This month we interviewed Adian Pilbeam who has been involved with SIETAR Europa and SIETAR UK since their early days. He was on the board of SIETAR Europa for 5 years (2019-2024) and Treasurer for three. He was also President of SIETAR UK for 6 years and has worked in the intercultural arena since the nineties.
We asked Adrian where his interest in the intercultural field all began and what advice he would give to interculturalists starting out in this field:
- How long have you been working in the field of Intercultural Communication? What attracted you to this field?
I started my career as a teacher of English and spent five years living and working in Portugal, Belgium, Spain and France. I worked in a language school, then as an in-company language trainer and for three years at a French Engineering Institute in Paris.
When I returned to the UK, I decided to specialise in teaching English to professionals, and after three years I set up my own company – LTS Training and Consulting – and I have since worked with people from international organisations all over Europe for more than 35 years.
In the late 1980s, one of our German clients asked if we could develop a course to help their engineers who were working with a US client and having communication issues that went beyond language. This led us to research the intercultural field, particularly the key ideas and concepts, what a training course should cover and what training materials and methods could be used.
We discovered SIETAR, at that time called SIETAR International, based in the US, and several of us attended some workshops and congresses in the US and slowly built up our knowledge and skills for intercultural course design and delivery. It soon became a second strand in our business portfolio, and I shifted much of my attention to the intercultural field.
In 1991, SIETAR Europa was formed and in 1998, we organised the annual SIETAR Europa congress at the University of Bath, the only time it has been held in the UK.
Since about 1990, I have continued to build up my experience and involvement in the field, as a trainer, consultant and writer. I edited and published a journal called Language and Intercultural Training for 20 years and have written various books aimed at non-native English speakers working internationally, of which International Management (Pearson 2000) and Working across cultures (Pearson 2010) are the most relevant.
Then in 2005 we were asked by one of our clients, Air France, to design and run a one-week course about intercultural training for their language training team. A year later, in 2005, we launched one of the first trainer training courses in Europe for intercultural trainers, called Developing intercultural training skills. Between 2005 and 2020 we ran over 60 sessions. After Covid, we converted the course to an online format, and since 2021 we have run it online, usually twice a year over 8 weeks. Whenever I attend SIETAR events now, I find several ‘alumni’ from our courses who have gone on to develop a successful career in the intercultural field.
- What advice would you give new interculturalists starting out their careers in this field?
It depends what you mean by interculturalist, as you don’t become one overnight. First of all, it is necessary to have had international experience living, studying and working in different countries. This in itself does not make you an interculturalist, but it is an essential foundation on which to build. There are various routes into the field, but I would advise most people to either take a Masters in Intercultural Communication, especially if they want to work in education, and/or take training courses to develop their intercultural training and coaching skills or become certified in specific methodologies or tools.
I would also recommend that people join their national SIETAR, or SIETAR Europa, so they can attend workshops, webinars and also network with other professionals. For example, SIETAR UK has just launched a monthly co-working meet-up, where members working independently can meet fellow professionals face-to-face to network and to exchange experiences.
Mentoring is also a very useful support in the early stages of career development. Several national SIETARs including the UK offer a mentoring programme.
Most SIETARS also hold one- or two-day conferences, usually once or twice a year, as well as shorter sessions online and face-to-face. Every two years, SIETAR Europa holds a 3–4-day congress, which brings 250-400 people together from all over Europe and further afield to participate in workshops and attend presentations by some of the leading practitioners and researchers in the field. These are great opportunities for getting the latest ideas about the field in terms of research and practice, and even to give a presentation yourself. Recent SIETAR Europa congresses have been held in Lille, Malta, Leuven and Dublin.
- Do you think everybody can become an effective intercultural communicator? Do you think it requires a certain level of English (think of CEFR)?
If you have good communication skills in your own language and culture, and you are open-minded and ready to learn about different communication styles, there is no reason why you should not become an effective intercultural communicator, provided you acquire international experience through living, studying or working with people from other cultures. Attending some training sessions about effective intercultural communication and some reading in the field will also help.
Regarding a certain level of English, it is certainly important for being able to communicate with a wider range of people. In fact, it is rare that effective intercultural communicators do not speak at least one other foreign language well, including those with English as a first language. And it is almost standard now that graduates from most European universities should be tri-lingual. I have given most of my intercultural training sessions in English, usually to people for whom English is a foreign language, and it always impresses me how high the standard of English is in the European countries I have worked in.
- How necessary do you think it is to have international business experience when working as a trainer or coach in the field?
It is certainly essential to have a good amount of international experience if you want to work as a trainer or coach in the intercultural field. However, for some areas where trainers and coaches can work – in higher education or social services – it is not necessary to have specific business experience. But if you want to work in a corporate environment, then some international business experience is important. It will give you more credibility and confidence if you have been involved in international teams or taken part in international negotiations before you offer such services to clients.
- Are you working on any particular project at the moment? Where do you see the field going in the next 10 years?
My main interest and activity now is the area of trainer training. It gives me great satisfaction to train people who are relatively new to the field, even if they already have extensive international experience and other professional skills such as language training.
In terms of how the field is likely to develop, there is a movement away from focusing on cultural differences, using known models by Hofstede, Trompenaars and others, and replacing that by a focus on how best to leverage the diversity that naturally exists when people with different cultures and experience come together to work or study.
Bio
Adrian Pilbeam has worked for over 30 years in the intercultural field as a trainer, writer and trainer-trainer. He is the founder and director of LTS Training and Consulting, which works with professional clients throughout Europe and beyond. His main interest now is in trainer-training, and he runs a regular course online called Developing intercultural training skills. Adrian has also been involved with SIETAR Europa and SIETAR UK since their early days. He was on the board of SIETAR Europa for 5 years (2019-2024) and Treasurer for three years. He has also been President of SIETAR UK (2018-2024).