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I find that the only way I really deepen my cultural competency is when I am immersed in a process with people who are in some way different than myself. I can read about diversity and inclusion, and benefit somewhat, but it’s only when I am challenged by being in-relationship with others that I reach those deeper places where resistance lives

I spent last week in a class at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC) in Portland, Oregon. This is my fifth year at SIIC, and like every other year, I learned a lot about my limitations and how much I don’t know. The classes range from a couple of hours to five days, with my favorite being the five days. It’s enough time to dig deep into a topic while taking advantage of the diversity in the room to experience walking up to my edge.

Terry Brake, of tmaworld, taught the 5-day class on Culture, Technology, and Communication in the Global Workplace.

Lessons about Global Virtual Teams

Virginia Yonkers stopped by this blog each day with very helpful insights. She wrote a blog post, entitled Lessons Learned in Working with International Virtual Groups, which summarizes insights that she and her classes have gathered over the years about working with global teams. It’s a great resource list and very little is about the technology itself. Curiosity, resiliency, and patience seem to be at the center of the required skills.

I also had the pleasure of interviewing the faculty for the class, Terry Brake, for the ASTD-Cascadia podcast. We talk about his upcoming book, Where in the world is my team: Making a success of your virtual global workplace. I’m really looking forward to it, because we got a preview of the material in class. It has a lot to offer anyone who is building diverse teams.

Moving beyond the class

The class has a Facebook page where we plan to continue sharing resources. We have also chosen a delicious tag (siic2008cct) for collecting things that may help. If you are interested in the intersection between culture, technology, and communication join the Facebook page or tag some resources.

Reflections on my participation

Facilitation skills + technology skills + some cultural competency ≠ competent participation on virtual global teams.

I’ve been a facilitator for a long time. I know that the process is foundational, and must be operating smoothly for the content to be effective. Why then, did I jump right in with everybody else to focus on content/task/outcome. Did I leave my facilitation skills at home?

We kept hearing about continuous partial attention, the state many of us are in while we are managing multiple tasks. We would encounter a challenge in class, have to come up with a way to use technology, navigate the cultural differences, listen to very fluent but accented voices, and achieve some kind of outcome in a short amount of time. Not to mention checking email and answering inquiries from the office.

Kermit Pattison’s article, Worker, Interrupted: The Cost of Task Switching in Fast Company wonders about the impact of our behavior:

I argue that when people are switching contexts every 10 and half minutes they can’t possibly be thinking deeply. There’s no way people can achieve flow. When I write a research article, it takes me a couple of hours before I can even begin to think creatively. If I was switching every 10 and half minutes, there’s just no way I’d be able to think deeply about what I’m doing. This is really bad for innovation. When you’re on the treadmill like this, it’s just not possible to achieve flow.

I learned a lot in the class. Way more than I could have by reading about how to be successful. I don’t think our project output reflects the depth of the learning. I found myself taking shortcuts and aiming for “good enough”. Which is a much lower standard than I usually aim for.

The other thing I noticed is I did not get to meet many other people from the other classes at the Institute. It took all my focus to participate in the global teams’ class. There was so much audio processing from simulating conference calls, and having to listen very carefully to the variety of accents, I was totally exhausted by the end of the day. Usually I will attend the evening socials, which start at 9:30 PM. Not this time, I had to go home and go to bed. I have colleagues who were there who I did not even get a chance to talk to.

Blogging each day

This was a stretch for me. First because the days are long and I was really tired, but also because I am fairly reflective, and it’s hard for me to experience something new and then turn right around and write about it. I usually try to be clearer and spend more time on my posts, so it was new to throw unfinished ideas up on the blog.

Which technology?

I was surprised to see much of the class was about using conference calls, chat and email. It seems that these tools are what is still most common for many virtual teams. Certainly the people in the class who were working with organizations often had other web conferencing tools, but I saw way less social media tools than I expected. I realize that is still true in the larger whole, but I thought people who were involved in virtual teams would already be using the whole gamut of collaboration tools available. Instead, people were sharing tools and signing up in class for the ones they weren’t already using. It was also nice to see some of the older class members were using more of the tools than the younger members.

