Category Archives: Assessment tool reviews

Developmental Intercultural Competence Using Cultural Detective Online

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CDO
Are you doing your best to develop cross-cultural effectiveness in your organization, and want better results? Quicker results? Longer lasting results? Or, maybe even just results—heightened productivity and satisfaction? Our clients have achieved amazing increases in cross-cultural effectiveness—their people improving two stages on the DMIS (the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity) in a few months, and customer satisfaction increasing 30%—using Cultural Detective developmentally. How did they do that?…

Index for This Post (jump ahead if you’d like)
The DMIS
The DMIS and Cultural Detective
How Customers Successfully Build Intercultural Competence
Additional Resources

Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity ©Dr. Milton J. Bennett, 1986 & 1993.

Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity ©Dr. Milton J. Bennett, 1986 & 1993.

The DMIS
Let me start by telling you about the DMIS. First published by Dr. Milton Bennett in the International Journal of Intercultural Relations in 1986, and more fully developed in Education for the Intercultural Experience in 1993, the DMIS has proven to be a key milestone in the intercultural field. It provides a roadmap for those of us who aim to develop intercultural competence.

A developmental model is a conceptual framework that helps us better understand a progressive process, as well as providing guides for continued development. Examples of a developmental model with which most parents are familiar are those charts that track the major milestones of an infant’s growth. Such models help us anticipate when our baby will smile, sit up, crawl, or distinguish right from wrong, and they can help us ready our children for their next big challenge. There are abilities our baby generally must develop (e.g., roll over) before being ready to accomplish tasks at a higher stage of development (e.g., crawl). At each stage, the baby needs to be appropriately encouraged, while also feeling safe enough to take the risk to try something new.

Similarly, the DMIS is a conceptual model of six stages of the development of intercultural sensitivity, from ethnocentrism to ethno-relativism. The IDI, or Intercultural Development Inventory, is a psychometric instrument that assesses one’s stage of development. Its origins are based in the DMIS, though it uses a slightly modified version of the model today, called the IDC (Intercultural Development Continuum). The DMIS and the IDI enable us to track where we are in the development of our intercultural sensitivity, and ready ourselves for enhanced sensitivity or effectiveness.

The DMIS and Cultural Detective
The beauty our clients have found in the Cultural Detective Method is that it challenges and supports, stretches and comforts, learners at each stage of their development of intercultural sensitivity. While the DMIS and IDI indicate where one is on the developmental continuum, Cultural Detective assists in the learning and development of the skills needed to succeed in cross-cultural interactions.

The process works organically. The designer must make the case for diversity and inclusion in developmentally appropriate ways, and debrief learning in ways that comfort and challenge the learners. However, the Cultural Detective (CD) Method itself need not vary, no matter the developmental stage. Learners, depending on their abilities, will naturally use the CD Method differently at different levels of development.

Let me give a couple of examples.
  • Learners in ethnocentric stages of development will easily and fairly quickly solve a Cultural Detective mystery—they will be eager to complete the Worksheet, solve the problem, give the participants in the critical incident advice on what they should have done differently. Facilitators will observe, however, that learners at earlier development stages will suggest Cultural Bridges that are naïve or unrealistic, though of course possible. They might suggest, for example, that “the Japanese person just needs to speak up more assertively,” or “the Mexican manager needs to be more considerate of others and trust that his and his company’s welfare will be looked after.” Both of these recommendations are within the realm of possibility, both are achievable by Japanese and Mexicans of certain personality types or personal discipline, but such Bridges are not realistic for the majority of people from those cultures. Learners in ethnocentric stages feel good that they are able to solve the problem, which encourages them to try another and, with practice, learn what really works and what doesn’t when teaming across cultures.
  • When completing that same Cultural Detective Worksheet, learners in ethno-relative stages of development will enjoy pairing Values, Beliefs and Cultural Sense with the Words and Actions they motivate. They will invest effort into discerning the commonalties, as well as the differences, between the participants in the critical incident. They will develop ways to build on shared interests, while also leveraging diverse opinions and abilities, so that all players more fully contribute and the organization or community benefits. They will, without prompting, compare themselves, their values and beliefs, to the players in the incident—constantly learning, discovering, and refining their self-understanding. They will, in an organic way, explore and cultivate their cultural (or multicultural) identities, their understanding of and empathy for others, and their abilities to collaborate across cultures.

