November 24, 2024 • 62 mins
What truly makes diversity initiatives succeed in today's complex global world?
Join Marco Blankenburgh and Linda Berlot as they uncover the qualities of courage and cultural learning necessary for engaging in impactful intercultural dialogues. Their conversation navigates through the intricate layers of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) initiatives, dissecting the global hurdles these face. The episode reveals why some DEIB efforts fall short and how giants like Microsoft are rethinking their strategies to heighten cultural adaptability, specifically in regards to relationship-centric and problem-centric cultural approaches.
Cultural dynamics and intercultural relationships take center stage as we share insights on the significance of humility and forgiveness. Through a lens of personal experiences and organizational examples, we examine cultural assumptions tied to agency and hierarchy, illustrating the delicate bridge between respecting cultural expressions and maintaining authenticity. We discuss the unique challenges in developing leadership assessments that resonate universally, stressing the importance of considering cultural perspectives to avoid skewed results. With tools like the Three Colors of Worldview and the Cultural Mapping Inventory, we aim to enhance survey designs and data interpretation to better reflect organizational realities.
The discussion ventures into the realm of vulnerability in leadership, exploring how it can forge powerful connections, though its acceptance varies across cultural landscapes. We tackle the complexities of cultural sensitivity in addressing global issues and the clever adaptation required to foster meaningful change without imposing a one-size-fits-all approach. The episode invites you to embrace courage as a cultural learner, offering resources to deepen your understanding of intercultural intelligence. Special thanks to Linda Berlot and all contributors who made this enlightening exploration possible. Engage with us as we chart pathways to a more culturally agile world.
| In this episode, you will learn:
-- About creating DEIB solutions that thrive beyond an individual-accountability perspective.
-- How to acknowledge the significance of humility and forgiveness in cross-cultural spaces, especially in regards to language barriers.
-- The nuances of transparency and vulnerability in leadership among hierarchical organizations.
| Learn More about:
-- Global Leadership - How to Become a Culturally Agile Leader (https://www.knowledgeworkx.com/post/global-leadership-how-to-become-a-culturally-agile-leader)
-- Applying Cultural Agility to DEIB (https://www.knowledgeworkx.com/post/applying-cultural-agility-to-deib)
-- The Key to Unlock Success in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiatives (https://www.knowledgeworkx.com/post/the-key-to-unlock-success-in-diversity-inclusion-and-belonging-initiatives)
-- Looking for a book to take your cultural agility to the next step, check out the Ultimate Intercultural Question Book brought to you by KnowledgeWorkx.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Linda Berlot (00:00):
courage, courage to have these conversations, and
that's another quality that'snecessary, right, as well as
being a cultural learner, ittakes guts to sit in the fire
and say hold on, that'sdifferent.
Share that with me.
You know, let me suspend mystory for a moment, or let me be
humble and curious, and youknow it's brave, and so that's
(00:23):
the invitation for everybodylistening is to be brave, to
step into courage and to havethese conversations, or to say
you know what?
I don't know enough about this,let me go and find out more and
educate myself.
Marco Blankenburgh (00:51):
Welcome to the Cultural Agility Podcast,
where we explore the stories ofsome of the most advanced
intercultural practitioners fromaround the world to help you
become culturally agile andsucceed in today's culturally
complex world.
I'm your host, marcoBlankenberg, international
Director of KnowledgeWorks,where every day we help
individuals and companiesachieve relational success in
that same complex world.
(01:12):
So welcome to another episodeof the Unlocking Cultural
Agility podcast.
And the last time we were inthe studio I was with Linda
Berlotte from Berlotte Group andwe decided to continue the
conversation because there wasso much to say.
So thank you for making thetime, linda, to come back again.
(01:33):
Really appreciate it and I verymuch look forward to part two,
basically, of our conversation.
So thanks for making it intothe studio today.
Linda Berlot (01:43):
My absolute pleasure, Marco.
Thank you for inviting me back.
I absolutely enjoyed that.
We got out of the last podcast,sat down and carried on talking
and then realized we still hada lot more to say.
Marco Blankenburgh (01:53):
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, and if you
haven't had a chance to listento that first podcast where we
talked about diversity, equity,inclusion, belonging initiatives
and our perspective on thatfrom a global lens, please
listen to that episode.
But if you're jumping straightinto this one, we wanted to at
least do a mini summary of thisprevious recording and just talk
(02:19):
a little bit about the thingsthat we unpacked last time.
So there were a number ofthings related to how
challenging it is to design aninitiative in one part of the
world and then export it toanother part of the world, and
the imagery that we used waslike the elephant on the plane
(02:42):
and trying to make everybody doit exactly the same way, and
that was an issue.
Another big issue we talkedabout was related to how some
people look at problems from arelationship-centric point of
view and other people look atproblems from a problem-centric
point of view.
Maybe you could say a littlebit more about that, linda.
(03:05):
You know, just as part of thissummary.
Linda Berlot (03:07):
Absolutely.
We did explore that and weexplored how, in some cultures,
it's really important to use theright words to define an issue,
to make sure that the issue isabsolutely clearly defined, and
usually what we find is thatpeople with the best use of
language, you know, are themasters and are seen as the
owners of that issue or theexperts on defining the issue.
(03:30):
On the other side, we've gotrelationship focused people who
will deal with issues in a verydifferent way.
They prefer to focus on therelationship and then deal with
the issue.
So those are challenges thatemerge when those two different
types of people come together.
Marco Blankenburgh (03:46):
Yes, especially when, on top of that,
that starts to determine how Idesign a solution, and we'll
come back to that.
We'll have some examples ofthat.
Another thing we noticed wasthe difference between thinking
about solutions of diversityfrom an individual
accountability point of view orfrom an individual
accountability point of view orfrom a community accountability
(04:07):
point of view, and how thatchanges what we do, how we do it
, how we bring people together,how we structure the
conversations, and what we foundis that a lot of the diversity,
equity, inclusion belongingsolutions are more designed from
an individual accountabilityperspective, and that then
causes challenges, and we'lltalk about that some more.
(04:28):
Inclusion belonging solutionsare more designed from an
individual accountabilityperspective, and that then
causes challenges, and we'lltalk about that some more.
Another thing we talked aboutwas we used the language of the
three colors of worldview and welooked at some of those
solutions, and we'll give someexamples today as well, in that
a lot of the solutions aredesigned from a right-wrong,
(04:48):
innocence-guilt perspective andas a result of that, it doesn't
always work so well to thenbring those initiatives to an
honor-shame or a power-fear,more hierarchical perspective or
context, and that leads to.
One of the other things wediscussed was how can you design
solutions that are both doingright by people, that are
(05:08):
honoring people and that areempowering for all parties
involved?
Yeah, and we found that veryfew solutions actually do that
well.
So those were some of thethings we discussed.
Anything else that you thatmissed?
Linda Berlot (05:25):
Well, no, you covered that extensively.
But I think that leads us tothe why we're here.
Right, because we walked out ofthe last podcast and we thought
, well, hold on a minute.
And we realized that the reasonwhy we're here is because so
many of these DEI initiativesbeing rolled out across the
globe are not working, and we'vegot loads of examples across
(05:47):
the globe of these hugeorganizations that are either
decreasing their DEI initiativesor doing away with them.
And it doesn't minimize theimportance for DEI to be
addressed in organizations, butwhat it speaks to is the fact
that they're not working, or notworking as well as these
organizations would have liked.
Marco Blankenburgh (06:06):
Yeah, and the latest example from last
week was that Microsoft let goof their DEI team and they said
you know that their commitmenthasn't changed, but what has
been tried didn't work the waythey anticipated and, like you
said, quite a few global firmshave actually done the same.
It's to the point where, whenyou look at job postings related
(06:29):
to DEI on some of the majorplatforms between 22 and 23, it
already dropped by 44% and webelieve, when you look at 2024,
that trend will continue.
So something's shifting.
People are realizing certainthings are not working, even in
the countries where a lot ofthese initiatives are designed
(06:51):
and originate from, like NorthAmerica and Europe.
Even there, people arefrustrated.
We're saying you know, this isnot moving us forward.
And then, on top of that, wesit on the other part of the
world, in the other part of theworld, and we face even more
complex problems.
So that's what we want to talkabout today.
Linda Berlot (07:10):
I think that's right, marco.
Here today we would like tokind of name some of the issues
that may be arising and alsogive some examples and then
provide some solutions.
Marco Blankenburgh (07:22):
Sounds great , but is there?
I mean, there's so many anglesto this Is there a way to sort
of put our finger on why a lotof these things are not working?
Is there like a high levelsummary we could give, or is
that going to be next toimpossible?
Linda Berlot (07:42):
That's really a good question and I'm not sure I
have the answer for that.
I don't think there is a cookiecutter solution, so one thing
gets rolled out in one countryin one context and that it can
be cleanly rolled out into alldifferent cultures and that we
can give a solution for that.
I think that it needs a littleunpacking and we could give a
(08:07):
myriad of possible areas fororganizations to look and to
reflect on and think about andhopefully it's useful.
Yeah.
Marco Blankenburgh (08:16):
Let's.
Why don't we just dive in?
Because, ultimately, examplesare always the best way to get
going, and I don't know if youhave one ready to talk about.
Let me pass the ball to you.
Linda Berlot (08:28):
I have a list and I know you do too.
I think one of the first oneswhich might be interesting to
unpack is in some cultures,there's a lot of importance
being put on using the rightwords, and if you don't use the
right words, you are thereforewrong, You're made wrong, You're
(08:51):
judged and you're made wrong.
Well, we live in Dubai, where,you know, there are over 270
different nationalities.
English as a first language isonly a first language for a very
small minority or a smallpercentage of the population.
That means that we cannot putso much importance on unspoken
(09:12):
words.
We have to look at other thingsright when we are communicating
across cultures.
Very often in one sentence, youmight find three different
languages, and so we can'tafford to make someone wrong for
using the wrong word.
I have a great example.
Actually, I was reflecting onthis topic and went to the
pharmacy and I was asking forwhat I needed, and that was a
(09:38):
cultural conversation, becausethe person in front of me
couldn't really understand myaccent, so I was trying to
enunciate better, and next to ustwo totally different cultures
altogether.
The gentleman asks for theproduct, the product is handed
to him and he says.
He looks down and he says canyou give me a price?
So the pharmacist tells himit's 1,700 dirhams and he looks
(10:03):
down again.
He says can you give me a price?
She pulls out her calculator,puts it in a visual tick, tick,
tick shows the calculator 1,700dirhams.
He looks down again and he sayscan you give me a price?
So we're all looking at eachother and he does something
different this time With hishand.
(10:27):
He did like a shrinking or aminimizing gesture and all three
of us at the same timeunderstood aha, he's asking for
a discount, but it was notspoken to directly.
He didn't directly ask for whathe wanted and he didn't use
words to describe what he wanted.
So what we're learning is thatin a, in a multicultural
(10:49):
environment where english is notthe first language, we make an
effort to try and understandeach other.
We look at the entire context,not just words.
We listen to tone, we look atfacial expression, we look at
body language and then fromthere we really make an effort
to try and understand what'sbeing said.
What's really being said thatmay not be verbalized, and
(11:12):
that's a little different toplacing importance on words.
Marco Blankenburgh (11:16):
Yeah, so it almost shifts your relationship
with language actually.
So the world of DEIB is full oflingo and I sometimes even lose
track myself, although I thinkI'm quite informed on the
subject.
But then I hear yet anotherterm or yet another
classification, or yet anotherlabel of sorts, or another
(11:40):
unconscious bias label has, orresearch piece brings to light
yet another unconscious bias,and there are already 188 that
are documented right now.