Photographs? Not under pressure

I’m not a snapshot photographer. It seldom occurs to me to take pictures unless I am specifically out on a photo shoot. So here I am in a visual company writing a blog without photographs again. I also realized I have a lot of things in my office to help me with the visuals like fancy software, digital tablets and a network drive full of photos. Away from the office on a strange laptop, suddenly everything seemed hard. So I just ignored it. The pressure to perform the tasks to get the assignments done superseded my need to illustrate my posts. I have a lot more empathy for people who don’t know where to start with photographs.

Take aways?

Building teams takes time. Over technology, it takes way more.

The process of how you will communicate, and even more how you will sense and respond when people are not communicating is really important. Dare I say, the most important?

The cost of not attending to all aspects of process is losing potential input that can be critical to move the outcome from good enough to high performance.

Cross cultural, technology, and communication skills separately will help you, but you have to learn all over again when you are combining them.

In order to work on a global virtual team regularly, I would need to come up with some way to have visual inputs. Shared visuals, and ways to draw on a whiteboard is really important to me, and central to the way I make meaning.

I’m left with a question posed by one of our class participants Miki Yamashita:

This was a question explored by our virtual team in the Culture, Technology, and Communication in the Global Workplace at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC) in Portland Oregon.

Tips for Avoiding Problems on Virtual Teams

In order to avoid challenges on teams, it is important that each team member has multiple ways in which to get in touch with other team members. For instance, do team members have contact information on email, skype, telephone, snail mail or other agreed upon technologies? Do team members have back-up contact information in case they haven’t heard from a teammate?

It is also important to set communication standards for the team. The team should have a shared understanding of what “silence” means. The leader should ask each person:

• What does silence mean to you?
• When you experience silence from other people, how do you respond?
• When you are silent, how would you like other people to respond?
• How much time (in general) would you like people to wait before contacting you?

Micheal Sampson suggests team leaders should be transparent and model for others how to act on the team. Individuals on the team should not stop talking to each other about:

• what’s coming up
• when they are going to be out of the office and out-of-touch
• what they think is working and not working on the team
• ideas they have for improving what’s being done

All team members must be willing to share their working conditions if they encounter non-understanding. This would include their physical environment, timezone, colleagues or any other factors affecting how you are able to work.

How we gathered information
We used a variety of inputs to create this listing of tips.

1. web research
2. tagging in delicious
3. class discussion including class members from respective cultures
4. input from faculty
5. input from comments on the week posts (thank you Virginia, Michele, and Ken!)
6. wisdom from our team members experience

While we had almost continuous technical challenges, we learned a lot. It’s not easy, but we realize this is where we are going in the future.

See also:

Exploring Culture and Technology

Exploring Culture and Technology: Day 2

Exploring Culture and Technology: Day 3

Exploring Culture and Technology: Day 4

Collaborating over Google Docs

We have resorted to using Google Docs for our virtual team project in the Culture, Technology, and Communication in the Global Workplace at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC) in Portland Oregon.

Great idea. We could all access it. We could all edit it.

And so we discovered another way we could get into trouble. We only had a couple of days of sitting in a class together. We thought we trusted each other. But simply editing brought us to a halt. We dumped all the information into the document and had a mess. Was it really OK to cut and reorder each others work? And what was each others work? There were no indicators.

The other thing I found difficult was there were some references sprinkled throughout. But I couldn’t tell which parts of the text was referenced, or by who, and which was the work of my colleagues. We talked about using my blog to put the final documents on, but since it is my business blog, I want to make sure anything we put on it is properly attributed. And I can’t tell.

We still can’t get the German Google chat to hook up with the US Google chat. We did get Skype working with our German member. But the other US member can’t install Skype on her work laptop. So I attempted to work in two chat windows and be the go between. I have also resorted to kicking my colleague under the table to get him to notice his chat. The other group in the room has given up and is simulating a conference call. Now we are distracted, in multiple chats, trying to edit a messy Google Doc together.

So we decide to go outside where we can talk. Smooth out the difference of opinion I was cutting and pasting between chat windows.

Exploring Culture and Technology

Exploring Culture and Technology: Day 2

Exploring Culture and Technology: Day 3

Another day, and another round of fully experiencing how hard communicating virtually across cultures can be. I guess my conclusion is that no matter what you choose to do, someone will potentially have problems with it. Best to use a variety of processes to at least allow people to be more comfortable some of the time.

