Category Archives: Design samples

Want to Get Out of the One-Shot Training Rut?

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Ribbet collageOne Client’s Story

A few months ago I received a call from a dear friend and respected colleague. He told me that he had a client very committed to diversity and inclusion, that hired him once a quarter, every quarter, to design a 2-1/2 hour workshop. He delivered the workshop to a total of 300 employees, so he facilitated it about eight times over. Great client, right? A full week of work every quarter, on an ongoing basis…

He told me about some of the topics he’d covered, and some of the methods he’d used; they were all fantastic. He reported to me that everyone attending would have a really great time. The participants would learn, the evaluations would be excellent, and my friend would get hired back.

But he also told me that, while lucrative for him and enjoyable for the learners, he felt his approach wasn’t really accomplishing anything. My colleague was frustrated because he didn’t feel the learners were really developing skills, they weren’t changing what they did at work, and the organization wasn’t developing the intercultural competence it needs. He knows that real competence requires ongoing practice, and he thought Cultural Detective could help.

The client is a division of a major university. The employees interface daily with students and scholars from all over the world, and they, themselves, are a very diverse team. My colleague wanted to embark on a two-year project with a coherent, developmental design for his workshop series. He felt that Cultural Detective could be the anchor, the “backbone,” so to speak, the constant throughout the two years. But how did he plan to do this?

He wanted to start by having me join him for the first workshop, so that I could introduce the 300 employees of this university division to the Cultural Detective Model. While I was there with them, he wanted me to also train him and a few on-site facilitators (Diversity and Inclusion trainers as well as those from Organizational Effectiveness) in the Cultural Detective Method.

coverIslamOver the next two years, he wants to use Cultural Detective to help the employees develop more in-depth knowledge and skills for working with individual cultures. For example, one quarter they might learn more about how to work with East Asians, using CD China, CD Japan, etc., as resources. Another quarter they might focus on Muslim cultures, using CD Islam, CD Malaysia, CD Arab Gulf, and CD Turkey, etc. In the months between workshops, supervisors will work with employees to ensure that the skills they learn in the workshops are applied on the job. They will use university staff and students as resources and after each workshop, program leaders will agree on an “application plan” to encourage employees to use the ideas presented and practice their skills between workshops.

How, exactly?

In the first workshop, we used critical incidents that were drafted by the client’s Diversity and Inclusion Task Force. These included stories of staff interaction with students from around the world, as well as stories of employee interaction with one another. We analyzed these incidents together in the workshop, and learned what each of us could do to improve our performance, to better understand our customers (in this case, students) and colleagues, and we generated ideas for improving the organization’s systems, procedures, and structures, to make it more inclusive. We also played several learning games and simulations, and participated in other, supplementary exercises.

Here is what program leaders agree will take place after the first workshop and before the second in order to help ensure skill development and application:

  • In the weekly “mini-meetings” that all supervisors conduct with staff, they will ask employees to share a “best intercultural practice” they’ve learned that week, as well as cross-cultural questions or incidents they’ve experienced.
  • The Diversity and Inclusion Task Force members will write up critical incidents and Sample Debriefs for each of the areas of the workplace that they represent. They will invite employees to attend sessions in which they discuss and analyze the incidents, thereby continuing to build employee knowledge and skill, and continuing to interculturalize organizational processes.

cover_selfdiscovery copyThe second workshop is planned for the first quarter of 2015. In that workshop, my colleague is planning to introduce Cultural Detective Self Discovery to the employees, helping them each to develop their own Personal Values Lenses. Employees will then compare their personal values with US American, African-American, and Latino-Hispanic values (the primary composition of the workforce), as well as to those values of the many nationalities of students with whom the employees work. They’ll learn how to remain true to themselves, and how to adapt their behavior to be more cross-culturally effective. They will also use their Personal Values Lenses to get to know one another in a more meaningful way, and to discuss ways to improve their work teams: how to effectively collaborate to bring out the best in each other.

Employee representatives, supervisors, and Diversity and Inclusion Task Force members will meet after the second workshop to decide on an application plan for what the employees have learned. Their goal will be to figure out how best to reinforce the learning on the job, to be sure it gets used, and that employees continue to develop their competence. In addition, they will work to ensure that the organization continues to refine its policies, procedures and structures for intercultural effectiveness.