And when that language getsintroduced, people first of all
don't understand it, but thenalso they get lost in it,
especially if English is theirsecond, third, fourth, fifth
(12:01):
language.
So being able to focus not onthe words but on the intention
is, I think, is what I hear yousay, yes, but then also being
skillful in picking up the cluesthat are not spoken.
So the full body language.
And when I moved internationallyI realized how handicapped I
(12:24):
was in picking up those otherclues, because I had grown up in
an environment where you purelyfocus on the words and the
words are the package.
And then I realized in manycultures that's not the case.
That's true.
The package is the whole humanbeing and paralinguistics is the
(12:45):
fancy term, but the up and downand the intensity and the
melody of the way it's spoken.
Super important and I was nevertrained to pay attention to
those things, so yeah.
Linda Berlot (12:56):
I think there's like a code switching.
That's important, right?
I learned that I was marriedacross to a different culture as
an italian, so we were, in thefirst year of our marriage, in
constant conflict because, as an, as an italian, whenever I felt
passionate about something orum, or I felt strongly about
something, my volume goes up.
(13:17):
But volume isn't an indicationnecessarily of anger.
It's how engaged am I, howenthusiastic do I feel about
what I am speaking about?
Anger is demonstrated with awhole lot of facial expressions
hand gestures, sometimes armgestures, body, all of this,
(13:37):
yeah.
But in my husband's culture,raising the voice indicated
anger, and we had to.
It took us a year to figure outthat we were in an
intercultural marriage and thatthis expression of anger was
different in our cultures.
Marco Blankenburgh (13:52):
Yeah, yeah now you mentioned when we
started to explore this podcast.
You mentioned that when peopledon't understand this, they
might sometimes have a tendencyto say wait a minute, you don't
understand my words or you don'tunderstand the classification
of a behavior or a dilemma thatI just used and therefore you
(14:18):
must be wrong.
And sometimes people then don'tknow what to do with that.
And sometimes people then don'tknow what to do with that.
Sometimes they might ask moreclarifying questions, but
sometimes they then project onyou you don't understand me or
you don't use the right language.
Therefore your behavior or theway you use language is wrong,
(14:40):
and I'm just wondering if you'vecome across that.
Linda Berlot (14:42):
I have come across that I work with a team that is
predominantly one culture, butthere are other cultures in the
team too, and sometimes thatdoes happen is where a
projection so a projection ofyou know you must be X, y and Z,
because X, y and Z and it feelslike the person on the
(15:05):
receiving end is being madewrong, like there is no space
for another truth to exist.
It's like a single storynarrative that you must
understand.
It doesn't allow any space forthere to be another truth, right
?
And it feels deeplyuncomfortable and and and can
create conflict, right?
(15:26):
So then you have this conflictwhere both parties feel wronged
and misunderstood and misjudgedand they sometimes miss the
opportunity to, you know, createa relational bridge, to try and
understand each other and asyou're explaining that, it it
really sounds like you know.
Marco Blankenburgh (15:46):
One of the other tools we use in our work
is identifying am I a culturallearner or am I a cultural
critic, or another way ofputting it do I have a cultural
learner mindset or do I have acultural critic mindset?
Linda Berlot (16:00):
I love that.
Marco Blankenburgh (16:01):
Yeah, talk to me how that is applicable to
what you just said.
Linda Berlot (16:03):
It's very applicable because a cultural
learner mindset is one that iscurious, assumes positive intent
.
There's a grace and aforgiveness there.
So if I'm not using the rightlanguage, someone isn't getting
triggered or finding me wrongbecause I'm using wrong
terminology.
There is a curiosity and acuriosity to try and understand
(16:25):
so that way we may meet eachother.
In that, you know, relationshipbridge, whereas a cultural
critic is more my way is the wayor the right way, and and you
are wrong, or sometimes the, thereverse right, my way is
clearly wrong, yours must beright, you know, and there's a
glorifying of that way.
(16:45):
So there's almost like a givingup of self, in a way, rather
than being open and curious andand being flexible, you know,
and having that mentality to toreally be curious and understand
your point of view, but alsonot giving up on myself, really,
because I'm not wrong for beingwho I am in all my colors, and
(17:11):
neither are you wrong for beingall your beautiful colors.
Marco Blankenburgh (17:14):
But we can build a relationship where we
can both acknowledge each otherand meet, be curious and build a
relationship from that spacethe picture that comes to mind
is is that the more complexitywe create, either through
language, throughclassifications, to unique
terminology, the more we almostdrop minds in the field and it
(17:39):
feels like that sometimes, yeah,and it becomes impossible to
really build that relationalbridge.
Linda Berlot (17:43):
Yeah, yes, also because you know, when you feel
like you step on a potentialminefield, then the very next
thing you want to do is defendyourself, and so then the walls
are down, yeah, and you're notreally in relationship anymore.
So you get this.
Marco Blankenburgh (17:58):
You know this almost critical defensive
dynamic that pops up that thenhas the potential to explode and
moves away from building therelationship, and you mentioned
something that is, I think, alsoimportant to highlight is that,
as an intercultural learner,somebody who wants to develop
(18:23):
intercultural agility, bothhumility and forgiveness are
actually important.
I'm curious why you mentionedthat.
Linda Berlot (18:32):
I was recently in Japan and you can imagine the
cultural difference between afeisty, opinionated Italian and
a very respectful Japanese, youknow.
But both cultures can berespectful.
It just shows itself in verydifferent ways and I was hour
(18:56):
one, day one, working with myreally valued.
We have deeply respectfulrelationships between my
colleagues and I and I reallyhad to name the fact that there
was rank and you know the factthat I might be, you know, very,
very vocal and vibrant aroundthe topic, but I really wanted
(19:19):
to acknowledge that I deeplyrespected their voice and their
opinion too and I understoodthat they were giving me more
space and I was humbled by thatand I wanted to just put on the
table that just because I'mfeisty or excited when I speak,
I didn't want to undermine theirvoice or make them feel shut
down.
In fact, I was there to supportthem and I felt the need to
(19:44):
really humble myself for thegrace that they were giving me
in their context.
And when that happened, it wasa lesson for me is that when we
are, you know, because we areall sometimes unskillful and a
bit enthusiastic in cultures andit sometimes works, sometimes
doesn't and the importance ofbeing humble, both humble and
(20:07):
forgiving is important as a wayto understand each other and
create a relationship between us.
Marco Blankenburgh (20:15):
Yeah, well, that's really helpful.
And when it comes to forgiving,I think one of the hardest
things to do quickly andgenuinely is to forgive yourself
when you mess up.
Linda Berlot (20:28):
Yes, that's also true.
Then I spend the evening alone.
You know, like a good Catholicwith a oh God, I could have done
that better.
I should have done that.
That in itself is a minefield.
Yes, you know, every mistake isa minefield.
Marco Blankenburgh (20:40):
Yes, every mistake is a stepping stone into
the future.
Yes, and the quicker.
As we talk about in ourintercultural competency
framework, humility and beingforgiving and forgivable are
important, but then also, movingon, just reframe and say, oops,
got that wrong, move on andlearn from it.
Now we both.
(21:01):
You mentioned you had a list ofexamples.
There's a few that come to mindfor me as well, and thinking
about what you just experiencedin Japan, where you were given
the respect and there was somehierarchy involved, I remember
(21:23):
one of the initiatives that wasrolled out by a global client of
ours had to do with how theywanted to restructure the way
people pursued their career inthe organization, and what they
did was they had one of theircenters of excellence.
They said okay, how do we makesure that people take ownership
(21:45):
of the way they pursue theircareer in the organization?
So they created a program witha nice jazzy name and they
created a flow of conversation.
So that was typically aroundperformance appraisals, career
advancement conversations in theorganization, but at the core
of it were some culturalassumptions.
(22:07):
So one of those culturalassumptions was everybody in the
world wants to have the agencyand the freedom to make their
own choices.
So in our interculturalframework.
We talk about directed versusdirective destiny.
So they made the assumptionthat the whole world was
(22:27):
directive destiny oriented and afew other things that they
assumed was that it was good to,let's say, have a conversation
with your boss and say to yourboss, I've done some thinking of
my own, here is what I want todo with my career, and they
(22:48):
assumed that that was a betterway to position yourself in
terms of your own advancementand they put the label being
proactive to that behavior.
And then what happened is theyexported this to the whole world
over 100 countries involved andwe started to hear stories of
(23:10):
how people struggled with thatnew initiative and how that
version of having careeradvancement conversations with
your boss or with your directreports wasn't sitting well with
people.
And we would hear things likeyeah, but if I position myself
that way with my boss, I'm beingdisrespectful, I'm shaming my
(23:32):
boss.
I need to respect and honor herseniority and I need to give
her a chance to tell me what shethinks would be the best next
step to take.
And I would find it verydifficult to be the first one to
speak.
Other things we heard fromsenior leaders.
They said well, that is unheardof in our context, because
(23:58):
people who report to us theyexpect that we are the wise
counsel for them and that wetell them.
When I was at your age and atyour level in the organization,
here is what happened to me andI see some similarity and maybe
here is one or two things thatyou could consider.
And that was the normal flow ofconversation and now they were
(24:22):
all quote unquote forced tochange that conversation.
Coming from the employee, ithas to be from me, and one of
the words that was used is thatcreates agency and agency is, I
believe, in agency.
The way you deploy it inorganizations is sometimes very,
(24:42):
very different.
The way it's often explained isvery what we would call
individual accountabilityoriented, and it's also often
more right-wrong innocence-guiltoriented in the way that people
position it.
Long innocence guilt orientedin the way that people position
(25:03):
it.
So that was a classic examplewhere a global rollout of in and
of itself great intentions toelevate everybody's career
advancement in the organization,with clarity and clear steps to
take and something exciting tolook forward to.
Linda Berlot (25:16):
At the same time, all kinds of local modifications
had to be made to make it workfor the whole organization I can
imagine, because it didn't takeinto consideration a very
hierarchical culture, forexample, where I don't speak
directly to my boss.
I wait for my boss to speak tome and to tell me what to do.
And removing that hierarchydoesn't mean that I know how to
(25:39):
speak directly, or even that Imay want to, because I may
embarrass myself or I mightembarrass my boss at the same
time.
So I can imagine how that musthave been challenging yeah.
Marco Blankenburgh (25:52):
So what?
What had to happen really wasto start finding how much
breathing space there was in thein the approach and in the
how-to, and we realized veryquickly that there was enough
opportunity to tweak things.
So the positive outcomeeventually was that people
(26:12):
started to understand the wayhierarchy is handled, the way
you create honorablerelationships across those
hierarchies, the way the bossempowers the employee, the way
the employee empowers the bossto speak into their career
advancement.
We discovered that that createdan opportunity to educate
people and say, yeah, here ishow you are different and here
(26:36):
is the edict that has come downis not necessarily exactly how
you would operate.
Unfortunately, there was enoughspace to start.
You know tweaking things in alocal context.
So two things happened.
On the one hand, the tweakingdid happen and sometimes, you
know, the headquarters wasn'teven aware or wasn't culturally
(27:00):
astute enough to realize thatthe end product or the end
result started happening.
But the way that end result wasachieved was sometimes very
different to what was prescribed, so to speak, and as a result,
people started to have morefine-tuned intercultural
conversations with one another.
It's like why wouldn't we do itthat way and how is that
(27:21):
uncomfortable for us and how dowe create a healthy culture
around that type of aconversation around performance
and career advancement and moretailored learning and
development solutions?
Linda Berlot (27:34):
I love that they learned from that experience and
they had those conversationsand I wonder how much time and
energy and money would have beensaved if those conversations
had been upfront, if theassumptions had not been made
the original assumptions.
And what would have happened ifthey came up with a great
initiative and then rolled itout to the countries and said to
(27:56):
the countries, how would youroll this out in your
organization, how would thiswork in your culture, how much
more appropriate those productswould be in those organizations.
