The document describes the Intercultural Competence Assessment and Development Process (ICAD) which is a service that assesses and enhances the intercultural skills of leaders. It includes online assessments, workshops, follow up development, and coaching. The process uses the Intercultural Competence Profiler (ICP) which is an online assessment tool that measures four aspects of intercultural competence: recognition of differences, respect, reconciliation, and realization. The ICP provides personalized profiles and feedback to help individuals improve their intercultural skills.

1. Intercultural Competence Assessment and
Development Process (ICAD)

2. What is ICAD?
Intercultural Competence Assessment and Development Process
• ICAD is a service provided by Trompenaars Hampden-Turner Consulting
that seeks to enhance the skills and knowledge of leaders and senior
managers for our increasingly multi-cultural and diverse world
• ICAD includes an appropriate combination of:
 online Web Based competence assessments,
 trainer led participative workshop or workshops,
 follow-up competence development and progress monitoring,
 options for personal executive coaching support
 access to the THT multi-media Culture Compass and Cross-cultural
database
 further support for expatriate working or diversity/inclusion
 Linkage to key business issues including globalization, mergers and
acquisitions, and corporate social responsibility
• It has been assembled by combining earlier frameworks based on our
extensive intellectual property that originally addressed each area
separately.

3. ICP: Intercultural Competence Profiler
A tool for assessing inter-cultural competence
• The ICP is multi-functional instrument that enables a participant to assess
their current Inter-Cultural Competence or that of their organization or
business unit as part of their learning.
• Unlike other competence tools, the ICP does not focus on a single basic
area of cultural knowledge or behaviour, but addresses the complete
spectrum from cross-cultural awareness through to the business benefits
deriving from effective action in multi-cultural situations.
• It is normally completed online and produces personalized profiles reports
(as pdf files).
• After any workshop, participants can rejoin the ICP online to explore their
own personal profile in depth to make comparisons with other country and
reference profiles

4. ICP - overview
The ICP is based on four components:
1. Learning to recognize cultural differences
2. Learning to respect differences
3. Learning to understand the tensions that differences can
produce and how they can be overcome
4. Use the differences for competitive advantage by combining
and leveraging different points of view
RECOGNIZING RESPECTING RECONCILING REALIZING
& INTERNALIZING & ROOTING
the benefits of
Cultural Differences Cultural Difference Cultural Difference Cultural Difference

5. The ICP is normally completed online
Profile can be available online or
distributed at workshop

6. Unlike many other instruments that are
only valid for US/Anglo-Saxon
respondents, the ICP seeks to be free
from culture bias.

7. What does the ICP measure?
We distinguish four aspects of Intercultural Competence:
1. Recognition: How competent is a person to recognize cultural
differences around him or her?
2. Respect: How respectful is a person about those differences?
3. Reconciliation: How competent is a person to reconcile cultural
differences?
4. Realization: How competent is a person to realize the necessary actions
to implement the reconciliation of cultural differences?
Strengths and weakness in the different components provide insights to
the individual participant and serve as a basis for assessing performance
potential.
For personnel already in place, it serves as a basis for needs analysis to
prioritise personal development initiatives

8. The profile can be available
immediately on-screen for the
participant to give immediate feedback

9. The personalised profile is fully
interactive – with ‘hotspot links’
providing interpretations and feedback

11. Interactive feedback is personalised

16. All personal profiles can be
downloaded as pdf reports

17. More online guidance and learning –
how to apply and learn from your
profile

18. Reviewing your IC profile
It is important that you now consider your profile carefully and try to identify what
it tells you about your behaviours and how you might be perceived by different
groups of people.
You might find it useful to consider:
• In which quadrant do you demonstrate a relative strength?
• In which quadrant is an area for development?
• In which quadrant are you receiving mixed messages, with a variation in the way your
behaviours are evaluated by the ICP and your own personal reflection of yourself?
In making this analysis it is probably necessary to consider the relative ratings you have
received as well as the absolute ratings.
This is because different people might use different standards for assessment - some
might mark more harshly than others - but they will still provide a view on relative
strengths.

19. Your profile and your current job
Most respondents will score average on a some of the competencies, good on particular
issues related to their specialist field and possibility poor on some other competencies.
This is because there is an element of self-selection in what work you do. That is, you
tend to seek out a job where you can use and exploit the competencies you have.
However, in today's fast changing world, we all need continually need to develop our
InterCultural Competence to maintain the competitive edge in order to achieve superior
performance.
Even if you job role and title stays the same. it is likely you will meet and interact with
people from different cultures as diversity in the workplace increases. This may result
from age ranges, gender balance and staff turnover in addition to ethnicity.
But overall, our research reveals that increasing your competence to reconcile dilemmas
is what will really make a difference.

20. Improving your Competences
Let us first remind you what Competencies are. Competencies are a way of focusing on
whether an individual has the capacity to achieve certain outputs given the appropriate
support and resources. There is less emphasis on general basic skills and knowledge
which avoids being prescriptive about methods.
Thus, in order to develop any particular competence, you need to think in two distinct
areas:
 do you have the skills and knowledge necessary to be competent
 what do you do ? how do you behave ?
So first you must reflect on the skills and knowledge you have. If they are insufficient in
the two quadrants of Recognition or Respect at the moment, then the first priority for
your development should be about acquiring the appropriate basic knowledge of cross
culture.
In practice this means gaining an appreciation of the seven dimensions of culture model
because otherwise it is this lack of knowledge about HOW TO that is limiting what
progress you can make.
For the third and fourth quadrants ~ Reconciliation and Realisation, you need to learn
the fundamentals of Dilemma Theory and how to reconcile dilemmas.

21. Improving your Competences (continued)
However, research shows that the more usual problem derives from the second area.
Competencies are really about behaviour - about what you do, rather than what you
know.
You probably know that planning is important to realise the benefits of decisions by
taking action to implement. But although you probably know how to plan, the question is
do you plan?
To make progress in your behaviour is easy once you accept this mindset - and agree
with yourself that you are going to do something about it - that you are going to behave
differently from now on.
So, try to compare your behaviour with another leader or senior manager who you
observe is effective in dealing with tensions and dilemmas that derive from cultural
differences. Remember, you are not thinking about their skill or knowledge for the
competence. When trying to consider what behaviour change you need, try to observe
how this manager behaves as your role model for the component of competence you
are considering.
Use the gap between how you behave and the ideal to determine what you need to do.

22. Benefits to the client organization
The ICP intervention workshops are therefore based on:
1. Assessed rather than assumed needs
2. Identification of ‘maturity’ in life-cycle phases: where is the primary
development need ~ ‘cross-cultural awareness’ or ‘leadership development’
or ‘realising business benefits’ for example
3. ‘Before’ and ‘After’ measurements: can be used to monitor the progress
in competence development
4. 360 degree extensions: ICP profiles can be extended to include peer/360
input