Page 526 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

504 Martina Rost-Roth

8. Coaching, consulting, training on the job – recent tendencies in
intercultural competence training

The terms ‘coaching’ and ‘consulting’ are gaining increasing significance (see
particularly Bolten 2001). Bolten attributes the demand for such new forms of
training to the fact that preparation time prior to foreign assignments, and thus
the time available for preparatory ‘off-the-job’ measures and training is being
reduced.
Furthermore, findings such as those of Stahl (1998: 157 and 171) indicate
that many problems that occur during periods abroad do not decrease with longer
lengths of stay. This can also be seen as one reason why ‘on-the-job’ training – in
contrast to outsourced ‘off-the-job’ courses – is gaining in importance. Corre-
spondingly, Dowling et al. (1999: 157) and Oechsler (2002: 876–878) cite sup-
port in everyday work as an important component for supporting foreign assign-
ments and a prerequisite for success.
Bolten (2001) compares ‘on-the-job’ and ‘off-the-job’ training schemes:

Table 2. Training schemes (Bolten 2001: 3, translation by the author)

off-the-job on-the-job
Intercultural training Intercultural mediation
as conventional cognitive and Mediating activity in open and con-
awareness training; cealed conflicts in multicultural
Intercultural experimental games teams
Professionally oriented experimen-
tal games, in which intercultural
on-the-job situations are simulated
Intercultural consulting Intercultural coaching
Providing intercultural advice to Coaching and supervising multicul-
management personnel on issues of tural teams with the aim of making
staffing international teams and in them aware of their own culture-
assignment and reintegration pro- specific actions, and formulating
cesses synergy potentials as targets

One prime advantage of on-the-job programs, in comparison to traditional off-
the-job training, is that they enable more direct reactions to dysfunctional situ-
ations. Bolten (2001) sees two main roles for coaches: firstly, the coach as a
metacommunicator, supervisor and moderator who has high-level analytic skills
for understanding communication and interaction processes, and secondly, the
coach as a moderator and expert, who also helps to implement the suggestions of
consultants. The job of consultants, in turn, consists mainly of providing advice