Back from New Orleans: Let’s Talk About Cross-Cultural Skills!

I’m back now from New Orleans, after conferencing about the latest and greatest in management issues. If you have a chance to go to New Orleans, I highly recommend a walking tour of the French Quarter! I talked about predicting success in cross-cultural settings at this conference, so I’d like to say a few things about this topic.

First, if you are interested in what competencies are needed for success in cross-cultural settings, try this list. Of course, the tricky part is assessing employee strengths or weaknesses with regard to those competencies. Alternatively, an organization could try training people for those skills. Selection and training is what I will be speaking about next month in Arizona.

Yet another approach is self-screening. Someone has come up with a tool, called the SAGE, which enables employees to assess their motivation for an overseas assignment. I have used this tool with students and it provides some useful feedback.

From some conversations I have had with managers, it appears that companies spend very little or no time either thinking about screening job applicants or training employees for cross-cultural skills. Given the global marketplace, I find this surprising!