Have you entered the cultural training & development contest yet and grabbed a chance of winning a free Life Lenses assessment?  No?  What are you waiting for – deadline is June 15th.

As I mentioned in a previous post watching out for too-near hippos by night and too-curious monkeys by day, I’ve been fortunate to do my training work all over the globe.  From -72 Celsius/-96 Fahrenheit to +44 Celsius/111 Fahrenheit I’ve run the gamut of intriguing work places and spaces.

When you find yourself 12 hours ahead or behind your regular timezone, in a culture that is obviously different from your own, cultural issues naturally tend to pop.  But.  Cultural issues are always at play.  Truly.  Truly.

Culture is what gives meaning to our lives.

No matter where you find yourself doing training & development work, whether your participants seem like they are culturally similar to you, vastly different or somewhere in between, culture is a HUGE component of every successful training.  Loose sight of its significance at your peril.

However.

First.

An important caveat.

I’m using what I’ve observed working with other cultures.  However the examples I give below don’t necessarily relate to the overall culture.  You will always find exceptions, other, difference. That’s what makes it interesting.

So please don’t take the examples as written in stone (aka generalizations or stereotypes), as in all Kenyans (fill in the blank) _______.  You’ll hear my gasp and choke from afar if you do!

Besides I’ll guarantee there are things about you that ‘fit’ your overall culture and things that don’t. For example, I’m Canadian but I really dislike hockey.  Yep, it’s true and if you dislike me because of it, the only thing that’s changed is you.

Now on with the cultural training & development lessons.

Whether I’m in my own backyard or several timezones away here are some of what I’ve learned about cultural lessons for training & development:

• Time: I was working in the Philippines years ago and one night decided to go to a movie.  While I waited for the movie to ‘begin’ I noticed people ambling in and out of the theatre.  Curious, I followed a bunch in.  Gobsmacked, I realized the movie had already ‘started’ and I was ‘late’.

It turned out to be a great example of how fluid some cultures treat time.  My culture?  We save, bank, shave, mark and bide out time.  It’s a commodity that we measure down to the nanosecond.  Working in a culture where time was much more flexible was refreshing.  Although I have to say my cultural roots sure showed another time when, working in an indigenous community in Mexico, we just about missed our flight because of this fluidity.

• Physical space & body awareness: ever ask a corporate North American audience to dance and move their hips?  It can be done but with a lot of preparation and foundation laying.  When I did a 5 day training in East Africa with Ugandan, Kenyan, Tanzanian and Rwandan UN workers let’s just say they put my North American clients to shame in the way they moved.  A movement exercise to reinforce the program evaluation training I was doing there was met with loud cries of ‘more!’

How cultures react to the physical space around them and how much they are aware of and consciously use their bodies varies tremendously.

• Formality / informality: a final cultural element to keep in mind when training is the  formality / informality continuum.  Where do you lie on the continuum?  Where do your participants lie?

When I was doing a cultural intelligence training for the United Nations in Brazil I was a bit worried (to say the least) when at the start of the workshop there were only 3 people in the audience.  Turns out the organizers were waiting for my formal say-so to open the door.  I’m happy to report that the workshop was overflowing.

How can you tell where you should aim your training on the formality/informality continuum?  Simple.  Look at what you and your participants are wearing.  Clothing is a big clue.  See a sea of suits?  You’re likely in a formal setting.  Open toed sandals peeking up at you below bare arms?  Could be a more informal environment.  Language is also a clue – watch for the level of formal terms in use.

Take a look at your cultural roots when you’re both preparing and delivering a training.  For sure your roots will show.  Same with your participants.

A recent survey in the Canadian HR Reporter, by Claude Balthazard, reported on human resource professionals’ take on problem managers.  Cleaning up after them.  Sometimes repeatedly.

The article had some interesting things to say about some organizational cultures tolerating problem behaviour.  A disappointing 35.2% said ‘if they deliver results, we tolerate just about anything’. Talk about being short sighted.  Imagine the motivation (or lack) of the rest of the staff.

As a trainer who goes into many different organizations I can say from experience how much organizational cultures differ (and not just on how they respond to problems).

I created a word cloud from the responses to the question ‘what do these managers do that creates the most problems?’ The larger the word the more common the response.  The smaller the word the less common the response. You can also see the word cloud here.

