Tag Archives: multicultural society

Excellent New Classroom Tool & a Great Read!

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Book Cover

We are thrilled to announce that this award-winning volume is newly updated with application questions for each chapter and fully integrates with your Cultural Detective Online subscription! Purchase it now for your classroom or for holiday gifting.

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Perception and Deception: A Mind-Opening Journey Across Cultures, 2nd edition, by Joe Lurie, Cross-Cultural Communications Trainer, Speaker and Emeritus Executive Director of UC Berkeley’s International House

What do your experiences tell you when you’re in line behind a bald man: Is he a militant? A monk? A punk? A neo-Nazi?… Or perhaps a cancer patient?

With YouTube, tweets and fake news instantly crossing cultures without context in this time of globalization, it’s essential to understand the actual meanings and intentions behind words, images and actions that seem abnormal or provocative. In line, online and off-line, we’re meeting many more “strangers.” There’s new wisdom in the Lebanese proverb: “Every stranger is a blind man.” And so, we face an urgency to teach students and professionals far more about other cultures and give them the intercultural skills to navigate globalization’s turbulent waters. That’s why, in collaboration with Cultural Detective, I’ve greatly expanded the first award-winning edition of Perception And Deception, A Mind-Opening Journey Across Cultures.

Think globalization is bringing us closer together? Think again. With refugees crossing cultures without preparation on either side, the dangers of intercultural miscommunication are intensifying. Why do many refugees traumatized by violence find Western “talk therapy” alienating? As a Syrian refugee confided, “I can’t share my painful, humiliating stories with a stranger.” A Sudanese refugee was diagnosed “psychotic” because she seemed to be talking to herself; her Boston psychiatrist was unaware that in her world, conversing with ancestors is normal. Some French see a Muslim woman in a burkina—a full body suit—as oppressed or as a potential terrorist. Yet the woman considers her burkini liberating, because she can swim modestly. Recently, a UC Berkeley student with a Spanish last name was snidely asked when she’d return to Mexico. Her angered response, “I’m from Kansas and I don’t speak Spanish.”

To enable use of the well-received stories in the first edition as springboards for developing intercultural competence, I’ve added a broad array of interactive questions and activities at the end of each chapter in this expanded new edition, as well as a brand new chapter, “Globalization and its Disconnects—Convergence Without Context.” It focuses in large part on the spiraling misunderstandings across cultures, especially in the worlds of refugees, religion, and responses to technology.

To better cope with the disrupting forces of globalization, each chapters’ questions and activities are designed to develop and heighten cultural self-awareness and sensitivity to others, among students, individuals and groups of all backgrounds and professions. Some of the included interactive, personalized activities are available for those who take advantage of Cultural Detective‘s superb, research-based, internationally tested online platform providing access to nearly 70 packages of rich intercultural material: Cultural Detective Online; other questions are useful on their own, without a subscription.

Below is a two-minute video recorded at the Commonwealth Club of California, introducing the first edition:

May the new edition’s stories and interactive activities addressing the disrupting forces of globalization and migration offer positive paths for engaging with difference without fear and by seeing with new eyes!

For further information and reviews about the book, or to order it from Amazon, visit PerceptionAndDeception.com; and to learn more about Cultural Detective’s anytime, anywhere intercultural competence development toolbox and virtual coach visit: www.CulturalDetective.com/cdonline.

Testing an Incredible New Process

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DYF flipchart

This chart paper contains words that describe the Spanish-speaking families. The client still has that sheet up in their conference room months after the training.

Guest blog post by Bego Lozano, who has lived and worked in different countries and cultures over the past 20 years. Right now, she calls home the Bay Area of California where she focuses on mindful leadership and coaching.

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As a fan and user of both Cultural Detective® and Personal Leadership®, I was delighted to learn that there is a tool called EPIC (Essential Practice of Intercultural Competence) that combines both.

I recently used the EPIC Toolkit to design, deliver and facilitate a training for a California-based NGO that focuses on supporting those affected by Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease that currently has no cure. This NGO had a unique challenge: funding for programs aimed at Spanish-speaking families had stopped with the 2008 financial crisis and had only recently returned. Their first attempt at organizing an event had fallen short of their expectations—both their internal expectations and those of their partners. They hired me to help make sure that didn’t happen again; they wanted to get the word out about prevention and treatment in powerful and meaningful ways. I turned to EPIC.

