Thriving in a Multicultural Workplace: Unlocking the Power of Cultural Awareness

Good morning. I'm gonna think good afternoon. Uh, probably good evening for some of you. Um, such a great global group here. A lot of people from the us, a lot of people from Canada. I saw Nigeria, I saw Mauritius. Um, I saw Ghana. Um, I'm calling in today from Bogota, Colombia in South America, where I just moved to, uh, with my family about, uh, days ago. So super global here. Really excited. Um, I wanna just, uh, do a quick apology to all you visual learners out there. I'm not gonna show slides today. Wait, what? No slides, no, no slides. But I do promise that anything I talk about, any definitions that I share, any concepts I share, you will get in slide form shortly after this call. Um, for those of you who might be watching this, uh, recorded later on, good evening, good afternoon, and good morning to you as well. And welcome. As Zach mentioned, my name is Michael Landers, my company's culture crossing. And I wanted to talk a little bit today about this idea of awareness. Um, first I just wanna start with this idea of IQs, right? Um, there's a lot of IQs out there. We, we all know what IQ is, your intelligent quotient, and, and how we tend to measure that and what that might mean for some people. I'm sure many people are familiar with the concept of eq, right? Your emotional quotient, which is really about how well you can manage your emotions, um, especially when you relate to other people and with other people, um, their cq as Zach mentioned, which is cultural quotient. And, and when I look at the cultural quotient, it's kind of what's your knowledge of other cultures, right? Um, their traditions, their rituals, their beliefs, um, their behaviors, what have you be. So that's your cultural quotient. Um, if you aren't familiar, there's also dq. Now, for those of you who are, are, are familiar with the American Fest food, um, restaurant, dairy Queen, um, it's not your Dairy Queen quotient. It's not how well, you know, the Dairy Queen menu and what a frosty is, all right? Uh, if that, or if that's even on the DQ menu anymore. But DQ is your digital quotient. And that's an interesting thing too, to look at, which is how well are you equipped for the digital revolution that's happening, right? We know the, uh, concept of living in a VUCA world, but how well can you handle all the information coming at you? Uh, we also look at companies and their dq, um, what is their digital quotient as it relates to digital transformation for their customers and their, and their, um, and their colleagues and their clients and their team members. Um, one of the newer ones that I'm seeing out here is sq, right? And SQ has been an interesting one because it's your spiritual quotient, and that's been kind of starting to become a little bit more mainstream into the workplace, right? And then not, doesn't mean necessarily from a religious perspective, but just from a spiritual perspective, and how does that impact all of its other things. But today, what I wanna talk to you about is what I like to refer to as global iq. And your global IQ really isn't how, whether you know what the capital of Burkina Faso is in West Africa, or you know, how many languages are spoken in Switzerland. Um, it's really about you. And that's the one thing and one consistent thing I've seen throughout all those IQs, that it really starts with your own self-awareness. The more aware you are of your preferences, of your style, of your defaults, of your mental models, something which we'll talk about in a second, the better equipped you will be to deal with everybody. And especially as we become more multicultural, more diverse, and more open to those things, the greater level of self-awareness one has is really what I like to call the greatest gift you can give. And this is a quote from many gurus and prophets and, and people throughout history. And it's one of my favorite quotes, which is, the greatest gift you can give to humankind is your own self-awareness. And so that's what we're gonna look at today. That's the kind of thing that I tend to work on with people in whatever they're looking to do. Lead globally, manage globally, cultivate cultures of functions, cultivate cultures of teams, cultivate cultures of accountability, inclusion, what have you. It always tends to start with this idea of self-awareness. Also, please add all your questions. As, um, Zach mentioned, we are gonna have at least minutes or so towards the end to answer all the questions versus answering them in kind as we go. So you'll be keeping track of them. And, and, and if I don't, if your question might not get answered as I'm talking, we'll definitely look to try to, to include that into our q and a session. So, along with this idea of the greatest gift, that first step of awareness is kind of what we look at when we try to give people a method to more successfully navigate this idea of working in a multicultural multinational context. For many of you, and this kind of, uh, process that I've, I've come up with for, for the last probably , years, I like to call it the cultural r o i. Now, for some of you, you know, the r o I is stands for return on investment in American English. And the return on investment of what energy and effort you put in. A lot of times it started from financial, like what's your return on investment if you decide to invest your money, but also in our personal lives, in our professional lives, what's your return on investment if you dedicate time to something? And so, what I was finding is a lot of times when people cross cultures, they weren't getting a strong return on investment. Many times the return was they actually had to go back to their own countries, or