NewsPosted by Elisabeth Plum 18 Feb, 2010 11:30:49Last year I
was busy giving speeches on what Cultural Intelligence is and how this approach
is useful in today’s business reality. I have been leading seminars and trained
leaders in how to develop CI in their teams, so they can achieve better
solutions across differences. I have received very affirmative feedback, and
leaders and HR people have asked me for tools to integrate this approach in
their companies, in settings where there is a need to improve collaboration
among people who think and act differently.
Now is the
time to develop the board game that I have had in my thoughts ever since I
wrote the CI book. This board game will be a development tool for teams, and it
will include very practical ideas about how to become more cultural intelligent
in everyday’s communication across differences. It will be relevant for collaboration
across all kinds of cultural differences – a practical tool for managing and
benefitting from cultural complexity.
I am
currently running tests of the prototype and I hope to have this new board game
ready in the Summer 2010.
NewsPosted by Elisabeth Plum 31 Aug, 2009 21:58:53‘How to
MINIMIZE interpersonal anxiety and the need for defensiveness, while MAXIMIZING
creative tensions and room for divergent perspectives’ – that was the sentence
that made me come to a meeting in Copenhagen, where Rosa Zubizarreta gave an
introduction to a tool called ‘Dynamic Facilitation’.
I always
have my eyes and ears open in search for tools that can support my development
of the Cultural Intelligence (CI) approach into practical ways of bridging and
benefitting from people’s differences. Being confronted with people who think
and act differently from yourself can create anxiety and other emotional
reactions that you cannot fully control. To ask people to benefit from their
working group’s heterogeneity is a challenge, but it’s a challenge that many
companies need to face in order to harvest the creative potential for the necessary
innovative development. This is a case for the strategic thinkers in an
organisation as well as for the practical professionals on the floor.
Jim Rough
was the first to name, define and teach a transformational approach to the
practice of group facilitation, which he called Dynamic Facilitation (DF). It
was designed to help groups apply creativity to practical issues, including
ones in which people are highly invested or emotionally charged.
After Rosa
Zubizarreta’s introduced me to DF last week, I think that this can be a useful
tool for the Cultural Intelligence approach. DF can be use to constructively establish
confrontations in situations, where we want a group of people to reach creative
solutions and learn the maximum from each other’s different perspectives,
without fighting or withdrawing. There will be places in knowledge-intensive
organisations, where we can use this tool to develop a group’s Cultural
Intelligence, while they collaborate effectively and satisfying to find a new
solution to a business problem.
Two aspects
in DF are crucial, where the first is the facilitator’s role and the second is
the deconstruction of the linearly working methods. The facilitator establishes
a safe frame and acts as a persistent active listener, who model for the
participants how it’s possible to listen to and use opinions that at a first
glace seem to be contradictory. In DF the group works parallel with problem
definition, ideas for solutions, data and perspectives and
difficulties/concerns, which as far as I can see creates trust in the
complexity and mirrors the dynamic spiral movements necessary for creative
thinking. Does this sound fluffy? … Well it’s a bit hard to explain this
approach in a few lines and I need to explore more about this method.
It was the
Danish company ‘Alt4kreativ’ who arranged the introduction to DF in Copenhagen
and Rosa’s website is www.DiaPraxis.com. Please read more about DF and courses in DF at www.DynamicFacilitation.com
NewsPosted by Elisabeth Plum 29 May, 2009 12:29:20
“I can see that you
are very inspired by Sonja Sackmann’s article on the three cultural paradigms”,
a Danish culture expert said to me after she has read the book ‘Cultural
Intelligence – the art of leading cultural complexity’. But I am sorry to say
that I had to reply “Sonja who…?” Because at that time I didn’t know the brilliant article that
Sonja Sackmann wrote in together with Margaret Phillips.
Their article is
called ‘Contextual Influences on Culture Research: Shifting assumptions for new
workplace Realities’ and was printed 2004 in International Journal of
Cross-Cultural Management (http://ccm.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/4/3/370)
In my brief version the important
points from this article are the following.
