Cross cultural coaching and consulting

CROSS CULTURAL C O A C H I N G & C O N S U LT I N G

Contact : Agnes Menso - + 33 (0) 676 280 953 - [email protected] - www.agnesmenso-coaching.com

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P.03 INTRODUCTION

P.04 YOUR COACH P.05 / Agnes Menso P.06 / Ethics & confidentiality Clients’ references

P.07 OUR APPROACH P.09 ADAPTATION AND INTEGRATION OF EXPATRIATE / IMPATRIATE IN THE ORGANIZATION P.10 / Individual cross cultural coaching for Executives P.12 / Collective coaching P.13 / Team-building

P.14 PARTNER’S SUPPORT P.15 / Individual cross cultural Coaching and Consulting P.16 / Skills assessment

P.17 CROSS CULTURAL SEMINARS P.18 / In-company seminars P.19 / Partner’s integration Assistance to departure

P.20 BACK HOME P.21 / Expatriate reintegration coaching P.22 / Partner’s reintegration coaching

P.23 CHANGE MANAGEMENT

P.25 WHAT ELSE?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Cross cultural coaching and consulting’s goal is to help you understand and cope with cultural dimensions, values and beliefs that you are not familiar with.

It enables you to set up appropriate behaviors and communication in a complex environment in respect of your identity and integrity. It will also help you manage stress issues and conflicts that may pollute and disturb relationships.

Cross cultural coaching and consulting will allow you to optimize and transform these cultural differences into tremendous growth potential in an unknown environment.

All these services are tailor-made and designed for Executives, Managers and their families. They can be taken either separately or combined with each other.

INTRODUCTION

THE COACH’S WORD

Management in a cross cultural context could be called “Dealing and coping with opposites”.

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YOUR COACH

As a cross-cultural Coach and Consultant, I want to offer you my expertise.

Highly passionate about my job and human relationships, my experience and involvement ensure challenging sessions, based on empathy rules of confidentiality and integrity.

«I have always been used to dealing with cross-cultural environments: first, as a child with foreign origins, then as a teenager and now as an adult.»

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Agnes mainly addresses Executive Committees, project management teams, in both team-building and individual coaching sessions.

Agnes combines her coaching experience with a Consultant perspective in Change Management and is also a lecturer on “Y-gen” and “Emotions management as a key success factor in change management within organizations”.

Before launching her own company, Agnes worked as a free-lance Consultant in international mobility. She also worked for eight years as a Marketing & Communication Manager and Budget Director in different fields: industry, banking & insurance and advertising agencies.

She graduated from a French business school and has lived and worked in the UK and Germany. As a Coach she graduated from HEC Business School and holds an Executive Master in Consulting & Coaching for Change (HEC-Oxford Saïd Business School).

AGNES MENSO

Agnes Menso has been running her own business as an Executive Coach since 2004. She specialises in Communication and Management in cross-cultural environments.

YOUR COACH

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ETHICS & CONFIDENTIALITY

Individual and collective coaching sessions are confidential. No information will be given to anyone without prior agreement. The client can give up the assignment at any time. The coach can also reserve the right to stop the mission. In these both circumstances, an end session will be proposed to the client and set-up. Coaching practice is regularlysubjected to supervision conducted by an external professional.

CLIENTS’ REFERENCES

Agnes Menso’s major references are in the car industry (Continental France, Renault and Faurecia), the food sector (Barry Callebaut France), telecommunications (EservGlobal), wholesale (Système U Centrale régionale Nord-Ouest), luxury goods (Van Cleef & Arpels International), aviation security (Securitas Transport Aviation Security), communication agency (I&E Services) and hotel business (Swissôtel) in France, Switzerland and in the UAE.

YOUR COACH

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OUR APPROACH

To offer you tailor-made services, it is vital to take time to clearly understand what you are looking for.

Activity-based learning is built upon systemic and transitional tools. Though it seems more dynamic than indoor seminars, we are willing to make those as participating as possible by integrating educational and creative role playing.

Whatever you choose, each session is subject to a rigorous debriefing where empathy, respect and confidentiality are assured.

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Should you choose a cooking challenge, a treasure hunt, a horse workshop or theatre, activity-based learning facilitates immediate behavioural consciousness.

These tailor-made approaches enable each member to sharpen his / her individual efficiency to enhance the collective performance to reach a goal. It helps participants reflect on their management and communication styles, leadership, emotions, priorities and stress management.These activities last approximately between one and two days and have been especially designed for groups starting at 8 people in France and abroad, both in French and in English.These are being conducted by one or two professional Coaches and by experts (Chef, actors theatre...) dedicated to your workshop.

