your goal in these sessions, after all, is to guide team members to find solutions. For this, you need to take time to weed through other unstated and subliminal factors that might have a bearing on their frame of mind before starting discussions on the actual problem.

Instead, start your coaching session with an Icebreaker and ask, “how are things in your country?” Most countries are dealing with different stages of the pandemic and live with the constant threat that things may escalate as the virus continues to evolve. So check in to see what your team member’s country is currently experiencing. If you’re based in the same country, start with how certain changes to guidelines or mandates may have impacted them. This question also offers a neutral start and gives your team members time to ready themselves for the discussion ahead.

Next, your question can start to get a little more personal, “How are you?” Depending on the cultures or your team members themselves, you could also extend this to people they care about: “How are things with your family?”

If they offer short, polite answers, that’s fine. Most would have gotten used to the noise and chaos of working from home, resigning themselves to this new normal. You need to give them time to feel comfortable about sharing more. However, if they do return the question to see how you’re doing, have an answer ready. Whatever you say should, of course, be authentic and doesn’t have to give away any personal details you’re not comfortable with sharing. The point is to help them to relate to you. To offer something in your story that may perhaps prompt them to expand their answer. To help them see that there are instances where you’re both on the same page.

 

You’ll need time to build rapport and trust, so factor this in when you’re planning out the session. Start on the right foot to remove or minimise obstructions as you get deeper into the coaching session. Your intention behind the coaching session is to address an actual problem. If your initial conversation starts to reveal bigger emotional issues, steer the conversation back to something more neutral and help them to return to a calmer frame of mind. You are not a therapist.

If it’s clear they need additional support, suggest ways in which they can get in touch with a professional counsellor or an individual from HR with the right training to help them make sense of bigger issues they may be facing.

Explore

As they get more comfortable, move on to: “What’s bothering you?” Your goal at this stage is to define the issue that might be causing problems with their performance at work. From your earlier conversations in the Icebreaker stage, consider if other sources of anxiety fuelled the problem at hand. If your team member is able to pinpoint specific issues, work-related or otherwise. 

If so, ask them explicitly if they’d like to discuss these issues in more detail. Very often, they’d say yes. The invitation lets them give you permission to take a step forward with the session. This empathetic environment helps them to feel more secure about your discussion ahead. From here, you can then lead the discussion to define possible roots to the problem and explore ways to resolve them.

Close

The rapport you’ve built during the coaching session isn’t a one-off thing. It’s not like meeting someone on a flight where you go your separate ways after the plane lands. Improving performance isn’t going to happen within the span of one session. 

So don’t let the hard work you’ve done to build trust go to waste. Close the session an invitation for them to reach out if they need to. Again, it’s important at this stage to signal that you’re not a therapist. Be specific about how they can reach out – for example, via email or text, depending on your company’s culture and norms.

If you know that your team member is from a country or culture that expects an immediate response, give them a head’s up ahead of time that you may be slow to reply or may not always pick up a call, but will definitely read every text or call back when you can. Practise how you say this ahead of time if you can. They should feel assured while understanding the professional boundaries both of you will maintain.

1 Restructure Coaching Sessions

In a WFH world, you’ll first need to untangle personal issues that may be clouding your team member’s performance. Allocate more time for checking in with them at the start of the session. Giving them a chance to clear their heads builds trust and puts them in a better frame of mind to tackle performance issues. 

2 Research Cultural Norms

Take the time to learn how different cultural norms and beliefs shape your team member’s worldview. The impact of uncertainty and new working arrangements varies from country to country, culture to culture. Having some background helps you to relate to their behaviours and choices, which then helps you to create an empathetic environment to encourage growth.

3 Practise How You Close Each Session

Close each session with an invitation for your team member to reach out to you. But, you also need to make it clear that you aren’t a therapist. So practise what you’re going to say and have clear options, such as counselling with HR, you can offer should they need additional support.