My guess is they will recommend ongoing team meetings that use the Personal Values Lenses, as well as having teams share their own critical incidents based on their own experiences. In this manner, the group will continue developing their intercultural competence, they will develop a library of resources on intercultural effectiveness to use to train new hires and continue to develop themselves, and they will maximize the intercultural effectiveness of the organization. Program leaders will then plan the third workshop, followed by an application plan, and so on.

In this way, over the next two years, my colleague is confident that these 300 employees he’s had the pleasure of working with will truly develop their understanding of themselves as cultural beings. They will learn how to better manage cross-cultural situations with the students, and how to better function in the multicultural teams of which they are members. Plus, they will help improve the intercultural competence of the division in which they work.

I do hope they will do a pre- and post-assessment, using the IDI (Intercultural Development Inventory) or some other instrument, to track employees’ progress. It would also be useful to record the systemic and procedural changes made, and see if there are differences in work-team functioning and in student satisfaction with employee performance. I believe research of this sort would be invaluable in showing how improving cultural competence can be a worthwhile investment of time, money and people’s energy.

I greatly appreciate the invitation to join the group to be part of the beginning of this grand undertaking. I look forward to watching as the program moves along its path, and intercultural competence spreads among the staff and organization. I am confident my friend’s plan is going to be hugely successful and wish him and the organization the best of luck!

How to Get Promoted in 3 Hours

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mexican-american flagsI’m going to tell you a real story, of an actual person, who was promoted to a management position from an administrative assistant position because of a three-hour workshop she conducted for her bosses.

How’d it happen? The woman, let’s call her Yolanda, worked for a very large multinational in Texas. The firm, of course, did a lot of business with Mexico. Over the ten years or so Yolanda had been with the company, she’d worked for a succession of bosses, most of whom did not understand Mexican culture and had committed many errors, losing opportunity and revenue, as well as credibility, for themselves and the company. Yolanda is Mexican-American, and her bosses’ actions used to frustrate and embarrass her. She could see that her bosses could be a lot more effective, she wanted to help, but she didn’t know where to begin to explain Mexican culture to her bosses. She was an administrative assistant, not a consultant, executive coach, or trainer.

Enter Cultural Detective. Yolanda looked over the Cultural Detective Mexico package. It made sense to her. She intuitively understood the values in the package’s Mexican Values Lens. She could tell stories from her own organizational experience to illustrate each value and correlating negative perception. Yolanda had so many stories, stories that were real, that had cost her company money and, in some cases, staff.

Yolanda got her four bosses to agree to a three-hour “lunch and learn,” during which she’d teach them about Mexican culture. She was excited, but she was also scared. She wasn’t a facilitator, she’d never studied culture or cross-cultural communication. But, she knew her organization, she knew her bosses, and she knew both US American and Mexican cultures. So, she gave the workshop her best.

At the outset of her seminar, Yolanda told her bosses a story—a story they clearly recognized from their own experience, a story of a time they’d been frustrated, and less than successful. They all knew the details; she had only to remind them of the event she was talking about. Yolanda drew a Cultural Detective Worksheet on the flip chart. She asked her bosses what they had done in that situation. Then, she asked them to think about why they had done what they’d done—what was the underlying “common sense” that motivated their behavior? That wasn’t so easy, but they did it. And it proved pretty insightful. They hadn’t consciously thought about the reasons for their actions, hadn’t spent time thinking about how culture-bound their behavior was. This was Yolanda’s first successful “aha” of the three hours.

Next, she asked them what their Mexican colleagues had done in the given situation. Yolanda encouraged her bosses to quote the words that were said and the actions the Mexicans took. Of course, her bosses said things like, “I couldn’t trust them,” “he wouldn’t tell me the truth,” or “they went behind our backs,” but on the flip chart she recorded the actual words and behavior of the Mexican colleagues. Yolanda then asked her bosses to do the same thing for the Mexicans that they had done for themselves. She said, “Maybe your colleagues really were dishonest, untrustworthy, conniving. But, for the sake of learning, for a few minutes let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. What could have been the positive intentions behind their words and actions? If we look at your side of this Worksheet, you have all positive intent, nothing negative. Let’s see if we can’t fill in their side the same way. Maybe at the end we decide to throw it all out, decide that they were just bad people. But first let’s see.”

