I’m afraid I’ve been a bit tardy getting back to comments lately! Sorry.

I had trouble with coComment a while back and had to de-install it etc. I re;ied on it a lot to find my way back to comments I’d left and have only recently been getting on top of it again (sigh!)

@Christine @Tom – Thanks for your support! I find that I often don’t think the way many other people do (not criticising one way or the other here) but being a INTJ (if you know what THAT is) is supposed to make things difficult for me anyway – I’ve learnt to live with it .

Ka kite!

The standards thing is really mixed. On the one hand not just anything will do. Yet on the other helping people with the ability to communicate more humanly, at deeper levels, and to know thyself better are much needed, not readily standardized, and I don’t believe are listed in Bloom’s Taxonomy. I can’t imagine how old Bloom missed those.

Wholeheartedly agree with you that tolerance is a core trait for communication especially across cultures. it’s not a nice to have but a need to have. Whenever I travel, I chant to myself ‘When in Rome, when in Rome’. Pays off sometimes and sometimes the ugly American leaps out. Progress not perfection I guess.

I suspect the juicy mix happens when people are able to create a new cultural space that includes aspects from each. Where we seek “our” collective culture. Not trying to melt them together, but leaving the individual parts intact. Making a space for tolerance and learning to greet each others difference with curiosity.

I’m fascinated by the concept of global standards. I suspect I have a lot to learn in this area that will involve me giving up the perfectionist part of myself to be willing to redefine what quality means in a larger context.

I agree that listening is challenging for many people. I may be on the other end of the spectrum, and was listening at the levels I usually do (for what is being said, what is not being said, nonverbal inputs, other ways of knowing). I was also taking notes for the class on the Google Doc, where I usually take notes by hand. I think what I learned is that I can overload my channels, and how I need to be able to step back to a place where I can listen effectively as well as mindfully.The details of what makes that possible need to change from situation to situation.

Aren’t standards odd things?

Y’know, the learning object has had it’s fiercest fight purely because of standards. In fact, some would say that it has been standardised to near extinction. Yet the most stringently standardised learning object may not necessarily be any more effective than the simplest learning object that’s designed to teach the same objective.

It is an inherently human thing to use standards to determine whether something is acceptable or not, no matter how effective it may actually be in its function if used (standard needs aside).

Culture plays a major part in all this, but it is not just confined to acceptable cultural function and behaviour.

Tolerance goes a long way to assist in ‘connectivity’ between people, culturally, racially, whether gender, status or age related. And while many people put a lot of store in saying things the ‘right’ way, whether on twitter or in an email or F2F, perhaps we really should be putting energy into learning some tolerance as well.

The adage “When in Rome . . .” summarises this very pertinent trait. Why should a woman learn to perform a communication according to a specific culture rather than that same culture learns to accept the way her culture says it? Shouldn’t it work both ways? It has to with technology, after all. Otherwise connectivity becomes an issue.

Ka kite

When I was auditing, we found many mistakes that a previous unicultural team had made. This group, made up of an American team with no foreign language or previous international experience identified “mistakes” in inventory counting, for example, that while appropriate for the American context, were against the laws in France and Germany. We modified out audit so it would fit French and German law, and were told that we were compromising “American corporate” standards. However, the fact is that by understanding French and German law, we were able to identify a real problem not captured by our American standards.

Repeatedly we were complimented on the quality of our work, which some might have said were “just good enough” but in fact were outstanding in a global context.

Secondly, I feel it is very difficult to have “partial attention” when you are focusing on understanding others. I wonder if you feel you improved your listening skills over the course of this training (I loved the visual Miki provided above). How do you think that might improve your work in the future? I find this is a skill my students really lack. They are so busy trying to think of the point they are going to make, that they really don’t listen to other people. As we move to greater focus on knowledge within the workplace, this means there is the potential to “lose” that knowledge or the opportunity to cocreate knowledge.