Tag Archives: Cross-cultural

Lockdown as an Immigrant Simulation

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Lionel Laroche, co-author of Cultural Detective Canada, is sought-after for his expertise and insight at helping new Canadian immigrants find jobs that use their expertise, education, and experience. He is a popular speaker, educator, author, and consultant. Recently he said to me, “Nearly half of our planet is in lockdown and they are participating in a giant simulation of an immigrant experience.”

Say again? I must admit that until Lionel said this, I hadn’t given a second thought to the parallels between “shelter at home” mandates and the immigrant experience. But he is most definitely on to something! I recently chatted with Lionel about this topic, and share with you the video of that conversation.

The pandemic has meant that rules have changed. At first no one was quite sure what the rules were or how to abide by them. New guidelines for the new reality have to be agreed upon, just as they do in multicultural teams, and we have to teach these new practices so that we can succeed together. We frequently hear both those sheltering at home and immigrants say things like:

  • “I’m missing ____ (my favorite meal/my friends and family).”
  • “I can’t ____ (eat out, exercise, go to the movies or a concert).”

Gratefully such needs can result in new and wonderful innovations: online concerts, museum tours, and celebrations with friends and family, to name just a few.

Many of those at home now are either not working or are doing so with diminished hours, earning less than they are used to. What immigrant hasn’t experienced unemployment or under-employment? Talk about taxing one’s creativity; try putting a meal on the family table without an income.

Immigrants and those sheltering at home go through a transition process, a learning and adaptation process. Change—living with what is new and different—can bring on anxiety, lack of confidence, and the loss of feeling competent. Both immigrants and those confined to home experience culture shock. We have had to learn new vocabulary and new ways of connecting during physical distancing. For many, it’s been their first time on Zoom or Google Hangout. Before we left home, or before we became confined to home, we didn’t know we’d need to learn so much, or that so many aspects of our lives would change so quickly and perhaps permanently!

We try to find or create a new rhythm, a new comfort zone within this new reality. None of the rules by themselves are showstoppers, but there are so many to learn that there is a loss of personal efficiency. As an immigrant, I knew the codes back home, but not here,  not during the pandemic. In my former life I may have been a highly respected professional. But now, it may take me five times as long to do something from home as it would have taken me to do that back at my workplace. It’s frustrating. It’s a constant learning curve. It brings frequent doubt, second-guessing, and can lead to irritability. Thus, we have seen heartbreaking increases in domestic violence and mental health problems.

Immigrants who are technical professionals may think their work is universal; science is science, math is math. They may think they are doing a good job, as measured by their home country standards, but in their newly adopted home they use different criteria to measure performance. The experience is quite similar for those working during stay-at-home orders. So many are learning the new rules of working remotely: how to dress appropriately, how to check in with the boss remotely, how to partner with their team across physical distance, how to teach online. Some of us adapt while kicking and screaming, others grin and bear it, still others rejoice at the opportunity.

What Can We Learn From the Migrant Experience to Help Us Through Survive COVID-19?

Lionel shared with us five characteristics that make the difference between successful and unsuccessful immigrants. Most of these are also among the twelve Cultural Detective Best Practices. Here is his list:

  1. Drive: Keep trying, don’t give up. We may be overwhelmed in many ways from Skype, FaceTime, MS Meetings, to shops closed so we have to order delivery from groceries and restaurants. It can seem to be more than we can manage, but we need to find our groove, maintain our mental health, and keep going.
  2. Adaptability: Those who drive without adaptability are those who keep sending out the same resume even though they had no response the first 300 times they sent it. We all do this; insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Some of us pick up more quickly than others. Adaptability keeps us happier and more successful.
  3. Positive attitude: Easier said than done; we all have down days. How we complain also varies by culture. In Canada, Lionel tells us, you can complain endlessly about the weather; otherwise, you best keep complaints to yourself. The wise will find emotional outlets with family, friends, or a counselor.
  4. Sense of ownership: We can’t do anything about the virus, but we can manage how we respond to our circumstances. Those with a sense of ownership will learn or do something new during quarantine and come out stronger on the other side.
  5. Ability to see the world in shades of grey vs. black and white: When people move from one country to another, feeling that there is one right way of doing things is a recipe for disaster. Culture, by definition, means there is more than one way to get to the same result.