The beauty of EPIC is that participants develop awareness into what they personally bring to their work, plus gain insight and understanding of the core values of a culture different than their own. Quite often we forget that as human beings we bring our own cultural lenses to everything we do, and understanding a situation from our own perspective only gives us, at most, half the picture.

After an EPIC training, participants become more mindful of their own values and actions—why they respond in the ways they do. They learn to appreciate the values of the different culture, and most importantly, to build bridges to work better together.

EPIC is not a one-time fix; it is a process of continuous feedback and change, a mobius strip that has space for constant improvement and nuances. It is about competence, and therefore it includes practicing relentlessly and compassionately.

Last I checked, the programs for Spanish-speaking families were doing much better: employees had implemented small and significant changes that had increased participants’ engagement and comfort and their partner’s reported meaningful improvement. People were excited about their jobs and the positive impact they can have in their communities. If you’d like to learn more about EPIC or give it a spin yourself, it is available for license and is such a value!

Certification in Oregon

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Portland-20917The summer has gotten off to a running start, that is for sure! If you’ve been wanting to get certified in Cultural Detective, to transform how you work in this world to develop intercultural competence in yourself and others, get online and register now! This approach looks at people as complex individuals with unique personalities, influenced by multiple layers of culture. Cultural Detective is practical, theoretically sound, developmentally appropriate, and immediately useful.

Tatyana Fertelmeyster will be conducting a two-day workshop between sessions at SIIC, the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication, on Thursday and Friday the 26th and 27th of July. Click here for more information, and click here to register. This is the only public certification on our calendar at this time.

Book Review: Why Travel Matters

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51Xh7kpNNhLWhy Travel Matters: A guide to the life-changing effects of travel, by Craig Storti, published by Nicholas Brealey, 2018.

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only a page.
—St. Augustine

Are you looking for a terrific graduation gift? Just published last week, this quick, thought-provoking read will encourage any beloved young adult in your life to challenge themselves to develop new perspectives and values by experiencing the world around them fully.

Why Travel Mattersis an in-depth exploration of how to ensure travel experiences transcend tourism and transform the soul. “Through the ages it has been observed that travel broadens your horizons, deepens your understanding and changes your perspective. How? What must be done when traveling to make sure these things actually happen?”

Nothing is comparable to the new life that a reflective person
experiences when he observes a new country. Though I am still always
myself, I believe I have changed to the very marrow of my bones.
—Goethe

The book is written in typical Craig Storti style: engaging prose, good humor, content based on sound concepts and theory, well explained with lots of stories and examples. I read it on one leg of my flight last week and have already purchased several copies for the graduates on my gift list.

Not a typical travel book, Storti talks to the reader about the consequences of the trip rather than the trip itself, the inner as well as the outer journey, using quotations, insights, reflections and commentary from travelers, travel writers, historians and literary masters including Mark Twain, DH Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, St. Augustine and Somerset Maugham. He reviews the history of travel, including the importance of the grand tour beginning in 16th century Europe.

He goes on to explain the rise of modern tourism in the 1840s, thanks to Thomas Cook injecting the four elements of speed, comfort, convenience and tour groups, scrubbing travel of experiences that might disturb or discomfort—and, thus, removing its transformative powers. For me, with a passion for travel, who has hired a tour guide but has yet to take a group tour, who lacks the patience to lead a group of tourists, and who values a liberal arts education heavily grounded in study abroad and cross-cultural competence, the message this book promotes is music to my ears.

They had learnt life in a different school from mine
and had come to different conclusions.
—Somerset Maugham

Storti defines tourism as escape, recreational travel during which tourists are served by locals. Tourism is relaxing; tourists see the sights. Travel, on the other hand, is arriving at a destination. Travel is educational, travelers meet with locals and are stimulated to understand.

