Maximum Health with your host Dr. Ken Gray. With over 20 years in healthcare, Dr. Gray is a doctor of Oriental Medicine and holistic physician fusing Eastern and Western healing. Dr. Gray is on staff at Jupiter Medical Center and in private practice with an office in Ju Florida where he resides. Dr. Gray enjoys being a physician as well as being an educator.
His unique approach to holistic healing has taken him abroad to lecture in Boden Germany and treat sports professionals in Hawaii and beards France. He is co-author of several books on food therapy and the founder of the Annual Star Summit talks at the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach, Florida. Now it's time for Maximum Health with Dr. Ken Gray. Welcome back everyone. This is Maximum Health Radio Quality, Living with yours truly. Dr. Ken Gray, thank you for joining us.
We appreciate your attention and your love and your support, and as always, we have wonderful guests for you. This, uh, today's guest is Catherine King, someone I go way back with and, um, someone I admire very much. She is currently working on a project which I think we'll speak to all of us. It's the question she's asking in the, in the next Ted Talk she's involved with. And, um, and the project she's working on surrounds around culture, which she's been involved with many years.
But this question is what is rude and I cannot wait to dig into this conversation. Um, Katherine, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. So, um, you have been doing a lot over the years in many different, uh, ways and facets. You've directed, produced film, you've, you've done so much. And I know, uh, one of your titles is organizational development specialist at Invisible Culture. There's, tell me a little bit more about your background and your titles and education and so forth.
Absolutely. So in 2000, I started working as an interculturalist while living overseas for the next Patriots, and that's where I discovered cross-cultural training. So companies would hire relocation companies to train executive CEOs, anybody who is going to be moving to a new country on the new culture to which they were going. So that's really my day job, that's my career as an organizational psychologist in the field of organizational development.
And what that really means in kind of normal terms is I work in terms of the psychology in groups, not the psychology of an individual person. And so what that means is that I'm very much focused on the space between two people or 10 people, or a hundred people or a thousand people, not so much on who is right or wrong.
And so that's the nature of my day job. Now, the phone making all came about because one of the most powerful tools we can use as interculturalists, which is what my, my field is called intercultural communications, is storytelling. And so I have a passion for storytelling because while the data is really important about how we're different, we've got lots of data about how we're different. The storytelling is what fills in the spaces, um, for what data can't tell us.
And so that's how we kind of reconcile my titles. As an organizational development expert, I'm working with people who work across culture. So even if it's someone who's living in Florida who never has to leave their hometown, but they have to work with somebody and say India or China or Brazil or Russia, I should say, then um, I would come in and facilitate storytelling data,
subject matter experts, et cetera. Hmm. And then people come out of it going, Oh, I didn't realize that I was gonna go in and make mistakes. So the most often that's the result of what people do because exactly what causes us to be successful at home is could be what causes us to fail in a new country. That is, that is so true. And you know, obviously I'm the key to, um, learning of different cultures is really to travel.
And so have you done a lot of travel and have you seen a lot of the, the ways that your work really, uh, holds true ? That is such a good point and I'm glad that you brought it up without question. Travel is a solved to so many of the problems I feel that humanity is facing today, but I would love to even elevate that beyond. Yes, I've traveled a lot. I'm very passionate about cultures. I've been to over 30 countries. I've lived in Singapore, China, Australia,
and Costa Rica as well as here in New York. And, um, I think travel's important, but we can still stay on the surface of a culture when we travel. And while it's fascinating, if you think of culture like in iceberg, you can only really see 10 to 20% of it and it's the 80 to 90%. It usually trips us up when it comes to that question of being rude or what is rude. Mm-hmm. . Cause generally speaking, if you travel,
you can kind of stay in the 10 to 20%. So that's why a lot of people, when you come back from a place that might suffer grief, you know, injustices might say it's beautiful, it's wonderful, it's lovely. The people were so kind, It was so nice. And that's the first step. Travel, no question. Yeah. So the type, the type of travel is, is key. Is that. The topic of travel? Exactly. I you finishing my , which was so great.
