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Two Chaps - Many Cultures
Global Business Excellence Through Cultural and Emotional Intelligence (ICE-Q)
Welcome to ๐๐ฌ๐ค ๐พ๐๐๐ฅ๐จ โ ๐๐๐ฃ๐ฎ ๐พ๐ช๐ก๐ฉ๐ช๐ง๐๐จ. We help you navigate the business of culture and the culture of business. Christian Hรถferle and Brett Parry ponder many topics related to culture through a combination of short bursts and deep dives.
We feature guests from the world of business and personal development, speaking about their experiences developing a combination of Cultural Intelligence (CQ) and Emotional Intelligence (EQ), as well as it's vital importance to successful global organizations.
It's not only about culture. There are also tips and strategies for creating abundance in your professional and personal life.
Level up your ICE-Q by hitting the SUBSCRIBE button. Add your questions and comments related to culture, business, and personal growth.
Two Chaps - Many Cultures
Show Me The Money! Assessing the Return on Investment for Cultural Intelligence Training
The stakes are high and the financial implications massive. Justifying the costs associated with international assignments or preparing personnel for engaging with global markets can rest with various stakeholders. Questions can come thick and fast concerning just what is the value of the cultural intelligence learning aspect of the preparation.
In this episode we discuss that it is not just about the financial costs; we dig into the human element and spotlight the transformative power of cultural intelligence training. It's a game-changer for any organization looking to bolster its return on investment and ensure the triumph of its international ventures.
Join us for an honest and invigorating discussion that could redefine how you justify the support offered for individuals and families heading off on long term international assignments.
๐๐ฌ๐ค ๐พ๐๐๐ฅ๐จ โ ๐๐๐ฃ๐ฎ ๐พ๐ช๐ก๐ฉ๐ช๐ง๐๐จ is the worldโs #1 show on the business of culture and the culture of business. Christian Hรถferle and Brett Parry ponder culture in short bursts and deep dives, featuring your questions and comments related to culture, business, and personal growth.
Be sure to check out and subscribe to our YouTube channel for even more great content: https://www.youtube.com/@TwoChapsManyCultures
Visit https://theculturemastery.com/ for more information about the skills for working in a global context.
The music on this episode is provided courtesy of Sepalot.
โDuum Diipโ - Artist: Sepalot - Label: Eskapaden - Copyright control
Imagine you're a HR professional or involved in the human side of your business and all of a sudden you are tasked with exploring some of the cultural aspects of the international or foreign adventures your company is undertaking, and that might even mean moving people, supporting moving people. Well, what happens when your executive team come in and you explain to them why you want to do it, and all they say is show me the money. We're going to talk about that. Welcome to 2Chaps.
Speaker 2:Many Cultures In an increasingly globally connected world it is vital to possess the essential skills of cultural intelligence. Listen along as we present the topics, tips and strategies you can use to develop the power of cultural understanding in your personal and professional life.
Speaker 1:Here are your hosts Christian Hรผffler and Brett Parry.
Speaker 2:How much is that going to cost us? Show me the money. Yeah, if you're in people business, people side of things of the organization justifying your expenses, that's the thing.
Speaker 2:I know we've dealt with this multiple times, it's not always easy and we're going to talk a little bit about what the ROI, the return on investment, is for cultural intelligence in the corporate world. And if you like what we do, remember there is the bell that you ring, ding, ding, ding, ding to subscribe. Make sure you get updates on the latest episodes. This is Two Chaps, many Cultures, where we talk about the culture of business and the business of culture. And we're Brett. What is it? There is culture. There's never enough culture. What, what's your phrase?
Speaker 1:too much culture is barely enough that is so true.
Speaker 2:So make sure to subscribe. Never miss an update, weekly new videos from the two chaps. By the way, if you are in people business, like one of my clients, they will tell you on the phone. Christian, I'm in this new professional development course for my company and we're talking about diversity and I've used one of your two chaps videos for our course. That's how you do it, thank you, people, people. Let's talk about the return on investment for cultural intelligence. Is it measurable? Offer training, coaching, mentoring, seminars, workshops, support for global organizations to help them build their cultural intelligence? What arguments do we have to say? This is worth it, this is worthwhile doing. Show your management the money. How do we do that, brett?
Speaker 1:Well, of course, both being in business, we understand the importance of looking at the numbers.
Speaker 1:We want to go to data as to build the veracity of what we do and why we do it and how we serve our clients.
Speaker 1:So in that case, we understand that from a perspective of other people in the organization. However, if you are tasked and you are more directly involved in the human side of your business and, as we said in the intro, you are faced with looking for resources, pulling in different aspects that will support the cultural intelligence adventure of your colleagues, whether again, they are moving countries or in fact engaging in some expansion of the business in foreign lands, then you have to come up with some kind of credible basis of your argument of why you do that. And that's when we come in in terms of the cultural side of it, because if we just look at expats, there's certainly a salary cost that doesn't go away, but then you're adding to that travel and the cost of living allowance that might come along with that. All of these are really really substantial. And what is it Christian? One or two million bucks a year, one or two million dollars for the life cycle of an assignment.
