Course Overview

In our globally connected world, cultural awareness isn’t optional – it’s essential. This intensive course equips you to navigate cultural diversity with confidence, sensitivity, and skill. You’ll discover how your own cultural values shape your coaching, learn to recognize and bridge cultural distance with clients, and develop practical frameworks for coaching across 11 key cultural continuums – from autonomy to community, direct to indirect communication, and beyond.

What makes this different? This isn’t theory-based cultural studies – it’s hands-on coaching development. You’ll coach real guest clients from diverse cultural backgrounds during class, receive expert feedback, and build a personal Cultural Awareness Journal that becomes your ongoing tool for growth. Led by Cindy Schmelzenbach, MCC and Rudy Graham, ACC, this course integrates ICF competencies with biblical wisdom, helping you steward your coaching calling with greater cultural intelligence and Kingdom impact.

By course end, you’ll possess a sophisticated framework for cultural self-awareness, the ability to assess coach-client cultural compatibility, and proven strategies for partnering effectively with clients across generations, nationalities, organizational cultures, and ministry contexts. Your coaching will become more adaptive, more respectful, and ultimately more transformational.

Cultural competence and diversity training for professional Christian coaches
  • Course Length: 7 weeks

  • ICF Education Hours: 10 hours

  • Weekly Commitment: 2-3 hours/week (1.5 hours live class + reading/reflection)

  • Format: Live via Zoom

  • Prerequisites: None (designed for practicing coaches or those in coach training)

  • Price: Starting at $182/month

  • Course Length: 7 weeks

  • ICF Education Hours: 10 hours

  • Weekly Commitment: 2-3 hours/week (1.5 hours live class + reading/reflection)

  • Format: Live via Zoom

  • Prerequisites: None (designed for practicing coaches or those in coach training)

  • Price: Starting at $182/month

Is This Course Right for You?

Whether you coach globally, lead diverse teams, or simply want to deepen your cultural intelligence, this course provides the frameworks and practice you need to serve every client with greater awareness and impact.

Coaches Working Cross-Culturally

You serve clients from different cultural backgrounds, work with global organizations or NGOs, or support missionaries navigating multicultural contexts. You need practical tools to bridge cultural distance and coach with greater sensitivity.

Leaders Expanding Their Influence

You’re a pastor, ministry leader, or executive who naturally mentors others and wants to formalize your coaching skills. You recognize that cultural and generational differences impact every conversation and you’re ready to lead diverse teams with excellence.

Coaches Committed to Personal Growth

You’re dedicated to becoming a more self-aware, culturally intelligent coach. You want to understand your own cultural biases and develop the reflective practices that lead to lasting transformation—for yourself and your clients.

What You’ll Accomplish in This Course

This is an experiential, practice-based course where you’ll apply cultural awareness frameworks in real coaching conversations and build competencies you can use immediately.

  • Assess your own cultural values and biases using 11 Cultural Values Continuums and understand how they influence your coaching approach.

  • Coach live with diverse guest clients from various cultural backgrounds and receive expert feedback on cultural responsiveness.

  • Evaluate cultural distance between yourself and potential clients to determine compatibility and adapt your coaching strategies accordingly.

  • Master culturally sensitive listening that honors both what’s said and unsaid across direct and indirect communication styles.

  • Navigate generational differences using proven frameworks for understanding values across Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z.

  • Apply Milton Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity to recognize where you and your clients fall on the continuum from ethnocentrism to ethnorelativism.

  • Build a personal Cultural Awareness Journal that becomes an ongoing tool for reflection, growth, and enhanced cultural intelligence.

  • Demonstrate ICF Core Competencies with heightened sensitivity to clients’ identity, environment, experiences, values, and beliefs.

Course Breakdown

The course progresses from foundational awareness to advanced application, guiding you through self-discovery, skill-building with live practice, and integration of cultural intelligence into your coaching identity.

Weeks 1-2: Cultural Foundations & Self-Awareness

Establish your baseline understanding of culture’s role in coaching. Explore Milton Bennett’s model of intercultural sensitivity, examine the neuroscience of “different,” and begin assessing your own position on key cultural continuums. Learn the PCCI Coaching Process and ICF competencies through a cultural lens.

Weeks 3-4: Deep Listening & Identity

Coach live guest clients and debrief cultural values observed. Explore Third Culture Kids/Adults (TCKs), autonomy versus community values, and how stress impacts coaching conversations across cultures. Examine change, planning, and risk tolerance through cultural and generational perspectives.

Weeks 5-6: Communication & Boundaries

Navigate empowerment, boundaries, and gratitude across cultural contexts. Understand status versus equality orientations and healthy workplace hierarchy. Master five critical communication continuums: dichotomistic/holistic, conceptual/practical, task/relationship, direct/indirect, and concealment/vulnerability.

Week 7: Integration & Transformation

Synthesize your learning by exploring generational values, grief across cultures, and coaching as a means for both cultural and personal transformation. Create your ongoing plan for continued cultural intelligence development and commit to next steps in your journey.

Required Course Materials

Course materials are carefully selected for practical application and include both purchased texts and provided resources that support your hands-on learning.

Dancing Between Cultures - textbooks for cultural competence coaching
Different Like Me - textbooks for cultural competence coaching

Upcoming Course Dates

All sessions are live via Zoom with recordings available for registered students. Experience the richness of learning in a cohort with coaches from diverse backgrounds.

August 2026

DAY: Thursdays
TIME: 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM Eastern
DATES: August 27 – October 8, 2026
INSTRUCTORS: Cindy Schmelzenbach, MCC & Rudy Graham, ACC

Tuition & Payment Plans

Choose the payment option that works best for your budget – all plans provide full access to the course, live sessions, and course materials.

Full Payment

$500 / full pay

NO monthly payments

2 Payments

$265 / monthly

$530 total investment

3 Payments

$182 / monthly

$545 total investment

All payment plans include a $15 monthly service charge.

Real Results from Real Students

This course transforms how coaches approach cultural differences, leading to deeper client relationships, more effective coaching, and greater confidence in diverse contexts.

“The most profound change I’ve experienced from this course is a newfound curiosity. I’ve become far more curious of cultural differences, and have found that my curiosity can help someone awake their own awareness of cultural preferences and biases, and whether or not those serve them in a given situation. Coaching is about evoking better awareness in others, and this course has given me several new areas in which to be curious and evoke awareness, and has added a bunch of new tools to my coaching toolkit.”
Kris Kelso, PCC, The Kelso Group

“This course has given me an unprecedented level of awareness, and each week helped me notice a level of bias I didn’t know was there, allowing me to reset, re-calibrate, and raise my level of awareness. Before I took the course, I thought I had a relatively high level of awareness, but during the course I realized I was only seeing through my cultural lens. This course broadened my perspective and ignited a fresh curiosity within me to embrace with confidence how to truly understand the experiences of others more deeply.”

Nancy Lopez, PCC, NDL Leadership LLC

“This course is essential for Christian coaches, equipping us to effectively serve clients in their cultural context. Understanding how culture shapes values is critical, as clients’ responses are deeply tied to their values. By recognizing cultural differences, we avoid missteps and become better coaches. Just as Jesus met the Samaritan woman where she was, this course empowers us to do the same across all cultures.”

Pamela Mertz, PCC, Blueprint Life

“I was initially concerned this course might not respect my independent perspective, but I absolutely loved it. It has radically improved my ability to serve my international clients while maintaining my own authenticity and values. I now trust my instincts around cultural differences, which has led to several client breakthroughs. I’m recommending this course like crazy!”

Lisa Mladinich, PCC, Wonderfully Made