ABSTRACT
Mentoring is used in the workplace to help people develop both personally and professionally, and is a key HR practice to increase knowledge exchange in organisations. Nowadays, mentoring is often intercultural – between two individuals from different cultures – and brings along additional barriers such as cultural differences and language barriers. This chapter shows how cultural differences influence mentoring, for example, through different expectations of how a mentoring relationship should be, and the increased possibility of communication problems due to cultural differences. It is also outlined how an organisation can set up mentoring for different types of expats, such as the traditional expat from the parent country but also the third country national and the inpat. Organisations should remember to include locals of the host country as a source of global talent that could benefit from mentoring. An important starting point is to look at the needs of the expat according to the stage of the assignment and assign multiple mentors since it is often very difficult for one single mentor to meet all the expat’s needs. Finally, the chapter discusses the choices the organisation has when setting up a mentoring programme to best enable the expat to learn and develop.