Um, exactly the type of travel, what I would say is to anyone with chance to work in another country for more than six to 12 months to take that opportunity mm-hmm. , because, and if you can't, what the training is that does that we do, is it recreates experiences so people can safely feel the discomfort of making a mistake in a new country mm-hmm. so that they can make a mistake safely with me.
So when they go to the new country, they can go with all of that goodwill that they bring with them packaged up and translated in a way that won't cause sometimes irreversible mistakes. Yeah, Yeah. And those mistakes, you know, they come from a place of uh, I think severe, um, I wanna say ego, but it's deeper than that. Uh, it seems that, you know, of course, you know, Americans are regarded as, uh,
people who tend to be more self-centered when they travel. Um, and and I, and I see that's when I travel, they, I they say, Oh, you went to France? Did, did you find it rude? Cuz I found it rude? And I, I'm like, No, I've never found it . But I go with a spirit of meekness and hum uh, humility, which I generally carry anyway because I feel, um, I, I come from a different culture in a way. I was born here, but I come from a West Indian culture and, and it's a little bit more polite.
So it's not your, I didn't, where I tried to experiment early on with the, the, the very western approach to, you know, almost better or holier than bow. Um, it didn't work for me. It, it, it blew back in my face pretty early as a kid. And I thought, this is not a path I want to go down. I I want to understand other people, I wanna appreciate other cultures and, and I want to be friends with everyone because I think everyone has something to
offer. So when I travel, I get that and it seems to open up a lot of doors. It seems to be a welcoming, loving experience with a lot of miracles and magic. Um, and that's not just France, it's been wherever I've gone, whether it's the, you know, the hills of Guatemala, you know, into the country where you have to, you know, trek every day for just a tomato and a couple eggs or or,
or, you know, uh, many other places in other cities that I've been to. Um, so the, I I, I like what this is about because it speaks to the place that we come from when we deal with other people and trying to find the parts of ourselves that we can communicate with, but also the parts that are not there that we can grow into, um, that we can all be better. So I I love what you're doing. Yeah, no, thank you. I appreciate that.
So there's one of my original teachers and early interculturalists and social justice, um, warrior with Andy Reynolds, and he once said, people don't usually walk outta the house in the morning wanting to piss someone one off. Mm-hmm. . So I'm so much frustrating you chance of God, there's something else going on. And as an interculturalist we like to look at culture. It could be health, it could be situational. Someone could have lost someone dear to them, we don't know.
Mm. Yes. Um, but as an interculturalist we looked at the culture. And so the first step to do when you have, we have that natural human, it's natural human interaction, I said, People are rude sometimes. And I, I'm writing the speech and I still have that natural human reaction and be like, Oh, that's so rude. And then I go, Yeah, now what does that moment mean?
But that moment means as that I am in the presence of someone who was taught or learned to believe something different than what I was not the rudeness or validity of another. And so that moment is rude, is an indication of my ethno centrism. And the ethno centrism is what allows us to survive all these thousands of years. Right. So we don't wanna shame people for having natural biases. Right. We wanna work with where they are in that moment. And so what are your goals?
How are you going to get there? And how might this not work in another country? Okay. Got. It. And so that question of what is rude or having that natural human moment of thinking someone rude is actually an opportunity for understanding because there's nothing more foundation about build to building bridges between our differences than self-awareness.
Speaking of bridges and self-awareness, where do you find the commonalities most when you travel, when you have traveled and when you have looked at the world through this lens of, you know, uh, politeness versus rudeness so forth. Where where is that commonality? It's really a good question. I've been asked this question so many different times, and while I haven't been yet to find any, uh, universal truths around behaviors, I do believe we share common values.
We just manifest and enact them in different ways. Hmm. And then there's ano like, so we both may believe in honesty, but for one person honesty is saying, you know, you've got, you've got touch up on your face, so you've got food on your face. And for another person, honesty is not saying that. Mm. It's be, to be polite is to not say it to you because I might tell you to lose faith. Yeah. What I do believe applies across all cultures is that people do that for which they're rewarded.
So if you have a moment where you interact with someone and you think that person is being rude, the first step for self-awareness is to suspend that judgment. Okay. Because that judgment is only telling us about ourselves. It's that old quote from the tour that NI's n repeated, which is, we don't see things as they are, We see things as we are. So by suspending judgment, that moment of rude lets us reflect, Oh, what was I taught?
And how is that different from what the younger person has taught? Right. And then the second step is to get curious and like you said, travel, Get out there, learn and bring in that humility with you. Um, is part of the attitude aspect of developing into cultural competencies. Cuz you have to have attitude, skills, and knowledge.
You can't just read about China and know and be able to interact well. Mm. That to be able to go in with the right attitude, like you're talking about, that you have when you travel, and then you take that attitude and that knowledge, combine it together, and then it's a lifelong practice of developing skills. It's not just like a training program that can develop someone's skills. Right.
It's a lifelong activity of creating competencies to know whether to kiss on two cheeks, whether to put your basket in your lap, whether it's to eat before somebody else has eat polite and rude, or really just relative trends. Sometimes people use the word polite to mean formal. Right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. formalities. Yeah. Because some people will say, Oh, you know, like this is, they're not polite. Well actually in their world,
they're being polite. They're just not being as formal as another person. Talk to be. Right. And so, whereas in some cultures that, um, politeness is a deeper sense of how you carry yourself, your gestures that you use, your tone of voice. Whereas here it's more like you said, those formalities, whether or not they said please or thank you, um, you know, which are superficial, but the tones could be different and the, there could be no smile and it could be cold, You know?
So there's a depth to other cultures where they look at your mannerisms, your, you know, whether or not you're smiling, your tone. And all of those matter as to whether or not you're being polite or, you know, humble or, or caring or all those good things that we want to do to not be rude. That's right. And, and to tell you the truth, I could put on all of the, what I believe to be polite, apply it in another culture, and they might see it as rude. Mm-hmm. .
So the key is that these definitions of polite and rude are really only telling us about what we were taught. Mm-hmm. not about what's right or wrong. Right. Right. Um, when you, when you look at this term, and you know, you obviously you see that we were talking a little bit more superficial, like formalities and such, but, and then the question asked was what are some of the common grounds or commonalities? I would think that, you know, you touched on it, which was,
you know, uh, eating. But I'd say furthermore, food, um, that seems to be an area of things that could either bring us together or separate us, Right? So, so many instances in movies or conversations you say, Oh, I just, I went and they served this and I couldn't believe they ate that and I couldn't, I couldn't eat it. And then someone might, you know, just like say you didn't eat it, that's so impolite. You know, ,
that's so root. You know, So it's, um, food seems to be one of those areas that in, in dealing with cultures is a very, um, daring or separating thing. Without question. I actually decided that it's so challenging to do this work because most of us underestimate how hard it will be to cross cultures. Most of us believe that we do it well already. Mm-hmm. . And because of that it's hard to say, Hey, you need this, you need this.
And so one of the things I thought was, well, what do we all act actually need? But we can share together. We can't share our houses together. Right? We can't share our clothing all the time, but we can share food. Hmm. Right. If you go down to the basic needs of Maslow's hierarchy, so food, clothing, shelter, we can share food. So food is a great entry point to bring that positive or humble attitude in and to say, I wanna learn what is polite in your culture.
Hmm. And then boom, we've solved all the problems of the gaps. That that's enough to build a bridge. Because even if a person makes a mistake, say for example in Japan, I remember when I was in Japan, you're not supposed to fill someone's cup all the way to the ri or up to the pop that's considered roots. Right. But just the fact that I asked what do I do and don't do to be polite, all of the sudden changed that whole my way is the right way or my way.
Is the cause you care. Cause they're seeing that you care. Yes. I think that just, Oh, you wanna know about my culture, You're not coming in dominating. You're not coming in and saying that we're all the same. Mm-hmm. . So there are three definitions according to Dr. Milk, Milton Bennett, if famous interculturalist to being ethnocentric, one attitude that you, these are the three attitudes that I think are wrong to approach new culture with one my way is the only way.
