This Tuesday, February 2, 2021, Marco Blankenburgh, KnowledgeWorkx’s International Director, shared about the importance of interculturally intelligent coaching in a webinar hosted by the Dutch Organization for Professional Coaches and endorsed by the EMCC (European Mentoring & Coaching Council). The turnout of coaches at the webinar was astounding with 155 coaches expressing interest and almost 120 in attendance at the webinar. This represents a growing trend among coaches recognizing their need for specifically intercultural tools and training beyond their regular coaching tools.
Rixt Kuiper, a senior practitioner Coach of NOBCO/EMCC with 17 years of international experience co-creating large scale transformation in global organizations, organized the webinar, and Dr. Riza Kadilar and Marieke Jellema, the chairs of NOBCO and EMCC, opened the webinar which was an exciting endorsement. Rixt brought two excellent panelists on board alongside Marco. One panelist, Christian van Nieuwerburgh, PhD, is a professor of coaching and positive psychology at the University of East London and published author on interculturally-sensitive coaching, and the other, Sonja Wekema, is managing partner of The Other Perspective and co-founder of The Board Whispers.
Together the panelists answered challenging questions like, “Aren’t the tools we have as coaches, like empathy and humility enough to coach in an intercultural context?” They introduced the coaches to the intercultural spotlight showing them how essential it is to be both emotionally and interculturally intelligent. Then they discussed how to co-create shared culture (the third cultural space) with clients in order to enhance the coaching engagement.
The webinar was an excellent introduction to intercultural coaching with an overwhelming majority of the participants indicating they wanted to continue the conversation to learn more about intercultural coaching. If you want to learn more about why intercultural coaching is so important check out this article: “The business case for intercultural coaching”
If you want to invest in taking your coaching to the next level register to become a certified intercultural coach here.
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