Her bosses came up with several guesses—possible motivators of their Mexican counterparts’ behavior. Then Yolanda filled in a couple more, explaining the reasons these colleagues had probably acted and responded the way they had. Her bosses said things like, “That makes sense,” “I’d never considered that before,” and “so I did exactly the wrong thing; I shot myself in the foot!” Her bosses experienced their second “aha” of the workshop.

Next, Yolanda handed out a copy of Cultural Detective Mexico to each of her bosses. She walked them through the Mexican Values Lens, telling stories from her organizational experience. She asked them how they felt about each of the values, and reminded her bosses that each Mexican is unique—that the values in the Lens are societal tendencies. After introducing the Values Lens, she focused her bosses’ attention back on the Worksheet. Now they had lots of ideas about why their Mexican colleagues might have acted the way they did. And even more importantly, her bosses had lots of ideas on how they could have acted in ways more conducive to achieving their business objectives—to bridging cultures. A third round of “aha” learning was achieved.

The three hours sped by quickly. Her bosses learned so much. Their ability to do business in Mexico and with Mexicans was greatly enhanced. They learned about themselves, about their own personal and US cultural values, which enabled them to better explain themselves to any new colleague, whether Mexican, Chinese, or US American. And, very key to me, Yolanda’s bosses learned what a valuable asset she was as a cultural resource. They began using Yolanda as a sounding board, asking her to help them write emails and reports, and also to help plan strategy. Within a couple of months, Yolanda left her job as an administrative assistant because she was promoted to a more prestigious and much better paid management position. She achieved her dream of being able to travel for business, and she loved the kind of work she was able to do. Her company gained an employee who was confident and able to use her bicultural heritage in ways that added value.

Now, I’m not promising that using Cultural Detective will get you a promotion, but if you and your organization work across cultures—and what organization doesn’t these days—you will definitely gain a whole lot of skill and expertise by using Cultural Detective. Add it to your priority list! Start building your intercultural competence by attending one of our free 90-minute webinars, or subscribing to (and using!) Cultural Detective Online today.

A Design for Incorporating Cross-cultural Effectiveness into Existing Programs

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arton235-88ad2Do you have an existing curriculum or training design and wish you could simply add a cross-cultural element to it? You probably don’t realize how easy and affordable it is to keep your existing objectives and design, while weaving in key cross-cultural dynamics using Cultural Detective. Below is a half-day design using Cultural Detective that works well in a variety of contexts with a variety of topics:

  • In business for global management, leadership across cultures, multicultural or international customer service, multicultural team effectiveness, negotiating across cultures, management and motivation, new hire orientation, expatriation (prior to departure, during the assignment, reentry).
  • In study abroad for students during orientation, their sojourn and reentry; orientations for host families; teamwork and community-building for students, receiving organizations, and host families.
  • For special purposes such as patient-care across cultures, multicultural spiritual communities, and neighborhood community building.

A Sample Half-Day Training Design Leveraging the Cultural Detective® Method

1. Objectives, introductions, agenda (of your chosen topic).

2. “What’s in it for me?” Present your topic in context; why is it important?

3. Skills for [workshop topic, e.g., leadership, teamwork, healthcare, sales, etc.] Across Cultures:

  • Tell a story or show a video of cross-cultural interaction in the context of the [workshop topic]. The playlists and videos on Cultural Detective‘s YouTube channel may give you some ideas.
  • Lead the participants through an analysis of the story (debrief) using the Cultural Detective Worksheet.
  • Once complete, ask participants what they learn from this approach (values, beliefs and “common sense” world view motivate behavior; world views are often different but all are “correct”; similar values can lead to different behavior; different values can motivate similar behavior; bridges must leverage similarities and shared objectives as well as differences/complementarities; bridges must be interpersonal and multidirectional but also organizational/systemic)
  • Summarize: What skills for [workshop topic] can we learn from this Cultural Detective (CD) approach?
  • Apply: How can participants use this CD approach in their daily work?