Three
steams of research can been indentified in the field of international
cross-cultural management research. Each emerged in a particular context with
specific political, social and economical challenges and questions – asking for
certain kind of research and practise.
1. ‘The
cross-national comparison’. Individuals
travel to transact business in a foreign country, so how do you navigate and do
business with people from other countries? Culture is identical with nation and
is seen as a stable variable. How to know there protocols and not break
important norms/rules. In
this approach universally applicable dimensions is identified and it’s rooted
in the positivistic paradigm. Triandis 1972, Hofstede
1980, and Trompenaars 1993 are well-known representatives.
2. 'Intercultural
interaction perspective’ assumes that the critical success factor - for
Japanese competitiveness etc. - is culture. Internationalization means that many businesses are facing the challenge
of having subsidiaries/HQ in other countries. National culture is the fundamental source of
identification but other cultures are acknowledged at the organisational level
and culture is seen as being socially constructed. The interest is to improve bicultural interaction. Kleinberg
1989, Mary Yoko Brannen 1994 and Nancy Adler1997 are seen to represent this
perspective.
These two
perspectives are a product of the time in which they emerged, and they are no
longer appropriate for many of todays, and even more critically, tomorrow’s
work realities. The third perspective represents a necessary paradigm shift.
3. ‘The multiple cultural perspective’
offers the necessary flexibility in identifying culture(s) within today and
tomorrow’s work context. The interdependence and complexity have grown
dramatically around the globe. To stay competitive and exploit the new
opportunities, firms have moved beyond national boundaries using different
strategies … multinational, local subsidiaries, M&A and strategic alliances,
cross-disciplinary work and networks. The sources for
individual identification have multiplied, so each individual must be seen as a
product of her/his not only national culture but also professional, regional,
social, functional and organisational culture = ‘the multiple cultural
perspective’.
Sackmann
and Phillips point out how the new cross-cultural paradigm has to embrace the
complexity and paradoxes of today’s work context where many different cultural
identities meet and intertwine on a daily basis.
Yes, I definitely
see the point of the Danish culture expert. The approach Cultural Intelligence
(CI) can be see as a contribution to this new paradigm, in that it transcends
the one-eyed nationality focus and insist on working with people’s multiple
cultural identities. CI aims to increase mutual understanding across all
relevant differences in the companies and to help people work more effective
and satisfying together. Cultural complexity will not go away, and it’s a competitive
advantage to be able to embrace it and turn it into a benefit for business.
NewsPosted by Elisabeth Plum 15 Apr, 2009 09:14:20The magic
thing had happened in USA. A coloured man had become “the most powerful man in
the World” and I had certain expectations when I was travelling around in the
country one month after the inauguration of Barack Obama. I talked to taxi
drivers, students, academics and diversity practitioners and got all kinds of
opinions about how Obama’s skin colour and minority background would influence
the intercultural field and the diversity management debate.
-
“This
was the next step in equal opportunities for blacks and minorities”
-
“He
is a role model and this will legitimizing intelligence among young black
people. It’s cool to be clever and to show your intelligence.”
-
“Some
people in this country still think that white people are more clever that black
people can ever be … well they have got something to think about now.”
But at this
time people were not so interested in this subject. The most common opinion was
that ‘magic was over’ and his skin colour had become insignificant now he had
succeeded in being elected. The economic crisis and the two wars were in the
forefront and the talk focused on his competences as a president.
-
“Obama
coming from a minority group doesn’t matter to me personally even though I am a
coloured immigrant. It all depends on his policy and if he can get us out of
this mess.”
And my
curiosity and many questions were placed in a new perspective when a taxi driver
turned to me and said:
-
“Maybe
his skin colour has more importance for you white people? … You are so used to be in power.”