Verbally directing a visual

In the first exercise of the day we sat back to back. One person described a visual, the other tried to draw it. None of the teams did very well. For the second round, the person who had the visual could stand behind the other and coach them as they were describing the visual to the drawing partner.

I drew in the second round. We finished first, and I came pretty close to reproducing the visual. However, I had huge advantages:

• my partner was a US American
• we both were native English speakers
• we both used the same native units of measurement
• I can draw (not totally necessary, but gives me confidence if nothing else)
• the visual was an electric circuit, and I am married to an engineer so I am familiar with the type of visual we created

The other teams were working across native language difference and nationality.

Shared meaning is very important

Without shared meaning there is no understanding

• need to probe for understanding
• try to say it other ways
• double the care when working cross-cultural

Assumptions of similarity is a big challenge. It can be tricky when native language is shared, but birth nation is not.

Simulated conference call

We sat in a circle with our backs turned. Each person received three cards with information about a culture and a monument built there. The task was to figure out which day the monument was completed, but sharing the bits of knowledge we had with each other.

One person was selected as the leader of the call. She was really good, and you could tell all the participants had been on a number of conference calls. We knew a lot about identifying ourselves, turn taking and the behaviors that help calls run well.

It was basically a math problem, with parts labeled in unfamiliar terms. We did accomplish the task in just over half and hour. However, It was exhausting for me. Even though I could take notes, getting all my input through audio was really hard. Especially listening through all the accents. Even though everyone is quite fluent in English. If I had a job where I had to be on conference calls all the time, I’m afraid I would have to quit. It would be like working with one hand tied behind my back all the time.

Building paper roller coasters

Our last task was to break into three teams. Each one is responsible for building a section of roller coaster from 10 sheets of paper, a length of tape, and some paper clips. Over technology. We were sent off to various place, and were only allowed one five minute conference call, and five - four minute other calls to teams. The goal is to come back face to face to put it together and be able to roll a chocolate covered coffee bean down the track.

Can we just say round one was a disaster? Even our faculty brought us back face to face to come up with a new strategy for tomorrow. Technical challenge for the day, getting Skype and iChat working on my laptop. Never mind the roller coaster.

I did get the interview with Terry Brake recorded. Sent if off for editing, so I should be able to share that with you soon.

See also:

Exploring Culture and Technology

Exploring Culture and Technology: Day 2

Exploring Culture and Technology: Day 3

It’s all about the people skills

Our class at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication was a half day today. Good thing, I think many of us needed the time to process all we are learning.

We started out talking about the most common challenges for global virtual teams.

• difference in time orientation
• difference in problem solving approach
• difference in decision placement in org
• who gets to participate?
• differing degrees of formality
• differing expectations of leadership behavior

The person who is key is the leader. But not just any leader. A leader with some tech skill certainly, but more important, one who has collaborative leadership skills. The competitive advantage is gained through collaborative advantage. How can we truly leverage the diversity on our teams?

Trust is a decision

We spent quite a bit of time talking about trust. How to gain it and lose it virtually, across cultures, and virtually across cultures. How can you help a team build both swift trust and deeper trust?

Virtual teams are totally dependent on trust, but technology doesn’t really support it. Research has shown these things build trust:
Swift trust

• competence demonstrated
• cooperation, mutual support— offers of help
• open with each other about issues
• reliability

Deepening trust

• accessibility over time, have presence
• compatibility
• predictable
• caring as individuals
• safety ( I can say things and it won’t come back to haunt me, what is said in meeting, stays in meeting)
• inclusion

Technical challenge of the day!

Now I’m pretty sure there is an inverse relationship between the amount of time you have to accomplish a task and the number of challenges that arise. I recorded a really great podcast interview with our class instructor Terry Brake. Only it was the first time I did it without my technical guru co-host. So I managed to record my questions, but none of Terry’s answers. Not so interesting! I’ll try again, now that I have determined what I was doing wrong. If Terry is willing and we can find the time.

See also:

Exploring Culture and Technology

Exploring Culture and Technology: Day 2

As has happened every time I have attended the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC), insights are emerging about my cultural edges. There is nothing like being immersed in an experience with people from around the world to surface opportunities for growth!