they had to stop working with people 'cause they couldn't really connect in the right way. They couldn't sell, they couldn't market effectively, they couldn't lead, they couldn't build teams. And so I wanted to play with this idea of a cultural r o i, what's the return on investment when you're trying to work in a multicultural context, right? Ideally, it's to grow, it's to build better connections, maybe to build your business, grow the company, have good relationships, have, have and build a, a, a great culture. But instead of return on investment, we kind of swap, swapped out the, the words. And in this, the R stands for recognize for O stands for open. And the I stands for identify. And I'm gonna go through this process as I give you some examples of how this kind of work out for yourselves in the real world to have a better return on investment, essentially when you cross cultures. So the first thing is, is recognize. And I want to try to equip everybody today with a pause button you can use the next time you might have an interaction with somebody that doesn't go as well as you'd like it to. Maybe you're in one right now, right? And that first step is to recognize your reaction before you respond with that reaction. And I'll give you a couple of examples. When we look at ourselves from a cultural perspective, we really take a look at this as saying we are all programmed, right? From a very early age. Each of us are programmed with the culture that we're in. And typically it's your family culture. But then regional national cultures, corporate cultures impact us. But we're programmed to see things certain ways. And the more you see something a certain way, the more you hear people respond to you a certain way, the deeper the programming becomes. There's a quote that I like from the author Max Brooks, who's written several books. Um, I think, uh, world War Z is one of his big ones, but the quote was, people only see the present through the lenses of their personal pasts. I'll say that again. People only see the present through the lenses of their personal pasts. So if you wanna understand the way you are programmed or other people are programmed, take a look at the lenses of your personal past mine too. And those lenses can be thick, right? They can be multi-layered. Those lenses might not have been cleaned for a long time. So you only see things through a certain kind of glare on the light. But in reality, those lenses are programming, right? And so if you were raised in a household, let's say, that was very communicative, you might be programmed to be very communicative if you were raised in a household that really was comfortable with silence. If you ask a client or a colleague a question and it's met with silence, that might be not a big deal for you. But if you were raised in a household and you were programmed in a culture that silence was seen as bad as people weren't happy as punishment, then when you're met, then your question is met with silence. Guess what? You're gonna be like uhoh. Something's wrong. And that in, in essence is what we're talking about. So when something happens, when you're interacting multiculturally within your own culture and somebody does something or says something and you're about to react a certain way, the first step in this process is to recognize how you're feeling. Imagine if you have that pause button right there and you go, whoa, whoa, that person's coming across as aggressive. At least that's my perception. Hmm, my question was just meant with silence. I'm thinking they might not be happy with my question. Wait a minute, let me pause. Let me pause and go. That's what I'm thinking. I'm putting this answer and projecting this feeling onto the situation. Now, you might be right, but the big deal when we cross cultures is to really recognize, and we took the pause button on that recognize. So that's our first step in the r o i. Now, once we recognize, we have to really understand this concept of mental models, and it's one of my favorites, and it's really helped me understand, you know, what culture is, especially when we cross borders, um, the concept of a mental model is when we make judgments, when anybody makes a judgment, by the way, I would say on average, most of us, me too, make so many judgments during the day versus observations, judgments, outweigh observations, maybe , , , , to one. Just in a normal day, we're conditioned to judge. So it takes a lot of work, a lot, a lot of work to say, Hey, I wanna observe. And I think many of you who are in this field within hr, within leadership, learning and development, one of our jobs is to really get people to recognize when they're judging and try to say, Hey, can we make an observation instead? But we're all conditioned, we're all programming. Culture, in my experience, is a series of mental models. So when people make judgements, they're comparing whatever they're judging to some model in the, in their minds. And take it personally for a second here and say, when you think of food as spicy, it's spicy. When it's sweet, it's sweet. When the customer service was excellent, it was excellent. When it wasn't so good, it wasn't so good. That movie was hilarious, wasn't it for you, for me? Maybe not, right? So every moment, pretty much of every day, we are judging things and we're making those judgements, good or bad, positive or negative in relation to some model in our mind, which is related to the experiences we've had to date those lenses of our personal past. So when we look at our mental models, they really encompass everything. And some things, some, some of the things we see, like where it's the strongest is when you go from one country to another or you go from one state or region to another, or even one city to another. But definitely for those of you who have crossed international borders, the concept of food really brings out our mental models. If you ever have something that you love to eat in your country, let's just go with pizza, right? And then you order that pizza in another country, you might be like, what the heck? This is not pizza, by the way, I work with a lot of Italian people, and I've been working with in Italy for the last plus years with lots of large Italian companies. They struggle mightily when they come to other countries. 