ACTIVITY-BASED LEARNING

INDOOR SEMINARS

OUR APPROACH

We are mainly going to use coaching tools, creatvity and role playing to focus on the relationships between individuals. This will allow them be conscious in the way they interact between them in a system that can be either the team, the organisation or other counterparts.

This training takes into account words, tone of voice and body language. In that context, it gives priority to how the relationship is being led, if it is pleasant, performing, efficient, or on the contrary, if it generates stress or misunderstandings.They enable individuals to understand if and how they are being heard and to what extent, what is being said - or not, generates a kind of behaviour.The coach’s work is to make the individual or the group aware of the problems and lead them to find appropriate actions based on individual and collective performance.

These workshops mainly suit executive committees, middle and top management as well as functional or operational teams

for a team-building or a « change » management project.

These seminars can be perceived as a kind of mirror in the sense that they help participants analyse, better understand

and improve their verbal and non-verbal communication with one or several persons they are talking to or dealing with.

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ADAPTATION & INTEGRATION OF EXPATRIATE/ IMPATRIATE IN THE ORGANIZATION

In order to adapt, the best services we are able to provide for these Executives and Managers are individual cross cultural coaching, collective coaching and team building. These different kinds of services can be either taken individually or combined to each other.

Whatever their choice, these coaching and consulting services will take place in a rigorous framework, where empathy, confidentiality and respect prevail.

A relocated Executive or Manager is expected to adapt and perform rapidly in his / her new working environment.No matter what the cross cultural issues he / she has to deal with.

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Cross cultural coaching addresses any Manager or Executive who needs to perform quickly in a new and international context. Its objective is to help the client adapt rapidly in an unknown environment, in France or abroad without getting himself / herself lost.

The objective is to help the expatriate be operational more quickly through action plans that are going to give visible results, in respect of the client’s values, beliefs, identity and integrity.

INDIVIDUAL CROSS CULTURAL COACHING FOR EXECUTIVES

Coaching is concrete work conducted within a rigorous framework and with clearly defined objectives. A cross cultural environment makes individual coaching more complex in the sense that it includes parameters that cannot be really mastered.

ADAPTATION & INTEGRATION OF EXPATRIATE / IMPATRIATE IN THE ORGANIZATION

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In a cross cultural environment executive coaching requires a multidimensional expertise both in coaching and consulting.

Due to their position, Executives can face a deep loneliness that can be accentuated due to expatriation.

During a coaching session the Executive is free: free to express his / her personal emotions and feelings, free to share his / her doubts, free to

talk about sensitive topics that cannot be discussed within and outside the company and free to reflect on his / her values and sense-making,

without being afraid of judgment.

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INDIVIDUAL CROSS CULTURAL / COACHING FOR EXECUTIVESADAPTATION & INTEGRATION OF EXPATRIATE / IMPATRIATE IN THE ORGANIZATION

The coach’s work is divided into two parts. He / she facilitates talents mobilisation and skills development in order to restore self-confidence to help achieve the client’s goal. The coach is also here to focus with empathy on the client’s points of improvement and support him / her in any of his / her actions to reach his / her objectives.

Cross cultural coaching usually starts before the beginning of a mission and will give the client the main key success factors to understand, manage and use a different culture. This understanding may be difficult but is vital in the sense that it conditions the expatriation success.

A coaching session usually lasts from 1.1/2 to 2 hours. This service usually lasts a few months after arrival and can warn the Executive or Manager regarding a potential over-adaptation that can lead to stress and burn-out. Experience shows that approximately ten sessions, with a session every 2 weeks, are enough for an in-depth work.

Individual coaching covers several topics. It can be focused on beliefs, values, emotions and how they are going to be used to adapt the best.

It helps the client reflect on what he / she wants and what he / she needs to succeed and face this paradigm. It can also deal with communication,

management and leadership skills development and improvement, empowerment, the taking of a new position with new responsibilities,

and stress management…

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Collective coaching is very operational. It addresses executive committees, functional and operational teams. It is based on talents and skills in order to improve teams’ working conditions: communication improvement, resolution of conflicts, and change management that can generate a deep disruption…

It can take different aspects. It can be the attendance of an executive meeting where interpersonal communication,power games and management style are observed. But it can also consist of the observation, analysis and debriefing of a newly promoted Engineer who needs to take in hand his / her team.

In this context trust is a key factor. Indeed collective coaching assumes that each participant is ready to put in the service of the group his / her individual skills to make the group grow and perform better. It leads participants to think as a team and not as individuals anymore.

Collective coaching success mainly relies on the boss’ involvement, motivation and capability to challenge himself / herself and leads his / her team to change.

COLLECTIVE COACHING

Each group has a tremendous potential of competences, skills, talents and creativity that is often scarcely used.