I can only begin to skim the surface of the learning. Cross-cultural dialogue unfolds over time for me. I understand on a simple level what I am learning today, but I know it will seep in and affect my behavior over a longer period of time.

Worldprism

We spend much of the day exploring cultural dimensions and how they might impact our communication over technology. Using the Worldprism™, each class member played the role of cultural informant for the country they were born in. We took our best guess about where the business culture fell on average in the different countries.

The conversations were very rich. We were not looking to identify simple lists of what to do in specific countries, but rather to look at the factors that might be influencing communication. To begin to understand the type of drivers which might be under particular responses, and to learn what in our own behavior over technology may be difficult for others. I’ll have to spend some time combing through the notes to organize our collective thoughts.

Identifying my people

I was on the USA team. At the end of the part where we were charting the USA, I commented that I felt like a deviant. While I recognized the pattern, I was also aware how I felt different. Then I saw the French Canadian from Quebec chart. My grandparents were French Canadian, and though I only knew one of them, I see now how their norms have passed through to me. I had never heard someone speak from this perspective before. I always wondered why descriptions of French and Canadian separately had never felt familiar to me.

There was part of me that felt very emotional, like I had found my people. Ok, so I realize that part is very US American. It takes many of us quite a while to discover and define our cultural identities. Many other aspects are very clear to me, but this national piece has been elusive.

Our first virtual team experiment

I’m on the technology in business team. We are working virtually (in theory) on a project to explore how to identify and intervene when things go poorly. We ended the day with an hour working on our project over Google Chat. Lets just say that we experienced a full range of the things that go wrong on virtual teams. I think we are doing action research. Just a few things we noticed:

What created challenges

1. hadn’t thought about process or content
2. got into trouble right away, but kept going anyway
3. were answering different questions
4. German Google was not working technically (no indication in US chat windows)
   
5. assumed universal chat vocabulary which wasn’t true
   
6. no one was responsible for checking in around technology
7. no common cohesive problem
8. no defined roles
9. no direction
10. no turn taking
11. no clear facilitator

And after an hour of struggling, we are resorting to email since we have a deliverable on Friday. I no longer wonder why business doesn’t adopt more technology! Oh did I mention we ended up in the hall talking face to face?

Have you experienced any of these challenges? What did you do?

One of our class members is also reflecting on the class here.

Also see: Exploring Culture and Technology Day 1

Exploring Culture and Technology: Day 3

Today was the first day of a five day workshop I am attending on Culture, Technology, and Communication in the Global Workplace. It’s being held at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC) in Portland Oregon.

One of the things I find very special about this particular setting is the people who assemble here, from all around the world, yet all passionate about learning about each other. There are people working a wide variety of settings: education, business, non-profit, ngo’s.

Global Perspectives from global citizens

My day started hearing from the institute faculty who are teaching a range of workshops on diversity, inclusion, cross-cultural, and intercultural communication. Each shared something they have been thinking about, or what I think of how they are changing their little corner of the world. The interns follow, professionals in their own right, greeting us in the many languages they speak, from the countries they have lived in. Can’t remember how many, but more than 35.

Starting Class

To get us fully engaged in understanding the challenges of global teams, our faculty Terence Brake from tmaworld broke us into two teams. All but one person on each team was blindfolded. The rest of us where told we had something to find near us, which we were to assemble once we found it.

This was a very effective exercise to force us to communicate clearly (or not), find ways to connect and collaborate (or not), and challenge all sorts of assumptions. It was not easy, even though we were able to actually reach out and touch each other, giving us another sense we would not have over technology.

We’ll be exploring all week

I’ll be working with my team to investigate a number of technologies, and investigating the cross-cultural implications of the choices we make. My small group is particularly interested in exploring what we can do when the online communication starts going bad. How do we tell? What can we do about it?

Any insights? What are the signs you look for to tell something is wrong in a conversation using technology?

A white guy’s growing understanding of diversity

How can we define culture by what it is not? After all, don’t we define culture based on what it is such as our values, languages, religions, etc? Anthropologists talk of worldview, which also includes basic assumptions about how things work. Values are derivative of worldview.