I asked Lionel if he has any advice for diversity and equity professionals, interculturalists, and social justice practitioners during this pandemic. He shared two thoughts:

  1. Don’t start from the premise that diversity is inherently good and will bring good results. Diversity is a double-edged sword that brings benefits and challenges. The challenges come first and the benefits later. For the average front-line manager, diversity is a pain in the butt. We need to give our customers the benefit of the doubt the way we teach them to do. Intercultural competence is needed to harvest the advantages of diversity.
  2. There is an inverse correlation between unemployment and people’s ability to accept differences. The higher the unemployment rate, the less people accept immigrants on a societal level. People’s ability to welcome and be inclusive diminishes. Thus, professionals need to recognize where people are and deal with it, meet them there. The pandemic has aggravated so many societal inequities and injustices.

Please, share with me in the comments similarities that you see between these two experiences. How might we reflect on our pandemic experience and use to to build empathy and understanding of the immigrant experience? How might we use this opportunity to develop our intercultural competence?

Learning from Culture in Our Responses to COVID-19

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Please help me credit the creator of this image.

The COVID-19 pandemic is uniting our planet as well as dividing it in powerful ways. Many of us now share the common experiences of travel bans, hand washing, masks, quarantine, job loss or working from home, and economic uncertainty. Many of us are worried, trying our best to stay positive, doing constructive projects around the house, including exercise to stay in shape and online classes. Neighbors are reaching out to neighbors in life-affirming ways, making sure disadvantaged children and elderly shut-ins get sustenance and feel cared for, singing and playing with one another across balconies. We’ve had the privilege of enjoying gorgeous online concerts from some of the world’s best performing artists, playing in unison from the privacy of their homes directly into ours through the wonders of technology. “Light it Blue” united much of our world to thank healthcare workers and essential service providers.

Those who were already marginalized before the coronavirus due to our inequitable systems are suffering horribly now: the homeless, those barely subsisting in “normal” times, those without access to healthcare, those without internet to keep them connected or rooms in which to isolate people infected. Racial disparities show horrifying differences in survival rates, and many nations’ deplorable treatment of migrants and indigenous communities has had negative repercussions during the pandemic. Many disbelieve, convinced COVID-19 is a hoax, accusing politicians and the media of over-hyping the situation. We’ve all received loads of life-threateningly dangerous fake news, rumors and home remedies in our cell phones. Click on any photo to enlarge it or view a slideshow.

We’ve witness amazing international collaboration on scientific research, testing and vaccine preparation. And, we’ve also seen horrible competition for medical equipment. Open Government Partnership members are sharing best practices worldwide in an effort to help others. It seems the crisis has brought out both the best and the worse, magnifying what works and what’s broken in our society. Will the pandemic finally wake us up so that we work to build a more equitable future? Or, heartbreakingly, will our enterprise and our governments use it as a distraction to take further advantage of the marginalized?

Countries worldwide have had broadly differing responses to COVID-19 ranging from eradication (Taiwan) to containment (Australia) and extremely centralized authority (China) to trusting individuals to make the best decisions (Sweden). I recently read that the six countries with the most effective responses to the pandemic thus far (Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, and New Zealand) are all led by women! And that article doesn’t include the East Asian poster child—Taiwan, also led by a woman. Most credit these nations’ proactive decision making, persistence, meaning making, swift action, empathy building, coordinated efforts, and the fact that they were better prepared in terms of medical care and protective equipment (check out the Cultural Detective Women’s Values Lens and you might get some clues as to why).