'cause they're like, this is not pasta. You call that pasta lonza. No way. That is tomato sauce and hamburger. And in the states, I don't think so, right? Same thing with pizza. Um, but it's really interesting 'cause most people I meet get very frustrated. They get angry. They're like, how? How can this be a hamburger? You don't call this a hamburger. And it's all based on their mental models. For whatever reason they're expecting the food that they eat in their city of their country to be very similar when they go to another country. And so it's fascinating 'cause I've, I've had that problem myself over the years, but really when you look at it, you're like, really? You really expect the hamburger to be the same hamburger from your country, the same pizza, the same rice, whatever it is. How could you think that, right? Because we're very much focused and programmed around the way we want the world to be, right? And we know when we cross cultures that it's not very much like that. But when your mental models are challenged, you have an opportunity first, recognize what they are, okay? That's the r second, open your mind to a different way of looking at it. And that's the o and the r o i. So case in point, huh? When I was served pizza for the first time, when I lived in Brazil, growing up in, uh, beach restaurant in Rio, they brought me a circular kind of tray with very, very thin crust and cheese. That's it. And they, they put next to it a bottle of ketchup and some toothpicks. And that was my pizza. So as a teenager, I was like, what? This is not pizza. How can you, how can this be pizza? But if I use that model and go, huh, I'm a little frustrated. That doesn't really look like the pizza I'm expecting, but I'm gonna go to that second part of, oh, opening my mind and say, okay, well maybe here. That's how they define pizza. So got the ketchup, put it on the cheese. It wasn't that bad. Next time I ordered it, I knew it. To expect it wasn't a big surprise, right? So that's when it comes to just your basic mental models of how you like to judge things and what things mean for you. And when they're challenged, your opportunity is to open that mind. That's the second thing. Now, here's another interesting thing that happens with mental models, is recommendations. And here's a question for everybody. Have you ever had somebody recommend a restaurant to you in your life? Okay? And have you gone to that restaurant and found the restaurant to be good, maybe to made it met your expectations? Excellent. Have you ever gone back to that person and got a second recommendation? Now, if you have, and that second recommendation was good, that person becomes the restaurant expert in your life. They know restaurants, you will start to see them as the restaurant expert. And the reason why is 'cause they met your mental models two times. That's it. Same thing goes with people who recommend movies to you, recommend books. If they do it twice, if they match your mental model twice, they become amazing. Now, let's flip the question. Have you ever had somebody recommend a restaurant to you and it wasn't good? Okay, I've had that. Did you ever go back to them for a second recommendation? Probably not. Right, Robin? No way. Why? One chance they had one chance to meet your mental model and if they failed, that's it, right? So think about how powerful that is. Someone recommended a movie to you, someone recommended a book to you, it wasn't good. You're never gonna go back to probably give them the chance to recommend anything to you again in that domain because they didn't match your mental model. Now, let's take that to work, right? Because mental models just don't stop with restaurants and movies, right? They stop with, you know, are you fitting my mental model of a manager? Are you fitting my mental model of what you know, our responsibilities? And are you fitting the mental model of delivering feedback to me? Building trust, influencing and speci, especially in a business, if you don't fit the mental model of what your boss thinks is the positive behavior or the way you should work with customers or colleagues, you get about one chance on that, right? Sometimes not even that. So those things are really important with recommendations. And here's the interesting thing. The more or less a person matches your mental picture of something, an example, the more they do it, the better that you think they will be. And the less they do it, the worse that you think they will be. Even though those are all judgments from your perspective, right? And so this is why this is so intricate, because we hold onto our judgments and the deeper our programming around them, the harder it is to see things a different way, right? So just to recap, when we look at our cultural r i first is recognizing how a certain situation, person, you know, restaurant, whatever is making you feel. And before you jump to the conclusion of solidifying that you say, okay, this is how I'm feeling. I'm thinking they're being kind of aggressive. That's not fitting, that's not, that does not look like pizza to me, right? And that's the switch to me. Now, open your mind, huh? I wonder if there's another way to look at