I’m going to share with you how I learned a little about my European American culture through a story a friend told me recently and how I came to see my own culture a little clearer because of what it isn’t.

But before I do, let me give you some things to snack on.

A little about me

I am a European American male. 51 years old. My parents are from Irish and Scottish stock. I was raised and spent most of my life in the Northeast. Now living in the Pacific Northwest.

Verbalizing European American culture

I know when I’m asked to talk about my culture, I sometimes have difficulty doing so. I have to think about it and usually come up with some kind of generic answer. I have heard the same sorts of responses from other European Americans (EA).

For example these are some of the responses I have given and have also heard other EA’s say.

• I’m American
• We’re all Americans (When we start to drill down into this response, we don’t have to go very far to discover that there are big differences in what this means depending on who is speaking

I celebrate

• The 4th of July
• Thanksgiving
• Christmas

In my family we acknowledged our Irish background by celebrating St Patrick’s Day. My stomach still turns over when I think of all that over-boiled corned beef and cabbage I was made to eat.

Somehow all of these things leave me with a feeling that something is missing. There’s more to the story, but I can’t put my finger on it.

Lost in St Louis

As I mentioned, a friend told me a story recently that gave me greater insight into my own culture. Let’s call him Michael.

Michael is from the Northwest and holds numerous high level degrees. The word brilliant comes to mind when I think about him. A thirst for knowledge, curiosity, and making relevance of the world has been his path through life.

A number of years ago, Michael attended a professional conference in St Louis, Missouri. He decides to save money by taking a bus instead of a taxi to his hotel. Unfortunately, he finds out that the bus line ends far away from his hotel. Now he is lost and is walking around trying to find another connection to his hotel. After an hour of walking in business attire, he finds himself on the edge of Washington University. Michael has never been to this city, so everything is new.

At some point in his wanderings, he notices a sheriff is following him. What makes the act so apparent is that the sheriff is in an official car and driving at the speed Michael is walking. There is no attempt to conceal the surveillance. Michael makes nothing of this at first chalking it up to a bored cop with nothing better to do.

After two, or has it been three, hours of this, Michael is feeling panicked. He cannot understand why he has drawn the attention of this sheriff. He has no history in St. Louis, so no reason to be harassed. He is well dressed and has broken no laws. He is a professional not some street thug in need of chaperoning.

He is lost and feeling desperate. He tries to call a cab from a phone booth, but the cab company wants to know ‘where’r you at’. He doesn’t understand the question. He’s telling them the location. He goes into an Asian restaurant to get change to call another cab. The workers look at him with fear and suspicion. They nervously inspect his money and give him change. Finally someone tells him that in St. Louis, cabs will only pick up people at a specific location such as at a restaurant. Unwritten rules.

What Michael didn’t know at the time was that the county had a sort of curfew in effect. The curfew was not geared towards protecting children by ensuring they were home at a safe hour. It was a local rule aimed at keeping specific groups of people off the streets. There were no signs spelling out the curfew guidelines, so only the locals would know of its existence.

The one qualification a person had to have for the curfew to apply to them was being non-white. You see, Michael is African American. He didn’t know the rules that governed African Americans in that part of the country, because they were enforced but not advertised like so many of these types of rules..

Defining culture by what it’s not

Hearing this story helped me to understand my European American culture better not because I had never heard of this sort of experience before. It helped me, because I realized that I would never expect this to happen to me. It is not in my consciousness or part of my life experience.

What isn’t defines what is

In the art world, there is a term called negative space. It is used to describe the space around an object or form. Negative space is as important to the overall purpose of the work as is the primary focal point, because it gives the work context.

This term is not used as a value judgment. There is no good or bad, right or wrong. It is just context.

Michael’s story is, in a sense, the negative space that gives more context to my experience as a European American. It is about what my experience has not been.

A reverse view of injustice

Part of what all of this is about is coming to understand white privilege. For me, the concept of white privilege has been more about the conscious attitudes of European Americans.

What I’m realizing is that there is an unconscious aspect that has to do with what I don’t ever expect to happen to me. When I was young and had long hair, I did expect the possibility of being harassed by a redneck cop. If my hair had been short I wouldn’t have expected it. But what I never would have expected then or now is to be followed around for hours because of my skin color. It’s not in my consciousness.