Marco Blankenburgh (28:08):
You know I totally agree with you.
At the same time, that can bepretty scary if you're looking
at that from a headquarterspoint of view, because that
requires both courage and thefaith in your, in the local
teams, to come up with thosesolutions right.
Linda Berlot (28:24):
You have to trust that local teams have the
solutions that work for them andthat you may not have all the
answers, so it's almost likeputting the solution in their
hand and letting it flourish inthat, in that space.
Absolutely, and yes, it can bescary and also thrilling.
Marco Blankenburgh (28:40):
Yeah, absolutely can you think of
another example?
Linda Berlot (28:45):
so many.
Marco, I was thinking about anassessment tool that I once
worked with and I remember goingto the training for it, so we
were being educated on the tooland we were then going to use
the tool.
I live here in the part of theworld that I do, so my lens is
always looking at anything thatI'm working with through the
(29:07):
lens of intercultural agility,and I remember it was a
leadership development tool andwe were walking the map on the
floor.
It was a blown up version.
They had placed it on theground and we were exploring the
different, you know, leadershipdimensions that were considered
valuable and the ones that werea little more tricky.
(29:28):
And one of the dimensions thatwas more valuable or, yes,
valuable was the dimension ofbeing transparent as a leader,
and I reflected upon that andlater on, when working with it,
realized that that didn't work,because whilst transparency is
valued in certain cultures, it'snot valued in other cultures.
(29:53):
So, again, there was theassumption that transparency is
a behavior that's valued acrosscultures.
Well, and of course it's not,because in other cultures it may
be more important to behonorable and to be respectful.
You know of who I have in frontof me Many cultures, and you
(30:13):
know across the leaders that Iwork with.
Many leaders would say to me Idon't want to be transparent
with that person.
You know, I would rather nothurt him or her and not cause
them to be embarrassed.
I would rather not be directwith the language that is needed
to be transparent.
And so we had to figure out adifferent way of working with a
(30:36):
tool to make it more applicablein that context.
Marco Blankenburgh (30:39):
Working with a tool to make it more
applicable in that context andlinked to that, I think, is also
that transparency is somethingthat has grades to it, so there
might be a like this is me andthat then definitely doesn't
translate well to other cultures.
(30:59):
But how have you seen sort ofdifferent grades or nuances of
that across cultures?
Linda Berlot (31:06):
Absolutely so.
In a hierarchical organization,for example, there might be
transparency at the highestlevels, or more transparency at
the highest levels, and as wecome down the organization there
is less and less transparency.
So, for example, setting budgetsor KPIs when you don't have the
full picture, highest levelsand as we come down the
organization, there is less andless transparency.
So, for example, settingbudgets or KPIs when you don't
(31:28):
have the full picture can getquite tricky, you know, because
you don't have the full picture.
Setting a strategy when youdon't have the full picture can
also be tricky, and some peoplehave the full picture, but very,
very few, usually the peoplewho are closer to the boss and
the trusted advisors perhaps,and maybe not much further than
(31:50):
that, and so it's almost likenavigating in the dark and you
find ways around that becauseit's not seen as important.
Marco Blankenburgh (32:00):
Yeah, the other thing I've seen on that
subject is that very often it'slinked to how the leader is
perceived by the organization.
So admitting weakness, forinstance, is a huge challenge
interculturally, especially ifthat, if the perception is that
(32:23):
it diminishes my position ofpower, or if it diminishes my,
the perception people have of mein terms of am I the right
person for the job?
Was I the right choice?
Am I I knowledgeable enough andlearning to find where people
are at and how much stretchthere is in the system?
(32:45):
And sometimes a tiny little bitof vulnerability can just do.
It can shift thingsdramatically, but not on my
terms, but on their terms.
Linda Berlot (32:59):
That's beautiful.
I see that often and thatstatement is, if I'm vulnerable,
I'll be seen as weak oftencomes up.
So I coach the leadership teamsacross organizations and for me
, vulnerability is such a giftbecause it's the quickest way to
connect with someone, andsometimes it's perceived as a
(33:20):
weakness.
Yeah, so how do we createconnection in a in a world where
vulnerability is vieweddifferently, you know, by
different cultures?
Vulnerability is there, butit's not always named as that
you know um, an apology may notbe a direct, I'm sorry.
Apology, yeah, but it could be atap on the shoulder or it could
(33:42):
be an offer for a coffee, youknow.
Marco Blankenburgh (33:45):
Or a favor.
Linda Berlot (33:45):
Or a favor yes, and so vulnerability is there.
You just have to be savvy andrecognizing it when it happens.
Marco Blankenburgh (33:53):
Yeah, Especially if it's more in an
indirect manner, right, notexplicit, right?
Yeah, yeah, you mentionedassessment, so I can think of
the fact that, that theassessment makers assumed that
everybody, every leader in theworld, needs to have a certain
score on vulnerability.
(34:13):
That automatically raisesanother challenge.
Is that how in the world do youcreate tools like that that are
truly universally applicable?
So, yeah, that's a big issue.
We come across this all thetime.
Yeah, I'm thinking of um, the.
The first time I came acrossthis was with a big employee
(34:33):
engagement survey with one ofour clients, and the survey was
designed from a right, wrong,innocence, guilt perspective.
So the assumption there is thatthe the person who fills in
this or completes the assessment, will have a natural desire to
(34:55):
volunteer the right answer.
Another assumption that we sawin the survey was that they were
assuming that people would givethe answers from an individual
accountability point of view.
So, in other words, it's myopinion, it's my perspective on
the situation and I takeownership for my opinion.
Linda Berlot (35:14):
Yeah, exactly.
Marco Blankenburgh (35:15):
So this was rolled out across many countries
and I was in contact with theHR team and the head of HR at
one point said oh, it's goingreally well with the survey and
we have about 3,000 responsesback so far.
What do you think?
Should we close the survey?
I said, do one thing for me.
(35:37):
Can you check, just a sensecheck of the people that
completed it?
Where do you think theyculturally come from?
Lo and behold, the first peoplewho filled in the survey were
the people who are individual,accountability and innocence,
guilt, oriented on the threecolors of worldview.
(35:58):
If they would have closed thatsurvey right there and then they
would have had by and large3,000 responses from the
organization, from the peoplewho are all innocence, guilt and
all-oriented and individualaccountability.
Linda Berlot (36:12):
And you can see that that would have skewed the
results and not given you a fulland accurate picture.
Marco Blankenburgh (36:18):
Yeah, and they had to go back and they had
to say wait a minute.
why is that?
Well, it's because of the waywe designed it.
It's harder for honor, shameand power fear oriented people
to actually be excited about thesurvey and oh, I'll do that
immediately.
But also it was very muchharder for them to answer the
questions because they weredesigned assuming that everybody
(36:41):
who does it will want tovolunteer the right answer and
the answer is my answer, not myteam's answer, not the answer
that reflect the opinion of myboss, et cetera, et cetera.
So we've seen this time andtime again with designs of
engagement surveys, employeeopinion surveys, etc.
I was with a client last weekand the client said, yeah,
(37:06):
explain to me, why do we havesuch really high engagement
results in this country I won'tmention the country name and
very low engagement surveys inthis other country?
So I sort of reflected on thatusing our intercultural
framework.
She said, ah, now I get it.
(37:27):
So the country that had superhigh engagement, the way the
questions were designed didn'tgive the person completing it a
choice.
They had to give honorableanswers and, as a result, they
had an average over the years,an average of 90% scores on
(37:49):
their employee engagement survey.
And in other countries it openedthe door to get your guns out,
because that's how the questionswere triggering the people that
were completing the questions.
So they call that socialdesirability.
Slipping into these surveys andassessments and designing them
(38:12):
so that that doesn't happen isactually not easy.
But using tools like the ThreeColors of Worldview and the
Cultural Mapping Inventory, youcan at least design the
questions better and or supportthe harvesting of your data with
other mechanisms.
Not just an electronic surveybut other methods.
(38:35):
But the designing of how thequestions are phrased, how you
give people options or open textto engage with the question,
that can make a huge differencein truly understanding what's
going on in your organization.
Linda Berlot (38:52):
Yeah, I love that you point in that direction.
Mark been rolled out, or a 360,and people have taken the
opportunity.
Well, either the the data wasso skewed because some people
responded from my voice, otherpeople responded no, with the
team or the leadership teamabove, or it was so confused
they were not comparing applesto apples and um.
(39:15):
Or, for example, 360s were usedand people used that as an
opportunity to pull out all gunsblazing, because I don't
normally have the opportunity tospeak up or speak the truth,
and so I've been asked to go inand kind of untangle that web.
So it's really important.
I love that you're pointing inthe direction that you're going.
Marco Blankenburgh (39:38):
Any other ideas or stories that you can
think of?
Linda Berlot (39:43):
One of the areas that I've been reflecting on.
You know I work across culturesand various organizations.
I've been reflecting on anagenda that's important
something like this and verypresent in one culture, then
becomes the diversity piece thatmust be rolled out across the
(40:07):
globe, across different cultures, and then being faced with
contempt of a sort, you know,eye rolling and minimizing and
making fun of, and I had to sitwith that for a long time.
I couldn't figure that pieceout.
And then I realized well,what's important in one culture,
(40:31):
it doesn't mean it's notimportant in other cultures.
They may just have anothercontext in that moment that's
more important.
An example of that is, you know, gender diversity being an
issue in one culture and beingvery present, and so they're
really working deeply to createinclusion and belonging around
(40:55):
that topic.
That then being rolled out andbeing across the globe and all
other countries being told.
You know, you have to roll outthese gender diversity issues
and then wondering why it's nottaking traction and it's being
marginalized as a topic.
Now, it doesn't mean that it'snot important in those other
countries, but perhaps you'rerolling it out in a culture
(41:19):
where, in that moment, they have, you know, intertribal violence
, for example, or something likethat.
So for me, then I sat with thatand I know that we've had a
conversation around that.
So what's important there inthat case?
Because you know, genderdiversity or even racism, for
(41:40):
example, racism being on theagenda and very important for
one in one country, then it'srolled out in other cultures,
and it's not that it's lessimportant in other cultures, but
it might be that in my countryI'm having war, you know, and so
racism becomes less important.
(42:01):
So how do we make it important?
And I love when we were havingthe conversation that we were
talking about.
Well, perhaps if we get to theissue behind the issue, then it
becomes important for me too.
So if a topic is important inyour culture and we look at
(42:24):
let's take racism, for exampleso what's the issue behind the
issue?
And it could be the fact thatone people is imposing their
will or being dominant overanother people right Well across
the globe.
I can identify with that.
I might not call it racism, butI am being imposed on in my
(42:44):
context because maybe adifferent caste is imposing
itself on me or a differenttribe is imposing itself on me.
So this concept of what's theissue behind the issue for me
has become very important toaddress.
Marco Blankenburgh (42:59):
I think that also makes it possible to come
up with initiatives that canspan the globe.
Yes, but it's not, you know,the localized manifestation of
that.
Yes, you use the word racism ofcaste difference, tribal
difference, religious difference, whatever it might be that
(43:19):
causes some people to beelevated and some people to be
put down Right, and that can be,you know, in general, in public
, but it can also beinstitutionalized Right.
It can be through politics,through religion, through
legislation, et cetera, etcetera.
So, learning how to take anissue that's really, really
(43:40):
close to my heart, and I feel itand I've experienced the pain
of it and the struggle of it,when I say, how do I take
learning from that to otherparts of the world, I have to
find something similar that isequally important, but to your
point earlier on, it might bethat the timing is not right.