Thus, in a very natural way, learners at all stages of development receive the support as well as the challenge they need to continue their developmental journey towards intercultural sensitivity. There is very little stress on the facilitator to adapt the CD Method for the learner’s level of development, freeing the facilitator to focus effort on answering questions and dealing with resistance in ways that are both appropriately challenging and supportive to the learner.

And such a flexible process can be a blessing when we work with groups from mixed developmental levels. I often compare the Cultural Detective Method to the Montessori approach, because learners at all developmental levels can gain from helping one another.

So, How Do Customers Do It? How Do They Successfully Build Competence?

1. Research shows the development of intercultural competence requires ongoing, structured learning. That is precisely what a subscription to Cultural Detective Online (CDO) provides. So, first, get a subscription. If you want to build competence in your team or organization, if you are an experienced interculturalist, or if you are new to the Diversity and Inclusion space, a CDO subscription is a small investment with huge potential. The subscription agreement allows you to project CDO contents onto a screen for group viewing in any work you personally deliver, as long as you explain to your learners that Cultural Detective Online is a tool that anyone can subscribe to. Our goal is to get these materials used!

2. USE the system, regularly. Cultural Detective Online isn’t an entertainment system; it isn’t passive; it won’t give you intercultural competence through osmosis or by using magic dust. (That’ll be version 2! Just kidding.) Log onto the system once a week, and spend 20-30 minutes debriefing a critical incident, and using Values Lenses to supplement what you see. Respond to the prompts asking you what you’ve learned. Review your notes.

3. After a few weeks using your subscription, once you feel comfortable and competent with the Cultural Detective Worksheet, upload your own incident. Choose something from your real life: perhaps an interaction with a family member, friend, or colleague that puzzled you. Once you write the brief story, link the participants in your incident (yourself and others) to the Values Lenses in the Cultural Detective Online system. Think about why you behaved the way you did, and reflect on the influence that national, gender, generational, and spiritual values had on your behavior. Think about these same influences on the other people in your incident.

4. Then, you can discuss the incident with the real people involved in the situation. Having worked through a CD Worksheet, you will be able to move beyond judgment in your discussion. You will have already thought through the possible positive intentions of the other person, so your dialogue will proceed constructively. You both can learn, and collectively develop strategies to collaborate, or cohabitate, more enjoyably.

5. If you are a team lead or an organizational facilitator, gather your learners together regularly (monthly, quarterly), to discuss what skills they are acquiring using the CD Online system, questions they have, and the challenges they’re experiencing in developing intercultural competence.

6. Remember, Cultural Detective need not stand alone; supplement the tool with your favorite activities: simulations, exercises, videos, role-plays, etc. The core Cultural Detective Method dovetails smoothly with just about any other intercultural tool or technique, because it is a process.

7. If you want to track your progress, be sure to use the IDI to get baseline measurements of participants in your group. I’d then recommend participants take the IDI again, after three months of structured learning using CDO. You will be amazed by the results!

8. Cultural Detective Online is a tool. It doesn’t replace skilled facilitation; it supplements and extends it. You may already use the MBTI, the IDI, dimensions models, etc., in the training or coaching you do. Add CD Online to your repertoire and you will be delighted at how it transforms what you are able to achieve with your learners.

9. Be sure to share your Cultural Effective success story with us, and get your organization some positive kudos!

Additional Resources
A few years ago, two very experienced and well-regarded intercultural facilitators, Heather Robinson and Laura Bathurst, wrote an article explaining what I’m talking about.

I am also happy to share with you one of the handouts I prepared for a session at a recent IDI Conference (be sure to scroll down to view all three pages). This handout is a table showing the needs for challenge and support at each stage of development, and explicates the ways in which the Cultural Detective Method meets those needs. You are most welcome to download and print this handout. Note that in the handout you will find the five stages of development that are currently used by the IDI (slightly different than those of the DMIS, above).

