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

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?

How does it really work in organizations?

I attended another evening program at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication facilitated by Jaime Wurzel of Intercultural Resource Corporation (IRC). It was titled: Applying Intercultural Concepts to the Promotion of Positive Change in Organizations.

IRC produces videos that show how individuals from different cultures interact. They include A Different Place : The Intercultural Classroom which shows how individuals from a variety of countries interact with a professor and each other in a learning environment. He has also created the The Cross-Cultural Conference Room: An Interactive Seminar that shows how groups from the same company located in different countries react to the same case study. I have learned a lot about cultural differences each time I have seen the videos. They also come with extensive materials for processing the experience with groups.

The program I attended a few weeks ago showed The Multicultural Workplace, a video Dr. Wurzel produced with the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). The main character, Carlos, is shown interacting with various people in a work environment. His personal relational values are continuously creating challenges for him operating under the more individualistic organizational values. The more I learn about differences between values in cultures, the more painful it is to watch the video. Each person is acting from their own reality, with very little awareness of the effect on the other people.

Before showing the video, Dr Wurzel put forth the idea that institutions as a whole are crazy and dysfunctional. He proposed working toward institutions becoming reflective organizations. What I heard was the essence of this idea was to continually look under the surface for the assumptions driving actions. He raised the question of how can we look at the power reflected in the dominant assumptions of an organization? It’s a big question, especially since those in power in organizations often derive the most benefit from those dominant assumptions.

It’s not how we do things around here

But why? Here is where so many culture clashes seem to occur. Those who were brought up in a culture with similar values and norms to the organizational culture have the potential to thrive. Those from significantly different cultural norms and values may never quite understand the informal ‘how it works around here’. Especially when a stated norm is expressed with different behaviors.

In a workshop I attended in June, Donna Stringer from Executive Diversity Services talked about value differences and shared an alternative way to look at what matters.

In the business arena, is it a difference that makes a difference in the context? Does it affect one of these areas?

1. Cost
2. People or productivity
3. Legality
4. Safety

If not, how can you create flexibility to accommodate different ways of doing something?

When we are acting in a culturally competent manner:

• We see multiple possible interpretations for any behavior.
• It depends is the answer to any cross-cultural question.

So what is THE ANSWER.

Here’s an interesting thing that happened after watching the video. Carlos, who had been working for the organization for ten years was shown unsuccessfully interacting with co-workers and his boss. The audience was multi-cultural and multi-national, and all spoke English to some degree. The discussion was quite animated, some people thought it was unrealistic that someone could work for an organization for ten years without learning the informal aspects. Others talked about people they loved who had never adjusted to a culture they moved to. Emotions were high.

And then the conversation turned to looking for THE ANSWER. Some people seemed particularly annoyed that Jaime Wurzel was not providing the answer. Others seemed to blame the entire Intercultural profession for spending too much time helping people to understand why instead of what to do. One person wanted a list of things to tell a group of trainees.

Is it even possible?

Life is complex. So are organizations and the people who they are made up of. When you add the complexity of diverse cultures of any kind, the variables multiply to a level where one can only hope there are endless answers. In order to figure out which one might even have a chance, you need to look at many aspects of the complexity. An answer, if it is even possible to find one, needs to be discovered in the context of time, place, and players.

I don’t think anyone can give answers that can be randomly applied.

How do films help?

Jaime Wurzel is boiling down the essence of culture clashes, and serving them up to us in a format that allows us to feel what is happening. He knows the intercultural communication theory and research that offers some explanation for why it is so complicated. The learning is in the conversation and reflection after seeing the film. Each time we gain another bit of understanding of the other, or see a piece of ourselves, we have the opportunity to grow and challenge our own assumptions.

Jaime told us he had frustrating experiences being from Latin America and coming the US. But I didn’t have a sense of what that felt like until he showed us Carlos. My compassion grew. Along with my understanding and my curiosity about what else I am unaware of. A real person standing in front of me, showing me how the dominant assumptions of my culture have affected him. Powerful stuff.

I have been facilitating a VisualsSpeak session on the first day of the Tailoring Training for Transitions class at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication for four years. The class is geared toward people who help others prepare to go abroad to work or study, often for extended periods of time.

It is a five-day class taught by Peggy Pusch and Bruce LaBrack. They have been teaching this class together for over a decade. The first time they created VisualsSpeak images together, Peggy almost ran Bruce off the table. Her image had lots of photos placed at angles to one another extending across the whole table. Bruce contained his close to the size of the background rectangle. I believe his was hanging off the edge of the table by the end of the process. Two very different professionals finding common ground by approaching the topic from different perspectives.

We use a complex framing question to immerse students in the process: ‘Who were you before the transition?’ ‘Who were you while you were going through it?’ ‘Who were you after you returned?’

Individuals flex the framing questions to reflect their own circumstances. For example, if they have never spent extended time abroad, they might choose another significant life transition. In this environment, we also see people who never go back home, but continue to travel or live in a series of places around the world. Others may select just one of their repeated journeys.

It has been interesting to see multiple classes explore this topic in the same way. Last year the process took all afternoon and continued into the next morning. This year, they were done in a little over an hour. Last year there were lots of tears and surfacing of deep hurts around some of the experiences. This year the descriptions were more matter of fact. I’ve talked to numerous people who have reported that they uncovered aspects of transitions they thought they had already dealt with, only to have a lot of emotion emerge when talking about their images. So far, participants have felt that surfacing the emotions has been helpful offering another opportunity to work through an experience that had been left unfinished.

What have I learned?