Travelers don’t know where they’re going
and tourists don’t know where they’ve been.
—Paul Theroux

Storti weaves in recent discoveries in neuroscience and recounts powerful passages from some of the world’s greatest travel narratives to support his thesis, including the story from Saint-Exupery’s Wind, Sand and Stars of the first time the Moors realized the Sahara was a desert and so very dry compared to other parts of the world—after they’d travelled and seen their first waterfall (p. 35). The reader thus learns that impressions formed abroad change how we see home once we return. He presents and reframes basic intercultural concepts in the context of travel: “You don’t see what is in front of you; you see your brain’s perception of it” (p. 24), sharing with us how JG Farrell saw blood spatters on the pavement during his journey through India, when in reality the red he was seeing was betel juice (Indian Diary), or Storti’s own inability to identify what his eyes were seeing when he first glimpsed icebergs from the air.

Each act of seeing informs and enhances all subsequent acts;
the more we have seen, the more we are subsequently able to see.
—Why Travel Matters, p. 32

In Chapter 4 Storti provides a table of cultural dimensions, writing that travel helps “you realize most people behave logically most of the time. You may not approve of their logic… but once you realize there are reasons behind their behavior you begin to accept that it makes sense.” He does occasionally get over-zealous, in my opinion, continuing on to optimistically tell readers, “There will never be people you cannot understand.”

Knowledge of ourselves—what we at Cultural Detective call “subjective culture,” meaning knowledge of ourselves as unique individuals influenced by multiple layers of culture—gives us choice over who and how we are in this world.

One’s destination is never a place but a new way of seeing things.
—Henry Miller

Storti concludes in Chapter 5 by providing a list of eleven best practices or tips on traveling for personal growth. These include:

  1. Travel alone.
  2. Stay out of touch/off the grid; you can’t have an experience and share it at the same time, attempts at the latter diminish the former.
  3. Collect sights not sites.
  4. Secure an introduction, a friend of a friend or colleague, to provide you a look inside the life of a local resident.
  5. Frequent places where you’ll find locals.
  6. Be a regular.
  7. Get inside someone’s home.
  8. Read about the country before and during your travel.
  9. Enjoy yourself.

Why Travel Matters includes three appendices: an interesting collection of rules for travel from other authors; a selection of quotes from people who are against travel, which feels a bit out of place or forced; and a wonderful list of the world’s great travel books—several of which I’m confident you’ll want to add to your reading list. Here’s to enjoying and benefitting from the journey!

There is all the difference in the world between behaving academically,
with the intellect, and behaving personally, intimately,
with the whole living self.
Proverbs are platitudes until you have experienced the truth of them.
—Aldous Huxley

 

We Want to Get Rid of You!

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“The Power of Storytelling in Intercultural Communication”
Many thanks to Joanna Sell, a certified Cultural Detective facilitator, for this terrific guest blog post. Be sure to check out her new intercultural storytelling blog at http://www.interculturalcompass.com/blog/.

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DOD

It was early autumn when Martin, a German project leader, relocated to Mexico. At the beginning of his assignment he was very excited about the new challenge and curious about the host culture. His only concern was the fact that he was an introvert.

Every day before going to his company he threw a coin and “played heads or tails”. When he saw heads he would talk to the very first employee he encountered on his way. While seeing tails he would breath a sigh of relief that he did not have to “jump over his shadow” to practice small talk. Nobody knew about his habit and his team members were quite puzzled by his behavior, seeing that he did not talk to them as often as had their former leaders.

Pretty soon even those who had been very talkative at the beginning of Martin’s assignment limited their exchanges with him to the minimum. His assignment became challenging and Martin could not help feeling excluded, not only in the professional context but also in private life. Actually, he almost had no private life at all. Spending extra hours at work in the evening and during weekends resulted in isolation amidst a crowd of smiling faces in Mexico.

One late October morning, shortly after arriving at the office, Martin noticed a colorful skull made of sugar on top of his desk. He closed the door and slowly sat down. He remained frozen for half an hour or longer. He noticed that his colleagues barely spoke to him. Seeing the skull, he got terrified that they most probably wanted to get rid of him.

What happened next?