LayeredLenses_1024EXERCISE
I’ve collected artifacts (posters, videos, slogans, images) from our worldwide response to the pandemic, and urge you to log into Cultural Detective Online, bring up the Values Lenses for the cultures in question, and use those values to help decipher the cultural influences at play in the messaging you see in this article. Osnat Lautman wrote an article on Israeli values and response to coronavirus that may give you an idea how to connect values to behavior.

To begin, I think it could be helpful to work with a collection of Chinese posters on COVID-19 with English translations. Focusing on one national culture as a first step will be an easy way to get started. Read the posters below and think about the underlying values at play in these attempts to motivate citizens. Then, use the Cultural Detective China Values Lens to help you go deeper.

Every nation, of course, has huge cultural diversity: regional, ethnic, socio-economic, gender, generational… Once you’ve analyzed the messaging from a national cultural viewpoint, pull up a complementary Cultural Detective Values Lens for gender, generation, sexual orientation, or spiritual tradition and see how someone with those values might respond to the messaging. And, remember, each of us are unique individuals, with multiple layers of cultural influences on our behavior.

SOCIAL DISTANCING
While social distancing has been nearly a universal response to COVID-19, the distance seems to vary between one and two meters depending on location. How that distance is communicated, however, can vary widely by culture. The goal of such posters, of course, is to grab attention and stick in the memory. The culture of National Park users in the USA and the culture of bicyclists and runners  have also been affected by news of how the virus can spread in one’s slipstream, as you’ll see in a couple of the posters below.

POSTERS
That trend continues across other official COVID-19 messaging. While most governments encourage citizens to wash their hands frequently, use antibacterial gel, cover their sneezes and coughs, stay home, and not touch their faces, how those messages are communicated does vary by culture. Most attempt to find a balance between calm, instructive encouragement and a sense of urgency about the seriousness of the situation. Some posters use cartoons, others simple symbols, others data and facts. What cultural similarities and differences do you note in the posters below?

Edmonton, Canada
Government of India
Italy leading up to the crisis
Italy lockdown announcement
Japanese Government
Government of South Africa
Public signage in South Korea
Taiwanese PSA
National Park Service, USA

MUSIC VIDEOS
Quite a few nations have put out catchy tunes to inform the public how to stay safe during the pandemic. One of the most popular, with nearly 40 million views, is Vietnam’s Ghen Cô Vy—which equates the coronavirus to a troublemaker who jealously tries to break up a couple. The song even inspired a dance challenge on social media app TikTok. The cute animation includes a bit of national pride, with an animated Vietnamese flag waving with the words: “Vietnam is determined to beat this disease.”

One of my favorites is a music video performed by the employees of Bangkok’s BTS Skytrain:

Below is Philippines’ very popular song about coronavirus. I sadly couldn’t find a version with English subtitles; if you do, please let me know and I’ll substitute it in.

My absolute favorite, however, is Bobi Wine and Nubian’s effort to help fellow Ugandans. In a true spirit of collaboration, they’ve openly licensed the track, encouraging musicians worldwide to “sing our song in your language and for your people!”

Speaking of music videos, we can’t forget Bollywood. Muskurayega India (India Will Smile) has 10 million views on YouTube.

Iranian comedian Danial Kherikhan wins my award for world’s best hand washing technique:

What culture-specific values and behaviors do you see in the videos above? Which are you attracted to and why? Most probably, it resonates with one or more of the values you hold dear. Which video disinterests you the most? Again, that probably tells you something about your personal and cultural values. Open your subscription to Cultural Detective Online, go to the Self Discovery package, and create a Personal Values Lens.

MASCOTS
In Mexico where I live, people greet with big bear hugs and kissing. It’s incredibly rude not to properly greet or take leave, so the national government came up with an inspired campaign to give people permission not to greet.

susana-distancia-conecta_2.jpg

Once the cartoon superhero called “Susana Distancia” (translates to “your safe distance”) came on the scene, it very quickly became common for Mexican friends to hold up their arms or pucker their lips from a distance and refer to Susana. Intercultural competence is crucial in our world today, and particularly so during a crisis, when the difference between engagement and disengagement can mean life and death.