Speaker 2:Most average expatriate assignments come up to two, three million for a three-year assignment. That is additional cost for the employer. It really depends on where people are sent right. If you're sent into a high cost destination like Hong Kong, singapore, I don't know, angola used to be super high then those expenses might even be more enormous. It is an investment in talent. You're bringing experts, people who have a high degree of expertise in whatever their field is. You're sending them somewhere else to do their job there because they were really good at what they're doing at the home office. And now you're expanding. Or you need to fill a position abroad and you have just the right candidate, and now you're expanding, or you need to fill a position abroad and you have just the right candidate.
Speaker 2:So the move the family, the household, goods, the school very often private school, if it's a country whose educational system is not up to par with what the home system is. There are so many hidden costs that factor into this. It's going to cost you a chunk of money. Cost that factor into this, it's gonna cost you a chunk of money. Are you willing to sacrifice all that investment by not preparing your people for that journey, for that cultural wall that they're gonna hit at some point. It would be, from our perspective, unwise to do so right? So comparatively low are the numbers you will add to the overall expense for language support, for destination service support and for cultural intelligence support. That's peanuts compared to the whole expense basket of what you're spending for that expatriate employee and their household.
Speaker 1:Right Now, if you're listening to this, this is where you should be taking notes, because you should be ready for this discussion with your colleagues, whether they be at board level or management level, executive level, and these are the things that we encourage people to take back to these folks and say this is a human adventure at its very core. Yes, there's business involved, but there's humans at all levels of life, whether it be professional or personal. And so when you're talking about the human cost, we just look at the cost side of things. I mean, we can speak to a lot about the cost, right, mate?
Speaker 2:We can speak a lot about the cost, and yet it's not only the human cost attached to the expatriate and this is something that that's a conversation I very often have with clients, and I'm sure it's similar for you, brett it's not only the person who is changing cultures for work or changing locations for work that wants to be prepared, that needs to be prepared for this, it's also the receiving side. I just had this conversation recently with one of our long-term clients who themselves are in the leadership role as expatriates, who themselves are in the leadership role as expatriates, and they said after now, their second assignment is about to end, they're going to return to their home country. They said, yes, it was helpful for us to receive cultural preparation for this assignment. It was equally important that our team here in this foreign location is prepared for receiving us.
Speaker 2:So if you're in a multinational, bilateral, trilateral, multilateral matrix organization, not only do you prepare the people you're sending away, you also want to prepare the team that is incorporating foreign executives, foreign employees, because now you have a mixed team. Why would you only prepare one side of the equation? They're going to collaborate right and most cultural intelligence initiatives work really well if it starts at leadership level and it's cascaded down through the levels of the organizations that will benefit most from this professional development exercise. And very often this is an overlooked factor, because we have people say well, what is this going to cost us? Is this going to immediately make us more money or is it going to save us money? What would be your answer to that, brett?
Speaker 1:Well, as you said before, mate. So think about that person who has been chosen for these tasks, whether it be physical movement or, in fact, in charge of the expansion. They're not there by accident. Their management has identified that they have a certain set of skills that allows them, as leaders, to pass on knowledge right to pass on intelligence to the team, and hopefully that's going to translate no matter where they go. So in many ways, as you were speaking there, I'm thinking, you know, we're encouraging this and we're kind of doing ourselves out of a job, because if we do a very good job of the actual cultural education side of it, the cultural training or coaching, if we do a very good job of that, we're also doing the job of building the skills for that person to be able to pass that information on. So that's a really key point you make there.
Speaker 2:Well and I might be wrong about this, and yet some of my mentors have taught me this that the role of anyone who manages something whether it be a process or people or both is to make themselves redundant. And if you do your job well, then at some point you're not needed any longer because the process has been implemented and installed and it runs itself. So if we work ourselves out of a job, then we did our job well, and I only recently had this, what you just mentioned or alluded to. I had this wonderful experience. I've been working with a sales and distribution executive who, later in their career, was sent abroad, and it was their first time going abroad and they were, from their behaviors and from their personality, pretty much well it's hard to put it that way, but they were set a little bit. There was very little behavioral flexibility and also a low desire to adjust. They were like, yeah, take me as I am, take me or leave me, but this is how I'm going to be and you're going to figure me out. Of course, as you probably guessed it, that didn't work very well at the foreign destination, and so we got to work with each other.
