In our latest column on mentoring, we explore how to support cross-cultural mentoring programmes
By Lis Merrick
We operate in a globalised business environment, where multicultural organisations view their talent globally and where borders are removed when considering flows of tacit knowledge and expertise. Fantastic for opportunity and access to diversity, but it can create difficulties in developing working relationships, and it has its own challenges for mentoring relationships.
The programmes I have been working with recently have created stimulating matches, such as a British man with a Chinese woman and a young Dutch graduate with a senior Indian leader. These look great on paper, but in reality are hard work when getting a really good developmental dialogue off the ground.
The issues
The biggest challenge is creating initial rapport. Obtaining that sense of responsiveness and relaxation in the relationship can be hard, with participants unsure of how much – or not – to give and how to build the trust needed to feel ‘safe’ to learn. Issues such as pride, ability to be assertive, to ask for what is needed, being honest and direct (something we Brits are not always good at) and making yourself vulnerable, really varies between different cultures and can get in the way of establishing initial connection and chemistry. If this rapport is not created in the first two to three sessions, it is difficult to have more than a superficial mentoring relationship.
Setting direction can also be problematic, with a mentor of a different culture not always able to park their ambition for their mentee and work with the mentee’s own agenda, which culturally may seem ‘strange’. A more directive senior mentor may find a mentee of a more ‘gentle’ culture difficult to comprehend, and vice versa, another mentor may find their mentee ‘pushy’.
In many cultures, mentoring is still implicitly of the sponsorship variety, rather than our more familiar developmental type. This may not surface clearly until further into the relationship – to the shock of the mentee, who finds they are being treated as the mentor’s protégé.
Supporting the relationships
Good practice in your process is a key part of ensuring successful cross-cultural mentoring – clear briefings, thoughtful matching, ongoing support, supervision and plenty of formative and summative evaluation. However, there is more you can do at the outset, particularly around education at the briefing stage. I routinely use Andy Mollinsky’s Four Step Plan of Developing Global Dexterity with mentors and mentees so they understand the importance of:
- Diagnosing the cultural code of their mentoring partner
- Identifying their own personal challenges around their partner’s culture
- Customising their behaviour towards their mentor or mentee
- Making the behaviour into ‘muscle memory’
Giving mentor and mentee a framework to work through together reduces the embarrassment of talking about this topic head on and gives them language to explore ‘the elephant in the room’.
Try it out. Even having a conversation about what might be each other’s cultural code kickstarts rapport-building beautifully.
- Next issue: best practice in the complex area of mentoring millennials
- Lis Merrick is a consultant and visiting fellow of the Coaching and Mentoring Research Unit at Sheffield Business School. She welcomes correspondence on anything to do with mentoring.
- Contact: Lismerrick@coachmentoring.co.uk
Reference
- A Mollinsky, Global Dexterity: How to Adapt your Behavior Across Cultures without Losing Yourself in the Process, Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2013