When Katrin Sihling—a dear colleague of mine from the Munich area who was raised by her Mexican mom and her German dad in South Germany—finished the story and asked that question, everyone in our group at Jena University smiled. Someone hurried with a possible explanation: “People in Mexico celebrate November 1st with parties to commemorate their ancestors and give one another sweet skulls to highlight the festive character of this feast”.

Listening to that explanation I sketched the following concluding scene in my head: Luckily, Elena, one of Martin’s team members, originally from Switzerland, entered his office and got concerned when she saw Martin’s pale face and absent gaze. When he indicated towards the skull without saying a word, she immediately noticed the cultural misunderstanding. It was she who had put the colorful sugar skull on his desk, as she did every year for all the people in their department. She explained the symbolic meaning of the sweet skull and asked Martin whether he wished to join the Mexican part of her family in celebrating El Dia de los Muertos.

That day both of them learned something new: not to take the world of obviousness (their world of obviousness) for granted, but to ask for new meanings instead.

The power of the storytelling approach in the intercultural context lies exactly in this attitude. Exchanging stories across cultures enhances curiosity and redirects attention from a focus on general, simplified assumptions and towards sense making and re-narrating the world of obviousness; that’s why the Cultural Detective Method is built around stories! Every critical incident in our series is a true story, sometimes a combination, involving real people in real situations.

“Culture is a set of stories that we enter” (Jerome Brunner) and exchanging facts and data about cultures without exchanging stories is a dead-end street.

“It is the stories we share with each other that help us to overcome cultural conflicts, cope with transition stress, and shape how we perceive the past and see the future. Thanks to an exchange of stories we become able to rethink our assumptions and change our behavior. Changing behaviors definitely requires mindfulness in order to recognize which behaviors are inappropriate and which are desirable in different cultural contexts.

To sum up why we need storytelling in the intercultural context, I would like to offer a short list (instead of a story) that includes the following issues:

  • Storytelling suppports zooming in and out effects and, therefore, enables perspective change.
  • Storytelling allows the discovery of cultural roots from multiple perspectives.
  • Storytelling offers insights into the complexity of multicultural identities.
  • Storytelling can be an eye-opener in new cultural surroundings.
  • Storytelling adds the emotional layer to the cognitive level.
  • Storytelling serves as a means of transmitting cultures.
  • Storytelling deals with new stories of belonging.
  • Storytelling initiates change processes.
  • Storytelling serves as sensemaking.
  • Storytelling moves hearts.

Sell, J. (2017): Storytelling for Intercultural Understanding and Intercultural Sensitivity Development in: Chlopczyk, J. (ed.) Beyond Storytelling. Springer Gabler, pp.234-235.

Made you curious? Please find more about the storytelling approach in the intercultural context with a focus on choice biographies and identities in flux, coping with the danger of a single story, new stories of belonging and a hands on compilation of storytelling methods that can be applied in intercultural programs in two of my chapters published in following books:

Sell, J. (2017): Storytelling for Intercultural Understanding and Intercultural Sensitivity Development in: Chlopczyk, J. (ed.) Beyond Storytelling. Springer Gabler.

Sell, J. (2017): Segel hoch und auf zu neuen Ufern – Eine Reise durch die Welt der Storytelling-Methoden im unterkulturellen Kontext in: Schach, A. (ed.) Storytelling. Geschichten in Text, Bild und Film, Springer Gabler.

Le « Bridging » 

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I hope you’ll join Catherine Roignan and myself in the heart of Paris on 18 November for this terrific one-day, bilingual workshop! English follows the French.

Atelier le samedi 18 novembre 2017 de 9h30 à 17h30
Hotel Normandy, 7 rue de l’Echelle – 75001 Paris
Animé par Dianne Hofner Saphiere et Catherine Roignan
Organisé par SIETAR France

Le « Bridging » : méthodes et techniques pour faciliter la coopération
au-delà des différences culturelles

Savoir « créer des ponts » entre personnes ou groupes culturellement différents, les mettre en situation et en capacité de communiquer et coopérer de façon efficace : c’est à la fois une nécessité et un but pour de nombreux chefs d’équipe, que ce soit en entreprise, dans les administrations ou les ONG.

