Sights on Success Consulting uses a coach-approach to foster leadership development in intercultural competence. This means helping leaders to shift from mono-cultural mindsets to intercultural mindsets of understanding, acceptance, and adaptation to both cultural differences and similarities. Intercultural development coaching helps leaders to increase both cultural self-awareness and cultural awareness about others across diversity dimensions such as age and generation, gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, religion, etc. so that they can become more inclusive and effective.
The following topics and questions are meant to provoke thinking and self-reflection that will help leaders to shift their mindsets in the intercultural and culturally adaptive direction.
1.Individualism and Collectivism
Have you ever thought about whether you are more an individualist or more a collectivist and whether you expect others to have the same bias?
For example, if you are more likely to self-promote, discuss and debate your ideas and opinions, advocate for your rights, value independence, personal goals, achievements, awards and rewards, etc. do you expect your team members to behave likewise?
How do you relate to and lead them if they do not share your bias?
Moreover, what might be the impact of your bias on your team and their engagement and your efforts to create inclusion?
2. Leveraging our ability in intercultural adaptation
Plan and schedule intercultural development training for all leaders at all levels on a regular and on-going basis because diversity-related and intercultural communication challenges are embedded in everyday working life.
Remember that cultural backgrounds and differences are not to blame – instead, realize that our level of ability to adapt our mindset and behaviour will determine how successful we are in leading and bridging the gap between diversity and inclusion.
What are your goals with respect to bridging diversity and inclusion in your team or organization?
What challenges do you experience with respect to your goals?
How are you planning to raise your capacity to address your challenges and achieve your goals?
3. Universalism and Particularism, Feb. 22, 2021.
Like Individualism and Collectivism, Universalism and Particularism is a cultural dimension and difference that is part of a cross-cultural framework developed by management consultants, Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner (Riding the Waves of Culture, 2021). Universalism is the belief that ideas and practices can be applied everywhere without modification, while Particularism is the belief that circumstances dictate how ideas and practices should be applied. Universalism pays more attention to rules and Particularism pays more attention to relationships.
An article published by CBC News, Saskatoon on February 21, 2021 and written by Jason Warick may provide an excellent and current example of this cultural dimension. According to the article, a uranium company started surveying the land of a northern Saskatchewan First Nation without consent. The company indicated they had obtained all necessary provincial permits and the province took the position that a traditional land-use study was not required by law. This may be an example of Universalism.
The First Nation’s response was that the land survey had been started without their permission and they considered the action very disrespectful and improper. They are, first and foremost, concerned about the impact on endangered wildlife, habitats, and trap lines. Moreover, the area has a great deal of traditional, personal, and emotional significance for the community. The First Nation is in favour of a proper consultation process and dialogue. This may be an example of Particularism.
Interestingly, another variation of Universalism is provided in the article which supports the First Nation’s position. An academic interviewed about this case said that Canada’s Constitution and recent Supreme Court of Canada rulings and emerging case law are clear: “First Nations concerns must be front and centre on any development affecting them” because treaty rights and Indigenous rights need to be reconciled. There is a “duty to consult and accommodate” Indigenous rights holders. “Those inherent and treaty rights override any provincial permit process.”
As a leader, what is your bias likely to be? Are you more Universalistic or more Particularistic in your perspective, decisions, and behaviour?
How would you bridge and reconcile this cultural difference in your interactions with others?
How would you create an inclusive team culture that takes your bias and its impact on your team members into consideration?
4. Dominant or non-dominant and majority or minority perspectives: a question of values, March 30, 2021.
Within a cultural community, what are the values that dominant members take for granted, promote, perpetuate, and have internalized? What other kinds of values do dominant members need to be aware of, recognize, accept, and include if minority members are to develop a sense of belonging and commitment?
For example, if you are a dominant member, do you tend to support and advocate for causes and types of diversity that matter more to you than to minority members? Do you tend to highlight and demand restitution for inequalities or injustices that are more relevant to your values and beliefs and to your social and economic status and position than to others?
Furthermore, who do you usually identify and empathize with? Who do you need to be more curious about and learn to respect?
5. Emphasizing sameness – the “elephant in the room” of cultural bias, April 13, 2021.
If we are members of a dominant majority in a diverse and heterogeneous society, do we extend the olive branch of inclusion to others based on how much and what kinds of similarity we can recognize in them? Do we interpret inclusion as a form of conditional love? The more alike others are to us, the more we like or love them; the less similar they are to us, the less inclined we are to accept them?
In addition, do we publicize statements like, “There is more that unites us than divides us.” Yet, the values, beliefs, and practices we claim can unite us are the ones that we subscribe to and that we have selected for everyone – dominant and non-dominant alike – to uphold. They are not the ones individuals of minority status subscribe to in the privacy of their homes or validate in public for reasons of self-preservation.
Emphasizing sameness is an effective strategy in intercultural communication when cultural similarities are present and can be tapped into. It is less effective, however, when there are no or less relevant cultural similarities to draw upon. Moreover, emphasizing sameness tends to create a binary and hierarchy between cultural similarities and cultural differences. Cultural similarities are seen as positive and superior to cultural differences; cultural differences are seen as negative and inferior.
In reality, cultural differences are just as important and valuable as cultural similarities and should not be seen as a barrier to appropriate intercultural communication. The way to bridge cultural differences is to develop a deep understanding of them in order to accept and adapt to them. There is no need to set up a competition between these phenomena to create an inclusive and equitable society. Emphasizing sameness is a stepping stone in the journey of intercultural competence development; it is not the end game.
If you consider yourself a member of the dominant majority, what similarities between yourself and others are you emphasizing on a regular basis? What differences are you minimizing?
What groups do you consistently join and support that maintain the dominance of your values and expect compliance to those values by others who are in the minority?
What balance are you trying to achieve between valuing and respecting both cultural differences and similarities between yourself and others?
