However coaching can be used as a stand-alone tool to develop individuals per se. It allows client to explore their goals and values, how they are aligned to the business they work for, and what their goals and aims are for their life and work. It also encourages client to confront self-limiting beliefs and step out of their comfort zone, knowing they have the, non-judgmental and confidential, support of their coach. The coach will challenge them and encourage them to develop their own innate abilities and focus on their positive achievements.
Although intercultural training and coaching are two distinct activities, these two approaches can work very well when used together. One classic obstacle encountered in business education is the difficulty of transferring skills and enthusiasm from the seminar room to the workplace. Coaching is an excellent way of helping client applies what they learn from a course to their day-to- day work.
Intercultural training provides general or country specific knowledge or target to an increase of intercultural sensibility for a group of participants. In contrast intercultural Coaching focuses on accompanying the individuals specific process and to provide the international working individual with support. According to this intercultural Coaching emphasizes the focus strongly to the requirements of the targeted group and cannot be standardized. Each single situation and interaction has its own individual context and history. It is a part of the target agreement as a basis of the relationship between coach and client that it is the coach’s task to analyze the spontaneous dynamics, the meanings and consequences of those situations.
Step 1: Pre-training Needs Assessment
The purpose of a business needs assessment is to identify performance requirements and the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed
by company’s workforce to achieve the requirements. An effective training needs assessment will help direct resources to areas of greatest demand. The assessment should address resources needed to fulfill organizational mission, improve productivity, and provide quality products and services.
Coaching can be applied in all 3 levels of assessment. A coach is responsible to guide the team through the Training Needs Assessment session. Coach spends time with HR personnel or Training Manager, team leader and each participant (if the team is not too big) separately to understand more on their expectation and goal/goals for the training. Equally important, it enables the coach to identify the team challenges and customize the training in order to address the current and real issues.
Step 2: Experiential Training
Experiential learning has come to mean two different types of learning: 1. Learning by yourself and 2. Experiential education – experiential learning through programs structured by others (Smith, 2003).
Learning from experience by yourself might be called “nature’s way of learning”. It is
education that occurs as a direct participation in the events of life (Houle, 1980, p. 221, quoted in Smith, 2003).
It includes learning that comes about through reflection on everyday experiences. Experiential learning by yourself is also known as “informal education” and includes learning that is organised by learners themselves. Principles of experiential learning are used to design of experiential education programs. Emphasis is placed on the nature of participants’ subjective experiences.
In Kolb’s model of experiential learning, learners choose how to acquire information (either concretely through the senses or abstractly by analyzing) and process it (reflectively by watching or actively by doing) as showed below.