Softening the culture

Edith Coron believes there is a promising future for the global leadership coaching industry in China. Meng Jing / China Daily

Former foreign correspondent Edith Coron has put her international experience to use advising executives on how to understand and manage relations between people from different countries

It may be surprising to know that even some of the world's most powerful businesspeople can experience difficulties "thinking things through". Senior executives from large multinational companies, such as the oil giant ExxonMobil and tire producer Michelin, come to Edith Coron for that very reason. However, what they need is not answers but questions.

As a global leadership coach, Coron, founder and executive director of EOC-Intercultural, helps her executive clients identify their strengths and weaknesses by asking challenging questions.

"Through asking questions, I help them shape their thinking process. You may be surprised to know how much we need an external eye or an external ear to help us gain a better understanding of complexity.

"Often we are so involved in small things that we don't even see the big picture," says Coron, whose company is based in Beijing, where the increasing prevalence of international business and interactions among people from different cultural backgrounds that goes with it has created a growing pool of potential clients.

Most of Coron's clients are international executives in China or Chinese executives whose companies are expanding into overseas markets, and a big component of the challenges they meet is dealing with complex international teams.

"They do not need hard skills. But it is the soft skills, such as people skills, the capacity to communicate effectively with people from different cultural backgrounds, that prove difficult to get," says the 56-year-old French woman, who provides a tailor-made service in one-on-one sessions.

The monthly one-hour session can last from 3 months to a year depending on individual goals.

For Coron, communicating effectively in an international team is not about speaking the same language but about dealing with people from different cultural backgrounds, which leads to varying understandings of hierarchy and rules of behavior.

This is the exact area Coron understands best. As a former foreign correspondent for about 20 years, Coron moved from one country to another, covering everything from general news to politics, business and war.

"I called myself a global nomad because I moved a lot," she says.

In fact, she changed location so often that she can not recall how many countries she has been to.

When she finally moved back to her hometown in France in the late 1990s, she worked as a foreign correspondent for a London-based newspaper called The European.

"The job created a distance; I was kind of acting between an insider and an outsider. By that time I had spent more time outside my own country than actually in it," she says, adding that her international experience helped her adapt to dealing with people from different cultural backgrounds.

"The secret is to clear your mind about the stereotypes we all have about other people and try to relate to people at an individual level."

The experience of being a foreign correspondent in her own country made her think about the difference between cultures. "Then I came across a field called intercultural. I looked into it and I met a group of specialists who deal with the encounters of people from various cultures, helping them to do better. This is a field that I feel very much at home with."

She then decided to retrain for a new career. She is now among 22,000 coaches certified globally by the US-based International Coach Federation.

It was difficult for Coron to give up a career that she had spent half of her life in, but it was a transition she was willing to make.

"Basically when you are a journalist, you are a grain of sand in a machine. It feels like you have to stop the machine to look at the situation, the country, the politics, the economy or whatever."

"You observe things instead of acting. But this job helps me to transform myself from a little grain of sand to a little drop of oil. I can try to make things work better now."

She first set up her company EOC-Intercultural in Hong Kong in 2006, mainly covering business outside the Chinese mainland, because the culture of coaching, a Western model of individual development, had not arrived there yet.

However, with more investment pouring into China and an increasing level of outbound investment too, Coron later decided to move her practice to Beijing.

She says her profession reflects economic trends. "At the beginning, the majority of my business was from countries outside China.

Now there is more and more demand from companies inside China," she says, adding that demand has risen specifically as a result of Chinese being promoted to senior positions in multinational companies.

"I was in Shanghai a few days ago. A Chinese gentleman, who is the head of regional HR for a very European luxury brand wants to be coached because he feels the need to be competent at a global level. He wants to go to a meeting with people from all over the world and feel comfortable," Coron says.

She believes there is a promising future for the coaching industry in China, as many Chinese executives are significantly younger than their Western counterparts.

According to the second Comprehensive Coaching Study in China conducted by the European Union Chamber of Commerce and the Asia Pacific Alliance of Coaches last September, demand for coaching is likely to rise due to a large leadership and management skills gap.

The study says that the managing director of a business unit in China is on average 10 years younger than his or her Western counterpart.

Despite the growing demand, Coron travels frequently to countries outside China, such as Singapore and South Korea, to coach clients, partly because the coaching culture in China is still weak compared with other Asian countries and partly because people there want to be coached in their native language. Coron speaks little Chinese compared with her use of French, English, Spanish and Russian.

She says many Chinese still do not understand the difference between coaching and training. "People usually come to me expecting that I have the answers to solve their problems. That doesn't work for a coach.

"Coaching is a journey to help people achieve their goals and enhance their performance. Through asking questions, I push them to think. They will be the one to tell me what are their strengths and weaknesses."

With almost 10 years in China, immersing herself in Asian culture, Coron's company has not expanded at all - it is still just herself and an assistant - but the global nomad is in no hurry to leave.

"China is still one of the best places to be because of the interaction of cultures," she says.

"I can be useful here and I still have lots to learn. And I truly believe that understanding things from an Asian perspective in the 21st century is essential."

mengjing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 05/03/2013 page29)