I have never lived abroad. I’ve been through some powerful transitions, but there is something about going to a place where things aren’t the same as you are used to that is beyond what I have done in my life. I’ve heard story after story about feeling totally overwhelmed, disjointed, frustrated, and utterly alone at some point in the process. I’ve also heard people say they feel empowered, transformed, and never the same again. Witnessing the power of the stories helps me to realize it is not an experience to be entered into lightly.

I’m also not bi-cultural. The stories about moving to the US from other places have touched me deeply. While I think I had some compassion for those who come here with limited English, I have been deeply touched by the stories of trying to assimilate into a new place while holding onto the the roots of your native culture. Stories of being straddled between parents from two places, or parents and friends, and wondering what is real. I thought it was tough to be a teen in the US. I can’t imagine what its like to navigate being a teenager and crossing cultures at the same time. Judging from the emotion I have witnessed from people remembering back, it is much harder than I imagined.

I always imagined that people who jouney to a new place with family form deep ties that help them through the process. I’ve learned it’s not always so. Individuals go through the transitions differently, and it may or may not sync up with loved ones. Even being around the ones closest to you there can be many times of feeling very isolated.

How does this make me a better trainer and facilitator?

Working with this class in particular, has deepened my understanding and compassion for what those who have come from other countries go through. It has made me aware that their current reality may still be heavily influenced by those transition experiences. Working with these students has shown me that they have a lot to teach me about coping and managing change.

It has helped me to understand that preparing people to make transitions is very important, but it cannot prevent them from going through the feelings associated with the process.

I attended a program at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication by a colleague, Kate Berardo. Kate is an intercultural consultant and the founder of the online resource Culturosity. I make effort to attend her programs at conferences. I am also on a list serve she is on, and I always look forward to opening messages by her. Very bright young woman, always insightful. The session was titled, Training for transitions: Moving beyond ‘culture shock’ and the U-curve of adjustment.

The U-Curve

When speaking about how people experience moving from one culture to another, there is a commonly used model, often referred to as the U-Curve. There are many versions, but basically the premise is there is an emotional adjustment curve that begins with a ‘honeymoon’ or euphoria period, followed by a sinking into ‘culture shock’ which levels out to a return to ‘adjustment’ over time.

Theory to Practice

Kate studied this model in her graduate program. It’s a quite interesting study, this summary does not do it justice. For anyone who might be interested in the full study, the library at the Intercultural Communication Institute has a copy. She looked at the academic and public domain documents as well as the web to see how the model was presented. She then surveyed and interviewed trainers to find out how it was being used in practice.

The original research was done over 50 years ago when the study of cross-cultural transitions was in it’s infancy. It involved a group of Norweigan Fullbright scholars. There was no depiction of a U-curve, rather a suggestion of an emotional adjustment process. Over time, the U-Curve visual emerges and a number of studies test the theory. Here is the thing, there is little support, and the academic consensus is that it is not statistically valid. Some people might go through a curve like this, but there are so many factors that influence an individual’ s cross-cultural adjustment that there are many other possibilities beyond this simplistic curve.

When Kate surveyed 84 intercultural trainers from 26 countries who provide relocation training for people moving to new countries she found over 90% of them use this model.

Benefits of a simple model

In the session I attended, as well as the interviews that Kate conducted, participants identified a number of benefits of using this model. While I don’t use it in training, I have referred to the concept when talking to parents who have unhappy children overseas, almost as a comfort offering. To reassure them that it is normal to have a period of uncertainty and discomfort. It offers hope.

For a trainer, it is simple to draw. Simple to understand. Visuals provide a concrete starting point for a discussion. Most people have had some experience in their lives where this curve applies. It makes intuitive sense.

Is it ethical to use a model that isn’t supported by research?

Is questioning the ethics even valid? Kate suggests if you do use a model with questionable backing, that you also reveal the limitations and controversial nature of the research behind it. She adds that kind of introduction rarely instills confidence in participants, so perhaps finding another option is worth considering.

Here is where is gets particularly interesting for me. Graduate school instills the importance of seeking out the source of your data, and developing the skills to interpret research findings. I have that ‘training’. But I also have the lived experience of life being far more complex than any data set. I have a hard time completely discounting things that make intuitive sense. I find value from both, and draw conclusions in practice from a balance between the intellect, emotion, and intuitive parts of life.

I agree with Kate, it is important to reveal the sources of where the idea is emerging from. It is important to understand which parts of the information I include in training is backed by research (and know something about how it was conducted and applied). I also may include something, like the U-Curve visual. Rather than present it as fact, I find it more useful to use it to surface stories where it was relevant. Perhaps contrast it with stories of other possibilities.

What do you think? There are lots of models and visuals used by trainers, some of which are backed by research, some are backed by myth. Is it a matter of good model versus bad? Or one perspective versus another?

The Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication offers a series of free evening programs at Reed College in Portland, Oregon July 11-27, 2007 . I will be presenting one of the programs with Peggy Pusch on Monday July 23 at 7:00 PM in Elliot 314.

Developing Culturally Competent Professional Associations

What makes culturally effective professional associations? How can interculturalists help the professional associations we belong to operate in more culturally sensitive ways? How can we create effective leadership teams in these associations? In this experiential session we will use VisualsSpeak to explore how leaders on boards of professional organizations can discover their collective values and determine how to reach goals of inclusiveness and intercultural competence. A process used with two leadership teams and one multicultural group focused on intercultural competence will be demonstrated and results from these sessions discussed.

If you are interested in the other programs that will be offered, you can download a schedule here. Reed College is located at 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland OR 97202.