Beyond Borders: Building Your Employees' Cultural Competency Skills for Global Growth
- Harmony Ryan
- Oct 1
- 5 min read
Updated: Oct 6
Expanding into new international markets represents one of the most significant opportunities and challenges a company can pursue. Yet many organizations approach global expansion with an invisible handicap: the assumption that business practices that worked at home or in other global markets will translate abroad. They don't.
The difference between companies that thrive internationally and those that stumble often comes down to honing your employees' cultural competency skills. This isn't about memorizing customs or learning a few phrases in the local language, though those gestures matter. It's recognizing that your baseline assumptions about how business works are just that, assumptions shaped by your own cultural context.
Cultural Competency vs. The Myth of Universal Business Practices
Consider something as straightforward as a business meeting. In your home market, you might pride yourself on getting straight to the point, viewing efficiency as a sign of respect for everyone's time. But in many cultures, opening a meeting with immediate business discussions signals disrespect and damages trust. The relationship must come first, sometimes through conversations that seem tangential to the agenda at hand.
Neither approach is right or wrong. They're simply different systems that have evolved within distinct cultural frameworks. The company that recognizes this, and adapts accordingly, creates opportunities. The company that pushes forward with "this is how we do things" creates friction. Cultural competency is being astute enough to ask the question: How do I adapt in this situation so that a positive outcome is the result of this interaction?
Building Your Cultural Intelligence
Cultural competency begins with intellectual humility. Before entering a new market, acknowledge what you don't know. Your success in previous markets doesn't automatically transfer. Your management style, communication patterns, decision-making processes, and even your definition of success may need recalibration. And, you will need to boost your cultural intelligence so that you are agile in different situations.
Start by researching the business culture of your target market, but don't stop there. Read beyond the business publications. Understand the historical context, the social values, the communication norms. Talk to people who have done business there, not just other executives from your country, but locals who can offer genuine insight into what works and what doesn't. Finding in-country guides can be a huge help, particularly for specialized services such as recruiting, negotiating contracts or providing complex services.
Then comes the harder part: experience. You cannot fully understand a business culture from a distance. Spend time on the ground. Observe how meetings unfold, how decisions are really made, how hierarchy manifests in daily interactions. Notice when your instincts tell you something feels inefficient or indirect, that discomfort often signals a cultural difference worth understanding rather than a problem worth fixing.
Practical Strategies for Cultural Adaptation
Hire local leadership early and genuinely listen to them. One of the most common mistakes in international expansion is bringing in a leadership team from headquarters to "establish the culture" before bringing locals into decision-making roles. This approach almost guarantees you'll miss crucial market insights and make avoidable mistakes.
Local leaders understand nuances that no amount of research can teach you. They know which communication channels people actually use, how to structure compensation packages that motivate employees, who are reliable people to work with and which business practices will alienate potential partners. Give them real authority, not just advisory roles.
Customize your approach to each market rather than deploying a one-size-fits-all strategy. Your marketing messages, sales processes, customer service protocols, and even your product features and colors may need adjustment. What resonates in one market can fall flat, or worse, offend, in another.
Pay attention to communication styles. Some cultures value direct feedback and explicit communication, while others rely heavily on context, ambiguous deference, and what's left unsaid. Misreading these differences leads to misunderstandings on both sides. Your team might think they're being clear while local partners find them abrasive. Or you might interpret indirect communication as evasiveness when it's standard professional courtesy.
Cultural Intelligence Uses Respect as a Business Strategy
Cultural intelligence allows you to develop cultural competency which ultimately rests on respect, not the performative kind expressed in mission statements, but the genuine variety that changes how you operate. Respect means recognizing that different approaches to business reflect different values, not different levels of sophistication.
It means being willing to adapt your timeline when relationship-building takes longer than expected. It means reconsidering your organizational structure when it conflicts with local norms around hierarchy and decision-making. It means sometimes feeling uncomfortable as you stretch beyond your default ways of working.
This kind of respect isn't just ethical; it's strategically sound. Markets respond to companies that demonstrate genuine cultural understanding. Customers, partners, and employees in your new market will notice whether you've made the effort to understand them or whether you're simply exporting your existing playbook.
Your Cultural Competency Checklist
As you prepare for global expansion, keep these actionable principles in mind:
Challenge your assumptions early. Before entering a market, identify which of your business practices you've assumed are universal. Question everything from meeting structures to decision-making timelines.
Invest in deep research. Go beyond business articles. Study the historical, social, and cultural context that shapes how business operates in your target market.
Spend time on the ground. Virtual research has limits. Observe how business happens in the market through extended visits and firsthand experience.
Hire local leadership with real authority. Bring local experts into decision-making roles from the start, not after you've already made strategic choices.
Customize relentlessly. Adapt your marketing, sales processes, product features, and operational practices for each market rather than deploying a uniform approach.
Study communication patterns. Learn whether the culture values directness or context, explicit feedback or indirect signals, and adjust your style accordingly.
Build relationships before transactions. In many markets, trust and relationship-building must precede business discussions, even if this feels inefficient.
Embrace discomfort as growth. When something feels awkward or slow, treat it as a signal to learn rather than a problem to fix.
Accept that mistakes will happen. Cultural competence comes through effort and iteration, not perfection. Show genuine willingness to learn from missteps.
Getting the Support You Need to Develop Cultural Competency and Cultural Intelligence
If you're preparing for global expansion and want to develop this cultural agility systematically, Culture Coach can help. We work with companies entering new international markets for the first time or expanding into additional regions, providing the cultural intelligence and practical strategies you need to succeed. From developing 3 to 5-minute topical micro learning videos based on the cultural and business practices of your target markets to training your teams in culturally adaptive communication and leadership, we help you avoid costly missteps and build genuine connections from day one. Our approach combines research-backed frameworks with real-world experience across diverse markets, giving you both the knowledge and the confidence to navigate unfamiliar business environments. Learn more about how we can support your global growth on our microlearning webpage https://www.culturecoach.biz/microlearning and training page https://www.culturecoach.biz/training.
The Long Game for Developing Cultural Competency
Companies that approach international expansion with curiosity rather than certainty, with adaptability rather than rigid adherence to home-market practices, position themselves for sustainable growth. They build stronger relationships, make better decisions, and ultimately create more value in each market they enter.
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