Our business model is quite unique in the industry. It is designed to deliver measurable value to your employees and your organization by providing targeted information, specifically designed to help increase employees’ on-the-job effectiveness.

Today, most cross-cultural training programs consist of general information, without concrete, specific skills that can be applied to day-to-day business needs. Our method delivers targeted knowledge that is immediately relevant and directly tied to better on-the-job-performance. Our approach will increase your employees' productivity and give your company a competitive edge.

Learning Solutions

Many years of experience in coaching, training, and organizing thousands of training programs, has proved that learning must:

• Be relevant Learning programs must be designed to meet the specific performance needs of your employees ? “just in time and just for you.”
• Relate to real-world experiences Learning programs must be delivered by coaches and trainers who have business experience and understand differences in business practices across cultures.
• Be collaborative Learning programs must provide access to subject-matter experts around the world. We work with top-level cross-cultural consultants worldwide.
• Be continuous The first learning session is just the starting point. When the topic and the content of training relate to the work at hand and specific performance goals, then the new knowledge is embedded in the daily work of employees and learning becomes continuous.

Our Model and Overall Philosophy

To be effective, cross-cultural, coaching, training, and consulting must delve into three dimensions of intercultural management:

a. Differences in national cultural values
b. Differences in corporate culture
c. Differences in individual behavioral styles and the way people work and interact with others

Geert Hofstede and other cross-cultural pioneers have demonstrated that national cultural values affect how people work and relate with each other within the organization. Work-related values are not universal. Each culture has its own patterns of thinking and acting, and these patterns persist even when a multinational company tries to create a unified organizational culture in all its offices around the world. What Hofstede found was that these deep-seated local values determine how policies from headquarters are interpreted.

Although cultural differences affect working relationships to a great extent, even more important is the individual behavioral styles that we bring to the workplace, regardless of culture. Differences in how each of us work and interact with others affects teamwork as well as other business interactions.

Hodge International Advisors uses a validated Assessments (DISC) to identify employees’ personal work styles. During training and coaching, participants gain an understanding of how their approach to work translates into a new cultural environment and what kinds of adjustments will bridge the cultural gaps to ensure successful working relationships.

Another factor with huge impact on the success of working relationships across cultures is corporate culture itself. Companies nurture different values within their organizations. When people from different companies (even from the same national culture) merge together, differences in corporate culture can cloud communications. When companies merge across borders, differences in corporate culture often compound differences in national culture and individual working styles, leading to miscommunication. Even within a single company, corporate culture at headquarters can be very different from practices at various subsidiaries.

Understanding all these issues leads to consulting and training solutions that will give participants specific tools that can be applied to their work environment. Knowledge and skills can clarify and simplify the hidden complexities of work in a modern global enterprise.

Is it really possible for people to change themselves to accommodate people from other cultures?
The aim of understanding other cultures is not to change ourselves in order to accommodate them or change them to become more like us, but to learn to make the necessary adaptations that will allow us to work smoothly with people from other cultures.

Charles Darwin said that it’s not the intellectual who survives but the one who is able to adapt best to the changing environment. We’ve all been able to survive because we’ve learned to adapt. Otherwise, we’d be extinct, like the dinosaurs.

We invite you to try our services and experience the HIA difference.