(44:03):
Right, there might be other,much more pressing issues that
are currently important for mycolleagues in that part of the
world, and then I have to havethe intercultural agility and
the respect to say, okay, we'llallow you to deal with the
issues that are currentlyimportant for you and then we'll
(44:25):
come back to those other things.
Linda Berlot (44:27):
Right, yeah, I think what's important in these
you know we talked about thisactivism.
I've become an activist andactivism is needed, right,
because it pushes forward and itteaches us and it really
stretches us but the ability toknow how to switch from being an
(44:48):
activist to holding multiplestories as being true, right To
being able to sit inconversation and not assume that
my story is the only story andthat my story is right story is
the only story and that my storyis right.
So how do I switch from themoment where I can be fierce and
and speak to my story or myagenda and then to be able to
(45:11):
sit in conversation and not makeyou wrong because you have a
different story?
Yeah, and and being in dialogue, holding multiple stories as
the truth, yeah, you know, asbeing true.
Marco Blankenburgh (45:22):
And especially you know, when
activism has become part of acareer, let's say and I've met
so many people who haveincredible stories to tell,
where often coming from a placeof pain or that they've
personally experienced, or inthe world around them, and say I
want to do something about that, and then they step into
(45:45):
volunteering in that direction.
Eventually it might become ajob, a career that they pursue.
At the same time, it'sincredibly hard to hold a
multiplicity of stories amongstyour fellow activists, and I've
heard people say, as soon as Itry to open up a conversation,
(46:07):
to really understand the otherside, no matter how contentious
that might be, to really be acultural learner, not to
compromise or to switch over,but to really deeply understand
why the other party thinks theway they think.
And I've often seen that in theworld of activism you get
(46:31):
flagged immediately if you tryto do that.
There is no room for amultiplicity of stories, there
is no room for being a culturallearner about this subject.
You have to fight, and I'veseen this with some of our
initiatives.
You mentioned gender equality,where the organization we were
working with they had heardabout a program that was rolled
(46:52):
out by a Silicon Valley companyrelated to gender equality and
it looked all fantastic andreally lots of publicity around
it.
And one of our femalefacilitators then looked at it
and she said I don't think I canverbatim bring this material
into this particular context.
(47:16):
And fortunately she flagged itearly and she said let's look at
this from an interculturalagility point of view and see
what we might need to do toreally give the organization the
best way to stretch theboundaries While at the same
(47:36):
time being very respectful ofwhere they are today and how far
could we potentially move themwhen it comes to gender equality
in their context.
And it was just beautiful tosee how we were able to take
again a beautiful program withgreat intentions.
But it was designed for a timeand place where people were at a
(47:59):
certain point in their ownjourney within a certain
cultural context and then tryingto bring that to another part
of the world.
And if we would have done thatjust copy-paste it would have
been a big disaster.
She did a fantastic job and itwas just such a thrilling time
(48:19):
for the people who were part ofthat program because it
respected where they were.
It respected some of thelimitations they were facing,
but it also gave them thecourage and boldness to work out
together how they could movethose boundaries.
Linda Berlot (48:33):
Right, right.
So it sounds like a veryrespectful approach, respecting
both the agenda as well as thecultural context that they found
themselves yeah yeah becausethe flip side is also true.
Marco Blankenburgh (48:47):
If you don't do it that way and say, here's
the program, we need to rollthis out, you know.
And then when you do it, youactually create so much pushback
that in the mid to long termyou're actually further away
from home than you want to be.
Linda Berlot (49:02):
Yeah, I see that, and I see that being played out
on the political stage too.
Right, there is so muchactivism, there is really not
much space to listen, to try tounderstand, and there is also
sometimes a belief.
Like you said, if I amlistening to you and being
curious and trying to exploreyour point of view, I am made
(49:26):
wrong almost for giving up onour agenda, and it should not be
like that.
In a savvy world, it would bethat we have the ability to
remain in dialogue and discourseand be curious about each other
have the ability to remain indialogue and discourse and be
(49:47):
curious about each other.
Marco Blankenburgh (49:53):
There's two authors and facilitators who I
really respect William Ury hejust released this book.
Possible has a work in theglobal scene.
You mentioned politics.
I've just bought that book andI just have the greatest respect
for people who can actuallywork together with people that
they might totally disagree with, but they step into that space
to build bridges, to bringpeople together.
Another gentleman who does thatreally well is Adam Kahane.
(50:16):
He wrote the book Collaboratingwith the Enemy, working
together with people I don'tagree with, I don't trust and I
don't like, and it's being ableto step into that space.
It's hard, but you can only dothat as a cultural learner, with
the desire to be asinterculturally agile as I can
possibly be.
Linda Berlot (50:38):
You know, in OSC, which is the model of team
coaching that I use, we havethis little metaphor.
It's where we say that it's adance.
It's a dance between being opento influence so I allow myself
to be in discourse and dialoguewith you and I'm open to
influence but I don't give up onmyself.
(50:59):
And there's a dance betweenthat because I'm not so rigid
and stuck in my single story andbelieve that my way is right.
But there is the intention tocreate a flow between us and I
don't have to make myself wrongfor being who I am.
I can own who I am.
I can own my story, but I canalso curious and and find you
(51:24):
right in your land.
And if we're doing that foreach other, it creates a
beautiful dance of relationshipbetween us yeah, yeah imagine
that playing out in politics.
Marco Blankenburgh (51:34):
How beautiful that would be amazing
yes, without deeply hiddenagendas no yeah, wow, I think
the think the other thing thatkeeps coming back to me is that
doing the hard work to find whatis important right now in this
(51:54):
context and then designing waysto bring people together to
create culture together, tobring people together to create
culture together.
And of course, I might be alittle bit biased, because
intercultural agility is veryclose to my heart, but I find
that often people lead with aproblem and they don't
(52:17):
understand the why of the whybehind that problem from a local
perspective.
So we talked about a fewalready.
It could be gender-relatedissues, could be localized
versions of racism, caste mebeing bigger better than you,
etc.
It could be issues related tohow people view disadvantage,
(52:40):
historical issues related tominorities, sexual orientation,
etc.
And what people then do is theymake the issue the focus first,
and that's where a lot of thestories come from, where this
didn't work or this backfired onus in the local context, or the
(53:01):
local team or the local boardflagged this down and they don't
want us to spend any budget ortime on this subject.
What I find is that almost thekey to start unlocking it is
actually first buildingintercultural agility, because
every one of the diversitychallenges, there is always a
(53:22):
cultural angle to it.
You can't escape walking into acountry and when you start
asking, for instance, about howpeople view gender, there's a
local story.
You go to another country andyou start asking about sexual
orientation there is a localstory.
There's always a local story.
And, yes, it's not just culture.
There are other influences thathave an impact on it.
(53:45):
But I've seen so often, ifpeople discover the fun and the
power of intercultural agility,they get tooled up with some of
those tools that you know, buildthe cultural learner mindset
that teach people how to hold amultiplicity of stories, teach
people to have betterconversations with one another.
(54:06):
And then you revisit some ofthose problem topics.
All of a sudden it becomespossible to even have those
conversations, absolutely.
Linda Berlot (54:16):
I think you know all of the teams that both you
and I work with.
They're all multicultural,right, and we see that very
often.
Please come and work with myteam so we can fix that problem,
and so I think the pieces ofwork is flipping that right and
upskilling them, as you say, andalso helping them build their
(54:37):
relationship first.
So how do we build ourrelationship so that it's strong
enough to be able to hold thoseconversations?
How do we create enoughunderstanding about me and you
and the different cultures wecome from, and how do we create
a space where we both can feelseen and understood and included
(54:57):
and safe so that we may thentalk about that topic?
Yeah, so that's the, that's thework that we may then talk
about that topic.
So that's the work that we do,right, that's the work that we
ask teams to focus on.
Marco Blankenburgh (55:08):
I'm thinking of an example where I was asked
by a senior leadership teambecause that was from a global
edict.
They were told you need to dounconscious bias training.
And I was asked to come in andwork with that senior leadership
team and I knew that that wasjust gonna be a compliance
exercise and so I got to know alittle bit more about the team
(55:32):
and I realized that there werecertain issues that I knew,
certain tools that we use,especially in our perception
management.
Using tools like the ThreeColors of Worldview would, on
the one hand, in and ofthemselves be helpful for that
team.
On the other hand, it would bean indirect way for them to
(55:54):
become more aware of theirunconscious biases.
So I literally took the libertyto talk for one slide about
unconscious bias and say youknow, they are real.
There are 188, plus now.
I don't know them all by heart.
They are real.
Sometimes they are neutral andeven helpful when you think
(56:18):
about what food to eat, whichclothes to wear, which route to
take on the road to work.
Other unconscious biases arenot helpful at all.
They're destructive.
They create pain and division.
The question is can I start torecognize when that negative
trigger happened or when that'snot the case?
(56:39):
So we started looking at anumber of conversational tools.
We used the three colors ofworldview to help them
understand that people seethings in different ways.
They are motivated and drivenby either the right thing, the
honorable thing, the thing thatgives power position, and by
taking that route at the endthey started.
(57:02):
It's almost like their eyes wereopen yeah they started to see
and hear and listen and askquestions and it it increased
their, their presence in theroom increased their mindfulness
and they started to say, oh, ifI say it that way, that would
be disrespectful, right?
Oh yeah, I have to rememberthis place is very different
(57:25):
from where I was previouslyemployed.
I can't just assume thateverything's going to be the
same.
Or I was very successful inthis other place.
Now I'm in a different contextwith totally different cultures.
I can't just assume that I cancopy and paste the method I used
in my previous employment intothis context and that it will
work.
So it was an indirect approach,but they started to actually
(57:49):
tackle their unconscious biases,especially when they were
unhelpful, automatically as aresult of tooling them up.
Linda Berlot (57:58):
Very precious, very precious and, I think, so
important, particularly becausewe know that with globalization,
people are traveling, peopleexpect international placements.
We are constantly moving acrossboundaries and across cultures,
and so it becomes more and moreimportant to navigate in
(58:21):
different waters and becomfortable navigating in
different waters.
I think some of the childrenthat are third cultural kids get
that, get raised in a in adifferent country to where they
were born, or even where theirparents may have been born.
They, they go to school withchildren of different cultures
and they grow up.
You know, it's almost like thewater that they swim in.
(58:44):
They are so interculturallysavvy.
It's mind-blowing and sointeresting to observe.
Yeah.
Marco Blankenburgh (58:51):
I was listening to my son.
He was asked to give someexamples of what it's like to
grow up interculturally and hesays I can't think of any
examples.
Linda Berlot (59:04):
he's so steeped in it.
Marco Blankenburgh (59:05):
It's like well, what about this?
Uh, I gave him an example.
I gave him another example andhe looked at the and he said,
yeah, but that's normal.
So, yes, for you, for you it'snormal, but for other people
that's profound, yeah, so TCKscan sometimes be so into it that
(59:28):
it's totally the water theyswim in, right, right, yeah,
yeah.
Well, I think we've given somereally practical examples.
Linda Berlot (59:38):
I think we have a few more on our list.
Marco Blankenburgh (59:40):
At the same time, I really appreciate that
we can actually talk about thesethings, although we're
naturally cautious asintercultural practitioners.
We don't like to put our fingeron things, especially if it
becomes contentious.
But I think it's important tohave this conversation today.
If it resonates with you as anaudience, you say, oh yeah, I've
(01:00:04):
experienced that.
Please reach out to Linda andmyself, and I hope we can have a
conversation beyond thispodcast as well.
Linda Berlot (01:00:14):
I love.
Where you are pointing towardsis courage, courage to have
these conversations, and that'sanother quality that's necessary
, right, as well as being acultural learner.
It takes guts to sit in thefire and say hold on, that's
different.
Share that with me.