Speaker 2:I became their coach for more than half a year and we had very intense one-on-ones where I was able to challenge them on some of their behavioral quirks, and it was sometimes like knocking my head against the wall. I'm not going to lie. This was a really tough candidate to engage with and they were rather reluctant to listen and apply what we work through. And now that their assignment has come to an end, they're about to pack their things and go back home. I had to sit down with them and their successor to pass on lessons learned, right? So best practice, we're not just doing this in isolation, we're saying, ok, so what did you learn in these three years and what can your successor learn from your experience?
Speaker 2:And then they sat with their handwritten notes from our coaching call and they were basically reciting the material that we had worked through, where I thought, okay, they're never going to get this or they don't want to. Now they were sitting there and telling their colleague hey, watch out for this, watch out for that. And this is what I learned. And, like hallelujah, it does work. It does not exist in a vacuum, right? So in an ideal scenario, you're managing company knowledge. It's knowledge management, right? Doesn't always work that way. When it does, it is gold.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that experience and of course, in our work we often talk about the reward we get out of this, but the reward comes from sometimes some discomfort and that point that you made to this person some of our job is to confront.
Speaker 1:We're not we're not trying to be adversarial, but we're trying to actually build in the this person that we are sitting across, the ability to kind of put a mirror up to themselves and see where perhaps there are some limitations, that just whether it's been their upbringing or their experience, that's every. All of us have got those and we understand that. And but that is part of our job too. It's been their upbringing or their experience. All of us have got those and we understand that. But that is part of our job too. It's not just to be agreeable and sitting there and banking the checks for free. It is actually real work. And I think when you told me that story, chris, I think it was a really great, satisfying, rewarding experience to see that person passing on and that's the ripple effect, that little pebble that you put there, and now it's rippling and that person's going back to their country and they're going to recite those same things to people that look up to them as mentors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm not going to lie, I had watery eyes when that happened. I was like damn it, this really does work Nice.
Speaker 1:We do take it personally right, and that's the other. Getting back to the point is that if you surround yourselves with people that are going to give you the tools and the messaging back to your company, understanding that this is a human endeavor, this is, yes, there's dollars and cents that are involved in this, but this is a human endeavor, especially when there's families and cents that are involved in this.
Speaker 2:But this is a human endeavor especially when there's families and children, all those things that take place and you said, just counting the checks or monitoring the checks coming in, and again we're at the cost. Right, and as I was thinking about this and preparing for this episode, senior management or those with budgetary decision-making powers they will want to say show me the money. They want to know what do we need to budget for this and is this a smart investment? Now, it may not be very nice to argue with. What are you standing to lose if you don't invest, but that is often something that people are much easier motivated by is the fear of losing something than the prospect of gaining something. That's a little bit vague, but what you will definitely lose if you do not invest in cultural intelligence is business, and you will not even know why.
Speaker 2:I have had this happen in so many client relationships where we had these analytical discussions. What happened? What went well, what went wrong? Well, this client walked away. We thought it was this and that Turns out. Their prospect did not commit to a deal and it was because of culture and the service provider or the company my client trying to sell them their product or service did not realize it was a cultural mistake. They thought it was price, they thought it was delivery conditions, whatever other business factor or supply chain factors it may have been. When in fact it turned out, the person negotiating the deal made a mistake, wasn't aware of it, the company wasn't aware of it. So it's in your blind spot and you don't even know which mistake you're analyzing. So it's not a. You don't make more or you don't save something with cultural intelligence in this example. If you don't have it, you stand to lose something and you don't even know how much it is absolutely well.
Speaker 1:Hopefully we've given you a few uh tips and uh strategies to approach those conversations. I'm not saying they're easy, they are difficult and these are just parts of many levers that you have to take. So we are certainly really grateful for the work you do. If you're listening to this as a human professional, as a person who is tasked with this, because we're in your corner and many of the people that do this same work are, and we understand we get to meet with the people right and understand that this is a very human impact that you're having. So thank you for doing that. And, of course, the image we showed before with the little circle of costs and the the amounts there. We're going to throw that link to the cultural mastery website. You'll see, there'll be that link to the cultural mastery website. You'll see, there'll be a link in the notes. So thank you again for joining two chaps, many cultures for another week of absolute madness, where too much culture is never enough. And um, show me the money.
Speaker 2:And I'll show you the big seat. Right, it's right here. Ah yeah, Cash Is that cash?
Speaker 1:Is that cash? Is that Culture? Come on, culture, there see.
Speaker 2:There we go. Culture might be cash if you do it right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, you can turn culture into cash. Yeah, so, before we get too carried away with metaphors and cerebral irreferences Alliterations. Yes, let's get the hell out of here. Ciao for now. Good to see you again, mate. Two Chaps, many Cultures Again, subscribe, hit the bell. Don't forget our new podcast. It's fresh to the platforms, on all of the best platforms in the world, and we will see you in the next edition of Two Chaps, many Cultures. Have a good one, see y'all.