MASKS
One of the most visible cultural differences in response to COVID-19 has been in the wearing of masks. East Asians have a tradition of wearing masks during illnesses and to protect against pollution, while most of the West has been much slower to adopt this practice. The Czech Republic mandated the wearing of masks in public on March 18th; their results no doubt have helped other western nations to adopt the practice. Face masks first made it to fashion runways in China in 2014, and masks were well represented this year at Paris Fashion Week. It is interesting to watch cultural resistance fade and behavior change in such a large and important way. 

Many of us have not only learned to wear masks, but we’ve also picked up new vocabulary during this crisis, via the popularization of words such as “PPE/Personal protective equipment” and the recycling of valuable-yet-neglected terms like “common good.” Many of us have also re-learned elementary and middle school biology lessons about the difference between a bacterium and a virus and how to kill them.

TECHNOLOGY: HELP LINES, APPS, QUIZZES AND COORDINATED MEDIA

Many communities leveraged technology to help citizens. We have seen apps for COVID-19 tracking, quizzes to help diagnose, telephone helplines, and united messaging across newspapers, radio and television and, in Latin America at least, across countries. While the use of technology favors the higher socio-demographics and the young, public visual and performance art are much more inclusive (at least before we isolated at home, if we have one).

STREET ART
Street artists around the world have pitched in to help get the word out. Street performances, visual art, and the songs mentioned above are particularly helpful with largely illiterate populations, but I believe if we researched it a bit, we’d find the multi-sensory learning advantages of these methods work well everywhere. I especially loved this collection of beautiful images from Senegal:

In Indonesia a youth drama troupe took to the streets to scare citizens into staying home.

COMMUNITY-SPECIFIC MESSAGING
The differing histories and heritages of our world populations mean that cultural communities have to tailor their responses to the pandemic. Native Americans, for example, suffered germ warfare not so very long ago. This latest virus resurrects that inter-generational trauma, and has led to responses ranging from connecting with tradition to innovative world-class field hospitals.

Ashley Lawrence and her sign language-friendly masks
Response to COVID from a Diné/Navajo community member

CREATIVITY AND CITIZEN INVOLVEMENT
A crisis brings out creativity and innovation as we’ve seen in India where, after suspending operations of the world’s fourth largest train system and the country’s biggest employer, they are converting train cars into temporary hospitals. Graphic artists have pitched in, creating pieces to help spread awareness and save lives. Weiman Kow created “comics for good” and opened them up to the public for translations. Germany held a hackathon to generate ideas for improving pandemic response. And Ireland’s public health service has made posters available in multiple languages.

I have said since the beginning that COVID-19 is Mother Nature’s way of putting us in timeout so she can clean her air and give her animals and plants a respite. Sure enough, we are all enjoying gorgeous video of clean water in rivers (the Ganges runs clear and some say it’s again drinkable!), lakes and ocean beaches, clear skies over normally grey, polluted cities, and wild animals (elk, fox, boar, deer, even wolves) strolling through the streets of towns and cities where they haven’t been seen sometimes in hundreds of years! One sad reality, though, is an abundance of single-use masks and latex gloves in our waterways.

There are so many cultural universals and cultural differences on display right now, as our world faces a shared enemy in a small but lethal virus. Will we learn from the time many of us have had to reflect, and change our behavior going forward? Will we act as better stewards of our environment? Will we act to create more equitable systems in which all are fed, housed, educated and receive medical care? I sure hope so! We are in this together, we share one planet, everyone’s participation and expertise is crucial, and collaboration is our future.

CD Certification in Mexico in January!

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DSC_4549You have asked for this. Repeatedly. “Help us get out of the snow, cold, and grayness of winter” for some terrific intercultural professional development. A Cultural Detective Facilitator Certification Workshop will be held January 16-18, 2020, in my hometown for the past 12 years—Mazatlán, México.