You know, let me suspend mystory for a moment, or let me be
(01:00:36):
humble and curious, and youknow it's brave.
And so that's the invitationfor everybody listening is to be
brave, to step into courage andto have these conversations, or
to say you know what?
I don't know enough about this,let me go and find out more and
educate myself.
Marco Blankenburgh (01:00:56):
I think that's a beautiful way to finish
today.
Thank you, linda, I reallyenjoyed this.
Linda Berlot (01:01:01):
Thank you, Marco.
Marco Blankenburgh (01:01:17):
I always enjoy our conversations on your
favorite podcast app or channel,or forward and recommend this
podcast to people around you.
As always, if any of the topicswe discussed today intrigue you
, you will find links toarticles discussing them in
greater depth in the podcastnotes.
If you would like to learn moreabout intercultural
(01:01:37):
intelligence and how you canbecome more culturally agile,
you can find more informationand hundreds of articles at
knowledgeworkscom.
A special thanks to JasonCarter for composing the music
on this podcast and to the wholeKnowledgeworks team for making
this podcast a success.
Thank you, nita Rodriguez, araAzizbakian, rajitha Raj, and
(01:02:02):
thanks to Vip and George foraudio production, rosalind Raj
for scheduling and Caleb Straussfor marketing and helping
produce this podcast.
courage, courage to have these conversations, and
that's another quality that'snecessary, right, as well as
being a cultural learner, ittakes guts to sit in the fire
and say hold on, that'sdifferent.
Share that with me.
You know, let me suspend mystory for a moment, or let me be
humble and curious, and youknow it's brave, and so that's
(00:23):
the invitation for everybodylistening is to be brave, to
step into courage and to havethese conversations, or to say
you know what?
I don't know enough about this,let me go and find out more and
educate myself.
Marco Blankenburgh (00:51):
Welcome to the Cultural Agility Podcast,
where we explore the stories ofsome of the most advanced
intercultural practitioners fromaround the world to help you
become culturally agile andsucceed in today's culturally
complex world.
I'm your host, marcoBlankenberg, international
Director of KnowledgeWorks,where every day we help
individuals and companiesachieve relational success in
that same complex world.
(01:12):
So welcome to another episodeof the Unlocking Cultural
Agility podcast.
And the last time we were inthe studio I was with Linda
Berlotte from Berlotte Group andwe decided to continue the
conversation because there wasso much to say.
So thank you for making thetime, linda, to come back again.
(01:33):
Really appreciate it and I verymuch look forward to part two,
basically, of our conversation.
So thanks for making it intothe studio today.
Linda Berlot (01:43):
My absolute pleasure, Marco.
Thank you for inviting me back.
I absolutely enjoyed that.
We got out of the last podcast,sat down and carried on talking
and then realized we still hada lot more to say.
Marco Blankenburgh (01:53):
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, and if you
haven't had a chance to listento that first podcast where we
talked about diversity, equity,inclusion, belonging initiatives
and our perspective on thatfrom a global lens, please
listen to that episode.
But if you're jumping straightinto this one, we wanted to at
least do a mini summary of thisprevious recording and just talk
(02:19):
a little bit about the thingsthat we unpacked last time.
So there were a number ofthings related to how
challenging it is to design aninitiative in one part of the
world and then export it toanother part of the world, and
the imagery that we used waslike the elephant on the plane
(02:42):
and trying to make everybody doit exactly the same way, and
that was an issue.
Another big issue we talkedabout was related to how some
people look at problems from arelationship-centric point of
view and other people look atproblems from a problem-centric
point of view.
Maybe you could say a littlebit more about that, linda.
(03:05):
You know, just as part of thissummary.
Linda Berlot (03:07):
Absolutely.
We did explore that and weexplored how, in some cultures,
it's really important to use theright words to define an issue,
to make sure that the issue isabsolutely clearly defined, and
usually what we find is thatpeople with the best use of
language, you know, are themasters and are seen as the
owners of that issue or theexperts on defining the issue.
(03:30):
On the other side, we've gotrelationship focused people who
will deal with issues in a verydifferent way.
They prefer to focus on therelationship and then deal with
the issue.
So those are challenges thatemerge when those two different
types of people come together.
Marco Blankenburgh (03:46):
Yes, especially when, on top of that,
that starts to determine how Idesign a solution, and we'll
come back to that.
We'll have some examples ofthat.
Another thing we noticed wasthe difference between thinking
about solutions of diversityfrom an individual
accountability point of view orfrom an individual
accountability point of view orfrom a community accountability
(04:07):
point of view, and how thatchanges what we do, how we do it
, how we bring people together,how we structure the
conversations, and what we foundis that a lot of the diversity,
equity, inclusion belongingsolutions are more designed from
an individual accountabilityperspective, and that then
causes challenges, and we'lltalk about that some more.
(04:28):
Inclusion belonging solutionsare more designed from an
individual accountabilityperspective, and that then
causes challenges, and we'lltalk about that some more.
Another thing we talked aboutwas we used the language of the
three colors of worldview and welooked at some of those
solutions, and we'll give someexamples today as well, in that
a lot of the solutions aredesigned from a right-wrong,
(04:48):
innocence-guilt perspective andas a result of that, it doesn't
always work so well to thenbring those initiatives to an
honor-shame or a power-fear,more hierarchical perspective or
context, and that leads to.
One of the other things wediscussed was how can you design
solutions that are both doingright by people, that are
(05:08):
honoring people and that areempowering for all parties
involved?
Yeah, and we found that veryfew solutions actually do that
well.
So those were some of thethings we discussed.
Anything else that you thatmissed?
Linda Berlot (05:25):
Well, no, you covered that extensively.
But I think that leads us tothe why we're here.
Right, because we walked out ofthe last podcast and we thought
, well, hold on a minute.
And we realized that the reasonwhy we're here is because so
many of these DEI initiativesbeing rolled out across the
globe are not working, and we'vegot loads of examples across
(05:47):
the globe of these hugeorganizations that are either
decreasing their DEI initiativesor doing away with them.
And it doesn't minimize theimportance for DEI to be
addressed in organizations, butwhat it speaks to is the fact
that they're not working, or notworking as well as these
organizations would have liked.
Marco Blankenburgh (06:06):
Yeah, and the latest example from last
week was that Microsoft let goof their DEI team and they said
you know that their commitmenthasn't changed, but what has
been tried didn't work the waythey anticipated and, like you
said, quite a few global firmshave actually done the same.
It's to the point where, whenyou look at job postings related
(06:29):
to DEI on some of the majorplatforms between 22 and 23, it
already dropped by 44% and webelieve, when you look at 2024,
that trend will continue.
So something's shifting.
People are realizing certainthings are not working, even in
the countries where a lot ofthese initiatives are designed
(06:51):
and originate from, like NorthAmerica and Europe.
Even there, people arefrustrated.
We're saying you know, this isnot moving us forward.
And then, on top of that, wesit on the other part of the
world, in the other part of theworld, and we face even more
complex problems.
So that's what we want to talkabout today.
Linda Berlot (07:10):
I think that's right, marco.
Here today we would like tokind of name some of the issues
that may be arising and alsogive some examples and then
provide some solutions.
Marco Blankenburgh (07:22):
Sounds great , but is there?
I mean, there's so many anglesto this Is there a way to sort
of put our finger on why a lotof these things are not working?
Is there like a high levelsummary we could give, or is
that going to be next toimpossible?
Linda Berlot (07:42):
That's really a good question and I'm not sure I
have the answer for that.
I don't think there is a cookiecutter solution, so one thing
gets rolled out in one countryin one context and that it can
be cleanly rolled out into alldifferent cultures and that we
can give a solution for that.
I think that it needs a littleunpacking and we could give a
(08:07):
myriad of possible areas fororganizations to look and to
reflect on and think about andhopefully it's useful.
Yeah.
Marco Blankenburgh (08:16):
Let's.
Why don't we just dive in?
Because, ultimately, examplesare always the best way to get
going, and I don't know if youhave one ready to talk about.
Let me pass the ball to you.
Linda Berlot (08:28):
I have a list and I know you do too.
I think one of the first oneswhich might be interesting to
unpack is in some cultures,there's a lot of importance
being put on using the rightwords, and if you don't use the
right words, you are thereforewrong, You're made wrong, You're
(08:51):
judged and you're made wrong.
Well, we live in Dubai, where,you know, there are over 270
different nationalities.
English as a first language isonly a first language for a very
small minority or a smallpercentage of the population.
That means that we cannot putso much importance on unspoken
(09:12):
words.
We have to look at other thingsright when we are communicating
across cultures.
Very often in one sentence, youmight find three different
languages, and so we can'tafford to make someone wrong for
using the wrong word.
I have a great example.
Actually, I was reflecting onthis topic and went to the
pharmacy and I was asking forwhat I needed, and that was a
(09:38):
cultural conversation, becausethe person in front of me
couldn't really understand myaccent, so I was trying to
enunciate better, and next to ustwo totally different cultures
altogether.
The gentleman asks for theproduct, the product is handed
to him and he says.
He looks down and he says canyou give me a price?
So the pharmacist tells himit's 1,700 dirhams and he looks
(10:03):
down again.
He says can you give me a price?
She pulls out her calculator,puts it in a visual tick, tick,
tick shows the calculator 1,700dirhams.
He looks down again and he sayscan you give me a price?
So we're all looking at eachother and he does something
different this time With hishand.
(10:27):
He did like a shrinking or aminimizing gesture and all three
of us at the same timeunderstood aha, he's asking for
a discount, but it was notspoken to directly.
He didn't directly ask for whathe wanted and he didn't use
words to describe what he wanted.
So what we're learning is thatin a, in a multicultural
(10:49):
environment where english is notthe first language, we make an
effort to try and understandeach other.
We look at the entire context,not just words.
We listen to tone, we look atfacial expression, we look at
body language and then fromthere we really make an effort
to try and understand what'sbeing said.
What's really being said thatmay not be verbalized, and
(11:12):
that's a little different toplacing importance on words.
Marco Blankenburgh (11:16):
Yeah, so it almost shifts your relationship
with language actually.
So the world of DEIB is full oflingo and I sometimes even lose
track myself, although I thinkI'm quite informed on the
subject.
But then I hear yet anotherterm or yet another
classification, or yet anotherlabel of sorts, or another
(11:40):
unconscious bias label has, orresearch piece brings to light
yet another unconscious bias,and there are already 188 that
are documented right now.
And when that language getsintroduced, people first of all
don't understand it, but thenalso they get lost in it,
especially if English is theirsecond, third, fourth, fifth
(12:01):
language.
So being able to focus not onthe words but on the intention
is, I think, is what I hear yousay, yes, but then also being
skillful in picking up the cluesthat are not spoken.
So the full body language.
And when I moved internationallyI realized how handicapped I
(12:24):
was in picking up those otherclues, because I had grown up in
an environment where you purelyfocus on the words and the
words are the package.
And then I realized in manycultures that's not the case.
That's true.
The package is the whole humanbeing and paralinguistics is the
(12:45):
fancy term, but the up and downand the intensity and the
melody of the way it's spoken.
Super important and I was nevertrained to pay attention to
those things, so yeah.
Linda Berlot (12:56):
I think there's like a code switching.
That's important, right?
I learned that I was marriedacross to a different culture as
an italian, so we were, in thefirst year of our marriage, in
constant conflict because, as an, as an italian, whenever I felt
passionate about something orum, or I felt strongly about
something, my volume goes up.
(13:17):
But volume isn't an indicationnecessarily of anger.
It's how engaged am I, howenthusiastic do I feel about
what I am speaking about?
Anger is demonstrated with awhole lot of facial expressions
hand gestures, sometimes armgestures, body, all of this,
(13:37):
yeah.
