Cross-cultural training (also known as intercultural training) is a multi-faceted approach to increasing the knowledge and skills required to facilitate adjustment in the host country. Brookfield Global Relocation Services found that 80% of companies who responded to their “2010 Global Relocation Trends Survey” provided international assignees with pre-departure cross-cultural training as a means of decreasing the severity of culture shock and improving the effectiveness of expatriate managers.
Intercultural Training Lessens the Severity of Culture Shock
Culture shock is partly a result of stress due to uncertainty and anxiety about culturally-appropriate behaviours in a new environment. Gudykunst and Hammer, writing in the book Cross-Cultural Adaptation: Current Approaches, suggest that contact with an unknown person causes individuals to try to understand past behaviours and predict future behaviours as a way of lessening this apprehension. The result is an increased sense of well-being and comfort.
Further extending this theory suggests that it’s possible to experience “anticipatory adjustment” to an unfamiliar culture before arrival. Providing realistic expectations of life in the new locale, and the skills to deal with intercultural interactions, should therefore reduce the stress and ambiguity expats experience when dealing with the unknown culture, thus improving adjustment. However, studies on the effectiveness of cross-cultural training have produced mixed results, perhaps because there is no consensus on what, exactly, it entails.
Content, duration, and delivery methods vary widely. Training can range in duration from a few hours to a week or more. The mode of delivery can be experiential and workshop-based, or lecture-style. Trainees can work alone with interactive computer software, meet one-on-one with a trainer, or sit in a lecture hall with dozens of other participants. Content varies from culture-specific (focusing on life in Germany, for example), to culture-general (giving expatriates the intercultural communication tools to navigate multiple cultures), to a combination of the two. It is this lack of consistency that tends to muddy the waters of any discussion on the value of training.
Expat Spouses Share their Views on Cross-Cultural Training
The Brookfield survey found that the assignee’s spouse is less likely to be given the option for intercultural training, even though spousal dissatisfaction with the host culture has long been the reason most often given for expatriate assignment failure. Faced with an extended period of cultural novelty, lifestyle changes and isolation, spouses are becoming more vocal in their demands for cross-cultural training – despite mixed feelings about its effectiveness.
Rachel*, a 50-year-old Canadian, has accompanied her husband to Ecuador, Malaysia, and now Scotland. She received both culture-specific and culture-general training, which included discussions of how her own cultural perspective could affect her judgments and interactions in the host country. Rachel is certain that this cross-cultural awareness made her life overseas much easier. “I was more prepared,” she says. “Without the insights of cross-cultural training, I would not have the ability to open my heart to other cultures.”
Because the content of Rachel’s training encompassed more than just area studies – delving into broader topics such as intercultural communication – it was highly relevant to her expatriate lifestyle. In their 2001 study, Caliguri et al. found that relevance in training led to accurate expectations, which positively affected the expatriate’s adjustment. This is not to suggest that Rachel escaped culture shock entirely; she acknowledges experiencing frustration and uncertainty, saying that initially, “the rules were different and I just couldn’t figure them out.” However, she believes her training provided her with the cross-cultural skills to deal with those feelings.
Charlotte, a 56-year-old American, received intercultural training before her husband’s first assignment in Indonesia. She doesn’t believe her training contributed significantly to her adjustment, calling it “a waste of time.” The only way to feel at ease in a novel culture, she insists, is to immerse oneself in it: “I think people learn best from on-the-job training. It’s when you are right there in the trenches that you can guarantee the information will always be in your memory banks.”
However, Charlotte has recently moved to Nigeria for a new posting, and is experiencing enormous difficulty adjusting to her new home. Although she’s a seasoned expat, with more than fifteen years of Asian experience under her belt, she is struggling with the shock of living in such a completely novel culture.
In “Cross-Cultural Training to Facilitate Expatriate Adjustment: It Works!” Waxin and Panaccio write that “the more different a culture is from that of the country of origin, the more important and necessary is the use of cross-cultural training programs.” This opinion is one that Charlotte is starting to share: “I’ve given a lot of thought to what cultural training would have provided for this transfer,” she says ruefully. “We would have been better prepared.”
Cross-cultural training teaches the skills and knowledge that may provide anticipatory adjustment to individuals in a novel cultural environment. Expat spouses Rachel and Charlotte hold different views as to its effectiveness, but they both agree that inevitably, expatriates need to take the plunge into the new culture. Says Rachel, “In the end, we can only prepare ourselves so much – then the actual experience needs to unfold.”
*Email interviews were conducted in January and February, 2008. Names have been changed.
Readers who are interested in expat life may also enjoy Expat Advice on How to Manage Culture Shock and Families Adjust Better to Expatriate Life with Support from HR.
Additional References:
Gudykunst, W. B. and Hammer, M. R. “Strangers and Hosts: An Uncertainty Reduction Based Theory of Intercultural Adaptation.” In Kim, Y.Y. and Gudykunst, W.B. (Eds.) Cross-Cultural Adaptation: Current Approaches (106-139). Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1987.
Waxin, J. F. and Panaccio, A. “Cross-Cultural Training to Facilitate Expatriate Adjustment: It Works!” Personnel Review 34:1 (2005): 51-67.
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