this. I wonder if there's another way to interpret the behavior I'm seeing. I wonder if there's another way to kind of make a observation about what I'm seeing instead of a judgment. And that's the open, right? That's opening your mind to different mental models. And I'm gonna get to the third one in a second. But first I wanted to share with you how varied a mental model can be and how your brain tends to react. I'm gonna switch from food, Deborah, here we go. How you, how you, how your brain tends to react, um, when you're, you're presented information that's new to you. Okay? So we have a pretty global group, so I'm gonna, if you're active in the chat, put it out there. But what I want to know is I want to know from, from you growing up, what did the dog say in your country, right? And like, I'm not, I'm looking for like from the Americans. Yes. Thank you. I'm looking for a Wolff Wolff, okay, excellent. So look at, look at what? Look at all these things. We have a lot of barks, we have a lot of wfs, we have a lot of afs. Okay, what does the dog say in ca in Canada? Anybody there? Okay? So if you look through, you'll see a lot of things. We're seeing some interesting ones from, from countries around the world. And so if you don't know, the dog sounds different in every language, right? And so, for example, in Britain, they like a good woo woof, right? Similar to the US in Chinese, Mandarin, it's Wang, Wang Wang, or whoa, whoa, whoa, Denmark. It's woo Greek rah Indonesia. The dong says go, go, go gong. G o n g g o n g. In Iran, it's Hao. I think someone put it up there, it ta. In Italy, it's Bao Bao and Laos country. In Southeast Asia, it's Von Von Poland. How, how Dominica, thank you, Philippines. It's aa Romania, ham, ham, as we saw. And in Thailand, the dog says Hong Hong. And the in South Korea, the dog says, mung Hmong. Wait, what? Now, if I told you for the rest of the day, the dog says Hmong, Hmong, for some of you, you'd be like, Uhuh. No way. That can't happen. So here you go. Mental models of the way a dog sounds. And when you present that information to most people, what are they gonna do? The same thing most of us do when we're presented with new information, believe it or not, reject it. And this is a good kind of lesson from, for you and for those of you who might be in hr, right? And, and leadership development, which is when you're trying to present a new concept or a new way of thinking, if it doesn't fit into people's existing mental models, if they can't find a place for it, most of them will reject it. They'll reject it outwardly. And it's not necessarily a personal thing, you know, like they're saying, I don't really like that. It's the mental model. It's, it'll be challenging for them to create a new mental model. So some of the best ways to get people to adopt and be open to new ways of thinking is to let them understand why their rejection feeling will come up. Communicate to them the idea of a mental model and how we're gonna try to create a new one. And why this one might be counter to yours and that's normal. And your normal reaction, most of you is gonna be to reject it. And so we use examples like this with a dog to get people to understand it. But by the way, every animal sounds different. So growing up in the United States, the dog says rib, I'm sorry, the frog says rivet in Japan, the frog says ghetto. Ghetto, right? The chicken in the United States says, Oodle do. Growing up in Colombia, as I did, the chicken says, um, right? So we always joke after this and we say to big question for everybody, what does the fox say? There you go, Barry. Right on. Um, all right, little dad joke there. So we went from recognize our mental models, opening our minds to other ways. And the next kind of step in this is identifying the eye, how I might adapt my behavior, right? Recognize how you're feeling. Open your mind to a different way of thinking and identify how you could adapt your behavior. Now, the most interesting thing for me when it comes to recognizing your mental models, opening your mind to others, and then really getting to identify. In order to identify, I really have to know what it is that, um, and what the options might be, right? So that can take a little bit of time. The recognized piece is something you can start right away and you can, um, and, and people can, uh, help, help you out in that sense, which is you recognize your own feelings about things. You don't need any other information. You just go, Hey, that's feeling weird, that's feeling aggressive, that's feeling assertive. What? It's opening your mind. Let me think about a different way of, of, of, of looking at this. That's a question you can ask yourself. And then when it comes to identifying ways to adapt, that one is an interesting one. 'cause that's gonna take a little bit of time and also experience. But if you're working with multicultural companies, you know, if you are in a multicultural company and you have employees from around the world, they can provide all these different ways of seeing a similar thing. So we'll talk about that in a second. But one thing that most people live their lives in and around is, is what we'd like to call, and I'm sure many of you're familiar with this, the golden rule, right? The golden rule in life is treat other people as you wanna be treated or do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And I think those that rule initially came from, from religious, you know, probably Bible stuff like that. Which, which again, the essence of that rule, I believe is about respect, maybe love, um, empathy. And there's nothing wrong with that core bit, but I always tell people is if you, if you live your life by the golden rule in today's multicultural world, um, it's