But in my husband's culture,raising the voice indicated
anger, and we had to.
It took us a year to figure outthat we were in an
intercultural marriage and thatthis expression of anger was
different in our cultures.
Marco Blankenburgh (13:52):
Yeah, yeah now you mentioned when we
started to explore this podcast.
You mentioned that when peopledon't understand this, they
might sometimes have a tendencyto say wait a minute, you don't
understand my words or you don'tunderstand the classification
of a behavior or a dilemma thatI just used and therefore you
(14:18):
must be wrong.
And sometimes people then don'tknow what to do with that.
And sometimes people then don'tknow what to do with that.
Sometimes they might ask moreclarifying questions, but
sometimes they then project onyou you don't understand me or
you don't use the right language.
Therefore your behavior or theway you use language is wrong,
(14:40):
and I'm just wondering if you'vecome across that.
Linda Berlot (14:42):
I have come across that I work with a team that is
predominantly one culture, butthere are other cultures in the
team too, and sometimes thatdoes happen is where a
projection so a projection ofyou know you must be X, y and Z,
because X, y and Z and it feelslike the person on the
(15:05):
receiving end is being madewrong, like there is no space
for another truth to exist.
It's like a single storynarrative that you must
understand.
It doesn't allow any space forthere to be another truth, right
?
And it feels deeplyuncomfortable and and and can
create conflict, right?
(15:26):
So then you have this conflictwhere both parties feel wronged
and misunderstood and misjudgedand they sometimes miss the
opportunity to, you know, createa relational bridge, to try and
understand each other and asyou're explaining that, it it
really sounds like you know.
Marco Blankenburgh (15:46):
One of the other tools we use in our work
is identifying am I a culturallearner or am I a cultural
critic, or another way ofputting it do I have a cultural
learner mindset or do I have acultural critic mindset?
Linda Berlot (16:00):
I love that.
Marco Blankenburgh (16:01):
Yeah, talk to me how that is applicable to
what you just said.
Linda Berlot (16:03):
It's very applicable because a cultural
learner mindset is one that iscurious, assumes positive intent
.
There's a grace and aforgiveness there.
So if I'm not using the rightlanguage, someone isn't getting
triggered or finding me wrongbecause I'm using wrong
terminology.
There is a curiosity and acuriosity to try and understand
(16:25):
so that way we may meet eachother.
In that, you know, relationshipbridge, whereas a cultural
critic is more my way is the wayor the right way, and and you
are wrong, or sometimes the, thereverse right, my way is
clearly wrong, yours must beright, you know, and there's a
glorifying of that way.
(16:45):
So there's almost like a givingup of self, in a way, rather
than being open and curious andand being flexible, you know,
and having that mentality to toreally be curious and understand
your point of view, but alsonot giving up on myself, really,
because I'm not wrong for beingwho I am in all my colors, and
(17:11):
neither are you wrong for beingall your beautiful colors.
Marco Blankenburgh (17:14):
But we can build a relationship where we
can both acknowledge each otherand meet, be curious and build a
relationship from that spacethe picture that comes to mind
is is that the more complexitywe create, either through
language, throughclassifications, to unique
terminology, the more we almostdrop minds in the field and it
(17:39):
feels like that sometimes, yeah,and it becomes impossible to
really build that relationalbridge.
Linda Berlot (17:43):
Yeah, yes, also because you know, when you feel
like you step on a potentialminefield, then the very next
thing you want to do is defendyourself, and so then the walls
are down, yeah, and you're notreally in relationship anymore.
So you get this.
Marco Blankenburgh (17:58):
You know this almost critical defensive
dynamic that pops up that thenhas the potential to explode and
moves away from building therelationship, and you mentioned
something that is, I think, alsoimportant to highlight is that,
as an intercultural learner,somebody who wants to develop
(18:23):
intercultural agility, bothhumility and forgiveness are
actually important.
I'm curious why you mentionedthat.
Linda Berlot (18:32):
I was recently in Japan and you can imagine the
cultural difference between afeisty, opinionated Italian and
a very respectful Japanese, youknow.
But both cultures can berespectful.
It just shows itself in verydifferent ways and I was hour
(18:56):
one, day one, working with myreally valued.
We have deeply respectfulrelationships between my
colleagues and I and I reallyhad to name the fact that there
was rank and you know the factthat I might be, you know, very,
very vocal and vibrant aroundthe topic, but I really wanted
(19:19):
to acknowledge that I deeplyrespected their voice and their
opinion too and I understoodthat they were giving me more
space and I was humbled by thatand I wanted to just put on the
table that just because I'mfeisty or excited when I speak,
I didn't want to undermine theirvoice or make them feel shut
down.
In fact, I was there to supportthem and I felt the need to
(19:44):
really humble myself for thegrace that they were giving me
in their context.
And when that happened, it wasa lesson for me is that when we
are, you know, because we areall sometimes unskillful and a
bit enthusiastic in cultures andit sometimes works, sometimes
doesn't and the importance ofbeing humble, both humble and
(20:07):
forgiving is important as a wayto understand each other and
create a relationship between us.
Marco Blankenburgh (20:15):
Yeah, well, that's really helpful.
And when it comes to forgiving,I think one of the hardest
things to do quickly andgenuinely is to forgive yourself
when you mess up.
Linda Berlot (20:28):
Yes, that's also true.
Then I spend the evening alone.
You know, like a good Catholicwith a oh God, I could have done
that better.
I should have done that.
That in itself is a minefield.
Yes, you know, every mistake isa minefield.
Marco Blankenburgh (20:40):
Yes, every mistake is a stepping stone into
the future.
Yes, and the quicker.
As we talk about in ourintercultural competency
framework, humility and beingforgiving and forgivable are
important, but then also, movingon, just reframe and say, oops,
got that wrong, move on andlearn from it.
Now we both.
(21:01):
You mentioned you had a list ofexamples.
There's a few that come to mindfor me as well, and thinking
about what you just experiencedin Japan, where you were given
the respect and there was somehierarchy involved, I remember
(21:23):
one of the initiatives that wasrolled out by a global client of
ours had to do with how theywanted to restructure the way
people pursued their career inthe organization, and what they
did was they had one of theircenters of excellence.
They said okay, how do we makesure that people take ownership
(21:45):
of the way they pursue theircareer in the organization?
So they created a program witha nice jazzy name and they
created a flow of conversation.
So that was typically aroundperformance appraisals, career
advancement conversations in theorganization, but at the core
of it were some culturalassumptions.
(22:07):
So one of those culturalassumptions was everybody in the
world wants to have the agencyand the freedom to make their
own choices.
So in our interculturalframework.
We talk about directed versusdirective destiny.
So they made the assumptionthat the whole world was
(22:27):
directive destiny oriented and afew other things that they
assumed was that it was good to,let's say, have a conversation
with your boss and say to yourboss, I've done some thinking of
my own, here is what I want todo with my career, and they
(22:48):
assumed that that was a betterway to position yourself in
terms of your own advancementand they put the label being
proactive to that behavior.
And then what happened is theyexported this to the whole world
over 100 countries involved andwe started to hear stories of
(23:10):
how people struggled with thatnew initiative and how that
version of having careeradvancement conversations with
your boss or with your directreports wasn't sitting well with
people.
And we would hear things likeyeah, but if I position myself
that way with my boss, I'm beingdisrespectful, I'm shaming my
(23:32):
boss.
I need to respect and honor herseniority and I need to give
her a chance to tell me what shethinks would be the best next
step to take.
And I would find it verydifficult to be the first one to
speak.
Other things we heard fromsenior leaders.
They said well, that is unheardof in our context, because
(23:58):
people who report to us theyexpect that we are the wise
counsel for them and that wetell them.
When I was at your age and atyour level in the organization,
here is what happened to me andI see some similarity and maybe
here is one or two things thatyou could consider.
And that was the normal flow ofconversation and now they were
(24:22):
all quote unquote forced tochange that conversation.
Coming from the employee, ithas to be from me, and one of
the words that was used is thatcreates agency and agency is, I
believe, in agency.
The way you deploy it inorganizations is sometimes very,
(24:42):
very different.
The way it's often explained isvery what we would call
individual accountabilityoriented, and it's also often
more right-wrong innocence-guiltoriented in the way that people
position it.
Long innocence guilt orientedin the way that people position
(25:03):
it.
So that was a classic examplewhere a global rollout of in and
of itself great intentions toelevate everybody's career
advancement in the organization,with clarity and clear steps to
take and something exciting tolook forward to.
Linda Berlot (25:16):
At the same time, all kinds of local modifications
had to be made to make it workfor the whole organization I can
imagine, because it didn't takeinto consideration a very
hierarchical culture, forexample, where I don't speak
directly to my boss.
I wait for my boss to speak tome and to tell me what to do.
And removing that hierarchydoesn't mean that I know how to
(25:39):
speak directly, or even that Imay want to, because I may
embarrass myself or I mightembarrass my boss at the same
time.
So I can imagine how that musthave been challenging yeah.
Marco Blankenburgh (25:52):
So what?
What had to happen really wasto start finding how much
breathing space there was in thein the approach and in the
how-to, and we realized veryquickly that there was enough
opportunity to tweak things.
So the positive outcomeeventually was that people
(26:12):
started to understand the wayhierarchy is handled, the way
you create honorablerelationships across those
hierarchies, the way the bossempowers the employee, the way
the employee empowers the bossto speak into their career
advancement.
We discovered that that createdan opportunity to educate
people and say, yeah, here ishow you are different and here
(26:36):
is the edict that has come downis not necessarily exactly how
you would operate.
Unfortunately, there was enoughspace to start.
You know tweaking things in alocal context.
So two things happened.
On the one hand, the tweakingdid happen and sometimes, you
know, the headquarters wasn'teven aware or wasn't culturally
(27:00):
astute enough to realize thatthe end product or the end
result started happening.
But the way that end result wasachieved was sometimes very
different to what was prescribed, so to speak, and as a result,
people started to have morefine-tuned intercultural
conversations with one another.
It's like why wouldn't we do itthat way and how is that
(27:21):
uncomfortable for us and how dowe create a healthy culture
around that type of aconversation around performance
and career advancement and moretailored learning and
development solutions?
Linda Berlot (27:34):
I love that they learned from that experience and
they had those conversationsand I wonder how much time and
energy and money would have beensaved if those conversations
had been upfront, if theassumptions had not been made
the original assumptions.
And what would have happened ifthey came up with a great
initiative and then rolled itout to the countries and said to
(27:56):
the countries, how would youroll this out in your
organization, how would thiswork in your culture, how much
more appropriate those productswould be in those organizations.
Marco Blankenburgh (28:08):
You know I totally agree with you.
At the same time, that can bepretty scary if you're looking
at that from a headquarterspoint of view, because that
requires both courage and thefaith in your, in the local
teams, to come up with thosesolutions right.
Linda Berlot (28:24):
You have to trust that local teams have the
solutions that work for them andthat you may not have all the
answers, so it's almost likeputting the solution in their
hand and letting it flourish inthat, in that space.
Absolutely, and yes, it can bescary and also thrilling.
Marco Blankenburgh (28:40):
Yeah, absolutely can you think of
another example?
Linda Berlot (28:45):
so many.
Marco, I was thinking about anassessment tool that I once
worked with and I remember goingto the training for it, so we
were being educated on the tooland we were then going to use
the tool.
I live here in the part of theworld that I do, so my lens is
always looking at anything thatI'm working with through the
(29:07):
lens of intercultural agility,and I remember it was a
leadership development tool andwe were walking the map on the
floor.
It was a blown up version.
They had placed it on theground and we were exploring the
different, you know, leadershipdimensions that were considered
valuable and the ones that werea little more tricky.
