Do you know the sultana paradox? Probably not, because it’s more of an inside joke among friends of the culinary arts. The sultana paradox goes like this:
“Nobody likes sultanas, yet they’re in everything.”
OK – that’s perhaps a bit of a bumpy introduction. So let’s move on to what I call the ‘Intercultural Paradox’. It is based on experience from more than three decades of intercultural coaching.
It is a double paradox:
“Those who are interested in intercultural coaching don’t really need it anymore.”
But also:
“Those who believe they don’t need intercultural coaching are in dire need of exactly that.”
Let me explain this briefly. In numerous intercultural seminars on ‘Germany and the Germans’, I have met almost 100% people who were open to information about cultural differences. Our information was hopefully useful for them. But these people would probably have been successful in a new cultural environment even without this information. Because they already brought the one quality with them to our seminars: cultural awareness.
Of course, I have not met most international managers who take on a new job in Central Europe and think they don’t need intercultural training. But some of them I did meet.
From time to time we receive applications from corporat customers for a German course with additional information from the human resources department. This additional information then reads something like this:
“Actually, he (it’s almost always a ‘he’) needs intercultural training. But he refuses. He grudgingly accepts a German course. Can’t you put something intercultural in there?”
Of course we can – and we’re happy to do it. For our esteemed corporate customers, by the way, this is the most cost-effective form of intercultural training.
Here are two examples of intercultural ignorance:
Not only once did a manager tell me: “I know how things are done. I don’t need that kind of cross cultural stuff.” You can guess which country most of these clients came from.
When a US corporation took over a medium-sized German company, the top management of this corporation asked us to present a concept for an intercultural seminar with the aim of smoothly integrating the two companies.
Of course we were happy to do so. We submitted a scientifically well-founded offer for two days with a highly qualified American trainer and an equally qualified German coach.
We found the response from the USA somewhat shocking:
“No, no, no – that’s way too much time. We imagine it like this: We sit down with our German colleagues for three or four hours and tell each other how wonderful we are.”
That, of course, took us out of the game. Intercultural training cannot work like that.