Article on CIPosted by Elisabeth Plum 16 Mar, 2009 18:26:59
This article by Elisabeth Plum gives a short introduction to CI Cultural Intelligence
NewsPosted by Elisabeth Plum 28 Feb, 2009 21:01:35If
global leaders are only armed with artifact-level understandings of cultural
differences (e.g. Edgar Schein) and easy-to-learn, fast-to-recall dimensions (e.g.
Gert Hofstede) they will find themselves stereotype rich and operationally poor
in today’s business reality of complex cultural organizations.
This
is one of the important points I found in Mary Yoko Brannen’s article (‘Culture
in Context: New Theorizing for Today’s Complex Cultural Organizations’) in the
forthcoming book ‘Beyond Hofstede: Culture Frameworks for Global Marketing and
Management, Cheryl Nakata (Ed.), Macmillan Publishers Limited 2009.
I had
the pleasure of meeting with Mary Yoko in San
Francisco and we shared our views of how problematic
it is that descriptive and narrow culture models are dominant in management
studies focusing on solely national cultures.
In
her article Mary Yoko points out how managers will need to develop skill sets
for deep contextual understanding of what goes on when people interact across
several kinds of cultural differences in a modern global company. Among other
things leaders need to develop contextual acuity and a deep cultural
sensitivity that enables them not only to valuing and mobilizing complex
cultural workforces but also to opening up to new ideas and practices,
loosening boundaries, allowing ideas in from the periphery and finding creative
ways to integrate new ideas at home. This is just an small appetizer from this very interesting article.
I
can’t wait for this new book to be published. We need a lot of different
contributions to developing a new paradigm that can be helpful for leaders of
today’s cultural complex companies.
NewsPosted by Elisabeth Plum 21 Feb, 2009 06:32:27When trying to understand and improve the intercultural
collaboration in global teams working in virtual work arrangements you need to
include all the cultural differences among the team members. Typically these
will consist of different corporate cultures, national cultures,
functional/professional cultures, micro-organizational cultures (all the
different projects and entities that an individual can be member of at the same
time) and social demographic cultures (age, gender, and lifestyle). And it’s
important to view this cultural complexity in the team without to privilege a
special dimension because the importance of the different dimensions will
change and alternate.
This was one of the conclusions from Jennifer Gibbs’
ethnographic study in a global software company that she presented today on the International Workshop on Intercultural Collaboration – IWIC 09 at Stanford University.
This conclusion is a critical comment to the traditional
view of national culture as always being the core and most important part of
our cultural identity. I share Jennifer’s view. It’s in line with my
experiences from working with different kinds of cultural complex situations and
organizations.
Jennifer suggests the kaleidoscope as the illustration and
lens for understanding the complex culture of global teams. I like this
metaphor because when you rotate the kaleidoscope you never quite know how the
next picture will look. The constellation of colored glass pieces cannot be
predicted or controlled and that’s how I see the real life collaboration in a
heterogeneous team. You never quite know what part of peoples cultural
identities that will be triggered in the here-and-now.
NewsPosted by Elisabeth Plum 17 Feb, 2009 18:51:23How is it these days in ‘Obama land’? How are people juggling the tough economic situation and the new hope for change and better times? How will it impact the intercultural field and the diversity management debate that a man from a minority group has become the president?
Maybe it’s a little early to know but I will try to explore some of these questions while I am in USA on a lecture tour the next three weeks. I have been invited to talk about the book ‘Cultural Intelligence – the art of leading cultural complexity’ that has just been published on MU Press (UK). On four different universities I will meet researchers, teachers, students and practitioners from the field of international business, intercultural communication and diversity management. Exiting!
The election of Barack Obama must be a threshold event (is this the correct English expression?) – I mean we can’t go back to a time where being a president of the USA was solely a job for white men. It reminds me of this story I heard the other day:
”Can a man become a president?” asked the boy when Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson in 1996 became the president of Iceland after 16 years with Vigdís Finnbogadóttir on the post.
