[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 thinking.
[00:01:02] Trisha: Over the past few episodes, we've had the privilege of speaking with some remarkable individuals. We've shared their insights about creating real cultural shifts, both personal and societal. Today, I want to take time to reflect on those conversations, explore some patterns and insights that have emerged, and of course, look at them through the lens of cultural intelligence.
[00:01:26] Trisha: Those of you who've listened to earlier episodes will know that cultural intelligence, or CQ, is made up of four capabilities, drive, knowledge, strategy, and action. And as always, our focus is particularly on CQ strategy, which is the metacognitive ability to think about culture, to plan, to monitor in the moment, to be aware, and to adjust our intercultural interactions.
[00:01:54] Trisha: Let's start by reflecting on episode 40 and Dr. Michelle McQuaid, who shared her fascinating work on shifting away from the good girl mindset. What struck me about Michelle's approach was her development of two powerful questions.
[00:02:10] Michelle: And that is on whose terms? And for whose benefit are we behaving in these ways?
[00:02:16] Trisha: These questions are beautiful examples of cultural metacognition in action. They help us to monitor and adjust our behavioral patterns that might be culturally conditioned, as Michelle described. Her work also emphasizes something I've observed repeatedly in cultural intelligence, the power of small changes.
[00:02:36] Trisha: As she put it, tiny is mighty. This connects beautifully with what we know about developing cultural capabilities. It's often the small, consistent adjustments in our thinking and behavior that lead to real shifts in our ways of operating.
[00:02:52] Trisha: I also want to revisit and reflect on the episode with the Reverend Dr. Gary Mason about his extensive work in peace building in Northern Ireland. This was a real privilege to discuss with him. So many powerful insights. His description of what he referred to as linguistic violence, our words, and their role in dividing and dehumanizing people. It was weighty, you can just hear it in my voice, I can feel it in my chest.
[00:03:20] Trisha: And then, how storytelling can bridge cultural divides and be that uplifting force. It was particularly powerful. His observation that there's not just one story here reminds us of the importance of actively questioning our cultural assumptions.
[00:03:39] Trisha: The most recent interview in the series has been with Tanya Finney, a friend and CQ colleague, whose personal journey of cultural adaptation offered valuable insights into the development of cultural intelligence for her own experience. She spoke about growing up in South Africa and moving from there to Australia and about living in other countries and other cultural situations in many different, opportunities along the way.
[00:04:07] Trisha: Her navigation through these experiences often meant recognising multiple cultural identities and different ways of operating. She demonstrated how we can actively revise our cultural mental models. She said,
[00:04:21] Tanya: my natural style is also very direct with those two in combination, which I'm very comfortable with, but I also recognize that sometimes I may need a little bit of adjusting when I speak to somebody else who's maybe less direct.
[00:04:33] Trisha: When we look at these different conversations through the lens of CQ strategy, three key themes stood out to me. First, the power of stories in developing cultural understanding. Each of our guests shared powerful examples of how narratives shape our perspectives and how they can bridge cultural divides.
[00:04:53] Trisha: Michelle shared the story of a childhood book called The Good Little Bad Little Girl that profoundly influenced her understanding of societal expectations. As she described it.
[00:05:04] Michelle: And I certainly knew growing up that I was encouraged to be a good girl. It was often, you know, explicitly said to me in the houses where I grew up, I had a book as a child, a story book, called the good little bad little girl that I read me at night and all the was she was a good little girl.
[00:05:21] Michelle: And all the ways she was a bad little girl and if she just helped the good girl grow taller and taller and the bad little girl smaller and smaller, then she would be happy and loved.
[00:05:29] Michelle: *Laughter.*
[00:05:30] Trisha: This early narrative shaped her thinking for years until she began to question on whose terms and for whose benefit these stories were serving.
[00:05:40] Trisha: Gary Mason was up front about his intentional use of storytelling. He shared a number of stories. It's one of his skills. One of the ones that stuck with me illustrated how our life paths can be determined by seemingly small moments.
[00:05:54] Trisha: He told us about someone who set out to join the IRA but went to the wrong house as Gary related.
[00:05:59] Gary: And I remember telling a story in someone on the other side of the fence who set out to join the IRA. and went to the wrong house and rang the wrong doorbell, said to me, you know, Gary, I woke up the next morning and said this wasn't a good idea.
[00:06:12] Trisha: These kinds of stories remind us how thin the line can be between different life paths. They create empathy so that instead of seeing the other as someone less than human, who we can label and hate, instead we can understand, we can identify with them, we can empathize, we can like them.
[00:06:33] Trisha: Tanya Finney brought us stories from her time as a safari guide in Africa where she witnessed the power of direct cultural exchange. She shared experiences of taking medical doctors to visit traditional healers, creating opportunities for different medical systems and worldviews to interact. As she noted, these experiences helped her understand how the same situation can look completely different from another perspective.
[00:07:00] Tanya: I think it's that old age story of, you know, drawing a nine between you and me in the room and asking you if it's a, if it's a nine or a six, you're most likely gonna say it's a six from your perspective.
[00:07:11] Trisha: As Gary says,
[00:07:12] Gary: Storytelling, it's just so powerful. Listening circles, I mean, get back to that book of David Reeves. He quotes that Goscale academic in it, where he says, Science has long proven that storytelling is one of the most effective mechanisms of changing a person's mind.