Mazatlán is home to gorgeous tropical colonial architecture, world-class seafood, dozens of miles of pristine beaches, a seven-mile oceanfront promenade, an historic lighthouse with crystal bridge, and some of Latin America’s best opera, ballet, and modern dance.  Located at the mouth of the Sea of Cortés, you can watch whales doing acrobatics, dolphins and manta rays jumping, huge colonies of tropical birds, and witness some of the world’s most dramatic sunsets. Mazatlecos or “salty feet” (patasaladas) are some of the most outgoing, friendly, and inclusive people you will ever meet. Click on any photo to enlarge it or view a slideshow.

 

I rarely facilitate these workshops, but I will this time, and I hope you’ll join me to learn more about two of my favorite things: Cultural Detective and Mazatlán. Certifications are highly interactive; this one will include a project in the community to enable attendees to get to know a bit of local culture and gain a feel for its people. In addition, we will have optional morning and evening activities to make the most of the location.

Cultural Detective is one of only two process-based intercultural competence development methods, and the only one available online for ongoing learning. Groups and teams improve their ability to collaborate by working together to debrief their own real experiences and sharing their Personal Values Lenses.

These workshops get rave reviews from both highly experienced professionals and those new to the intercultural field:

  • “Cultural Detective has changed my programs from a ‘deliverer of information’ focus to that of discovery, with less pressure on myself and participants.”
  • “Better than a master intercultural workshop! Facilitator exuded training experience and intercultural expertise.”
  • “Cultural Detective has become the backbone, the design core, of almost everything I do.”
  • “Cultural Detective is so versatile: it’s useful for a variety of purposes and it can be used in so many ways. It’s broadened and deepened my repertoire of effectiveness.”
  • “Cultural Detective has enabled me to resolve counter-productive conflicts between co-workers much more effectively.”
  • “Cultural Detective is a wonderful tool! It will help any team to work better as a team.”
  • “Cultural Detective is indescribably valuable in providing directions and methodology to stimulate intercultural awareness and competence.”
  • “Cultural Detective helps me to be a better manager of my employees. It helps make my company attractive to a younger and more diverse workforce.”
  • “Cultural Detective helps me not to be so quick to get angry or criticize. It has made me much more productive.”

Clients have shown us that regular on-the-job use of Cultural Detective improves scores on the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI); one client report its staff gained two stages in just four months! Customers also tell us that use of Cultural Detective increases their bottom line:

  • One client directly attributed a 30% increase in customer satisfaction to Cultural Detective.
  • Dozens of consultants have reported sales increases as their clients continue using their subscriptions to Cultural Detective Online and then ask the consultant back for further in-depth training, consulting and coaching.

Our workshop will begin on Thursday evening from 5 – 8pm for a welcome reception and workshop. This will allow you to fly in that day, take a walk on the beach, and soak in some sunshine before joining us for sunset. Both Friday and Saturday we will meet from 9am – 5pm, and will conclude the program on Saturday with a no-host dinner and night on the town. You may fly out at your leisure on Sunday or plan to stay longer for a holiday.

Our venue is a charming smaller resort hotel right on the prime beach in the Golden Zone—Las Flores Beach Resort. Single rooms have two full size beds for 1755 pesos/night (about US$92); suites also have two beds, a guaranteed ocean view, sitting room, kitchenette, and terrace for 2539 pesos/night (about US$134). There are numerous less expensive options as well as more luxurious lodging if you prefer.

Register now to secure your early-bird reduced rate. Click here for more information, call +1-913-902-0243, or email Greg or Dianne at cd@culturaldetective.com. We look forward to working with you, and thank you for all you do to promote much-needed intercultural competence in this world of ours!

Book Review: How They Made it in America

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Fiona's bookSeven success values and the immigrant women who cultivated them by Fiona Citkin, due to publish in December 2018 by a Simon & Schuster affiliate

How They Made it in America is a welcome dose of reality amidst a very worrisome worldwide rise in nationalism and xenophobia. With 40.4 million foreign-born people living in the USA—one in every eight residents—this book is enormously important and timely, providing an inside look at the personal journeys of 18 women from five continents who emigrated to the USA.

