Executive coaching is a confidential, strategic thought partnership between a professional and a coach for the purpose of maximising efficacy, success, and goal attainment. For firms moving into new international markets such as the US, executive coaching is an especially powerful means to invest in and increase the likelihood of your expansion’s success.

In working with an international executive coach, you and your employees will be empowered to: develop new skills and an effective trans-national leadership style; manage the cross-cultural complexities and multi-directional demands of conducting international business; reduce the stress of moving one’s personal life and family to a strange place; eventually repatriate smoothly to their home country. Your return on investment in executive coaching will be worth it: companies report an average return of about six times what the coaching costs them.

ROLE TRANSITIONS AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
When expanding into the US, your firm will probably send several employees overseas. These individuals are likely to be taking on new responsibilities and moving into at least a partially different role. This is an excellent opportunity for them to work with an executive coach, as a role transition requires new professional skills, advanced inter-personal and political capabilities, and increased strategic and business savvy. In addition, new leaders will need to develop a leadership style that is natural for them and reflective of your firm’s ethos and values. Working with an executive coach will equip your employees with the skills they need to take on these new challenges, and enable them to assume a new leadership role with confidence.

CROSS-CULTURAL SOPHISTICATION
Running your business in the US requires a working knowledge of the subtleties and nuances of American professional and organisational culture. These are much more complex than the superficialities of business etiquette, and are crucial to the success of your expansion if your firm intends to interact in any way with American clients, employees, outsourcers, customers or other partners. Working with an executive coach who possesses cross-cultural expertise will help your expatriates integrate American day-to-day practices, norms of social interactions, business strategy and management styles into their professional lexicon. It is essential to understand these dynamics in order to avoid litigation and to quickly create the local connections and trusted relationships necessary for your business to thrive.

BRIDGING THE ATLANTIC
The most successful international business people expand their ways of perceiving, analysing and working to incorporate different cultural values and viewpoints without abdicating their own perspective and objectives. Your transatlantic employees will want to develop this ability to adapt and evaluate business issues from new angles. This also means, however, that business decisions made in the US may begin to spring forth from a different logic than that of the home office. The challenge international professionals encounter is effectively conveying decisions that make perfect sense in an American context, but seem irrational or illogical from headquarters’ perspective. Working with an international executive coach will help you and your expatriates to first view things from multiple perspectives, and to then develop cross-cultural communication proficiencies to convey and understand American-based decisions without eroding the mutual trust essential in a transatlantic relationship.

PERSONAL LIFE TRANSITIONS AND REPATRIATION
Transitioning one’s personal life to another country can be an incredible opportunity and adventure: it can also introduce stress, uncertainty and complexity. Protecting the wellbeing of your employees’ personal and family lives is critical to their success on the job, which is in turn critical to your firm’s success in expansion. Working with an executive coach will provide the support needed to manage these challenges. Surprisingly, though repatriation may seem like a happy reunion with one’s culture and community, it is often experienced with disorientation and a feeling of unsettledness. Working with an international executive coach will help prepare your repatriates for the transition home by setting expectations and creating a support structure to cushion what can sometimes be a rough landing.

For more information:
E-mail: deb@dhordoncoach.com
Website: www.dhordoncoach.com