(29:28):
And one of the dimensions thatwas more valuable or, yes,
valuable was the dimension ofbeing transparent as a leader,
and I reflected upon that andlater on, when working with it,
realized that that didn't work,because whilst transparency is
valued in certain cultures, it'snot valued in other cultures.
(29:53):
So, again, there was theassumption that transparency is
a behavior that's valued acrosscultures.
Well, and of course it's not,because in other cultures it may
be more important to behonorable and to be respectful.
You know of who I have in frontof me Many cultures, and you
(30:13):
know across the leaders that Iwork with.
Many leaders would say to me Idon't want to be transparent
with that person.
You know, I would rather nothurt him or her and not cause
them to be embarrassed.
I would rather not be directwith the language that is needed
to be transparent.
And so we had to figure out adifferent way of working with a
(30:36):
tool to make it more applicablein that context.
Marco Blankenburgh (30:39):
Working with a tool to make it more
applicable in that context andlinked to that, I think, is also
that transparency is somethingthat has grades to it, so there
might be a like this is me andthat then definitely doesn't
translate well to other cultures.
(30:59):
But how have you seen sort ofdifferent grades or nuances of
that across cultures?
Linda Berlot (31:06):
Absolutely so.
In a hierarchical organization,for example, there might be
transparency at the highestlevels, or more transparency at
the highest levels, and as wecome down the organization there
is less and less transparency.
So, for example, setting budgetsor KPIs when you don't have the
full picture, highest levelsand as we come down the
organization, there is less andless transparency.
So, for example, settingbudgets or KPIs when you don't
(31:28):
have the full picture can getquite tricky, you know, because
you don't have the full picture.
Setting a strategy when youdon't have the full picture can
also be tricky, and some peoplehave the full picture, but very,
very few, usually the peoplewho are closer to the boss and
the trusted advisors perhaps,and maybe not much further than
(31:50):
that, and so it's almost likenavigating in the dark and you
find ways around that becauseit's not seen as important.
Marco Blankenburgh (32:00):
Yeah, the other thing I've seen on that
subject is that very often it'slinked to how the leader is
perceived by the organization.
So admitting weakness, forinstance, is a huge challenge
interculturally, especially ifthat, if the perception is that
(32:23):
it diminishes my position ofpower, or if it diminishes my,
the perception people have of mein terms of am I the right
person for the job?
Was I the right choice?
Am I I knowledgeable enough andlearning to find where people
are at and how much stretchthere is in the system?
(32:45):
And sometimes a tiny little bitof vulnerability can just do.
It can shift thingsdramatically, but not on my
terms, but on their terms.
Linda Berlot (32:59):
That's beautiful.
I see that often and thatstatement is, if I'm vulnerable,
I'll be seen as weak oftencomes up.
So I coach the leadership teamsacross organizations and for me
, vulnerability is such a giftbecause it's the quickest way to
connect with someone, andsometimes it's perceived as a
(33:20):
weakness.
Yeah, so how do we createconnection in a in a world where
vulnerability is vieweddifferently, you know, by
different cultures?
Vulnerability is there, butit's not always named as that
you know um, an apology may notbe a direct, I'm sorry.
Apology, yeah, but it could be atap on the shoulder or it could
(33:42):
be an offer for a coffee, youknow.
Marco Blankenburgh (33:45):
Or a favor.
Linda Berlot (33:45):
Or a favor yes, and so vulnerability is there.
You just have to be savvy andrecognizing it when it happens.
Marco Blankenburgh (33:53):
Yeah, Especially if it's more in an
indirect manner, right, notexplicit, right?
Yeah, yeah, you mentionedassessment, so I can think of
the fact that, that theassessment makers assumed that
everybody, every leader in theworld, needs to have a certain
score on vulnerability.
(34:13):
That automatically raisesanother challenge.
Is that how in the world do youcreate tools like that that are
truly universally applicable?
So, yeah, that's a big issue.
We come across this all thetime.
Yeah, I'm thinking of um, the.
The first time I came acrossthis was with a big employee
(34:33):
engagement survey with one ofour clients, and the survey was
designed from a right, wrong,innocence, guilt perspective.
So the assumption there is thatthe the person who fills in
this or completes the assessment, will have a natural desire to
(34:55):
volunteer the right answer.
Another assumption that we sawin the survey was that they were
assuming that people would givethe answers from an individual
accountability point of view.
So, in other words, it's myopinion, it's my perspective on
the situation and I takeownership for my opinion.
Linda Berlot (35:14):
Yeah, exactly.
Marco Blankenburgh (35:15):
So this was rolled out across many countries
and I was in contact with theHR team and the head of HR at
one point said oh, it's goingreally well with the survey and
we have about 3,000 responsesback so far.
What do you think?
Should we close the survey?
I said, do one thing for me.
(35:37):
Can you check, just a sensecheck of the people that
completed it?
Where do you think theyculturally come from?
Lo and behold, the first peoplewho filled in the survey were
the people who are individual,accountability and innocence,
guilt, oriented on the threecolors of worldview.
(35:58):
If they would have closed thatsurvey right there and then they
would have had by and large3,000 responses from the
organization, from the peoplewho are all innocence, guilt and
all-oriented and individualaccountability.
Linda Berlot (36:12):
And you can see that that would have skewed the
results and not given you a fulland accurate picture.
Marco Blankenburgh (36:18):
Yeah, and they had to go back and they had
to say wait a minute.
why is that?
Well, it's because of the waywe designed it.
It's harder for honor, shameand power fear oriented people
to actually be excited about thesurvey and oh, I'll do that
immediately.
But also it was very muchharder for them to answer the
questions because they weredesigned assuming that everybody
(36:41):
who does it will want tovolunteer the right answer and
the answer is my answer, not myteam's answer, not the answer
that reflect the opinion of myboss, et cetera, et cetera.
So we've seen this time andtime again with designs of
engagement surveys, employeeopinion surveys, etc.
I was with a client last weekand the client said, yeah,
(37:06):
explain to me, why do we havesuch really high engagement
results in this country I won'tmention the country name and
very low engagement surveys inthis other country?
So I sort of reflected on thatusing our intercultural
framework.
She said, ah, now I get it.
(37:27):
So the country that had superhigh engagement, the way the
questions were designed didn'tgive the person completing it a
choice.
They had to give honorableanswers and, as a result, they
had an average over the years,an average of 90% scores on
(37:49):
their employee engagement survey.
And in other countries it openedthe door to get your guns out,
because that's how the questionswere triggering the people that
were completing the questions.
So they call that socialdesirability.
Slipping into these surveys andassessments and designing them
(38:12):
so that that doesn't happen isactually not easy.
But using tools like the ThreeColors of Worldview and the
Cultural Mapping Inventory, youcan at least design the
questions better and or supportthe harvesting of your data with
other mechanisms.
Not just an electronic surveybut other methods.
(38:35):
But the designing of how thequestions are phrased, how you
give people options or open textto engage with the question,
that can make a huge differencein truly understanding what's
going on in your organization.
Linda Berlot (38:52):
Yeah, I love that you point in that direction.
Mark been rolled out, or a 360,and people have taken the
opportunity.
Well, either the the data wasso skewed because some people
responded from my voice, otherpeople responded no, with the
team or the leadership teamabove, or it was so confused
they were not comparing applesto apples and um.
(39:15):
Or, for example, 360s were usedand people used that as an
opportunity to pull out all gunsblazing, because I don't
normally have the opportunity tospeak up or speak the truth,
and so I've been asked to go inand kind of untangle that web.
So it's really important.
I love that you're pointing inthe direction that you're going.
Marco Blankenburgh (39:38):
Any other ideas or stories that you can
think of?
Linda Berlot (39:43):
One of the areas that I've been reflecting on.
You know I work across culturesand various organizations.
I've been reflecting on anagenda that's important
something like this and verypresent in one culture, then
becomes the diversity piece thatmust be rolled out across the
(40:07):
globe, across different cultures, and then being faced with
contempt of a sort, you know,eye rolling and minimizing and
making fun of, and I had to sitwith that for a long time.
I couldn't figure that pieceout.
And then I realized well,what's important in one culture,
(40:31):
it doesn't mean it's notimportant in other cultures.
They may just have anothercontext in that moment that's
more important.
An example of that is, you know, gender diversity being an
issue in one culture and beingvery present, and so they're
really working deeply to createinclusion and belonging around
(40:55):
that topic.
That then being rolled out andbeing across the globe and all
other countries being told.
You know, you have to roll outthese gender diversity issues
and then wondering why it's nottaking traction and it's being
marginalized as a topic.
Now, it doesn't mean that it'snot important in those other
countries, but perhaps you'rerolling it out in a culture
(41:19):
where, in that moment, they have, you know, intertribal violence
, for example, or something likethat.
So for me, then I sat with thatand I know that we've had a
conversation around that.
So what's important there inthat case?
Because you know, genderdiversity or even racism, for
(41:40):
example, racism being on theagenda and very important for
one in one country, then it'srolled out in other cultures,
and it's not that it's lessimportant in other cultures, but
it might be that in my countryI'm having war, you know, and so
racism becomes less important.
(42:01):
So how do we make it important?
And I love when we were havingthe conversation that we were
talking about.
Well, perhaps if we get to theissue behind the issue, then it
becomes important for me too.
So if a topic is important inyour culture and we look at
(42:24):
let's take racism, for exampleso what's the issue behind the
issue?
And it could be the fact thatone people is imposing their
will or being dominant overanother people right Well across
the globe.
I can identify with that.
I might not call it racism, butI am being imposed on in my
(42:44):
context because maybe adifferent caste is imposing
itself on me or a differenttribe is imposing itself on me.
So this concept of what's theissue behind the issue for me
has become very important toaddress.
Marco Blankenburgh (42:59):
I think that also makes it possible to come
up with initiatives that canspan the globe.
Yes, but it's not, you know,the localized manifestation of
that.
Yes, you use the word racism ofcaste difference, tribal
difference, religious difference, whatever it might be that
(43:19):
causes some people to beelevated and some people to be
put down Right, and that can be,you know, in general, in public
, but it can also beinstitutionalized Right.
It can be through politics,through religion, through
legislation, et cetera, etcetera.
So, learning how to take anissue that's really, really
(43:40):
close to my heart, and I feel itand I've experienced the pain
of it and the struggle of it,when I say, how do I take
learning from that to otherparts of the world, I have to
find something similar that isequally important, but to your
point earlier on, it might bethat the timing is not right.
(44:03):
Right, there might be other,much more pressing issues that
are currently important for mycolleagues in that part of the
world, and then I have to havethe intercultural agility and
the respect to say, okay, we'llallow you to deal with the
issues that are currentlyimportant for you and then we'll
(44:25):
come back to those other things.
Linda Berlot (44:27):
Right, yeah, I think what's important in these
you know we talked about thisactivism.
I've become an activist andactivism is needed, right,
because it pushes forward and itteaches us and it really
stretches us but the ability toknow how to switch from being an
(44:48):
activist to holding multiplestories as being true, right To
being able to sit inconversation and not assume that
my story is the only story andthat my story is right story is
the only story and that my storyis right.
So how do I switch from themoment where I can be fierce and
and speak to my story or myagenda and then to be able to
(45:11):
sit in conversation and not makeyou wrong because you have a
different story?
Yeah, and and being in dialogue, holding multiple stories as
the truth, yeah, you know, asbeing true.
Marco Blankenburgh (45:22):
And especially you know, when
activism has become part of acareer, let's say and I've met
so many people who haveincredible stories to tell,
where often coming from a placeof pain or that they've
personally experienced, or inthe world around them, and say I
want to do something about that, and then they step into
(45:45):
volunteering in that direction.
Eventually it might become ajob, a career that they pursue.