The women interviewed represent all socio-economic origins, from some who grew up as daughters of government officials and business leaders, to those born into poverty, and everything in between. Some chose to emigrate; others’ lives depended upon doing so. Each has made her mark in disciplines as diverse as technology, development, business, education, journalism, and the arts; most of them are also philanthropists and community volunteers. The author’s choice of these specific women provides a broad and deep spectrum of experience in the book’s quick-reading 314 pages.

There are over one million foreign-born women business owners in the USA—that’s 13% of all women-owned firms in the country. This book offers an understanding of how starting a new life overseas not only changed these immigrant women themselves, but the economy and community as a whole—locally, nationally, and internationally. One woman’s impact comes from starting a company that has annual revenues of $3 billion, another developed a brand now sold at 10,000 stores in 68 countries, and another is changing the world through her micro-lending organization. We see how some immigrant women struggle to regain the status they had at home, while others begin on the ground floor and work their way up step-by-step.

Interview subjects include such well-known women as Chilean-born Isabel Allende and Ivana Trump, originally from the Czech Republic, to women I’d never heard of like social entrepreneur Alfa Demmellash from Ethiopia or Weili Dai from China, the only female co-founder of a major semiconductor company. By the end of the book most any US American reader will feel blessed to have such talented immigrants in our country!

We learn what these women love about the USA, what brought them in the first place, and what keeps them proudly living there. We gain insight about the effect immigration has on their relationships with those who stayed behind, with the children they birth in their new home, and with their American friends and colleagues. We hear about their struggles—from language, accents, and schoolyard bullying to the professional glass ceiling, assertiveness, and risk taking. Plus, we are privy to their hard-earned advice for others like them.

The author, Fiona Citkin, writes that she and her husband made the decision to immigrate because they wanted their 16-year-old daughter to “grow up in a country where she could fulfill her potential through her own efforts—not because of bribery, conformism, or her parents’ connections” (p. 7). Fiona’s first-hand experience informs the book deeply; she’s an immigrant who has had success as an academic, a corporate employee and executive, and an entrepreneur. “My own struggles in America have helped me understand what skills people need to develop in order to succeed in this U.S.—and the special set of challenges faced by immigrant women” (p. 8).

The book is divided into three parts, with two-thirds of it comprised of interviews with the women. From these interviews, Fiona distills seven “success values” that are explained in a second section, and the book concludes with an “Achiever’s Handbook” offered as a guidebook for immigrants wanting to succeed in the USA. Included is a Foreword by Cultural Detective extraordinaire George Simons and an Introduction by Carlos Cortés. The author has certainly done her research; the volume includes 15 pages of footnotes for those who wish to learn more.

Of particular interest and value to me was how the various women describe their blended culture experience. I most definitely wish I could share a copy of Cultural Detective Blended Culture with each of these women, individually and as a group! Most of the interviewees came across as “constructive marginals”—a term used to describe multicultural individuals who have integrated the positive aspects of their various cultural backgrounds into their identities.

  • “I am an eternal transplant… My roots would have dried up by now had they not been nourished by the rich magma of the past,” states Isabel Allende (Chile).
  • Verónica Montes (Mexico) tells us, “I had to reinvent my cultural practices in a different social and cultural context, and in that sense, I have consciously selected those practices that I find more significant and relevant to me. It is like becoming an orphan and needing to make your own cultural framework.” She sees herself as incorporating the best of American traits into Mexican culture, thereby enriching her world.
  • Alfa Demmellash (Ethiopia) shares with us a frequent theme among the 18 women: “I consider myself a global citizen residing in America.”
  • “Immigrants end up being hybrids with two hearts; two countries they love; two languages; and two cultures” is Ani Palacios McBride (Perú)’s take on the subject.
  • Raegan Moya-Jones (Australia) relates, “My children will be culturally richer for having parents from Australia and Chile. Life and work are all becoming more global; this is nothing but a good thing for me personally and for my children.” Her proudest achievement, like mine, is raising “respectful, unbiased, globally-minded children.”
  • Rohini Anand (India), tells us of her blended culture experience: “The U.S. is home, not India. I’m comfortable with my cultural mix and can navigate cultures comfortably. I love the sense of the extended Indian community and an associated support structure. If my family were here, it could change the whole dynamic for me.”