Le « bridging » est aussi l’objectif ultime du travail interculturel : si on apprend à remettre sa propre culture en perspective et à se familiariser avec la culture de l’autre, c’est précisément pour parvenir à construire ce pont sur lequel se rencontrer.

Mais comment s’y prend-on concrètement? Comment les managers et les professionnels de la formation et du conseil peuvent-ils favoriser la synergie des efforts et des équipes internationales?

Le Cultural Detective® « Bridging Cultures » capitalise sur l’expertise existant désormais dans ce domaine : compétences, activités, grilles d’analyse, bonnes pratiques pour faire évoluer les esprits et les pratiques, issues d’expériences dans différentes organisations dans le monde.

Dans cet atelier dynamique et participatif, vous apprendrez comment :

  • Renforcer votre capacité personnelle à « faire le pont » avec des personnes différentes de vous
  • Prévenir et surmonter les blocages dans la communication
  • Adapter votre stratégie de « bridging » à des contextes particuliers
  • Identifier des mesures concrètes permettant de faciliter la coopération entre groupes culturellement divers.

Vous serez amenés à expérimenter vous-mêmes plusieurs exercices du Cultural Detective® « Faire le pont entre les cultures », de manière à pouvoir ensuite les transposer dans vos groupes et organisations.

L’atelier sera bilingue, en français et en anglais.

Programme de la journée :

9h30      Qu’est-ce que le « bridging » ? Présentation de la problématique
10h30    Compétence 1 : Identifier son attitude personnelle face au « bridging »
11h30    Pause café
11h40    Compétence 2 : Prévenir et surmonter des blocages de communication
13h         Déjeuner libre
14h15     Compétence 3 : Analyser les contextes d’intervention
16h         Pause café
16h15     Compétence 4 : Identifier des mesures concrètes et adaptées pour créer des
ponts
17h15     Conclusion, retours des participants et pistes pour action.

Registration: http://sietarfrancecongres.com/events/le-bridging-un-atelier-propose-par-dianne-hofner-saphiere-et-catherine-roignan/

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Bridging Cultural Differences: Methods and Techniques to Create Cooperation that Leverage Differences

18th November 2017 from 9.30 am to 5.30 pm
Hotel Normandy, 7 rue de l’Echelle – 75001 Paris
Facilitated by Dianne Hofner Saphiere and Catherine Roignan
Organized by SIETAR France

To build a bridge between culturally diverse persons or groups and develop the environment and ability to communicate and cooperate efficiently: that’s both a necessity and a goal of many team leaders in organizations worldwide.

Bridging is also the ultimate goal of any intercultural work: learning to put our own culture in perspective and learn about the other’s cultures is part of the process.

But how to do this concretely? And how can managers and training and consultancy professionals best support the synergy of efforts and teams, so that differences become assets ?

Cultural Detective Bridging Cultures capitalizes on the now-existing expertise of intercultural bridging practices in different organisations around the world. It identifies key competencies, offers activities, grids for analysis and best practices to help mindsets and habits evolve and to create cooperation.

In this dynamic and interactive Cultural Detective®Bridging Cultures workshop you will learn how to:

  • Reinforce your personal ability to communicate and bridge with different people.
  • Prevent and overcome blocking situations.
  • Adapt your bridging strategy to specific contexts.
  • Explore different techniques to foster cooperation between culturally different groups.

This workshop will leverage select exercises from Cultural Detective® Bridging Cultures so that you can replicate them in your work, communities and organizations. You will leave the workshop with practices you can implement immediately as well as extensive handouts.

The workshop will be facilitated bilingually in French and English.

Program of the day :

9.30 am                               What is « bridging » ? Definition and issues at stake
10.30                                    Key Competency 1 : Self-awareness and bridging mindset
11.30                                    Coffee Break
11.40                                    Key Competency 2 : Overcoming blocking situations in
communication
1 pm                                     Open Lunch
2.15 pm                                Key Competency 3 : Contextual analysis
4 pm                                     Coffee Break
4.15                                       Key Competency 4 : Generating bridges
5.15 – 5.30                           Conclusion, feedback and tips for action

Registration: http://sietarfrancecongres.com/events/le-bridging-un-atelier-propose-par-dianne-hofner-saphiere-et-catherine-roignan/

Focus on Responsible Tourism

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We greet hundreds of thousands of national and international visitors each year on the west coast of México where I live. For years I have promoted cultural and religious tourism to the State Secretary of Tourism, trying to encourage travelers to get beyond the beer and beaches to experience a bit of the “real Mexico.”

