Intercultural Articles

If you want to do a little reading about intercultural things, there is an online textbook with an excellent assortment of scholarly, but easy to understand, articles. The title is actually Psychology and Culture, so that tells you their slant.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction and Overview
2. Conceptual, Methodological, and Ethical Issues in Psychology and Culture
3. Perspectives from Various Ethnic and Cultural Groups
4. Basic Psychological Processes and Culture
5. Conceptualizing and Measuring Intelligence, Abilities, and Creativity Across Cultures
6. Measuring Personality and Values Across Cultures
7. Studying Health and Well-being Across Cultures
8. Acculturation and Adapting to Other Cultures
9. Culture and Mental Illness
10. Counseling Across Cultures
11. Culture and Human Development: Infancy, Childhood, and Adolescence
12. Culture and Human Development: Adulthood and Old Age
13. Cultural Perspectives on Families
14. Cultural Perspectives on Death, Dying, and Bereavement
15. Social Psychology and Culture
16. Perspectives on Becoming More Culturally Competent

In Their Own Voice

6 billion Others — what an amazing project, and a gift to the rest of us that can’t travel everywhere and talk to all these people. You can go to this website and watch clips of people from around the world tell us what they think, feel and believe about life — love, parents, dreams, God, life — the interesting stuff. And they’ve shared it with us. I wish I could say thank you to the people who are interviewed and to the people who made the project. Check it out. I couldn’t stop watching.

Why do we need intercultural consultants?

Today, global corporations are transforming themselves into ‘transnationals,’ moving work to the places with the talent to handle the job and the time to do it at the right cost…. Companies are devising new strategies to reach global scale faster…. Moving people across borders…. The companies that play this global, mobile game best will emerge the winners. BusinessWeek (bold added)

This is why businesses need help from intercultural consultants.

Below are more snippets from the current BusinessWeek, or you can just scroll to the end for my summary.

International Isn’t Just IBM’s First Name

“My worst day was the last day of the quarter,” Oliviera says of his job as the Brazil country manager, which he held until he was promoted in late 2007. “I was measured for producing sales in Brazil, and at the same time, I had 6,000 global service delivery people with a different way of measuring. It was schizophrenic.”

One of the major challenges in this setup is the difficulty of communicating by e-mail or even videoconferencing when programmers have never met one another. Strangers don’t readily share knowledge. A big problem is trust.

Then there is Nokia’s new home in Romania (just outside Cluj, where I used to live).

The challenge is to teach local workers to be as productive and exacting about quality as their counterparts in Brazil, China, and India. And [the Plant Manager] has to know enough about Romanian culture to create a workplace where skilled employees will want to stick around. Other multinationals are also building factories in the region, so there is sure to be competition for the best people. But if it all works, Nokia will extend its dominance of the global handset market.

And isn’t that what companies want? More profits?

Conclusion: Companies are going global, not just in sales, but in their workforce. Companies are taking their way of doing things, which is culturally influenced, to a different culture. Furthermore, people (whose behavior and values are culturally influenced) are working with people of different cultures (who therefore have different behaviors and values). The coming together of these different cultures, whether organizational or personal, can clash, create conflict, and tear things apart, or they can synergize to create dynamic solutions and workforces. The companies have a lot at stake. Intercultural consultants can help companies manage the risk of globalization and leverage the opportunities it creates.

VisualsSpeak

I love this tool. VisualsSpeak gets into a different part of the brain and triggers differnt thikning. But in a way that still makes sense and is usable and accessible to those of us who are predominantly linear, right-brainers. Most recently I used it in a strategic visioning session with a group of higher education administrators, faculty and staff. The resulting group collage put into a picture what had not been entirely articulated, but was underlying the whole conversation. Seeing it affirmed the group and what they’d been thinking, and the pictures then helped put into words what was central to their vision.

VisualsSpeak is versatile and can be used for many different purposes and in a variety of settings (corporate, education, non-profit and informal settings), which makes it a good investment. They have a good blog for learning about visuals, including a page about why it works and Christine has been helpful as I’ve thought through using VisualsSpeak for different objectives.

Intercultural Conflict Styles Inventory (ICS)

All of the following information is taken from the ICS Facilitator’s Guide and Interpretive Guide. All quotes come from the Facilitator’s Guide.

The ICS was developed by Dr. Mitch Hammer as a statistically validated measure of an individual’s approach to resolving conflict with others. It “is designed to help [people] better understand approaches for dealing with conflict when interacting with others…. The questionnaire is specifically designed to focus on how you communicate under conflict conditions” (p. 14). The understanding that results helps achieve the following outcomes: resolution of disagreements, managing stress, accurate communication, improvement of personal relationships, and assisting in mediation. It can be used with high school students and older who have at least a seventh grade level of English reading and comprehension.