Please let us know how you have used Cultural Detective in your teaching and training to facilitate your learners’ intercultural development. I would also like to invite any researchers or graduate students who are interested in conducting research on this important topic to contact us.

You Trust a Quiz to Tell You Who You Are?

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Your profile now!

Depp photo @Examiner
Honsou photo ©Armando Gallo/Retna Ltd

You may have had the same experience I have: clients, students, trainees and colleagues often ask me what assessment tools I recommend. My response, of course, is “for what purpose? What do you want to assess?” Sadly they usually can not answer that question. They know they want something online, something quick. They want something that provides immediate feedback, either inexpensively or for free. But, they rarely have focused in on a purpose, on what they want to learn through the “assessment.”

Sometimes I hear, “To give our people a profile of themselves—a profile of their style that tells them who and how they are.” The assumption is that, by understanding ourselves via this hypothetical quick, online, inexpensive or free assessment, we will immediately (almost magically) become empowered to collaborate more effectively across cultures.

Now don’t misunderstand me: assessments and inventories can be incredibly helpful tools. We are all better served by understanding our learning styles, personality traits, and communication skills. Taking a quick online assessment can also be fun. Heck, those quizzes in the magazines can be entertaining: What kind of personality am I in the bedroom based on whether the quiz says I’m more attracted to Johnny Depp or Djimon Honsou. I had fun just writing that sentence!

However, I can’t help but feel the world is just a WEE bit out of whack when we trust a personal profile, produced by a quick survey, more than we trust our own 20, 50 or more years of experience living with and as ourselves. Profiles can be informative: they can stimulate thinking and conversation. But they are not going to, in and of themselves, improve my ability, either in the bedroom or to work cross-culturally.

What causes us to want a profile? We are by and large intelligent people. We are adults. We know ourselves. Many of us want the quick and easy “answer” because our days are so full. Many of us don’t take time for contemplation, practice, or deep meaningful dialogue—even though these are precisely the acts via which wisdom, happiness and, yes, competence are achieved.

Let’s face it: intercultural competence, like all the other important abilities in life (good parenting, sound health, even skills with technology) involves PRACTICE. We need to stay current, we need to both broaden and deepen our abilities and experience.

So, keeping in mind the importance of HOW we use assessment tools, and the importance of a regular structured practice to improve our abilities, there are a handful of “profile” tools in the cross-cultural field that I find useful. Why do I like these particular instruments? They involve or encourage the contemplation, practice and deep meaningful dialogue of which I’ve written, and that research shows is required in order to improve cross-cultural competence. Some tools I can recommend are:

  1. Cultural Detective Self Discovery: This unique product in the Cultural Detective series helps individuals to investigate their cultural identities and develop a “Personal Values Lens.” Through a structured sequence of short exercises and discussions, individuals identify their core values, the positive and negative aspects of these values, and the thinking and behavior that flows from them. They then explore how their values and behaviors may be similar to and different from those of cultural groups. This Personal Values Lens can be used in conjunction with the Cultural Detective Online system for individualized structured learning, or, better yet, with the guidance of a facilitator or coach.
  2. The International Profiler: This terrific tool by our friends and colleagues at WorldWork involves a web-based psychometric questionnaire, followed by coaching sessions, to help develop an individual’s ability to operate effectively in unfamiliar cultural contexts. Nigel Ewington has been piloting ways of combining The International Profiler (TIP) and Cultural Detective (CD), to harness the best of both. Perhaps we can ask him to do a guest post about that?
  3. Personal Leadership: This methodology offers a way of being and interacting with the world that begins from the “inside out,” one that asks people to be fully present in their lives, awake to their habitual behaviors, and willing to look at situations with “beginner’s mind.” Of particular interest in this context is the personal visioning practice. Barbara Schaetti and Heather Robinson and I have created a MashUp process aimed at leveraging the dynamic interaction possible with Personal Leadership (PL) and Cultural Detective (CD).
  4. The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), originally based on the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS), is a statistically reliable, cross-culturally valid measure of intercultural sensitivity. What I love about it is that it is developmental: great for charting individual or group progress. It can be completed online, with the assistance of a qualified administrator, and involves individualized feedback. Ideally the IDI is used as part of a process that also involves development planning and coaching.

