There was a story on NPR last month that showed that despite sharing the same genes, siblings can be completely foreign to each other from a personality perspective.  Not only do they share the same culture, they come from the same gosh darn family….and still sometimes can’t get along. 

You’d think applying some of the basic tenets of Engagement and Inclusion, or Intercultural Communications might help, but…

In intercultural communications, we take responsibility for our actions and our role in an interaction.  We say, “oh, that didn’t work, let me try another approach.”

We don’t say, “You wanna play nice?  You go first.”

In intercultural communications, we learn to recognize when someone’s communication style is different than our own, and we learn to separate the content from the delivery style.

We don’t say “You’re communication style sucks.”

In intercultural communications we learn to assume positive intent first, so that if someone e-mails and texts us on the weekend to confirm a weekend gathering, we think “they must really WANT to reach us and must be more comfortable with this technology assisted communication (or perhaps they are studying Japanese and didn’t say anything…30% of Japanese Send E-Mail First To Ask If They Can Call.  One reason given: “Other person may not like telephone”)

When we look at the missed messages on Monday we don’t think “It was Sunday, why didn’t he/she just pick up the @$%&* phone and call the house if he/she really wanted to talk?

And, finally, in intercultural communications, we might say “tell me the cultural tradition of your beautiful clothing.”

We don’t say “Yeah?!  Well…Your mother dresses you funny!”

Ah, but wait, I just insulted myself.  We have the same mother.

And there lies the deeper difficulty, or perhaps the more profound challenge ultimately yielding the greater reward.

While Engagement and Inclusion and Intercultural Communications are critical for a more productive workplace, and while one hopes that learning to navigate cultural differences at work will promote greater sensitivity overall…at the end of the day these valuable workplace skills, can if one chooses, stay at work.

But family, they are permanent and constant.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

Okay.  Swallow.  Let me try another approach.  If I can master this, I can do anything!

Happy Holidays.

Photo credit by Regenboog on Flickr

Looks like a sweet, innocent baby, right?  But if you panned out to get the full picture, you would see a different story.

As the camera pulls away, the baby is sitting on top of a case of tequila that is resting in the basket of a shopping cart to be the right height.  The mom is in front of the cart, facing the baby and holding him around his waste so he doesn’t fall.  She’s bent her head forward to be out of the picture, which places her head right at the baby’s belly button, a sure invitation for the baby to play with her  hair.

The photographer is waving and smiling to get his attention.  No go…looking away.  Nope, eyes closed.  He’s good, but mom’s head’s in the way.  Take 24.  Clerk ready to quit.  Mom ready to cry.  Trip to meet grandma first time in Brazil about to be canceled due to lack of passport photo.

And, voila, the perfect angel picture.

Point is sometimes the immediate image doesn’t paint the full picture, and this is no less true in intercultural communications.

Have you ever thought someone rude or unfriendly, only to find out later English wasn’t his or her first language?  Or how about walking into a business meeting in another country, but not knowing the customs or expectations in a particular context?  And, in moving to the arena of difference based on ability, how can hidden disabilities like chronic pain or illness influence interactions?

But isn’t that the job of the interculturalist to be extra observant and grasp the bigger picture?  How has remembering that helped you in your work?  Are there times when you didn’t grasp the full picture, and it hurt you?

Some people say they have the “whole world in their hands.” I say the world has it’s hands on me, and it’s calling out for connection!

Did you ever notice that when you plan conversations in your head, when you control both sides, they seem to go much better?  That’s because real life experience isn’t as ‘clean,’ we’re not in as much control.  And that’s why it’s critical, no less so for Intercultural Communications, to actually get out into the world and “practice what we preach.”

So I’m off into the world, one place where I don’t speak the language, one were I do.  Dillon’s coming too, and will get a chance to practice his own budding language skills. 

How will we feel?  What will we learn?  Who will we inadvertently offend?

We’ll let you know.

This may look like I accidentally posted a private e-mail to my blog.

I won’t deny it, I really do want to introduce artist Chris Jordan, author of Running the Numbers to Brenda at Kinship Circle  (and to Janet at SHARK).

But it’s really about Intercultural Communications.

Intercultural communications looks at our similarities and differences, evaluating both style and content. 

For Chris, Brenda and Janet, all are powerful activists who have put their passions into action.  Brenda and Janet started with the animals, Chris has touched there through his explorations of what he calls “Intolerable Beauty:  Portraits of American Mass Consumption. 

While Chris was in New Orleans photographing the devastation on a personal scale, Brenda was there making sure the companion animals, left behind, lonely and starving were cared for and reunited with family.

Their  issues are different, but they overlap.  As interculturalists, we bring people and cultures together.

But it’s really about engagement and inclusion. 

Compound that by engagement and inclusion, where a variety of styles are recognized and rewarded, and you have what research shows to be the most powerful teams. 

Chris communicates visually, creating powerful images that encapsulate devastating statistics, like photographing 3200 toy tigers, equal to the estimated number of tigers remaining on Earth, leaving empty space in the middle to hold 40,000 of these tigers, equal to the global tiger population in 1970. (Detail below of border in picture above.)