The Coach is in charge of the group dynamic. He / she helps the group analyse its strengths and points of improvement, and find appropriate

actions for the team to perform better.

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To be more efficient we advise you to combine this service with collective coaching and for some people with individual coaching.

This service takes place outside the company and usually lasts two days.

The wide variety of exercises, role playing and debriefings give the opportunity to get to know others more easily, develop unrecognized competencies, solve conflicts and make people work together.

TEAM-BUILDING

Team building mainly focuses on a relationships’ improvement among people. It is based on individual and collective motivation in order to reach an objective.


Team building develops group dynamics in order for a team to perform better in the long term, both internally and externally.

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PARTNER’S SUPPORT

This may potentially weaken the couple and jeopardize the expatriate’s career.

Though more and more young fema-les tend to expatriate, we are mainly dealing with a spouse who has fol-lowed her partner, and whose social status has changed tremendously. She has to deal mainly with logistics issues and is not Mrs Smith anymore, but Mr. Smith’s spouse…

Relocation has to be discussed and the decision has to be made by the two partners. Though companies mainly focus on the Executive’s integration, and scarcely take into account the partner’s, this is also part of their responsibility: to give the partner the opportunity to adapt and manage successfully.

75% of international missions stop before completion. This comes from the fact that the expatriate’s partner did not manage to integrate himself / herself successfully in his / her new environment.

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We advise you to set-up a few coaching sessions prior to departure. These interviews will help the partner express his / her feelings, emotions and doubts but will allow him / her to think about a new-life project with both short and long-terms objectives.

Indeed we know that relocation success is mainly based on the partner’s integration. Very often we are dealing with the expatriate’s spouse who loses his / her points of reference, who has not chosen to be relocated and has had to give up family, friends and a good position. He / she usually feels pretty lonely with the children at school and her husband / his wife at work. This is why, to ensure mission success, it is essential that companies be concerned about spouse’s status and his / her well-being.

These sessions can go on for one year after arrival to support him / her and help him / her make this period of time a priceless and unique experience.

We cannot say for sure how many sessions will be needed, as it really depends on the motivation to adapt and adjust to this new paradigm.

INDIVIDUAL CROSS CULTURAL COACHING AND CONSULTING

In relocation, companies usually focus on the employees who leave their country but scarcely take into account families and especially partners.

PARTNER’S SUPPORT

We advise you to combine individual cross cultural coaching with assessment skills. Though we are going to work on different aspects, it can be appropriate to combine these two services in order to be more

efficient and successful.

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SKILLS ASSESSMENTPARTNER’S SUPPORT

It also gives the opportunity to identify gaps that need to be filled and competencies that should be developed.

Trust that is being built between the client and the Consultant is the key success factor. There is no rule to estimate when skills assessment should be set-up. One of the major points in this situation would be to listen to one’s needs and motivations to start this process, and to talk openly and frankly to the Consultant whose job is to advise the client in respect of his / her interests and integrity.

Relocation can be an appropriate time to think about a different professional future. Skills assessment enables the individual to review competencies and talents that have been gained, and to be potentially transferred from one field to the other.

It allows the client to design a project that can fit in his / her new life-project. It creates dynamics and may help restore self-confidence.

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CROSS CULTURAL SEMINARS

Cross cultural seminars are designed both for Executives their family to help them cope with French culture at work and on an everyday life basis. Our expertise in other countries enables us to provide you with this assistance.

In both cases, these seminars are based on our experience on both living and working in France - as French - and abroad. You will be given concrete tools to lead you as quickly as possible to autonomy.

These seminars can be combined with any coaching or skills assessment services.

Geographical proximity does not mean cultural - and or linguistic - proximity.

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These seminars usually last two days and are tailor-made for Executives and Managers who need to adapt quickly and perform before arriving in France. They can be set-up both for individuals and teams, and are designed to help them get used to French culture and cope with it.

During these seminars we are going to work on several aspects:

• Managing time in a polychronic vs. a monochronic culture

• Managing information in an implicit vs. explicit culture

• Relationship to hierarchy in a strong power vs. small power distance

• Relationship to groups: individualism vs. collectivism

• Relationship to risk : weak vs. strong uncertainty avoidance

• Vision of manager’s role: femininity vs. masculinity

• Corporate values

• …

IN-COMPANY SEMINARS

WORKING IN FRANCE

Though you are going to work in an international environment you will have to deal with the French, their customs and habits, and sometimes their sense of humor.


We are going to give you a few clues to help you better understand French mentality, French business world -

and especially implicit French communication in business - to give adapted presentations, cooperate with your hierarchy,

peers and subordinates as well as manage meetings.