4. Culture-specific Skills for [workshop topic]

  • Introduce Values Lenses: what they are and aren’t; explain values and negative perceptions.
  • Introduce the Values Lens for each of the cultures in the story you told or the video clip you showed.
  • Ask participants if these values provide them further insight or deeper understanding of the incident. Do the Lenses provide any clues to help them add information to the CD Worksheet debrief? If not, fine. If yes, use that info.
  • Summarize: What skills for [workshop topic] can we learn by using Values Lenses? How can we use the Lens tools well? How should we never use the Lenses? (Lenses are guides to societal norms, and should never be used to stereotype or “box-in” individuals, but rather as clues for learning and dialogue.)
  • Apply: How could participants use Values Lenses in their daily work?

5. Knowing Oneself as a Cultural Being in the Context of [workshop topic]

  • Use a couple of the activities from Cultural Detective Self Discovery and guide participants to complete a Personal Values Lens
  • In pairs or threes, have participants share their Personal Lenses with one another
  • Have them discuss how they could best work together in the context of [workshop topic], to bring out the best in one another.
  • Summarize: What are some best practices for cross-cultural [workshop topic]? What have you learned?
  • Provide the Cultural Detective’s “A Dozen Best Practices for Cross-Cultural Effectiveness.”
  • Apply: What will you do to ensure you perform at your best in a cross-cultural [workshop topic] situation? To ensure you bring out the best in your team/clients/patients?

6. Summary and Application

  • Provide a list of skills for effective cross-cultural [workshop topic].
  • Ask participants what they have learned about themselves today as regards [workshop topic]?
  • What are the top 1-3 skills each participant wants to demonstrate to enhance their cross-cultural effectiveness at [workshop topic]?
  • How will they hold themselves accountable?

What cost does this add to your curriculum? If you are training 30 or more people, Cultural Detective Self Discovery licenses are just US$15 per participant. For Values Lenses, you can subscribe to Cultural Detective Online for less than $100 per year and project Lenses in a group training environment. The subscription price goes down for multiple users, to less than $30 per year per subscriber.

We hope you find this sample design useful, and that you will share with us your tried-and-true designs and curricula for integrating Cultural Detective into educational or training programs. We know you do terrific work, in such a broad variety of contexts, and your designs will no doubt stimulate others’ creativity and effectiveness. Together we can build a more equitable, just, respectful world in which we collaborate for a sustainable future!

New Year’s Gift: Oldie but Goodie—The STADIApproach

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Permission is granted to use this model freely and to circulate it, PROVIDED the © and url are maintained.

Permission is granted to use this model freely and to circulate it, PROVIDED the © and url are maintained.

It is said that experience is the best teacher. But learning does not lie in the experience itself; rather, it is our interpretation of the situation—the meaning we give to our experience—that provides our learning.

How might we better enable learners to constructively give meaning to their intercultural experiences? Are you looking for an easy and highly effective way to structure your next intercultural workshop or coaching session? Are you wondering how you might better enable study-abroad students to understand their experience in a way that builds cross-cultural competence? Do you have employees working internationally or multiculturally, and you’d like them to learn to truly harness the potential of diversity?

This “oldie but goodie,” the STADIApproach to Intercultural Learning, has been used in dozens of organizations worldwide with huge success. Click on the link to view a full article on the approach. I first published it for use with my proprietary clients in 1989; it is now even more useful as it can provide a design framework for blended learning approaches that leverage Cultural Detective Online. The CD Online system has STADI embedded into its core. In the hands of a skilled facilitator, teacher or coach, you can assist your learners to Sense, Think, Apply, Do and Integrate by analyzing the experience of others via the critical incidents in CD Online, as well as probing their own real life experiences.

We trust you’ll find the STADIApproach article helpful! Please accept it and use it as my new year’s gift to you, this January of 2014. It is my wish that the new year will enable all of you, dear readers, to better facilitate intercultural understanding, sustainability, respect and equity on this planet of ours.

Please share your experiences with us, and your designs that effectively leverage Cultural Detective Online to supplement your training, teaching or coaching endeavors.

 

We Have to Teach in Context!

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Apple-butterfly

What we learn has to “fit” with what we know.
It has to be appropriate for where we live and work.
Part of learning is to apply the new to the old, integrating the two.

A client called us, saying they had hired a young woman with an MS in Intercultural Communication to design courseware for them. The objective of the courseware is to improve participants’ job performance, in this case, to make them more effective and efficient at servicing international customers.

“We had a lot of hope for intercultural communication training. But we’ve been doing it for nearly two years now, and we are very disappointed with the results. We have seen no bottom-line impact on performance.”

