For the third time in forty minutes, Stavros says "we".
"We think the timing is wrong." "We'd want to hear from my uncle first." "We've never done it that way at the firm."
The decision on the table is his. A promotion is on offer that would make him his older cousin's manager at the engineering firm where they both work. Kalliope, his coach, has asked him what he wants, across a meeting-room table in Dubai, and each time she gets the family's view, carefully put.
So she asks once more, more simply. "And you, Stavros? What do you want?"
He sets his cup down. "You keep asking me to step out of the room," he says, without any edge. "My family is the room. I'm asking what I should do inside it."
Kalliope and Stavros are composites. They grew up a few streets apart in the same city and went to the same school, and they still learned opposite rules about who a decision belongs to. What she does with his answer will shape whose coaching the next five sessions turn out to be.
What is cross-cultural coaching?
Cross-cultural coaching is coaching between people whose backgrounds taught them different rules for a conversation: how direct to be, how to treat seniority, how much a family shares in a choice, what faith asks, and what a pause means. It isn't a separate method. It's ordinary coaching, done by a coach who knows their own rules are only theirs.
In Dubai almost every coach does this work from their first month. Clients arrive from everywhere, and so do coaches, and a session rarely brings together two people who learned to talk in the same rooms.
If clients whose backgrounds differ from yours are part of the practice you're picturing, you're welcome to a free call with an RS Method Master Practitioner, about whether RSCI is the right place to train for it. The apply page gives the call as "Approximately 20 to 40 minutes". Find a free slot. Or read on.
What arrives in the room when coach and client were raised by different rules?
In our experience, five things come up most, and each one can pull a session off course without either person noticing.
Directness. Some people say the hard thing first. Others circle it, so that nobody has to lose face. Neither is evasive or rude by its own lights. A coach who reads circling as avoidance starts to push, and a coach who reads bluntness as aggression starts to soothe.
Hierarchy. A client may treat the coach as a senior figure whose question deserves a respectful answer, or as a hired helper. Both shape what gets said. A client who wouldn't contradict an elder may not contradict a coach either, so a quiet yes can mean "I heard you" rather than "I agree".
Family. For many clients a decision about work, marriage or a move has never been theirs alone. A coach who keeps asking "But what do you want?", as though the family were an obstacle, may be asking the client to stand somewhere they don't live.
Faith. For some clients faith is the frame the whole conversation sits inside. For others it plays no part in the room at all. The coach follows the language the client chooses and never tests, tidies or debates what they believe.
Time. Punctuality, the length of a pause, how fast a goal ought to move, whether a plan is a promise or a hope. All of these differ, and all of them tend to show up by the third session.
None of this can be read off a passport. Two people from one street can hold opposite rules, and one person can hold one set at the office and another at the dinner table. What helps is curiosity about this client, not knowledge about a group. When the client is in the middle of a move as well, there's more in play, and our guide to relocation coaching looks at that side.
What changes in contracting, questions and silence?
Mostly, the coach asks earlier and assumes less.
Contracting. The first agreement covers the practical terms, and in this work it also covers the conversational ones. How would the client like to be challenged: straight out, or with room to arrive at it? How should long pauses be treated? Is anyone else part of the decision, a spouse, a parent, an employer who pays?
Questions. In our experience, a "why" question can land as an accusation in some ears, while "what" and "how" leave more room. Idioms travel badly, so plainer words help. And the big words in a goal, such as "respect", "success" or "home", are worth asking about directly. "When you say respect, what would I see?" can open a session that a coach's own definition would have closed.
Silence. A pause belongs to the person who is thinking. Some clients need a long one, and some feel a long one as pressure. Ask which, early, and keep to the answer rather than to the coach's own clock.
Agreement that never turns into action, which across a cultural gap can pass for good manners, is the subject of why clients resist coaching.
Why look at the coach's own cultural reflexes first?
Because the coach's rules are already in the room before the client says a word, and they're the ones the coach is least likely to hear.
Cultural reflexes aren't only national. Kalliope and Stavros share a city, a school and a language, and their rules about family still point in opposite directions. They're learned in kitchens, classrooms and offices, one household at a time. "What do you want?" is a good coaching question, and often it's exactly the right one. What made Kalliope ask it three times came from somewhere else.