At the same time, it'sincredibly hard to hold a
multiplicity of stories amongstyour fellow activists, and I've
heard people say, as soon as Itry to open up a conversation,
(46:07):
to really understand the otherside, no matter how contentious
that might be, to really be acultural learner, not to
compromise or to switch over,but to really deeply understand
why the other party thinks theway they think.
And I've often seen that in theworld of activism you get
(46:31):
flagged immediately if you tryto do that.
There is no room for amultiplicity of stories, there
is no room for being a culturallearner about this subject.
You have to fight, and I'veseen this with some of our
initiatives.
You mentioned gender equality,where the organization we were
working with they had heardabout a program that was rolled
(46:52):
out by a Silicon Valley companyrelated to gender equality and
it looked all fantastic andreally lots of publicity around
it.
And one of our femalefacilitators then looked at it
and she said I don't think I canverbatim bring this material
into this particular context.
(47:16):
And fortunately she flagged itearly and she said let's look at
this from an interculturalagility point of view and see
what we might need to do toreally give the organization the
best way to stretch theboundaries While at the same
(47:36):
time being very respectful ofwhere they are today and how far
could we potentially move themwhen it comes to gender equality
in their context.
And it was just beautiful tosee how we were able to take
again a beautiful program withgreat intentions.
But it was designed for a timeand place where people were at a
(47:59):
certain point in their ownjourney within a certain
cultural context and then tryingto bring that to another part
of the world.
And if we would have done thatjust copy-paste it would have
been a big disaster.
She did a fantastic job and itwas just such a thrilling time
(48:19):
for the people who were part ofthat program because it
respected where they were.
It respected some of thelimitations they were facing,
but it also gave them thecourage and boldness to work out
together how they could movethose boundaries.
Linda Berlot (48:33):
Right, right.
So it sounds like a veryrespectful approach, respecting
both the agenda as well as thecultural context that they found
themselves yeah yeah becausethe flip side is also true.
Marco Blankenburgh (48:47):
If you don't do it that way and say, here's
the program, we need to rollthis out, you know.
And then when you do it, youactually create so much pushback
that in the mid to long termyou're actually further away
from home than you want to be.
Linda Berlot (49:02):
Yeah, I see that, and I see that being played out
on the political stage too.
Right, there is so muchactivism, there is really not
much space to listen, to try tounderstand, and there is also
sometimes a belief.
Like you said, if I amlistening to you and being
curious and trying to exploreyour point of view, I am made
(49:26):
wrong almost for giving up onour agenda, and it should not be
like that.
In a savvy world, it would bethat we have the ability to
remain in dialogue and discourseand be curious about each other
have the ability to remain indialogue and discourse and be
(49:47):
curious about each other.
Marco Blankenburgh (49:53):
There's two authors and facilitators who I
really respect William Ury hejust released this book.
Possible has a work in theglobal scene.
You mentioned politics.
I've just bought that book andI just have the greatest respect
for people who can actuallywork together with people that
they might totally disagree with, but they step into that space
to build bridges, to bringpeople together.
Another gentleman who does thatreally well is Adam Kahane.
(50:16):
He wrote the book Collaboratingwith the Enemy, working
together with people I don'tagree with, I don't trust and I
don't like, and it's being ableto step into that space.
It's hard, but you can only dothat as a cultural learner, with
the desire to be asinterculturally agile as I can
possibly be.
Linda Berlot (50:38):
You know, in OSC, which is the model of team
coaching that I use, we havethis little metaphor.
It's where we say that it's adance.
It's a dance between being opento influence so I allow myself
to be in discourse and dialoguewith you and I'm open to
influence but I don't give up onmyself.
(50:59):
And there's a dance betweenthat because I'm not so rigid
and stuck in my single story andbelieve that my way is right.
But there is the intention tocreate a flow between us and I
don't have to make myself wrongfor being who I am.
I can own who I am.
I can own my story, but I canalso curious and and find you
(51:24):
right in your land.
And if we're doing that foreach other, it creates a
beautiful dance of relationshipbetween us yeah, yeah imagine
that playing out in politics.
Marco Blankenburgh (51:34):
How beautiful that would be amazing
yes, without deeply hiddenagendas no yeah, wow, I think
the think the other thing thatkeeps coming back to me is that
doing the hard work to find whatis important right now in this
(51:54):
context and then designing waysto bring people together to
create culture together, tobring people together to create
culture together.
And of course, I might be alittle bit biased, because
intercultural agility is veryclose to my heart, but I find
that often people lead with aproblem and they don't
(52:17):
understand the why of the whybehind that problem from a local
perspective.
So we talked about a fewalready.
It could be gender-relatedissues, could be localized
versions of racism, caste mebeing bigger better than you,
etc.
It could be issues related tohow people view disadvantage,
(52:40):
historical issues related tominorities, sexual orientation,
etc.
And what people then do is theymake the issue the focus first,
and that's where a lot of thestories come from, where this
didn't work or this backfired onus in the local context, or the
(53:01):
local team or the local boardflagged this down and they don't
want us to spend any budget ortime on this subject.
What I find is that almost thekey to start unlocking it is
actually first buildingintercultural agility, because
every one of the diversitychallenges, there is always a
(53:22):
cultural angle to it.
You can't escape walking into acountry and when you start
asking, for instance, about howpeople view gender, there's a
local story.
You go to another country andyou start asking about sexual
orientation there is a localstory.
There's always a local story.
And, yes, it's not just culture.
There are other influences thathave an impact on it.
(53:45):
But I've seen so often, ifpeople discover the fun and the
power of intercultural agility,they get tooled up with some of
those tools that you know, buildthe cultural learner mindset
that teach people how to hold amultiplicity of stories, teach
people to have betterconversations with one another.
(54:06):
And then you revisit some ofthose problem topics.
All of a sudden it becomespossible to even have those
conversations, absolutely.
Linda Berlot (54:16):
I think you know all of the teams that both you
and I work with.
They're all multicultural,right, and we see that very
often.
Please come and work with myteam so we can fix that problem,
and so I think the pieces ofwork is flipping that right and
upskilling them, as you say, andalso helping them build their
(54:37):
relationship first.
So how do we build ourrelationship so that it's strong
enough to be able to hold thoseconversations?
How do we create enoughunderstanding about me and you
and the different cultures wecome from, and how do we create
a space where we both can feelseen and understood and included
(54:57):
and safe so that we may thentalk about that topic?
Yeah, so that's the, that's thework that we may then talk
about that topic.
So that's the work that we do,right, that's the work that we
ask teams to focus on.
Marco Blankenburgh (55:08):
I'm thinking of an example where I was asked
by a senior leadership teambecause that was from a global
edict.
They were told you need to dounconscious bias training.
And I was asked to come in andwork with that senior leadership
team and I knew that that wasjust gonna be a compliance
exercise and so I got to know alittle bit more about the team
(55:32):
and I realized that there werecertain issues that I knew,
certain tools that we use,especially in our perception
management.
Using tools like the ThreeColors of Worldview would, on
the one hand, in and ofthemselves be helpful for that
team.
On the other hand, it would bean indirect way for them to
(55:54):
become more aware of theirunconscious biases.
So I literally took the libertyto talk for one slide about
unconscious bias and say youknow, they are real.
There are 188, plus now.
I don't know them all by heart.
They are real.
Sometimes they are neutral andeven helpful when you think
(56:18):
about what food to eat, whichclothes to wear, which route to
take on the road to work.
Other unconscious biases arenot helpful at all.
They're destructive.
They create pain and division.
The question is can I start torecognize when that negative
trigger happened or when that'snot the case?
(56:39):
So we started looking at anumber of conversational tools.
We used the three colors ofworldview to help them
understand that people seethings in different ways.
They are motivated and drivenby either the right thing, the
honorable thing, the thing thatgives power position, and by
taking that route at the endthey started.
(57:02):
It's almost like their eyes wereopen yeah they started to see
and hear and listen and askquestions and it it increased
their, their presence in theroom increased their mindfulness
and they started to say, oh, ifI say it that way, that would
be disrespectful, right?
Oh yeah, I have to rememberthis place is very different
(57:25):
from where I was previouslyemployed.
I can't just assume thateverything's going to be the
same.
Or I was very successful inthis other place.
Now I'm in a different contextwith totally different cultures.
I can't just assume that I cancopy and paste the method I used
in my previous employment intothis context and that it will
work.
So it was an indirect approach,but they started to actually
(57:49):
tackle their unconscious biases,especially when they were
unhelpful, automatically as aresult of tooling them up.
Linda Berlot (57:58):
Very precious, very precious and, I think, so
important, particularly becausewe know that with globalization,
people are traveling, peopleexpect international placements.
We are constantly moving acrossboundaries and across cultures,
and so it becomes more and moreimportant to navigate in
(58:21):
different waters and becomfortable navigating in
different waters.
I think some of the childrenthat are third cultural kids get
that, get raised in a in adifferent country to where they
were born, or even where theirparents may have been born.
They, they go to school withchildren of different cultures
and they grow up.
You know, it's almost like thewater that they swim in.
(58:44):
They are so interculturallysavvy.
It's mind-blowing and sointeresting to observe.
Yeah.
Marco Blankenburgh (58:51):
I was listening to my son.
He was asked to give someexamples of what it's like to
grow up interculturally and hesays I can't think of any
examples.
Linda Berlot (59:04):
he's so steeped in it.
Marco Blankenburgh (59:05):
It's like well, what about this?
Uh, I gave him an example.
I gave him another example andhe looked at the and he said,
yeah, but that's normal.
So, yes, for you, for you it'snormal, but for other people
that's profound, yeah, so TCKscan sometimes be so into it that
(59:28):
it's totally the water theyswim in, right, right, yeah,
yeah.
Well, I think we've given somereally practical examples.
Linda Berlot (59:38):
I think we have a few more on our list.
Marco Blankenburgh (59:40):
At the same time, I really appreciate that
we can actually talk about thesethings, although we're
naturally cautious asintercultural practitioners.
We don't like to put our fingeron things, especially if it
becomes contentious.
But I think it's important tohave this conversation today.
If it resonates with you as anaudience, you say, oh yeah, I've
(01:00:04):
experienced that.
Please reach out to Linda andmyself, and I hope we can have a
conversation beyond thispodcast as well.
Linda Berlot (01:00:14):
I love.
Where you are pointing towardsis courage, courage to have
these conversations, and that'sanother quality that's necessary
, right, as well as being acultural learner.
It takes guts to sit in thefire and say hold on, that's
different.
Share that with me.
You know, let me suspend mystory for a moment, or let me be
(01:00:36):
humble and curious, and youknow it's brave.
And so that's the invitationfor everybody listening is to be
brave, to step into courage andto have these conversations, or
to say you know what?
I don't know enough about this,let me go and find out more and
educate myself.
Marco Blankenburgh (01:00:56):
I think that's a beautiful way to finish
today.
Thank you, linda, I reallyenjoyed this.
Linda Berlot (01:01:01):
Thank you, Marco.
Marco Blankenburgh (01:01:17):
I always enjoy our conversations on your
favorite podcast app or channel,or forward and recommend this
podcast to people around you.
As always, if any of the topicswe discussed today intrigue you
, you will find links toarticles discussing them in
greater depth in the podcastnotes.
If you would like to learn moreabout intercultural
(01:01:37):
intelligence and how you canbecome more culturally agile,
you can find more informationand hundreds of articles at
knowledgeworkscom.
A special thanks to JasonCarter for composing the music
on this podcast and to the wholeKnowledgeworks team for making
this podcast a success.
Thank you, nita Rodriguez, araAzizbakian, rajitha Raj, and
(01:02:02):
thanks to Vip and George foraudio production, rosalind Raj
for scheduling and Caleb Straussfor marketing and helping
produce this podcast.
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