a broken rule. And I really encourage people to switch from the golden rule to what I like to call the global rule, right? Some people like to call it the platinum rule, and that's very simple, which is you treat others as they wanna be treated. Exactly right? Because if you try to treat everybody the way you wanna be treated, their challenge is, is not everyone's gonna be wanna be treated that way. On the flip side, if you try to treat everybody the way they wanna be treated, you will not, you will not be successful. So I'm not saying that you have to do that, but one of the things we find to really foster cross-cultural awareness and connection is you can't treat everybody the way they wanna be treated. It's not gonna be possible, but everybody can do one thing, which is you can always ask them, you can always ask people their preferences. And when you ask people their preferences, you know what? You find out their mental models. And once you discover people's mental models, you can have a better understanding of the way they see the world and then help it them explain that to them if you're looking for them to change it. But I can always ask people how they wanna be treated. And if I'm able to treat them the way they want to be treated, guess what? I'll do it. And if I can't, I'll explain why I cannot. And so for those of you who might be like, wait a minute, I love the golden rule. I live my life by the golden rule. I've been successful with the golden rule. I get you, I hear you on that one, but I just wanna give you an example, especially when it comes to working cross-culturally, where are you currently golden rule and the challenges that, that, that can possibly cause. So most of us golden rule in the way we send emails, some people are super informal, some people are more formal, right? You might get a dear mister or you'll just be like, Hey Michael, whatever your style is, some of you like a lot of exclamation points, you'd be like, Hey Michael, happy Monday, boom, boom, right? Hope alls well have a great weekend. Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. And if you are a naturally an exclamation point root user, um, you will expect some in return and you might actually be disappointed. You might feel offended in some ways, consciously or subconsciously, if you get an email back and guess what, no exclamation points. Now for other of you, you might be like, exclamation points, really happy Monday, three exclamations, come on, it's just Monday, right? I don't need those exclamation points. So you will mostly write, likely write your emails without them, right? So emailing is a way we golden rule formality, um, versus informality using a lot of emojis if you're on text versus not, okay. But again, you tend to be writing the way you want people to write to you. And by the way, if you get an email from somebody new and they start out more formally, um, maybe that's what they're expecting. If they start out more informally, maybe that's what they're expecting. So that's a great real kind of way to use the r o i to say, Hey, huh, this person was super informal. I wonder if they don't respect me. Wait, let me open my mind. Maybe that's just their preference. Maybe informal is what they are in their culture, okay? So instead of responding angrily or frustrating or making a snide comment, I'll just maybe reply informally and see how that goes. Same thing goes with exclamation points. Greeting is another way we golden rule. For those of you who enjoy giving people hugs, right? A lot of times we'll say, Hey, how you doing? Nice to meet you. I'm a hugger. Sorry. You're, you're apologizing for the fact that you're golden ruling and some people might not wanna hug. For those of you who like a firm handshake, you're shaking people's hands firmly, aren't you? And you expect that in return. For those of you who like that firm handshake, if you get that very limp one, you're like, oh, it kind of makes you feel like it's a dead fish and you'll say something about it. But guess what? For those of you who are more with a limp handshake, that's your style. People with a firm handshake, you're like, ouch, you're crushing my hand. Some people in cultures like to linger and hold hands between genders, same gender, walk around holding for others, people will be like, oh my god, let go of my hand. That's way too long. Again, mental models and golden ruling. Another way we golden rule giving feedback. Do you like to give critical feedback with a little good, a little bad, a lot more good? That's the American way. Sometimes we call that the Big Mac sugar bread on top. You're doing amazing so far. Little piece of meat, here's some things you could do better other than that. More sugar bread, you rock, keep it up. Versus those people who like to give feedback, very, very strip, you're doing a bad job, do better, you know, or other people who might be even more indirect about it, but you tend to wanna give feedback the way you wanna receive feedback. Same thing goes with selling and negotiating, communicating, building trust, influencing all of those soft and core skills. We all tend to golden rule on that. So that's just a little thing to look at. You go, your golden rules are usually connected to your mental models and they're really important to be aware of, especially when you work globally, because if, again, if we're always trying to treat everybody the way we wanna be treated, we're gonna have a lot of disappointed people. We're gonna have a lot of unhappy people. And it's something that can easily be adjusted or fixed just by being aware of your preferences and defaults and then getting curious to other people's preferences and defaults. Alright, so that's a little bit on golden rule and global