There’s no one better in the world who’s a better writer or more thorough in creating advocacy and letter writing campaigns on behalf of animals than Brenda, and Janet is equally committed and active in moving forward animal issues.

They use different media to convey their power and story.  As interculturalists we teach organizations to value what all forms of communication can contribute.

But it’s really about improvisation. 

That’s the “yes, and…”  I heard Chris speak at the SIETAR conference (Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research) last week (you can see a truncated version that he delivered for TED, here).  He takes human consumption starting with one, as in one tin soda can, and explodes it into the massive statistics, and then culls back to a single photographic image that conveys the scale of impact we are having on the earth.  

Intercultural Communications + Inclusion + Improvisaion =Action

Yes, and…here’s what we can do. 

Please watch this 6 minute film by Chris Jordan about the Pacific Garbage Patch, and how it is killing the albatross chicks on Midway Island (warning—it’s hard to watch—even Chris, who filmed it, was crying as we watched it at the conference.)

Chris is hoping to go back to Midway a few times next year to film the full cycle of the birds lives, from birth to mating and everything before the death.

 I thought Chris’ images were a great bridge to communicate the scale of animal suffering to “non-animal people.”

I thought Brenda and/or Janet might have connections or ideas about avenues for funding Chris efforts to document the plight.  Since Chris has documented other animal issues (he’s become vegetarian along his journey) I also thought he might be interested in some of the other statistics you work with.

And, for all…what do you do when you hear a new theory—when your eyes are opened to something for which your hands might be dirty…Do you deny it exists, or do you try to understand it?  What can you do?

My colleague was conducting a training during a “train the trainer” session this week on Intent and Impact, the idea being that in communications, sometimes our Intent does not equal the Impact we intended.  For example:

 “That sweater you’re wearing is really interesting” (intended as compliment).  Unexpected impact:  “You hate it don’t you?” (Spontaneous reaction:  heard as a catty, back-handed insult.)

The idea in that case to help maneuver out of that moment of discomfort is to assume positive intent on the part of the speaker, and use it as an opportunity to ask for clarification before jumping to conclusions.

Sarita, who is a brilliant, vivacious woman of Philippine and Pakistani descent, then went on to share an example of when she had used this approach.

“I was traveling back to LA after conducting an out of town training, and I had been upgraded to First Class.  I was sitting next to a businessman, who was Caucasian, and we started chatting.  He asked me if I traveled in First Class often….”

She continued, saying they talked about what she did (intercultural communications training), were discussing business and getting along famously when he said, “You know, if I close my eyes and just listen to you I don’t even know you’re a minority.”

Sarita started to break it down for the train the trainer group, and explain how she chose to try to diffuse this, but the rest of the group stopped her.  We couldn’t justify under any condition that this gentleman had ‘positive intent.’

That said, I do believe this gentleman thought he was paying Sarita a compliment.  Unfortunately he was doing it through an ethnocentric, privileged lens.  In essence he was saying “people of color can’t achieve success in their own right, only in how well they do something compared to how a white person would do it.”

Ignorance may have been bliss 50 years ago, but not anymore.  Want to keep up in a global, multicultural world?  Better brush up (or get started) on knowing your own culture is just an option.  An option among a plethora of successful, thriving cultures around the world. 

 Perhaps Sarita could have responded by politely giving him a copy of Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege:  Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.”, with the added point: “I can, if I choose to, sit in First Class without being asked how I got there.”

 What do you think?  Have you been on either end of this conversation?  How have you responded?

Photo Credit:  Simpliflying

“You were right, mommy.  Boris said what you said he would.  The best person in History? Jesus.  The worst person in history?  Stalin.

Just the day before my 9 year old son asked who I thought had the biggest impact on history—both good and bad.  I said I thought it might depend on your experience or cultural heritage. 

“For good? I’m still waiting.  Someone Christian would probably say Christ.”

For us (Jewish), the worst was probably Hitler, since he tried to exterminate us (that’s bad).  “On the other hand, for someone from Russia,” I pondered, “It would probably be Stalin,” who also did his fair share of genocide, killing as many as 20 million.

I didn’t realize my son would go on to conduct a single person focus group at school the next day, asking his classmate from Russia the same question.  Indeed, as a Christian from Russia, he got the answers I had predicted:  Jesus and Stalin respectively.

Three lessons stand out from this:

1.  Cultural Generalizations are Valid

It’s tricky sometimes in intercultural communications to find the balance between stereotyping and valuing individual differences, but populations do have a collective history that influences who we are. While of course there will always be individual differences of opinion, there will also always be generalizations that span cultures. 

2.  Got a theory?  Try it out? 

Hopefully no one from the American Psychological Association will read this and try to find Dillon, as he did not get a consent form from his unknowing subject, so all names have been changed to protect the identities of the innocent!  But, right up there with avoiding assumptions and learning about other cultures, the way we learn is by asking.