In reviewing the courseware, I found that it in many ways it was very savvy, but appeared to have been taken nearly verbatim from the woman’s graduate studies. The exercises and activities were designed for master’s students in intercultural communication, and had not been adapted for customer service representatives!

We heard from another client recently that had invested three years developing a curriculum to improve the intercultural competence of their global staff. A diverse group of their international employees attended professional development classes in intercultural communication, and an elite group at head office developed a standardized curriculum to be used worldwide. One of the main objectives of this effort is to be able to better resolve conflicts and misunderstandings more effectively.

So what’s the problem? Everyone loves the new curriculum. However, they leave the program feeling no better equipped to resolve conflicts. They love the tools they’ve learned, they enjoy the trainers, but they don’t know how to use the new tools and skills in a real situation!

THE PROBLEM IN BOTH SCENARIOS
What do these two scenarios have in common? In both cases, the training designer was replicating a graduate-level education course—designed for professionals—and repurpose it, as-is, for skill building. And that just doesn’t work! I’ve seen it far too often in recent years, and it’s a distinction we really need to make. Doctors graduate to practice medicine and to help their patients learn healthy lifestyles; they do not generally teach patients how to be doctors.

Professionals need skills they can use on the job, and that includes cross-cultural skills. But those skills must be taught in context, via application and practice in simulated and, eventually, real situations.

SOLUTION ONE
In the first case, Cultural Detective was added into the client’s existing customer service training. Leveraging pre-existing company-specific case studies and audio-visual scenarios, we used the Cultural Detective Worksheet and Values Lenses to supplement the debriefing. In this way, the need for intercultural skills became more evident and was linked to job success for the customer support engineers. In addition, all practice of cross-cultural skills was integrated with the practice of vital job skills.

We retained many of the exercises and activities included in the original, separate cross-cultural curriculum. However, we wove them into the customer service training to supplement, amplify, and deepen learning using the Cultural Detective Method. Once cross-cultural skills were grounded in the business at hand—the purposes of the employees’ work (customer service)—they made all the difference in the world.

This client reported to us a 30% increase in customer satisfaction that they directly attribute to Cultural Detective.

SOLUTION TWO
The second case is still in process. I very much admire the quality of the curriculum and the incredible coordination it has taken to get so many trainers in such diverse locations “up to speed” with the material. Yet, they are starting to realize that although the training has been well-received, staff is not able to use what they have learned once they are back on the job. Yet with so much investment, they don’t want to completely redesign. And they don’t want to be dependent on outside material.

I advised them to weave into their curriculum a simulated conflict scenario, one that could be worked on and revisited throughout the training. In this way they do not need to completely redo their superb design, and the training they have already provided will still be useful. The difference? The revised curriculum is grounded in their reality and will allow staff to practice cross-cultural skills in simulated situations. That way, when they return to work, they will know when and how to apply the cross-cultural skills and tools they have learned.

SAMPLE DESIGN
Let’s look at a typical training curriculum, and then look at how easy it is to weave Cultural Detective into the existing design. Let’s say on Day One they teach what is culture (Iceberg, observable behavior linked to underlying values) and D.I.E. (learn to Describe before we Interpret and then only with culturally appropriate information, to Evaluate). On Day Two, they teach intention/perception and cross-cultural adjustment (culture shock).

Instead, they might start Day One by introducing a case study involving an everyday challenge. Having introduced the context, trainers facilitate learning as planned in the original curriculum (Iceberg and D.I.E.—Description, Interpretation, Evaluation). After doing so, however, they return to the case study, the professional context, and explore: how do values apply to this case study? What are the Evaluations that I am making, based on what Descriptions? From there, it’s a very easy introduction to the Cultural Detective Method, which this client has already licensed and, therefore, is welcome to use.

On Day Two, intention/perception can be taught as part of the debrief of the Cultural Detective Worksheet for the case study. And, the same case study can be used to ground teaching around culturally-appropriate service or cultural adaptation. From there, as they facilitate the remainder of the designed curriculum, they can provide staff the opportunity to speak with the individuals in the case study, in a simulated environment, and to use CD Values Lenses and the CD Worksheet to help them better understand their own values and worldviews. Finally, staff can use the CD Worksheet Method to facilitate a resolution to the case study—harnessing the advantages of diversity rather than navigating around or ignoring them.