I have been aware for a long time that there is discrimination for many people in housing, job promotions, getting credit, etc. Yet, as a European American I have never had the conscious expectation that any of this would happen to me.

For example, I would never expect to be discriminated against for:

• Getting a job
• Being promoted
• Buying a car
• Purchasing a house
• Renting an apartment

I know this happens to others, but the possibility of it happening to me is not in my consciousness when I go about these activities. I never think to myself ‘I wonder if this person is going to treat me fairly because of my skin color’.

No scientific poll needed

I think it’s pretty safe to say that we don’t need a scientific poll to say that many non-dominant groups have the expectation that they may face discrimination in everyday encounters.

This expectation is something that a big percentage of US citizens live with every day of their lives.

And even though we may not be consciously aware of it, not having an expectation that it could happen to us, partly defines European American culture. It’s the negative space of our culture or worldview. The part defined by what it is not.

Incremental learning and diversity

I have found that becoming culturally aware and learning about diversity is about gaining insight through many small, incremental steps. Generally speaking there aren’t a lot of big ah-ha moments, although Michael’s story might be one, because it has caused me to reflect deeply. The reverberations have been many.

For me, understanding diversity and culture is a life-long process. I don’t think I’ll ever arrive at a point where I can say I know what it’s all about. There are layers and layers to uncover. And the layers shift as societies shift. Everything is in movement. Consciousness evolves. Understanding evolves.

What’s your perspective?

• How do you define your culture?
• What is the ‘negative space’ or unconscious parts of understanding cultural?
• What insights can you share to help others understand culture?

Finding out what the words really mean

I was sitting at a holiday dinner with my husbands family. We had several generations there, all native Oregonians. Well, I guess technically my husband was born in Idaho when his Dad had a temporary job there, but since he moved back here at 6 months, I think he qualifies as close enough. Except for me. I was born in Boston, and grew up in New England, and have lived in several areas of the country.

We got to talking about a beautiful day. The Oregonians decided that 65 degrees and overcast was a beautiful day.

I thought they were crazy.

How could there possibly be a beautiful day without a bright blue sky? How could it possibly be beautiful when it was cold? I thought they were kidding. But they weren’t.

So what?

You might not think it matters, but there are all sorts of ways this affects my daily life with Oregonians. Especially my husband. To name a few.

• He turns the air conditioner on when it hits 68 degrees
• I’m starting to get warm at 75 degrees, and turn off the air conditioner until it’s 80
• I want to be outside in the middle of the day hiking and biking
• He wants to wait until the sun has gone partially down
• He puts on long pants and long sleeves to hide from the sun, then he’s too hot

We have a pretty playful attitude about all this, but we have a lot of motivation to find a way to accommodate the differences. What happens when people don’t have a serious commitment to one another?

(How many various answers do you think there are to the question “What is going on in the photo with these two dogs?”)

Shifting irritation to curiosity

One of the side benefits of working with VisualsSpeak is a deepening of my curiosity about how other people see things. After watching thousands of people interpret the same photos differently, I really get how unique each one of us is. Not that there aren’t patterns. But even if two people see one picture similarly, they’ll see another one totally different.

It’s much easier to miss the range of difference when we are communicating with just words. When my husband talks about a beautiful day, he’s not talking about anything I would agree with. But I was married to him for over 7 years before I really figured it out. I knew we had air conditioner wars, but understanding how fundamental the difference was and the range of implications is a process.

The first step to understanding is to really get an idea of what the other person is perceiving. Not easy. But it’s part of why magic happens when you use images. At least you have a concrete starting point to center the discussion around. You have a better chance of discovery.

What makes a professional association culturally competent?

Peggy Pusch and I have been exploring cross-cultural effectiveness using VisualsSpeak for several months. Peggy is the Executive Director of the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research USA (SIETAR-USA). I am the Vice President of Outreach for the American Society for Training and Development Cascadia Chapter (ASTD-Cascadia).

The SIETAR-USA board is multi-cultural and multinational. You can see they are diverse, and you can hear it in their accents. They are all involved with helping people reach across differences in their professional lives, although from the perspectives of different disciplines.

The ASTD-Cacscadia board appears to be more similar. Each member has some connection to training and development, across a variety of industries. Read the rest of this entry »