We don't really have that many cultures that are not exposed to other, you know, to, to differences. Unless you're talking about maybe a Papa Noian hill tribe or something that's super remote, but still we have enough connectivity matters. It's hard to think that your way really is the only way. The second one is my way is the best way. And that's the one most of us go into when we get frustrated. Oh, if people only did things the way I thought they should do things,
things wouldn't be such a problem. We wouldn't have all these problems. But the third one is the toxic dismissal of our differences in that, oh, well, we're all the same. Why shouldn't we just focus on those similarities? Why do we have to talk about our differences? But if I'm minimizing the differences, how can I adopt to somebody if I am minimizing the differences, how can I respect them and how our differences are beautiful, Why would we wanna minimize them in the first place?
And so when you hear people say things like, Oh, I'm colorblind. While the sentiment behind that is beautiful because it's saying, I, I believe that I respect all people regardless of race, it also is anchored in a little bit of unintentional ethnic centrism. And that it's saying, Oh, why are we talking about differences? Let's just make things nice, nice, nice. But things aren't nice for all people.
People with less power are experiencing less justice and therefore they're like, No, please don't be colorblind. Please recognize that my experiences has been much worse than your experiences. And if you can recognize that, I need to maybe understand why I'm asking for some of things. Remember what I'm seeing in a lot of the diversity, equity, and inclusion solutions that organizations are taking right now is that the solutions are in Ethnocentricism.
And that's why we're experiencing so much resistance in workplaces and an organizational level because the solutions aren't anchored in acceptance of our differences and healthy adaptation to one another. So well pet, um, another area of, of cultural, um, interest I think in this subject is touch. Have you seen that differ from place to place? And I know, you know, even when you look at the, uh, hugging or the kiss on the cheek, some places it's one kiss.
Some places do kiss some places, three kiss some places no kiss . So absolutely. Let's talk to that. That's a great question. So that question, there are differences across culture with touch two culture, two people in different cultures could both agree on respect that, for example, if a person goes to Thailand and touches a child's head, that could be considered very disrespectful because there's a spiritual aspect to that. Mm-hmm. . So you're not supposed to touch children,
for example. Or for example, blood. It's not only touch. I remember once while I was living in Singapore, I had this wonderful interaction, um, on a place called Arab Street. I bought some baskets for my new home and I took my US American approach and I reached my hand out to say thank you. Cause I felt like it was such a, a great interaction and, and this man stepped back because of his religious beliefs mm-hmm. . And I could see how uncomfortable that I just defended him.
And I didn't understand why it time I was in my twenties. And I was like, what did I just do? Oh. And that's what culture shock comes from, is when you have these little interactions, um, and you feel like, Oh, I just made a mistake. And touch is not just how we, you know, shaking hands a firm handshake or a gentle handshake. Yeah. Being raised in the United States, I was taught to need a firm handshake and eye contact to build trust.
But then I moved to the Asia Consent region and I found that Affirm handshake was considered disrespectful by many people. Wow. And so, yeah, touch is definitely an area that varies across culture, even when both share the same value of respect to each other. Yeah. And a lot of these sensitivities comes with being open to reading others and reading other energy, which is something we're not really taught. A lot of us are not taught very early. Right.
So it's very much about how we carry ourselves and how we approach situations rather than how others and how we can respond to others. And so those sensitivities are something that has to be cultivated. Um, and, and that's, that's something too that I don't know how we do that on a mass scale other than, like you said, first starting out with this desire to do so and then, um, maintaining that practice or that awareness for the rest of your life. openness, that's.
Well, I do think that the corporations and the companies have a huge influence because they have budgets for training and education that is based in experiential learning. Experiential learning, which is like simulations, role plays, case studies, activities where people are talking with each other, listening to each other. That's where you have transformational learning.
If all of the learning is just directive and didactic and lecture based, people are gonna go, Yeah, yeah, I agree, we should be nice to each other. But it's not until you get people into some kind of simulation where they go, Oh, wait a minute, you're right. I do have this hidden bias that I enact without knowing it. Because, you know, most of the way that we offend each other is because what we don't know, we don't know not only about others, but also about ourselves.
And what we don't know about ourselves is that we all have biased. And that's one of the things that I really would love to see, that if somebody makes a mistake, that we lean into that beautiful quote from that 19th century author, um, whose name I can't remember right now, where he says, you know, to error is you remember to forgive is divine.