If you’ve licensed the CD Method, you know how versatile it is. But what you may not realize is that Cultural Detective doesn’t need to replace other methods. Often, if you put Cultural Detective at the core of what you are already doing, you’ll find the rest supplements it quite naturally.

Always remember, adults tend to learn best in context; they want to know why something is important to know or do. If adults learn to use and apply intercultural tools in situations that replicate real life, they’ll be much more likely to employ them when the need arises.

Oldie but Goodie: Comprehensive Expatriate Support System

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Expat-Flow

Moving overseas is an exciting yet stressful time for all involved: the person transitioning to a new position, the expat’s family who is relocating, and the organization—both the office dealing with the loss of a valued employee, and the receiving organization. We all know there are a myriad of details involved in preparing someone to work abroad, but where to start and what to include?

Years ago, when Cultural Detective Online was not yet a glimmer in anyone’s dreams, I put together the above guide for a client. You are most welcome to use it if it can be of assistance (click through to view a larger version), though I ask that you retain the copyright and url of the original.

I was proud to work with that client. They valued their international assignees, desiring that the employee and the relocating family become stronger from international assignment, and that both the receiving organization and the organization as a whole learn and grow. They thus asked me to “map” a process to help make that happen.

Today, Cultural Detective Online is an excellent tool to use with expatriates, relocating families, and receiving teams and organizations, at each stage of the relocation process. It offers a process as well as information at your fingertips — anytime, anywhere — to help build bridges across cultures, to help each of us better understand those we work with, and to get to know ourselves better.

“The Cultural Detective Online product is a sound investment for my work as an intercultural and relocation coach. I suggest to my clients to get a subscription for themselves.”
—Maartje Goodeve, Nascence Coaching, BC, Canada

How might you update the process in the graphic above? How could you use Cultural Detective Online in combination with other tools, approaches and your own facilitation to enhance expatriate performance?

Sample Half Day Global Competitiveness Program Design

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Many of us have found ourselves in the difficult situation in which people ask us to equip others to be cross-culturally effective and globally competitive – and then give us just a few short hours to do so.

Such was my task recently in Bogotá. The Colombian government had just signed a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the USA, and I had been invited to work with a lawyer and a business consultant, so that the three of us could, in five hours (ok, we started a bit later than scheduled, so really 4-1/2 hours), better enable local businesses to make the most of this new opportunity. My colleagues were excellent, and thanks to terrific teamwork and generous sharing of expertise, we were able to take a very diverse group of enthusiastic participants a long way in a short time.

I thought some of you might find the design useful for adapting to your own needs.

Session Title: Global Competitiveness and Productivity

Advertised Session Objectives: Learn how to make the most of the new FTA, how to conduct business at international levels of quality and competitiveness, and how to negotiate effectively with US Americans.

Advertised Session Components: Legal context of the new FTA, negotiating with US Americans, and global business ethics.

OUR DESIGN

Legal Aspects of the FTA – one hour

First, a very talented international lawyer, Andrés Forero, based in Bogotá, walked us through the various aspects of the new FTA, including a summary of the opportunities it presents for Colombian businesses. This was a most interesting session; Andrés knows the FTA inside and out, and he knows Colombian business. He took the complex and made it practical and understandable. He motivated those in attendance by explaining about the huge opportunities. And he also scared us a bit, telling tales of cross-cultural failures that he’d witnessed. Of added interest was the fact that he had been involved in translating the text of the FTA into English, and showed the full two volumes to the public for the first time ever.

Negotiating with US Americans – 2 hours

The extremely talented business consultant with whom I was working, Ing. Fernando Parrado, and I decided that we needed to just “jump in” with this group and immerse them in a case study of a typical Colombian-US negotiation. So we did. We told the story, and we debriefed it using the Cultural Detective (CD) Worksheet. This took about 45 minutes.

Once we had the Worksheet completed, we urged the participants to reflect on what they had done. They saw two different world views, two different approaches, both “correct” and both with value. They saw connections between actions and values, and that values and beliefs motivate behavior. And they saw that really effective strategies use the resources provided by all parties. This took another 10 minutes.

From there we introduced the three intercultural capacities on which Cultural Detective is premised (subjective culture, cultural literacy, cultural bridge), and then reviewed instructions for using the CD Worksheet/the CD Method properly. This took another 15 minutes or so.

