[00:00:00] Trisha: I would like to acknowledge the Dharawal people, the Aboriginal people of Australia, whose country I live and work on. I would like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and thank them for sharing their cultural knowledge and awareness with us.
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[00:00:39] Trisha: Hi there everyone, I'm Trisha Carter, an organizational psychologist and explorer of cultural intelligence. I'm on a quest to discover what enables us to see things from different perspectives, especially different cultural perspectives, and why sometimes it's easier than others to experience those moments of awareness, the shifts in our thinking.
[00:01:01] Trisha: For those who've listened to earlier episodes, you'll know that cultural intelligence CQ is the capability to be effective in situations of diversity. It's made up of four areas. Motivational, the drive. Cognitive, the knowledge. Metacognitive, the strategy. And behavioral, the action. And each of these capabilities helps us operate effectively in diverse contexts.
[00:01:27] Trisha: In this podcast, we focus more on the metacognitive aspect, thinking about our thinking, which is at the heart of CQ strategy and where shifts in our thinking can happen. As I'm recording this, we're three days into 2025 and here in Australia, we're enjoying the height of summer. For listeners in the Northern Hemisphere, as you face the colder, darker days, I hope you're finding opportunities to huddle down and reflect.
[00:01:53] Trisha: Like many of you, I'm looking ahead at the year and thinking about what I want to focus on. What I hope to achieve and where I'd like to grow. Unsurprisingly, cultural intelligence is top of mind as I dream and plan. One quality I deeply admire in experts in the CQ field, many of whom are featured in earlier episodes, is their ability to reflect. They think about their interactions. They consider assumptions they might have made and they explore how they could have acted differently. This reflection helps them learn and grow in their ability to relate well with others.
[00:02:31] Trisha: While I've improved in this area since starting this podcast, I know I still have a way to go. So one of my growth goals for 2025 is to deepen my reflection practice. I plan to increase my journaling time and use it as a tool for reflection. I'm inclined to journal intermittently, sometimes only once a month, but I want to make this habit stick and be a bit more regular with it.
[00:02:57] Trisha: So I'm applying research on behaviour change, starting small and creating tiny nudges to support my own agency and choice. Here's my plan. I've chosen a specific time and day each week to journal. Not every day, I'm aiming for something that is more realistic. My only requirement is to pick up my notebook and write the date, and then see what happens next.
[00:03:22] Trisha: And I aim to regularly review my entries to track what I'm learning and how I'm growing. For anyone else looking to grow in CQ strategy, I can recommend adopting a reflection practice, even small, because consistent steps can make a big difference over time. Another area I'm eager to dive into, or dive into deeper, if you like, is artificial intelligence, AI.
[00:03:49] Trisha: My good friend and colleague Sarah Black, Who focuses on helping communications and PR professionals increase their CQ and you may have heard her in episode nine. you can go back and listen to her if you'd like to. we were recently discussing how CQ can help us. as we come to work with AI and can help us enhance our understanding of AI. She's preparing for a conference presentation on this topic.
[00:04:15] Trisha: Many of us know that AI offers incredible benefits, but it also comes with risks. For example, the real risk of bias, AI systems can reflect the biases that already exist in their training data. AI is known to hallucinate, to invent information when it doesn't know the answer, so we need to look out for those hallucinations.
[00:04:38] Trisha: And one of the things that those of us in the CQ field are very aware of is that AI can produce weird perspectives. And by weird, I'm talking about Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic, W E I R D viewpoints, which is one of the risks of research in the social sciences that was outlined by Henrich, Heine and Norenzayan in their research.
[00:05:05] Trisha: And so we need to be thinking of these risks as we come to AI and as we work with it. I do believe that AI has the potential to enhance CQ, especially in the CQ knowledge and in the planning sub capability of CQ strategy. However, I also think it risks undermining our growth if we use it to bypass reflection.
[00:05:28] Trisha: AI can give us quick answers, but it can't foster the deep metacognition needed to process and understand diversity at a meaningful level. My focus for 2025 will be learning how to use AI in a culturally intelligent way and guiding others to do the same.
[00:05:46] Trisha: On a joyful personal note, I've recently become a grandmother. My daughter in law recently gave birth to a beautiful little girl. And this experience has been perspective shifting. It's deepened my appreciation for the beauty of life and the value of humanity. It's also refocused my interest in how different generations see the world.
[00:06:07] Trisha: My granddaughter will be at the tail end of gen alpha, and we know that we can all benefit from working together with other generations in multi generational teams. with all of us learning together. And this ties beautifully into CQ. Learning to appreciate and bridge generational differences is another way we can use and expand our cultural intelligence.
[00:06:31] Trisha: If you're looking to grow your CQ in 2025, think back to the model I shared earlier. Do you want to increase your drive for relating to people different to you? Do you want to grow your knowledge about cultural similarities and differences? Are you focusing on CQ strategy like me, developing your cultural metacognition, or are you aiming to improve your actions, adapting your behaviors when needed?
[00:06:56] Trisha: Here's a few ideas to get started. For drive, you could identify one cultural aspect you're curious about and learn more about it. For knowledge, you could read a book or an article about cultural norms in a region unfamiliar to you. Or plan a trip, and at that point you'd probably be using all four of the capabilities.
[00:07:18] Trisha: For strategy, you could try journaling to reflect on your cross cultural interactions, as I am. For action, you could practice adapting your communication style with someone from a different background, or different generation. You can also revisit past podcast episodes to learn more, or to find inspiration for your growth areas.
[00:07:39] Trisha: And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss future episodes. In the year ahead I'll be exploring CQ and AI, multi generational teamwork, and the art of cultural reflection, as well as diving deeper into the research into CQ and related research areas. I hope you'll join me on this journey.
[00:08:03] Trisha: Thank you for listening. I'd love to hear about your goals for 2025. Reach out using the links in the show notes. I wish you peace, health, and happiness in the year ahead, and look forward to meeting up with you again here on The Shift.
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