Coaching with Cultural Competence for ICF’s International Coaching Week

Working with clients from around the globe, our trainer and coaching team is often confronted with people who don’t share the same cultural background as them. The relationships between a coach and their coachee develop quite differently when first languages aren’t the same or when the formative influences of culture are dissimilar.

The International Coaching Federation recognizes this and offered us an opportunity to highlight this issue during their International Coaching Week this year. During an online session on May 19, the Cultural Mentor Brett Parry and TCM founder Christian Höferle addressed the fundamentals of cross-cultural coaching, global comparison frameworks, and offered some tips and tricks for working with global coachees.

You will find a recording of our webinar on YouTube.

Launched in 1999, International Coaching Week (ICW) is a week-long global celebration that educates the public about the value of working with a professional coach and acknowledges the results and progress made through the coaching process. In 2021, ICW took place from May 17th to the 23rd.

The International Coaching Federation (ICF) is the world’s largest organization leading the global advancement of the coaching profession and fostering coaching’s role as an integral part of a thriving society. Founded in 1995, its 35,000-plus members located in more than 140 countries and territories work toward common goals of enhancing awareness of coaching and upholding the integrity of the profession through lifelong learning and upholding the highest ethical standards. Through the work of its six unique family organizations, ICF empowers professional coaches, coaching clients, organizations, communities and the world through coaching.

Since spring 2021, The Culture Mastery is a diamond sponsor for the Georgia Charter Chapter of the ICF.


Here are two more reference points for those of you interested in cross-cultural coaching. One article from Christian’s blog and another one from Harvard Business Review, which he co-authored with Andy Molinsky.

If your goal is to seriously work on your ability to engage and interact with business partners from different cultural backgrounds, to inspire and lead multicultural teams, and to reach your full global potential, we are here to assist you on that path with our training and coaching programs. Take a look:

To paraphrase management consultant Peter Drucker: Once we accept the reality that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast with the changes around us, the next step is to ask ourselves: “Which skills will help me to stay ahead of change or, at least, deal with change with more ease and grace?”


If you are interested in learning more about cultural competence and foreign language skills, we invite you to sign up for our newsletter, The Culture Reflections. As a token of our appreciation you will receive a series of complimentary materials on cultural competence from us!
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