We can have all the information in the world about ourselves, but if we do not have the courage and diligence to act on it, it is worth very little. None of the tools discussed above provides instantaneous transformation or the magic pixie dust of cross-cultural collaboration. Nor, I imagine, will they give me an evening with either Johnny or Djimon. But with ongoing, mindful practice and the guidance of a good coach or trainer, we will find worlds open to us that we might never have imagined, and we will develop the ability to collaborate more effectively across cultures—exactly what many of our clients are asking for. Each of the tools above dovetails very well with the Cultural Detective Series: TIP and IDI can help you chart progress using CD as a developmental tool, and PL helps ensure the inner work that should accompany CD use happens.

There are many more inventories, assessments and collaborative tools in the intercultural field. What are some of your favorites? How do you use them for maximum effectiveness? How do you motivate yourself and others to practice? What do you wish existed to address specific developmental needs and challenges?

A New Tool and a New Mashup on Gender Relations

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Global Gender Intelligence Assessment and Cultural Detective Women and Men
Guest post by Donna M. Stringer

Using these two instruments in combination could have ground-breaking results in the area of gender relationships in the working environment (and beyond). And if we can improve gender relations, it would be nothing less than a global revolution!

ggia_full_logoThe Global Gender Intelligence Assessment is a new online tool created by Barbara Annis and Alan Richter. It is an outstanding resource that measures gender attitudes and competence in the areas of Insight (Head), Inclusion (Heart) and Adaptation (Hands). These three constructs are combined with scores for Self, Others and World, giving you a 3 x 3 grid of nine gender-related competencies—each with interpretation and developmental suggestions. There are two versions of the assessment: one for general staff and one for leaders.

The most useful aspects of this assessment are the Interpretations and Personal Action Planning sections. These areas offer detailed, practical, and “doable” suggestions for building competencies. Many assessments provide “Developmental” suggestions that are so general that they read like “can’t we just get along.” The GGIA developmental options are different. They are well thought out and so varied that individuals from a wide range of cultural perspectives can find culturally effective and appropriate ideas to implement.

The assessment is also affordable at $11-$15/per person depending on numbers purchased. For further information contact Alan Richter.

coverWomenMenCulture Detective: Women and Men is, of course, not a new tool—it  was developed as the first non-national Cultural Detective package in 2007 and revised in 2010. One of the many advantages of CD programs is that they help people understand culture and their own responses to cultural differences. Exposing people to CDs is a developmental process: it is non-judgmental and allows participants to see the world through a different lens, shift perspectives, and identify ways to bridge the differences that might otherwise create conflict or mis-understanding. CDs take a general understanding and problem solving approach that allows cultural differences to be seen as interesting issues to “solve.” The Cultural Detective Women and Men allows people to explore gender differences in a manner that is fun but not personal. Once individuals are able to approach gender in this manner, they are ready for the next step: examining their own individual gender competencies.

Gender MUThe Gender Mashup!

As a developmental process, it would work beautifully to use the GGIA as a follow-up to the CD Women and Men. Having experienced a non-judgmental process of understanding and considering both one’s own and the “other” gender, and identifying bridging behaviors, most individuals would now be ready to complete an assessment that allows them an interpretation of their responses followed by outstanding strategies for personal development suggestions.

Regardless of one’s occupation, organization, or country, gender is a primary diversity characteristic—and one that virtually everyone encounters in life. As I have traveled and worked around the globe, virtually every organization has gender as a diversity and inclusion issue. Using these two instruments in combination could have ground-breaking results in the area of gender relationships in the working environment (and beyond)—and if we can improve gender relations, it would be nothing less than a global revolution!

Written by Donna M. Stringer, Ph.D.

Resource Review: GDI Benchmarks

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We tend to get a lot of phone calls asking us to recommend a cross-cultural assessment instrument. Usually I ask what  seems to me a very logical question: “What is it you are trying to assess?” I am then often shocked to hear that the caller is not able to answer my question!