Focusing on the US American values section of the now completed Worksheet, we began talking about what is important to US Americans. We defined the concept of culture, cultural diversity, and cultures such as regional, ethnic, socioeconomic, gender, and generational. We made sure participants understood that when we generalize we want to talk about central tendencies of a group of people. We don’t want to stereotype, to “box” an individual into the central tendency of the group.

Then we introduced the concept of a Values Lens: that there are core values or central tendencies of a group of people. And that for each value there is a negative perception, that is, a way in which it can be viewed negatively by those who do not share the value or its expression. I told the participants, as I always do, about the danger of the Values Lenses. I cautioned them not to use them as yet another box into which to fit people, but rather as a tool for discovery, as clues for analysis. The values might apply to the situation, or they might not; they are a guide, a place to start.

These last two items took another ten minutes. It was quick. We covered a lot of territory in a short amount of time.

From here we introduced the US American Values Lens, sharing sample behaviors for each value, and sample negative perceptions. We asked participants if the Values Lens provided them any further clues to understanding the behavior of the US American in the case study, and indeed it did. Participants shared their stories of working with US Americans, and we were all able to learn from one another. This part took about 30 minutes.

Then we took a short break to eat some wonderful cheese-filled pastries and drink some of the famous Colombian coffee.

Understanding Colombians – 45 minutes

We came back from break ready to experience the debut of Cultural Detective Colombia. And what a debut it was! Fernando walked us around the Colombian Values Lens, sharing a story about each value, and explaining how to use it as a strength in working across cultures and making the most of the Free Trade Agreement. He also explained the Negative Perceptions for each value, again with illustrations, and positioning them as skills or competencies to develop when working internationally, at global standards.

Participants, who came in feeling that they had to “change” in order to be successful, now glowed with pride that they already held within them a heritage to be proud of, and onto which they could wisely add cross-cultural competence.

We again asked the participants if the Values Lens provided any further insight into the critical incident, and they found that it did. They enthusiastically declared the accuracy of the Colombian Values Lens. I felt very fortunate to be present for its debut.

This portion took about 45 minutes. While it was not requested by the client, it was an aspect we knew was very important if the participants were to achieve their objectives.

Global Business Ethics – 20 minutes

I am not an ethics professional, but the Cultural Detective Global Business Ethics enabled me to be able to define the topic of ethics in an understandable way. More importantly, I was able to explain the difference between compliant and ethical behavior, and the grey areas created by cultural differences: an action might be “non-compliant” yet seen as the ethical or right thing to do, or an action might be “compliant” but seen as unethical or wrong from a cultural perspective.

With the help of Andrés, our lawyer, we introduced the CD Global Business Ethics Values and Negative Perceptions, using real-life examples. We then asked participants if the values from this ethics lens provided further insight into the Colombia-US negotiation case study. Indeed it did! We also asked them to overlay the Colombia Lens with the Global Business Ethics (GBE) Lens, and the USA Lens with the GBE Lens, and the huge contrasts were apparent. They saw the difference that culture makes on perceptions of right and wrong. Unfortunately we were only able to spend about 30 minutes on this portion.

Personal Values Lenses – 30 minutes

Why such a short time on Global Business Ethics? Because I knew that, if these people were to succeed in global business, they also really needed a grounded understanding of who they were as individuals. Thus, we gave participants about 15 minutes to fill in their own Personal Values Lenses, using an exercise and Lens from Cultural Detective Self Discovery. They could then easily compare their Personal Lens to the Colombian Lens and the USA Lens, as well as the GBE Lens.

In closing, we passed out laminated copies of the 75 or so Lenses in the Cultural Detective series, so participants could get a feel for how they might adapt their approach to a German or an Israeli or South Korean marketplace.

All in all, it was a very fast romp across a very broad territory. But, oh, the insights the participants gained! They left the room in the evening standing tall and looking enthused, which I tend to take as a very good sign.

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Fernando and Andrés, thank you so much for this opportunity to work with you both in this way. It is not often I have the pleasure of working with people for the first time and we are able to find such synergy of talents; it was truly a privilege and a joy!

Everyone: what do you think of this design? What are your strategies for doing the impossible in a very short amount of time? I’m eager to hear!