Anything pop out at you?

Here’s what I noticed:

• all of the items (save possibly ‘failure to abide by employment standards’) are all related to being able to communicate effectively, with both emotional and cultural intelligence
• you might be the biggest bird on the block in terms of building nest-know how, but if you can’t manage your flock they won’t be able to fly
• our brains aren’t built to handle too much stress and still be able to highly function.  If we’re stressed, feel disrespected, bullied, discriminated against etc. we downshift to our lizard brain and focus on the basics – fight, flee or freeze – not exactly the stuff of an engaged, productive workforce.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been at the UN World Urban Forum (WUF) in Rio de Janiero, Brazil where I gave a workshop on cultural intelligence.  Here’s the behind the scenes story to the workshop, what I didn’t tell you in that post.

When the time came to start there were only 3 people in the room.  Disappointed, I wondered if the topic was wrong for the conference.  I thought perhaps I shouldn’t present it at a WUF conference again.

Then…

The organizers asked if they could let in people.  Turns out the participants had been waiting outside the room.  The room ended up being at capacity.  There were so many people I ran out of handouts.

Then…

A man walked in whose workshop, about social inclusion in cities, I had attended in the morning.  I enjoyed his workshop thoroughly and I was equally happy to have him attend my workshop.

Then…

I split from traditional UN genre workshops and did interactive activities that involved a lot of laughter and had people from all over the world working together and enjoying themselves.

Then…

The workshop ended and the same man came up to thank me, saying he’d enjoyed himself and wanted to talk further about possible collaboration.

Then…

I was sorting through the business cards that people left, those who wanted follow-up resource packages and found the unsolicited written feedback pictured above – ‘best two hours in Rio’ (referring to my workshop).

What a kind thing to do, to take the time to give a presenter unasked for feedback.  It made my week.

Then…

I realized it was from Gerd Junne, the same man whose workshop I had so admired in the morning.  He is the Chair in International Relations at the University of Amsterdam.  He’s also the source of the gorgeous woodcut picture in my last post.

You just never know.  From disappointment to gaining a new colleague and hosting a sold out workshop all in a small space of time.  How fast things can change if only we keep our chins up and our eyes open for 180 degrees of reconsideration.

Michael Hager, Washburn University, 'Inclusion/Exclusion' woodcut monoprint, 2004

What’s your CQ?  You may be familiar with IQ, social intelligence and emotional intelligence but the new kid on the block is cultural intelligence.

I’m in Rio de Janiero, Brazil at the United Nations World Urban Forum.  I’ve just finished doing a workshop on cultural intelligence, which is a combination of meta-cognition, skills and knowledge, that allows us to move with and through various cultures, including our own, with confidence and flair even.

Fill in the blanks:  ________ are good dancers, _______ are good at math, ________ are bad drivers. Bidden or not, welcome or not, were you able to fill in the spaces?  In all likelihood you were.  That’s because our brains are wired to fill in the gaps.

The Heath brothers, in Made to Stick, call it the curiousity gap.  It’s the same gap that makes us stay up too late watching a TV show we don’t like simply because we want to find out what happens.  Who killed who in the whodunnit. This filling in of the gaps is helpful in some areas of life but not intercultural work.

Too often we fill in the gaps wrong while thinking we are right.  We tend to assume we know up to 90% more about another culture than we actually do. What can help?

1. Have a broad working definition of culture - most of us default to defining culture only by ethnicity.  By including gender, faith, material possessions, time, physical space, personal space and many other cultural elements we are more likely to get a richer picture of the people we are working and playing with.
2. Check assumptions – look for the boxes that we unwittingly put around our thinking that squeeze our brain into road block thinking.
3. Understand your views on conflict – often times working interculturally includes bumping up against conflict.  If you understand your own particular view of conflict you’ll have a more effective starting point.  For example, do you see conflict as a chance to vent, a way to clear the air, or something that is scary, something to be avoided at all costs?
4. Hold a worldview that includes complexity – if you always expect 2 to follow 1, and b to follow a, that is you prefer a linear view of the world you’re likely in for a bumpy ride.  On the other hand if, while working interculturally, you expect a complex ride, with ups, downs and hidden corners, you’ll save yourself a lot of stress.

Cultural intelligence is the new kid on the block and a very much welcome one.  What will you do to welcome him/her?