Recently, a colleague in Milan, Maura di Mauro, told me about a special film track she coordinated in May at the SIETAR Europa Congress in Dublin entitled, Focus on Responsible Tourism. She cautioned me about how the culture of Mursi villagers in Ethiopia was changing due to tourism. Thanks to an influx of camera-toting tourists willing to pay for photos, the villagers increasingly exaggerate their traditional practices and even falsely embellish them, to make them more attractive to visitors. She also told me about Chinese tourists descending en masse on a small village in The Netherlands. Many of the Dutch residents welcome the added economic boost such international tourism provides, but there are also downsides to such tourism and, again, changes to the host culture.

Maura got me excited and I can not WAIT to view these two films!

The first documentary Maura told me about is called “Framing the Other” by Ilja Kok and Willem Timmers  (25 min, English and Mursi with English subtitles, €445 for the film in an educational package with guide and readings on tourism’s impact).The Mursi tribe lives in the basin of the Omo River in the south of the east African state of Ethiopia. The women are known for placing large plates in their lower lips and wearing enormous, richly decorated earrings. Every year hundreds of Western tourists come to see the unusually adorned natives; posing for camera-toting visitors has become the main source of income for the Mursi. To make more money, they embellish their “costumes” and finery in such a manner that less of their original authentic culture remains. The film contrasts the views of Mursi women and those of Dutch tourists preparing for a meeting. This humorous and at the same time chilling film shows the destructive impact tourism has on traditional communities. The film screening was followed by a Q&A with producer Ilja Kok. A preview follows:

The second film is called “Ni Hao Holland: The Chinese are coming” by Willem Timmers (25 min, Mandarin and Dutch with English subtitles, €395 for the film in an educational package with slides and readings on understanding Chinese tourists). This is a documentary about Chinese tourists and their quest for the authentic Dutch experience. Cherry, the main character, has long dreamed of swapping her home city Beijing for the Dutch village Giethoorn. She has heard and read a lot about this mythical place. The day arrives that she and her friend hop on the plane in search of adventure. In the meantime, entrepreneurs from Giethoorn work hard behind the scenes to cater to this “Holland experience.” They want to make the most of the fast-growing flow of Chinese tourists to their village. How is this authenticity created by some and experienced by others? Below is a preview:

Maura also curated a third film for the festival at SIETAR Europa: “Holi-days” by Randi Malkin Steinberger (50 min). If you’re interested in tourism and its impact on culture, it looks very worthwhile.
Why do we visit pilgrim’s places, art capitols and tourist’s paradises en masse? Traveling from Jerusalem via Florence to Las Vegas, Steinberger takes the answers to these questions to an increasingly general plane. In Jerusalem (welcoming three million visitors a year) we see tourists visiting the holy places, buying souvenirs, and putting themselves through torments that Jesus Christ once endured. What they are looking for is elucidated in short statements by pilgrims, tour operators, church leaders, guides, scientists, and souvenir vendors. All these opinions put forward a few basic ideas: tourism and commerce overgrow religion, and sacred places and objects give people the feeling that they are part of some higher order. We could look at Florence in the same way, where annually six million tourists drink in the best of Renaissance Art. The street interviews allow the same conclusion as in Jerusalem: people feel dumbfounded and overwhelmed. The countless tourists and the massive trade in souvenirs “have turned the city into a congealed moment in time.” The climax of this film journey is reached in Las Vegas. In this city, 36 million people a year enjoy replicas of famous cities and monuments, cinematic reconstructions of historical moments, spectacular shows, and dazzling gambling palaces. Here, the reality, which people also look for in Jerusalem and Florence, is better and more typical (and even more soulless) than in reality.

Early Bird Rate Closing Soon!