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In the same register we also advise the impatriate to participate to everyday life seminars to have a broader knowledge of French culture.

These integration seminars will be mainly focused on:

• The French educational system

• French bureaucracy and the notion of “service public”

• The Paris - Province opposition

• Food, culture, shopping, leisure and vacation

• Making friends and communicating with the French

• Current issues in French society

A limited and selective piece of advice can also be implemented if needed.

Should you be relocated to UK, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, China and the United Arabic Emirates, feel free to contact us. We would be happy to assist you.

PARTNER’S INTEGRATIONLIVING IN FRANCE

ASSISTANCE TO DEPARTURE

If possible, we recommend the partner to follow in-company seminars as it gives an accurate view of French systems and French values.

We are used to dealing in several countries.


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BACK HOME

According to a survey conducted in 2011, reintegration is hard to manage for 42% of them.

Only 28% have been promoted and 35% estimate that their company has filled their needs in terms of position. 38% of them indicate that it has facilitated their reintegration.

These figures may explain why 47% left their company after they return...

If companies want to make the most of their expatriates’ expertise, they should set up appropriate services to help them reconnect and share what they have learned.

When coming back, expatriates and their families have to face a reverse cultural shock. They usually feel somehow out of touch with reality in their home country.

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Usually companies have very few contacts with their employees when they are abroad. They tend somehow to forget them and usually feel a little overwhelmed when they come back. They do not really know how to enhance their Executives’ experience and do not know either how to manage them. Moreover, because of distance, these Executives have been neither included nor consulted in the company’s strategy and may disagree with it.

At this time, it is not uncommon that either expatriates set off again for a new mission abroad - which will make their return to “normal life” more difficult - or leave the company for a competitor, that is ready to acknowledge their skills, their talents and the added value they can bring to run the business..

It is hard to say how many reintegration coaching sessions are needed. They usually start before the expatriate’s leave and they both rely on his / her will to come back and on the company’s wish to integrate him / her successfully.

EXPATRIATE REINTEGRATION COACHING

Even after a short period of time in relocation, coming back home for expatriates may not be as easy as it should be.

BACK HOME

Expatriate reintegration coaching’s objective is to help the expatriate share and pass on his / her knowledge. It can also be set-up for this

Manager’s hierarchy, peers and subordinates to cooperate either on a collective or individual level.

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He / she has to get used to a country he / she may have totally or partly put aside and find his / her marks.

Like for the Executive it is hard to estimate how many coaching sessions are needed as it depends on his / her will to adapt to this new life. Nevertheless we advise to start these sessions prior to departure.

PARTNER’S REINTEGRATION COACHING

The issue for the partner’s integration is approximately the same as for the Executive’s.

BACK HOME

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CHANGE MANAGEMENT

This is a paradox that Executives and Managers cannot shirk and have to deal with.

The objective of this service is to give the client the main tools to have an appropriate communication and manage change successfully in respect of organizational, collective and individual values.

Change management consists in handling simultaneously the end of a paradigm and the beginning of a new one. An international context makes this more challenging.

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It can be a company’s move, an identity loss due to a M&A, the departure of a symbolic leader, a new product launch or the abandonment of a business activity…

On top of managing a new identity, a new culture with new values and unknown ways of working, Executives and Managers have to integrate cross cultural parameters - that may be sometimes religious.

The objective of this service is to help the client analyze, handle this complexity, set-up and follow action plans. It can be combined with collective and individual coaching

The objective of this service is to help the client analyze, handle this complexity, set-up and follow action plans as well as provide him / her with appropriate tools to communicate efficiently.

This service can be combined with collective and individual coaching.

CHANGE MANAGEMENT

There is a large variety of change management projects.

There is no miracle solution to manage change successfully. It is more a question of associating and setting a few elements in motion

with appropriate processes in a rigorous way.

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Agnes Menso has developed different communication tools to provide companies with a full range of Coaching and Consulting services. She is inspired by current news to give her clients food for thought to reflect and perform. Follow her on Twitter and have a look at her fields of expertise.

Writing: Agnes Menso - Creation: Anne Laroque - [email protected]

WHAT ELSE?

WEBSITE

w w w . a g n e s m e n s o - c o a c h i n g . c o m

CORPORATEBROCHURE

to be consulted, downloaded and printed

BLOG

w w w . a g n e s m e n s o - c o a c h i n g . c o m / b l o g /

http://www.agnesmenso-coaching.com/

http://www.agnesmenso-coaching.com/blog/

https://twitter.com/agnesmenso/

AGNES MENSO Cell : + 33 (0) 676 280 953

[email protected], France

www.agnesmenso-coaching.com

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