3.  Be careful what you say because your child will repeat it!

Maybe “be selective” is the better term.  Connection to Intercultural Communications?  You can learn something from everyone, even when you are supposed to be “the boss.” 

Who are your “best” and “worst” of history?  Is it objective or subjective?

Photo credit:  Mosesxan on flickr

It’s day five of Spring break, and my 8 year old is challenging my intercultural (aka intergenerational) communications competence.  While we have disagreed on a plethora of other things this week (I love my child, I love my child) we both agreed yesterday that “how can I claim to be a great arbitrator, a coach on communicating across lines of difference, when I’m challenged in that area on the homefront.” (I’ve addressed this dynamic at family gatherings in the past.)

But it’s not me…it’s him I exclaim! 

So, to have some fun and maybe gain some insight (I’m telling only YOU this–PLEASE do not tell my child!), I googled:  ”how to approach intercultural communications when the OTHER guy’s an asshole.”

Believe it or not, actually came up with some good advice, a la the “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”  In particular, I enjoyed the “Nice Guys Guide to Authority,” by Sonia Simone   After all, he wants me to be nice, and I want to maintain some semblance of authority. 

But sometimes nice guys don’t project a sense of authority. Everyone wants to spend time with us, but they don’t necessarily want to do what we tell them to.

And make no mistake, my friends, we want them to do what we tell them to.

Hallelujah!

The main tenets are to 1.) be incredibly good at what you do; 2.) know where you are going; 3.) know your core; 4.) get your ego out of the way; and 5.) be disarming.

I found the ideas above, paired with Simone’s “The Toddler’s Guide to Salesmanship,” (the value of repetition, surprise humor, or a favorite one I heard on NPR once, that for kids, negotiating begins at “no”) to be the perfect combination of strategies to reenergize and continue to work at what is and can only be a lifelong relationship full of love.

The only thing I would add is the value of separation–that sometimes when negotiations or a project become too challenging, it’s good to step away for brief respite, to re-focus and re-engergize, even if it’s only for an hour or two. 

How do you handle challenging communications?  Do you “practice what you preach” in your professional and personal communications?  Can you say babysitter?

Photo Credit childbehaviorproblems.xango.com

Your 7 year old child who is white hesitates to shake someone’s hand who is African-American.   Your first grader tells another student she’s “a lesbian with her sister.”  You were there.  You weren’t there.  You are the most open, anti-racist, multicultural person you know.  Where did your child get this from?

I’ve seen stories about these moments (remember the children’s summer camp that was asked to leave the Country Club pool last summer).  These articles rightly so express the pain of the child/parent, who is black, and astonishment, denial and/or defensiveness of the offender or offender’s parents who are white. 

But what seems missing is the doorway to learning that this opens for the white child.  Without discussion, what the white child may glean is A) they’ve talked about race, B.) all the adults have freaked out, and, C) by the transitive theory in math, where if A=B and B=C then A=C…then talking about race freaks people out so don’t ever do it again.

And that, my friend, is the perfect formula for passing unconscious bias, prejudice, and funky racial dynamics onto the next generation.

Just as we would help our children learn to read, write, add and subtract, we need to teach them intercultural competence.  It’s generally not taught in school, and it’s something we might want to frame in the home anyway, right up there with morals and beliefs.

So we have to talk, even when it’s hard.

In the hand shaking incident referenced above, it was MY reaction that was wrong…the more Dillon refused to shake hands the more anxious and insistent I got.  I got nervous thinking “he’s going to think Dillon’s resisting because he’s black.”  He didn’t, but I think our mutual friend who introduced us did.   

The better answer (now with the luxury of months to think about it) might have been “Sorry, he has a touchy germ issue—it goes over really well when he shouts ‘No!’ at the sweet Jewish ladies who try to hand him cookies at synagogue on Saturdays!”  In fact at the time he wouldn’t even eat sandwiches if I had touched them. 

On the lesbian name calling (yes, that was my son, too).  It was more practical…and brief–we haven’t even explained heterosexual relationships yet, let alone homosexual ones–  1.)  You generally don’t have a relationship with someone in your own family whether you like boys or girls (a la the Sister reference); and some people are lesbians, and that’s okay, it’s just a natural way of being, so you wouldn’t want to use that as though it was an insult, because there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just different.

Most of these discussions are hard because they have to do more with our own “hang-ups.”  I’m hyper-aware of racial inequities, privilege and unconscious bias, but as an adult tend to lean toward “politically correct,” gender/race neutral language (aka euphemisms)—which doesn’t work with children who need simple, specific, actionable language.

All I know is when his class discussed war and the military in Social Studies and the topic of homosexuals in the military came up, Dillon said all of the other children giggled at the word homosexual.  He was the one who pointed out that the US policy was discriminatory.  You go, Dillon!

Will I get it wrong?  Probably.  Will I have a chance to notice that and try again?  As long as I’m a mom.

What has your child said that mortified you?  What did you do?

Photo credit:  Stuff White People Do