Build Your Cultural Agility: The Nine Competencies of Successful Global Professionals

The investment in global collaboration technology now exceeds US$45 billion and global business travel spending is expected to reach US $1.7 trillion by 2022. Professionals who work in and across different cultures face some of the most cognitively, psychologically and emotionally difficult challenges existing in business today, often without the guide of a corporate compass.

Build Your Cultural Agility is that compass. This book offers strategies to help you develop into a successful global professional, one who can comfortably and effectively work in different countries and with people from different cultures. This book helps you leverage your natural strengths while providing suggestions for developing cultural agility competencies.

Build Your Cultural Agility focuses on nine specific competencies that comprise cultural agility: three self-management competencies (tolerance of ambiguity, curiosity and resilience), three relationship-management competencies (humility, relationship-building and perspective-taking) and three task-management competencies (cultural minimization, cultural adaptation and cultural integration). Within each chapter, the author provides a case example of that competency in action, explains why the competency is critical for success, offers a self-awareness exercise to help you determine your level of proficiency and concludes with suggestions for self-development.