As an organizational effectiveness practitioner I am concerned with individual and interpersonal effectiveness as well as that of the overall organization. We all live and work within systems, and if that system rewards and encourages us NOT to be cross-culturally competent, we are going to nurse burnout if we try to demonstrate and develop that skill. Organizational systems and structures need to support and reinforce individual and interpersonal competence. That is why “Global Diversity and Inclusion Benchmarks: Standards for Organizations Around the World” is one of my favorite assessment tools.

Written by Cultural Detective Global Diversity and Inclusion co-author Alan Richter, along with the very talented Julie O’Mara, the tool is available for use free of charge, though the authors ask that you submit a written request for permission (julie@omaraassoc.com or alanrichter@qedconsulting.com).

Newly updated in 2011, the 32-page booklet is based on a core model of 13 categories arranged into four key areas: Foundational Factors, Internal Abilities, External Benchmarks, and Bridging Competencies (you can already imagine how well this blends with a Cultural Detective approach!). The assessment instrument involves rating the organization at one of five levels for each of the 13 categories. Thus, it is very easy to use and educates as it assesses.

The GDI Benchmarks are based on extensive contributions from 79 experts around the world, and were developed from groundbreaking research in the early 1990s. Please contact Julie or Alan to learn more. And please share with us your organization’s progress with these benchmarks as you use Cultural Detective!

What Do You Mean?! I’ve Worked Abroad 20 Years and Score Low?!

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Image from The Vegetarian Athlete

So many of you seemed to resonate with my blog post about intercultural fitness, Tweeting it, Scooping it and passing it around the social media networks, that I thought you might be interested in a short article I originally drafted back in 2005 that uses the metaphor of an athlete to explain intercultural competence.

Developmental Intercultural Competence and the Analogy of an Athlete

Milton Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS), first published in 1986, provides a well-regarded theory about the process people go through as they learn to make sense of the complexity of cross-cultural communication. In the late 1990s after much research, an assessment for measuring intercultural sensitivity based on the DMIS was developed. Version 3 of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) is currently in use by qualified practitioners. Owners and users of the IDI have in turn used their results to revamp the DMIS into the Intercultural Development Continuum (IDC).

While such tools can be useful for measuring program effectiveness when used for pre- and post-testing, and can be hugely beneficial for individuals who want to improve their cross-cultural communication and collaboration, there are downsides. I’ve worked with career expatriates and global nomads, for example, who score quite low on the IDI. What this means is that the low-scorer may have a lot of experience, but has not yet engaged in systematic, structured sense-making of those decades of complex intercultural experience. I’ve also worked with quite a few individuals who value harmony as fitting in, and thus, on a scale that measures celebrating differences, they score comparatively low. Predictably, low scores can cause people to become focused on discrediting the instrument or rationalizing the assessment process, rather than on gaining benefit from what the results have to say.

To help learners focus on the guidance these tools can provide, I often use the analogy of an athlete. Just as athletes need multiple abilities to perform well, so do intercultural communicators. Both athletes and intercultural collaborators can use assessments to guide their performance improvement training.

Let’s say that the data on my athletic performance shows that I need increased flexibility. I dedicate several months to becoming more flexible, and then my coach tells me that I now need to shift my focus to building strength — of course while maintaining my flexibility. Months later, I may find that I need to refine my technique in order to make the most of my superior strength and flexibility. Or, I get injured, and I decide to add to my training a focus on my mental game: overcoming adversity, learning from mistakes, being fully present in the moment. Athletes thus focus on multiple abilities at different points throughout their careers in order to perform at their best.

In a similar way, the DMIS, IDI and IDC can be used to show us which issues we should focus on at a given point in time in order to maximally improve our intercultural performance. While developmental models and assessments are designed as measuring sticks or standards of comparison, their value for personal competence development is to highlight to us what competencies we should focus on building at each point in our careers in order to improve our overall performance.

Each of us has to balance the dynamic between comfort and stretch, challenge and support, growth and rest, in our own ways. Knowing what we are good at, as well as where we can improve, can help ensure we continue to develop. Using an assessment tool to gauge and target our intercultural development, in combination with a competence development tool such as Cultural Detective Online for ongoing, structured learning, is a powerful combination.