Intercultural Coaching Webinar
On 2 February, Sonja Wekema, shared about the importance of intercultural coaching in a webinar hosted by NOBCO, the Dutch 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.
Initiator Rixt Kuiper organised the webinar, which was opened by Dr. Riza Kadilar and Marieke Jellema, the chairs of resp. NOBCO and EMCC), Rixt brought two excellent panelists on board alongside Sonja. 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, Marco Blankenburgh is International Director of KnowledgeWorkx.
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, feel free to reach out.