rule. Let's take a look at one way and one skill in particular that I have seen through some of the people that have done, uh, a lot of work in the intercultural field, um, including one of my former teachers, l Robert Coles, who's passed away many years ago, but his work includes the survival kit for overseas living. So if you have anybody who's moving overseas, um, I highly recommend that book by l Robert Coles. We'll put it in in the slide deck as well. Um, uh, the survival kit for overseas Living. So within it, he goes around, goes over about different skills that can determine whether someone will be successful. I've done more research on that for the last , uh, plus years. And I've identified three skills in particular that'll determine if someone will be successful when they work or, or, or kind of travel overseas. I'm gonna share one with you today. And it's, it's the same skill whether you're living there or you're working remotely, um, um, for a global company. So the skill that we see as kind of the biggest determinant, if you'll be successful when you're working in a multicultural context or living or um, relocating overseas is tolerance for ambiguity, right? Right. And for those of you who are familiar, having a high tolerance for ambiguity versus having a low tolerance for ambiguity, what we find is people who have a high tolerance for ambiguity are more likely to be successful working in multicultural context and international context. And just for a mo definition perspective, again, this will be in the slides, tolerance for ambiguity is really the capacity to hold multiple viewpoints or possibilities in your mind and to remain open to new information and perspectives. So on one side I can have the ability to see the same thing to find differently. So for example, a dog can say, oh wow, a dog can say mung mon, A dog can say boon, boon, or other things. If I can handle that and I can respect that, and I can kind of appreciate that high tolerance for ambiguity, but if I'm like, Uhuh, the dog just says, woof, I don't know what the hell those other dogs are saying, it just says woof, right? Low tolerance for ambiguity. But the nice thing about this is you can grow that skill and we find that when we're kind of, uh, identifying people who are gonna be better global leaders, or if you're looking to go into a new country or a new department or new function, what have you, we really look to kind of assess people's tolerance for ambiguities, not just individuals and leaders of course, but organizations as a whole. We see a direct context to organizations and companies being successful as they expand globally with they have a higher, higher tolerance for ambiguity versus a lower tolerance for ambiguity. So same kind of thing when we look at that r o i, right? Recognizing how you're feeling, open your mind to a different way of thinking and identifying how you can adapt your response. That's the i high tolerance ambiguity connect to that. Being able to recognize, hey, that's the way I see it, but oh, there's six other ways to see that. Okay, I got that. Let me open my mind to see if there's a different way for us to maybe come to a solution here, not just the way I see it. And then if that's the case that we identify that, then guess what? We might be able to adapt that. So again, tall for ambiguity, the capacity to hold multiple viewpoints or to remain open to new information and perspectives that might be counter to the way you think, see things. And you can see how difficult this is because if I seen, if I've seen something or I've done something the same way my whole life, , , , years and I've never seen anything else and I haven't had a good experience trying to do anything else, good luck in trying to get me to change. I'm gonna have a low tolerance for ambiguity for most things. Versus somebody who has maybe had that experience of seeing things so many different ways, multiple times, they are gonna have a high tolerance, they're gonna be very open to new ways of things, right? So let's take this idea of tolerance for ambiguity to your companies, right? And we work with a lot of global companies over the years, um, as they've, as they've gone from become like small startups to huge companies like ar, Airbnb, um, from other companies like Uber as well, that started small and grows big. We've been lucky enough to work with them to your bigger well-known companies like Apple, globally, um, as well as Google, um, SS a p and some other, other kind of companies that you might know of. So why I bring this up is the work that we do with them is varied, but one of the things that we've done most with them is help them with their, uh, HQ problem, right? And I like to call this the HQ shoe, right? And so wherever your HQ is for those of companies, uh, who, people who are from companies who are working or have worked for companies where HQ might be somewhere, but then they expand to different, uh, countries and regions. So the HQ shoe is this. Most companies where HQ is located tries to put the HQ shoe on the global foot. And what we have seen is when companies knowingly or unknowingly try to put the HQ shoe on the global foot, it causes blisters. It doesn't fit perfectly. Um, and what happens if you've ever had a blister from wearing a shoe that's too tight or too big or too tall or too small, right? You don't walk well, you can't run well, you can't perform well because you're constricted by an ill-fitting shoe. So same thing goes with companies. When we see companies trying to force knowingly or unknowingly again, their HQ U on their global counterparts feed, they cause blisters. And so one of the things we look at is when you are looking at pushing out culture, pushing out function from an HQ perspective, being very mindful of what needs to stay the same, really what can't change, it has to remain hq and that's totally fine. There should be things that way. Um, where can we allow our global partners or, or departments or what have you, to do things a little bit more their way, let them wear the shoe that fits best for them, right? And that's kind of what we like to call a polycentric approach. Allowing, uh, local partners, local, um, kind of branches to decide and determine the way they wanna operate, whether it's communication decision-making, language market recruitment, training, you name it. And then another thing that tends to happen when companies grow is they move from that high in HQ kind of shoe, which is ethnocentric. They give a little bit of polycentric to let the regions and local municipalities do what they want and then eventually become geocentric. And that's the creation of a new shoe, right? A new shoe that incorporates both HQ and regions and fits perfectly for everybody, right? And it can morph and shift, but to be mindful of those things is really kind of what we see. And that's connected to that tolerance for ambiguity. Hey hq, this is how we drive motivation. This is how we drive performance. This is what we do with poor performances. Everyone goes on a PIP versus wait a minute, is that gonna make sense for our local partners? Is that gonna allow them to perform at the highest level? Um, and so again, having tolerance or ambiguity is, is is really great from that perspective as well. Alright, so that's a lot of stuff we talked about in a short amount of time, at least from my perspective. Um, let's do a quick recap. Took a, the idea of this concept of self-awareness. The greatest gift you can give to humankind is your own self-awareness. We looked at a number of different quotients and kind of wanted to talk today a little bit about this global iq, which is recognizing your own preferences and styles as you work across cultures to impact people in the way you'd like to. Um, we took a look at our cultural r o i, which is recognize how you're feeling in a moment or your reaction to things, opening your mind to a different way of looking at things. And then I, identifying how to adapt your response took a little deep dive into mental models, the way we see the world, which is really based on judgments and then our reaction to new information. And lastly, we took a look at golden ruling and thir and, and finally the idea of to ambiguity as it connects to how we like to run our company's functions high in hq, more locally driven geocentric, which would be both ways. So I'm gonna take a pause right here and um, I think we can open it up for some questions. I saw a bunch come in, so I'm gonna welcome Zach back in and see if we have a little bit of a dialogue around what might be most, uh, interesting to talk about, um, in relation to the questions that come up in chat as well. Love it. Yeah, first off, thank you, Michael. That was amazing. I agree with Claris, your, your comment like these were some powerful tools both from an individual level, I'm even thinking about scenarios in my own life where I can utilize these in everyday conversations and just scenarios that I enter into, but for organizations as well. So appreciate you Michael. Let's give 'em a first virtual round of applause for, for providing us with some perspective here. So yeah, definitely had some great questions in there. And we have about minutes left here. Yeah, I'm seeing the clap. It has keep going. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Um, but by the way, just a real quick thing, like one of the things we talk about about mental models is gestures, right? Like there's no gesture that means the same thing across cultures. And people are like, well Michael, what about clapping? I'm like, well, in some cultures instead of clapping, they throw money up in the air. So hey people feel free. I like, yes, That is, I'm gonna have to put, I we're gonna have to put one in in in Zoom, uh, or, or it's to show that one like throw that money. Yes, yes. I'm just tea everybody appreciate, welcome. I appreciate, alright, I appreciate the claps and the celebrations. That's, it's been good. Yeah, go ahead. There we go. Susan and Scott. Thanks Scott. Alright. Oh, that's Scott. Oh, sorry, go ahead. Sorry. I Love that. No, that's great. And yeah, keep the questions coming too. We have like minutes left here about, and I know I noticed some of you are working in countries, in some, I even saw someone in countries. Wow. That's amazing. Wow. Uh, that's amazing. So if there's something you're working through right now that you want some expert perspective on, this is your time, so ask that in the chat, ask that in the q and a. Uh, but I guess some of the questions that came into the chat that just go about into, um, you know, you kind of provided examples of learning cultural norms through like instant scenarios where you're in them, but about if mm-hmm. I am going to another country or I plan on opening another location within another country, is there some pre-work that I can do to really understand these norms and beliefs to make it a better successful launch or implementation? Yeah, Yeah, definitely. I mean there's, there's tons of stuff on the web. Um, this is, this is just one of the things on our website is we do offer a completely free cross-cultural guide to etiquette and understanding for most countries in the world. I'm not saying it's like the way, but if you don't owe anything, that's a great start. And there's a lot of free resources on the web because in my experience initially for the first probably plus years of this field, like the cross-cultural field, it was heavily focused and still is on the