A couple of the interviewees, however, either shared more deeply and realistically, or perhaps have not yet found a way to make peace with the various facets of their multicultural selves. In the intercultural literature, this is called being an “encapsulated marginal.”

  • Irmgard Lafrentz (Germany), like most others, has felt her traditional values change since moving to the U.S. “I feel more American [than German], but as I get older, I long for more belonging somewhere. I am rooted neither here nor in Germany. I am not sure whether it’s possible to become totally integrated, and if it’s an emotional or intellectual issue. There is a social identity that unites all immigrants, regardless of country of origin.”
  • Elena Gogokhove (Russia), “My Russian brain does the speaking with my Russian friends and sometimes my daughter. My English brain takes over when it comes to writing. I write only in English. Like a spy, I live with two identities, American and Russian—two selves perpetually crossing swords over the split inside me. There is no bridge between the two lives.” Unlike most of the interviewees who discussed themselves as changing drastically after emigrating, Elena says, “Moving to America failed to make me a different person… Russia, like a virus, has settled in my blood and hitched a ride across the ocean.”

While references to feminism in each of the interviews are interesting, they aren’t very well-connected to anything larger and feel a bit out of place. That said, this is an interesting and remarkable work that offers valuable insight into the creativity and perseverance needed to be a successful woman immigrant in the USA. How They Made it in America would be a terrific holiday gift for friends and family, and for any immigrants you might wish to help. And, of course, the best gift of all would be to combine the book with a subscription to Cultural Detective Online!

So Proud of Our Customer!

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MSFT_logo_rgb_C-Gray_DMicrosoft India has been a Cultural Detective customer for six years, and both Heather Robinson and I are so very proud of the abilities their staff members have developed to in turn coach and develop their support engineers’ customer service skills. The entire project has been amazing—truly a privilege to be a part of it! I’d like to take this opportunity to share a bit of their “Cultural Effective” story with you.

Microsoft uses Cultural Detective to coach their large enterprise customer support representatives. In the first six months using the tool, they told us they attributed a 30% increase in customer satisfaction to Cultural Detective! Now, five years later, they know Cultural Detective inside and out, and use the CD Method when interacting with both international and domestic customers.

In March of this year Heather again traveled to Bangalore to work with the trainers, to help improve their abilities to coach using Cultural Detective. The approach she used is what we call EPIC: Essential Practice for Intercultural Competence. It is a combination of Cultural Detective, with which Microsoft has been working for five years, and Personal Leadership, which their staff have been working with for the past year or so.

The design was an inspired one. Because Microsoft has experienced facilitators who are also well-versed in Cultural Detective, Heather used these facilitators to get team newcomers up to speed, as well as to facilitate small group breakout sessions. This internal group of facilitators put together the readings, sample interviews and assignments for the three-day training. As is so wonderful when training in India, there were plenty of games, activities and laughter.

As you might imagine, one of the main challenges for the support engineers is knowing how to respond to customers’ emotions. Large enterprises rely on Microsoft products to function in highly customized ways, which often means long days of problem-solving discussions, heightened emotions and frayed nerves. The March training included the learners acting out skits of engineer-customer interactions, videotaping them, and then using the Cultural Detective Worksheet to debrief the contrasting values, and the EPIC approach to discern how to respond most appropriately. We would love to share one or two of those videos with you here, but, of course, they are proprietary.

Instead, let me leave you with a few of the notes scribed in small groups. In case you’re wondering why “Kit Kats” and “Milky Ways,” the participants chose a candy bar and then broke into groups, one of ten techniques you can find in this blog post.

If you or your organization would like to be profiled in an upcoming blog post, we would be happy to talk with you about making that happen. Just let us know. Congratulations to all the Microsoft staff, who are so committed to building intercultural competence in their organization, and to you, the Cultural Detective community, for your efforts on this same journey.