[00:07:29] Trisha: Stories help us understand not just different perspectives, but they can also help us to identify with those who've had other experiences. So we can see how easily we could hold different views if our circumstances had been different. We need to learn how to tell stories well. We need to listen to others stories, and we need to provide platforms for others to speak so that they can be heard.
[00:07:58] Trisha: I'll put a link in the show notes to one of our earlier, interviews with Joanna Sell. Joanna is an expert on storytelling and has written a book, and in episode 23, we spoke about storytelling for cultural shifts. I highly recommend you go back and have a listen to it.
[00:08:16] Trisha: A second key theme was the importance of intentional cultural reflection and relearning. This ensures that the stories that we've heard don't get forgotten, but are integrated into our thinking and awareness to influence us in the way we choose.
[00:08:33] Trisha: Whether it's Michelle's processes of unpacking the acculturation damage done by the story, by following it up with structured questions, on whose terms and for whose benefits are we behaving in these ways. Or if it's Gary's peace building frameworks that help us to reflect and repair the damage of the linguistic violence he spoke of.
[00:08:55] Gary: And I suppose then asking the question that we all have asked 101 times in our lives, Trisha, if I was born in those circumstances, what choices would I have made?
[00:09:06] Gary: It's also interesting seeing their shift, Trisha, because I often use in some of my work in the US that isn't in the best shape at the moment, as we know, around religious and political polarizations. But they bring people from that tradition and my own tradition who did choose political violence and for them to talk about their shift.
[00:09:26] Gary: And for them now actually to say, as men in their 60s, 70s, to say, if I had of been born 100 yards away, I probably would have been involved in the other side's paramilitary or terrorist grouping.
[00:09:40] Trisha: Tanya's identity integration work that she described.
[00:09:43] Tanya: I think we often have to be, brave enough to pause and just, look at it from that other side.
[00:09:49] Trisha: This is what she draws on in her keynotes and presentations with organizations to challenge people and the organization themselves.
[00:09:58] Tanya: we can't change the world or change others unless we understand ourselves, know where we come from, understand our history, understand our own triggers
[00:10:07] Trisha: So what does this mean for us as we work to develop our own cultural intelligence? I think of several practical approaches. We can adopt question frameworks like Michelle's to develop our metacognitive awareness. We can use storytelling more intentionally in our cross cultural interactions and perhaps most importantly we can remember that cultural learning is a gradual process that requires patience and persistence. So to do it we really need to take the time and we really need to truly listen.
[00:10:38] Trisha: Each of our guests in their own way challenge the idea of quick fixes and instant solutions. Michelle McQuaid shared how she had learnt to move from a go, go, go mentality to a slow, slow, slow, making space for reflection and deeper understanding.
[00:10:55] Trisha: She emphasised the value of having buddies and safe spaces and challenging spaces.
[00:11:01] Michelle: but you need buddies and safe spaces and challenging spaces to take ideas out and have healthy debates and turn them around and add different ideas and sources to them that you yourself wouldn't come across.
[00:11:13] Trisha: And she repeatedly emphasizes the power of small changes. Tiny is mighty. The more we can shrink that change down, then we can get something going.
[00:11:25] Trisha: Gary Mason, drawing from his extensive experience in peacebuilding, reminded us that meaningful change takes time. Sometimes generations. He said,
[00:11:35] Gary: I mean, Most others in academics would say it takes 50 years, 50 years to bed down a successful peace process.
[00:11:44] Trisha: And we know that there is work to be done all through that time. As he put it,
[00:11:49] Gary: It was like going into the highest building in the world and switching off the lights one switch at a time
[00:11:55] Trisha: Each small change matters. Each conversation counts.
[00:12:00] Trisha: Tanya's experiences, both personal and professional, reinforced this message. As she noted,
[00:12:06] Tanya: I really believe in that one degree of change that over time makes an absolutely enormous difference.
[00:12:13] Trisha: She emphasized the importance of creating spaces where people can have the real conversations, the authentic, sometimes difficult discussions that lead to genuine understanding. For those of you working in cultural change, whether in organizations, communities, or in your own personal development, I hope these insights give you encouragement.
[00:12:34] Trisha: When the work feels slow or challenging, remember that you're not alone. Remember that the small changes matter. Remember that taking time to truly listen to ourselves and others is not a delay in the work, it is the work. As Tanya beautifully put it, Be a proud salmon, willing to swim upstream when needed.
[00:12:57] Trisha: Create those spaces for authentic dialogue, Trust in the power of small, consistent actions. And know that while change may not always happen as quickly as we'd like, Every conversation that builds understanding, every moment we take to really listen, contributes to the transformation we're working towards.
[00:13:16] Trisha: Thank you for joining me today in this reflection. If you'd like to learn more about any of our guests or their work, you can find links in the show notes. And I would ask for a special New Year gift.
[00:13:27] Trisha: If you feel comfortable, can you please give the podcast a positive rating on whatever app you are listening? Because this will help others find us so that we can share the learning. thank you so much for listening. Please make sure you've pushed follow or subscribe on your app so that you can join us again for the next episode of The Shift.
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