Okay. So if someone makes a mistake and offends somebody across culture, first thing is suspend judgment that that person is rude or negative or trying to be harmful and find out what was going on, what happened here, What's going on? What do you need? Another thing is when we're negotiating is instead of focusing, No, no, let's do it my way. No, do your way is what do we both need in this situation?
If we focus on needs, we can usually find our way back to that, that shared value of respect for each other. Okay. Yeah. I, I, I agree. So you've got a TED Talk coming up, , that's awesome. Yes, yes. And, um, I'm so excited for you and tell me how that came about and what, when that is and how people can, you know, attend or review. Absolutely. Well, the Ted Talk is on October 15th, 2020 from five to 7:00 PM at the Brew College Auditorium. It's a beautiful space.
And the way that this came about was that I teach a class at Bur College. It's a public university part of the city University of New York system. And one of my students decided to take up this opportunity that I presented to the students. I said to them, Listen, someone is ready to pass the torch on TEDx Grammarcy. And while most of your goes not to go out and get jobs in the world, you can go into LinkedIn where you're gonna get vetted by an algorithm.
Remember, if you wanna also add the relationship building side to the task, take on this opportunity, take on this, this idea of producing a TED Talk if you really wanna get a job. And part of me just thought everyone's working so hard and had so much to do, who's gonna really, you know, be able to take on this, but take us on. One of my students took it on. Hmm.
And as we've been going through the process of supporting and coaching her through it, she said to me, I want you to talk about what you teach us about in our class. Because so many people come up to me after our class and with all the skepticism that they arrived in the class at the beginning, they come at the end and they say, Wow, I really didn't think that this was a big deal, but I realize now how important this work is.
And so I was very, um, surprised and honored that she, um, asked me to join and be one of the speakers. And we have a lot of wonderful speakers that'll be attending. Um, the person, the woman who is producing it, is a brilliant woman named Monique Paris. And if you go to the TEDx grammar feed.com website, you can see who the speakers are, including Jesse Haynes from Grow With Google. You've got Hector Guadalupe, an entrepreneur.
You have so many amazing stories. Surrendering, um, who's a vertical farmer and humanitarian Ray Caretto, who's a professional photographer and filmmaker San Ye, who's a digital branding and storytelling expert. Nadia, and I hope I'm saying this right, , who's an entrepreneur, dancer, and Indian Matchmaker and Khi Green, who's a Gen Z historian and talk influencer. I'm really looking forward to hearing his ideas as well.
And the brilliant Neil Arthur, who's a global ceo, um, and then Glen Peterson, who's got some really fabulous stories to tell. And I'll let you find out by either coming or attending. If you can't attend and by [email protected], then you can also hear it on YouTube afterwards. And I will keep you posted on that as well. Dr. Ken. Thank you so much.
And is there any more information or ways that people can contact you or stay aware of your super continued influence and healing, cultural healing that you are, uh, just always involved with on our behalf as a, as a human culture?
Uh, how do people, Well. My invisible culture.com invisible culture, So invisible culture.com, and I think right now what I'm finding, whether it's schools or organizations, traditionally my experiences with multinational corporations, but even in schools, basic subconscious bias training can turn a school from one degree in the wrong direction to 10 degrees in the right direction. So I think sensitivity training, no matter how good we think we are at that,
there's always more to learn and grow. Even for me, even after doing this work for 22 years, I could still go into some a, a grass cultural training program or subconscious bias training or a sensitivity training, and I could still learn something new. So just never think that we've arrived at where we need to be, to be in a position to build bridges between our differences because the work is a lifelong process. It's not an event.
Well, Katherine King, you have been a, a great inspiration to me and hopefully all our listeners, and, um, again, congratulations on the TED Talk. I'm excited and I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to, to speak with us today. It was such a pleasure and an honor, and thank you for inviting me. Yes. This has been another Maximum Health Quality Living, and it's brought to you in part by Val Health, an app where you can customize your health, track it journal.
Uh, it's one of a kind, it's, it's there for you. And just download it on Apple or Google Play today. See you next.