Year-end Gift from diversophy

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DiversophyMany thanks to Cultural Detective author George Simons and his colleague Wiebke Döscher, who have put together a small diversophy game about holiday food habits across cultures and traditions, and offered it free to their colleagues to play as we slip into the New Year.

Each of the zip files contains the full game of fifty cards, along with printing and playing instructions:
  1. If you are in a place where A4 is the standard size paper, download from this link:
  2. If you use US letter size paper, download from this link:

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.

We Have to Teach in Context!

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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.

Cross-cultural Competence Enhances Productivity AND Satisfaction

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Last week a new brochure, this week a new introductory presentation! Thank you all for the incredible work you do with this process and these materials, to build cross-cultural respect, teamwork, productivity and equity!!!!

Use it, pass it around, and do the good work! Thank you, everyone!

Global Teams in Theory and in Practice

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Global-TeamGuest post by Vicki Flier Hudson

I once heard a Zen Buddhist monk say that the definition of suffering is the gap between what is and what we think should be. The wider that gap, the more we experience stress. Today’s global virtual team, without the right tools, might end up spending a lot of time in that gap. Most teams want to becoming high-performing units with all individuals feeling valued, all cultures being respected, and all tasks getting completed on time. The reality can look quite different, however. In today’s taxing environment, many teams find themselves reacting to fires, completing their tasks but without the benefit of time for intentional reflection or action.

As an intercultural practitioner I’ve had the privilege of working with a variety of global teams in industries from manufacturing to finance. Many of them display similar characteristics. They are often comprised of talented individuals who appreciate cultural diversity and want to collaborate effectively. But why do few teams achieve that vision? What causes the gap between that desire to collaborate and the reality of division or confusion?

So many factors play into the health of a global team, some of which defy explanation — call it chemistry, dynamics, or magic. Some of the factors, however, are more visible. For example, I see many teams become misaligned because they do not have proper communication protocols in place. They make false assumptions about shared understanding of terms or processes which can delay projects. Cultural differences also play a significant role in the effectiveness of global teams. Team members might run into disparate cultural approaches to a project, and rather than observe the problem objectively they immediately begin jumping to conclusions and/or negative evaluations. This premature leap can cause them to chase down incorrect solutions and again delay the project. Also, the team may not take full advantage of the diverse perspectives and resources that the members provide.

How do we close this gap between the theory of a collaborative team and the practice of one? First, a global team must realize that intercultural competence is a learned skill, in some ways like welding or computer programming. Cross-cultural skills may be harder to acquire or measure, but they must be studied and practiced. Cultural Detective Online is an incredible tool for global teams to unite around and hone their intercultural proficiency.

CD Online makes it possible, for example, for teams represented in fifteen countries to come together in a virtual training room and explore several important aspects of collaboration. First, they learn to separate objective facts from their perceptions of situations. That skill alone can increase team trust dramatically. Then they learn through what lenses their colleagues might be looking, and how those values impact the outcome of a business problem. Imagine eighteen members of a global team, all online and on the phone, working through a CD Online scenario together that illuminates the values of cultures they work with every day. Everyone gets to contribute and they physically practice those vital cross-cultural skills right there in the training.

I feel a great sense of excitement about what Cultural Detective Online does to increase the effectiveness of global teams, and not just in theory. Join me and the Cultural Detective team as I walk through a case study of a virtual training designed for a global team using CD Online. This event is free and will take place April 9, 2013. To learn more about this event click here, or to register please click here.

Global teams have amazing potential. What tools have you used to get your global team to high-performance?

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Vicki Flier Hudson, speaker and Chief Collaboration Officer for Highroad Global Services, inspires people to live, work, and build teams across cultures. She has helped countless large-sized corporations establish successful operations between the United States and India or Europe. Vicki is a certified administrator of the Cultural Detective methodology and the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). She has been featured on NBC News, and many of her articles have been published in a variety of magazines.