She knows roughly where. Once, against her family's wishes, she made a large choice on her own, and it turned out to be the best thing she ever did. Without ever saying so, she has organised herself around it: real decisions are made alone, and a family's view is something a grown person gets free of.
So she carries a pair of scissors into sessions that she never knew she'd packed. Whenever a client's sentence starts with "we", her hand goes to them, and the next question snips the client out of the family and holds him up on his own. It looks like empowerment. It's her own old decision, still cutting.
When Stavros says "we", the person who can't sit with it is Kalliope, not Stavros.
Put the scissors down for good, and "we" becomes simply how this client thinks. She can ask what he wants inside the room he lives in, and the promotion can be weighed with the cousin, the uncle and the firm all in view, which is how he'll weigh it anyway. Where the work would go is clear enough. What Stavros decides is his.
That's the reason RSCI begins with the trainee's own rules, whichever room taught them: the practitioner is transformed before the practitioner is trained. So the first house rules a trainee learns to question are their own.
Most coaches have packed a pair of scissors like Kalliope's without knowing it. A free call with an RS Method Master Practitioner is a good place to ask whether our training would help you find yours. Book a time to talk.
How can a coach check their own rules before a session?
Try a respect list. It takes about half an hour before a first session, and a little time after it.
- Write down three things a client could do that you'd read as respect. Plain behaviours only: arriving early, looking at you, answering promptly, disagreeing openly.
- Beside each one, note where you learned it. A person, a room, a year if you can.
- Write the opposite of each, and what you'd be tempted to make it mean. "Arrives late: doesn't take this seriously." Get the judgement onto paper.
- Strike through every meaning. Under each one write: "I don't yet know what this means for this client."
- Turn each item into a contracting question. "How would you like me to treat a long pause?" "Shall I say things directly, or leave you room to get there?" "Who else has a stake in what you decide?"
- Ask them in the first session, and write the answers down exactly as the client puts them.
- Afterwards, mark one moment where you read the client by your list rather than theirs. Take that moment to supervision, or to your own reflective notes.
The list is a tool for coaches. Coaching isn't therapy or medical care, so whatever help a client already gets from a doctor or therapist stays where it is. Someone in recovery keeps going with their programme and their people, whatever sessions bring up. If a client's distress about belonging, home or family runs on for weeks, or is reaching into sleep, work or their closest relationships, suggest they also speak to a doctor or a qualified mental health professional.
Which training prepares a coach for clients raised by different rules?
Three things matter most here, and RSCI's programmes are built with each one.
- Your own rules, examined first. Among the people RSCI is for, the training page lists those who "are prepared to experience the work personally". The tempo, the manners and the reflexes a trainee brings are worked on as their own material, so a client doesn't have to adjust to them later.
- Correction while you practise. Supervised practice is part of both programmes, and "Advanced supervised practice" is listed for RS Method Complete. A supervisor catches the question you asked three times when once was enough.
- An ICF route, worded exactly. ICF Level 1 education is part of RS Method Coach, pointing toward the ACC. ICF Level 2 is part of RS Method Complete, pointing toward the PCC, and the training page notes that "A graduate whose experience currently meets ACC requirements may pursue ACC first." The ICF-accredited education inside our programmes is designed, delivered and certified by the Institute of Coaching and Mentoring (IICM), an ICF-accredited organisation. The ACC and PCC credentials are awarded only by the ICF.
On fees: AED 18,000 for RS Method Coach, ICF education included, and AED 35,000 for RS Method Complete, also with ICF education included.
Across any table, whoever sits at it, the work asks the same of a coach. To witness. To hold. To walk them home.
Marko Mladenovic, speaking of his own life: "I am still in such a peaceful, blissful, joyful state. I feel like I have finally found the answers on my question, Who am I?"
Our life coach training page lists what RS Method Coach and RS Method Complete each contain, module by module.
Robert Simic, training the next generation.
P.S. Stavros's question deserves the inside cover of a coach's notebook: what should I do inside the room I live in? Our life coach training page shows how RSCI prepares coaches to hear a question like that.