Country Briefing to prepare an American Expatriate for a Leadership Role in Australia
(2023) Technology Industry

Challenge
Management of an Australian subsidairy with a Global Organisation and Head Office in the USA, requested a replacement American manager. The new appointed American manager is apprehensive: she does not know why the manager she replaces needed to be replaced. She wants to be prepared and has been offered to go through intercultural coaching for American expatriats working in Australia.

Interventions during intercultural coaching:

1. Virtual meeting:
   – Introduction and getting indepth knowledge about the request
   – Cultural awareness frameworks, multiple perspective taking and preparing for culture shock
   – Similarities in social relationships between the USA and Australia
   – Differences in social relationships between USA and Australia
   – Living in Australia (Country specific knowledge).
2. Virtual meeting:
   – Prework self-assessment in to prefered work behaviour: leadership, decison-making, task completion and communication
   – Discussing behavioural work differences between USA and Australia
   – Defining possible dilemmas and integrating cultural gaps to manage the complexity
3. Email contact to follow-up after two months in the country and decide what continuing support was required.

Results:
The American manager recognised a wide range of cultural differences at work between the Australian and American culture – we discussed possible scenarios’s where that could present challenges in the way Americans are perceived, and more specifically how she would be able to deal with the differences.
She also recognised some of the behaviour of the previous manager that had caused friction with the Australian team.

Contact us for:
Country briefings and continuing support to the professionals when they are in Australia or overseas and in need for additional coaching and ongoing mentoring. We prepare professionals for a range of countries in Ocenania, Asia, Europe, South America and the USA.

We work with Government and Business to prepare expats for:
– secondments / expatriate positions overseas
– professionals who are coming to Australia for the assignments.