Dr. Hammer identifies two dimensions of style: direct/indirect and emotionally expressive/restrained that are particularly important in conflict. By plotting these along two axes, he then identifies four cultural prototype conflict styles (one in each of the four quadrants). These four styles are: Discussion (direct and emotionally restrained), Engagement (direct and emotionally expressive), Accommodation (indirect and emotionally restrained), and Dynamic (indirect and emotionally expressive).

While the model defines cultural prototypes, Dr. Hammer states that one’s personal style as assessed by the inventory “reflects [one’s] own learned patterns for dealing with disagreements and expressing emotions under conflict conditions. [One’s] conflict style may or may not be similar to the normative approach characteristic in [one’s] primary cultural community” (p. 3). In other words, an individual profile is just that, an individual’s profile. His or her preferred approach to handling conflict may or may not be similar to the norms of the culture he or she identifies with.

Administration of the inventory is fairly simple. It requires purchase of the paper instrument and Interpretive Guide (they come as a packet), one per person, which the client then answers and scores. There are 18 pairs of statements. For each pair, the client divides five points between them. Once completed, the individual has a D/I (direct/indirect) score and an E/R (expressive/restrained) score that they plot on a graph in their Interpretive Guide. Placement on the graph identifies which of the four styles they prefer (Discussion, Engagement, Accommodation, Dynamic).

The Facilitator’s Manual makes the tool easy to use and easy to use well if the facilitator is familiar with using such instruments. It also provides details on the validation statistics. Certification on the ICS is not required, but is offered for those who want more training.

Global SIETAR

While I’m thinking about SIETAR, I’d like to recommend the Global SIETAR Congress in October of this year (2008). It is being held in Granada, Spain and is the first (or at least the first in many years) global conference. It is a place for newcomers to the field as well as seasoned professionals. What makes it truly worthwhile is the people you meet — the conversations you have and connections you make. Please pass the word and consider coming yourself.

Early bird registration ends January 30, 2008.

SIETAR USA

Last week was the annual SIETAR USA conference. I had a fantastic time — it was full of interesting people with whom I connected and full of stimulating conversations from which I learned a lot. I’m stuffed.

As a sample: I attended a presentation by Dr. Allan Bird on the Global Competencies Inventory, which is a well-research and tested inventory. I’m sure I’ll write more on this as I decipher my notes. I also attended a presentation by Mijnd Huiser on his Model of Freedom. It is his way of reconciling Hofstede with Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner and is an interesting way of looking at cultural dimensions and how they intersect. And I attended a workshop by Dr. Christopher Deal on bridging the academic/corporate divide, which turned into a good discussion that may turn into an ongoing dialogue (certainly an internal one, at least).

For instant gratification, I learned a fabulous trick for tacking up papers on the “wall” (see my post on the SIETAR blog to learn how). I almost didn’t go to this workshop because it was after lunch on the last day. The description said “experiential” and I know someone who didn’t go because of that. As for me, I knew that unless it was experiential, I would fall asleep.

Next year’s global conference in Grenada has a lot to live up to, and I’m looking forward to it.

Ignorance as a benefit?

One of the benefits of being in another culture can be ignorance.

Really?

I recently read an interview with Arianna Huffington, author and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post. She grew up in Greece, then went to the U.K. for university and later to the U.S. In her interview, she talked about how her ignorance of the local history, traditions, expectations or stereotypes meant she was free to try something the locals might not. She says, “I wasn’t weighed down with the kinds of overwhelming notions that may have stopped British girls from even thinking about trying for such a position.” For the record, she does go on to mention that there were indeed difficulties associated with being a foreigner. But the lesson she learned was, “it is easier to overcome people’s judgments than to overcome our own self-judgment, the fear we internalize” (Newsweek, Oct. 15, 2007).

In fact, living in another culture can be scary, and many people don’t do it because of fear, but we rarely think about the fear that stops us from doing things right where we live. Sometimes living in another culture gives us freedom from some of those fears. It can create the space to recognize the fears that limit us. It is possible that experiencing life in another culture can help free us from some of those fears.

To Be an Interculturalist

“Change your opinions, keep to your principles.
Change your leaves, keep intact your roots.”

– Victor Hugo

I attached this quote to a map that hangs above my desk. I love this quote. It embodies in a picture what we must do if we are to work effectively with people of other cultures. Some things must change. In fact, many things may change. The problem with that is as we change, it may feel as if we are losing our very identity. The leaves of a tree help a botanist identify the type of tree. If the leaves have changed, it’s confusing for the botanist. Really, it’s confusing for anyone trying to understand the tree. It may even be confusing for the tree.

Yet as we change, some things — our core — must remain. Perhaps the hardest work for an interculturalist is the continuing conversation with oneself about what is leaf and what is root. What can I change and what must I keep. We may have once thought that something was so important that we could never change being that way, only to decide later that we can. Or we may have gone into a different culture thinking we would leave our own cultural tradition behind, only to discover it represents our core, our roots, in such a way that can’t give it up — at least not at the time.

So the conversation will continue: what is leaf that can change? What is root that gives me life and must remain?