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cdfc-grad-5You have two more chances in 2017 to become certified in the use of Cultural Detective. The early-bird rate for the certification in San Diego ends 30th September!

  1. logo-1.jpg
    San Diego, USA, 21-23 October 2017
    Post-conference workshop of the SIETAR USA Conference. Profits benefit SIETAR USA.
    REGISTER OR FIND MORE INFORMATION HERE
  2. logo.jpg
    Vienna, AUSTRIA, 23-25 November 2017
    Sponsored by and with profits benefitting SIETAR Austria, this is a lower price than normal, so take advantage!
    FIND MORE INFORMATION HERE
    REGISTER VIA SIETAR AUSTRIA

Below are some comments from participants in previous Certification Workshops:

  • “Excellent, customizable tools will help me effectively address and restore my clients’ problems.”
  • “Cultural Detective helps me be a better manager.”
  • “This will assist me greatly in building partnerships in other organizations and with newly arrived communities.”
  • “We will roll Cultural Detective out across the organization to develop a shared model and language for leveraging our differences.”
  • “A teachable model that is a simple approach to a complex subject.”
  • “This helps me to better work with some co-workers and not be so quick to get angry or criticize, which is rarely productive.”
  • “Cultural Detective provides the structure and process for the deliberate intent required to understand others from their point of view and collaborate with them.”
  • “CD helps me see a clearer picture and find resolutions when I’m dealing with complex, sensitive issues.”
  • “Cultural Detective is an excellent conflict resolution tool.”
  • “CD has given me a greater understanding of the way people tick and the tools to recognize them. It’s a way to handle issues that makes sense!”
  • “I will use Cultural Detective with our international students as well as during our department training. It changes mindsets.”
  • “Cultural Detective opens doorways to more effective design and learning.”
  • “CD transforms team productivity.”

We very much look forward to having you join us and to helping us develop intercultural competence for enhanced respect, understanding, collaboration and justice in this world!

Free and Effective Intercultural Assessment Instruments

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The Freebies page of our website contains a plethora of downloads and resources we hope you’ll use. Today I’d like to focus your attention on one small portion of that page: Assessment Instruments.

There are, fortunately, loads of terrific intercultural assessment instruments on the market today. The instruments that we share do not compete with those but, rather, fill a different niche. There are just four of them, but they are important, IMHO.

  1. First, and most important, is the Diversity Collegium’s Global Diversity and Inclusion Benchmarks. With contributions from 95 Expert Panelists including me, this complimentary download is a tremendous resource for any organization or community aiming to improve the quality and caliber of its diversity and inclusion.
  2. Second, but also of great interest to our community, are the two Cultural Detective Competence Assessments. These tools are still in beta-testing and require your use and refinement, please! If you use Cultural Detective and would like to conduct pre- and post-tests to verify how well your learners have integrated the methodology into their daily thoughts and habits, give these instruments a go. And be sure to provide us your feedback and improvements/refinements!
  3. The final assessment tool is a quiz on world maps. It could be useful in training, or for your personal professional development. Maps obviously reflect the world views of their creators, and this quiz is aimed to help users realize that.

There are loads of other complimentary resources available from our site. Please put them to good and frequent use! Together we can make a difference, promoting respect, collaboration, innovation and justice.

Become a Certified Facilitator

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Register now to learn to use Cultural Detective’s robust and personally customized online system to improve intercultural competence in your communities, organizations and teams—bridging the issues that polarize our societies and leveraging differences as assets.

We have two upcoming workshops, one in San Diego USA in October and the other in Vienna AUSTRIA in November. Proceeds from both events will support the respective SIETAR (Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research) organizations. You will leave the workshop with a developmentally-sound set of tools in your hands and the knowledge and skill to use them. You will form meaningful, long-lasting relationships with leading professionals. And, as a certified facilitator, you will receive a 10% discount when you license our printed materials, a listing on our website, and one-month access to Cultural Detective Online.

Below is the flyer from SIETAR Austria, and following that is a video from SIETAR USA:

CD Vienna 2017 p1CD Vienna 2017 p2

Click on the link to learn more or secure your seat now.