Corporate and national culture in a global context

The challenge

How do you grow a strong corporate culture and make it successful in the city of New York, in Tokyo or in New Delhi – without losing the individuals’ unique values and origins?

Steps to overcome the challenge 

Insights into how national/regional cultures impact leadership styles and relates to the corporate culture: 

• Understanding of how leaders from different countries can misunderstand each other – and how to mitigate those misunderstandings
• Counselling and tools for having a “cross-cultural” dialogue that makes the leadership come across and builds stronger bonds in the team

Tools 

Several tools and methods are useful for a dialogue about national culture in relation to company culture, examples being: 

• World Cultural Map – Inglehart-Welzel map / World Values Survey
• Cross-culture Collaboration – Profile and Culture Guides from Globesmart
• Personal values’ understanding – Tool to create understanding for the team members values

Steps

1. Initial information session

– Client, direct report, advisor 

• Walkthrough and Q&A of national culture models 
• Establishing common development ambitions 

2. One to two individual counselling sessions

– Client, advisor

• Pinpointing important situations and improvement situations and improvement areas
• Dialogue and counselling for the client around the the direct report around the pinpointed areas pinpointed areas 

3. One to two individual counselling sessions

– Direct report, advisor 

• Pinpointing important situations and improvement situations and improvement areas
• Dialogue and counselling for the client around the the direct report around the pinpointed areas pinpointed areas 

4. One to two sessions together for understanding and alignment

– Client, direct report, advisor 

• Sharing insights and learnings 
• Bridging differences and creating next steps for development 

Understanding each other is a pre-requisite to appreciate and eventually take advantage of each others’ differences.