other, which means, hey, you're going to Japan, here's how the Japanese act. Hey, you're going to Singapore, here's how the Singaporeans act. Hey, you're moving to Ghana. This is how, how people in Ghana think. And while there's some truth to that, and I, and I appreciate those, I really encourage people to say, Hey, when you do meet people from those countries, don't assume you're gonna meet individuals the same way, you know, all us Americans don't like french fries, all Italians don't drink red wine or like soccer. You know, I mean there's just some, some things there. So I think it's important to look at that kind of stuff. Um, and then I'd love to have the experience two sides, one of the host country nationals. So I get some feedback. And again, a lot of stuff is, there's, there's stuff online. I'm also happy to put a, a number of list of books that could be helpful for you as, as people navigate to different countries. But the truth is always somewhere in between the host country national's perspective and an expat who's been living in that country for some time and is aware of themselves. And that's the, that's sometimes if we just go from one or the other, we're gonna get a naturally biased approach. So if you're looking to expand into another country, I'd always be curious to talk to multiple companies who've done it before and hear their perspective. 'cause it'll probably be varied. Um, but people tend to be very, um, final about their things. Oh, if you're going here, you have to, you must, don't forget about that. So I'm always like, okay, yeah, I'm gonna take that data, but I'm not gonna necessarily own it yet. I want to see and, and kind of see what other people are saying. Um, so that's, that would be be my suggestion. Like I said, lots of free resources and guides about just basic etiquette and understanding. And the deeper thing is try to connect with people, which LinkedIn's an amazing resource to just, you know, Hey, I hear you're working in this company country, we're thinking of going in. Would you spend minutes with me? Most people are like, yes, people who have done it before, you tend to like to help out, especially if no one helped them out when they did it first. Yeah. Which I mean, taking that strategy into action, check out this chat. I mean, we clearly have people operating all over the world, everywhere. Wonderful. That's A great chance to build your network and find others that might be operating in these different cultures and start connecting with them asking some of these questions. So take advantage of that. They're here with you right now. That's great. Yeah. Uh, this came into the q and a, which I, I was really wondering as you kind of provided, uh, talking about the golden rule and the global rule and how organizations are also kind of taking that same approach as well. And uh, they were really wondering like, how do you balance maybe welcoming these new concepts or these local cultures and perspectives versus having a firm and structured process or stance on something? And is there a certain flow that you move through to kind of get to maybe, okay, this is the universal kind of stance and you start more embracing locally? Or I guess how do you view that balance? Yeah, it can prove challenging, especially when you have certain corporate values that come from hq. Um, and, and a lot of companies are like, Hey, you know what, whatever we do, we're not going against that. And so sometimes if they make that decision, I'm not saying it's a bad one at all, but sometimes when they make that decision, the it'll impact how they do business. They might not do business with certain local partners because they don't agree in the way they treat their people, right? So there's some things that can be truly, you know, in some sense the view of universalists. But here's the thing, if I'm gonna try to establish a policy, a process in a local HQ or sorry, local, local, um, office, and I'm being met with a lot of resistance, that's gonna be my first clue into just be like, okay, oh, interesting. Tell me more there. This doesn't seem to be adopting. And, and it might be just that a couple of people personally don't like it. So that might be, maybe the answer is personally, and, and if that's the case, we might find a different strategy. If it's a personal thing, it might be, uh, culturally like it really goes against something deeper and we, and we didn't realize that. And so no matter what we do, we're still gonna be met with resistance. And so that will tell me something else and that might, that might kind of clue me into a different approach of how I might solve, right? So it could be an individual personal thing, it could be a cultural thing or it could be a combo, right? I think all of those things matter. So typically when we're trying to, if we're met with a lot of resistance, I wanna get curious as to why sometimes it just might be they've never thought of it that way or it's counter to the way they've done it. And it doesn't mean they want to adopt into it, but it's that it's that pushing into their mental mole and that's a natural rejection. Um, and so I think when you're met with resistance, really be mindful of your next steps after that and get, get clarity around what's, what's driving the resistance really. 'cause that'll adjust your response. Um, and I find I found a lot of times where companies continue to drive forward on what they believe and it ends up being very successful and the people love it. It's just been countered the way that they've done it before. Other times that push in to do something differently just is not gonna work that way, right? It just won't, it's just no matter what you do, it's just gonna be met with, with resistance and poor performance. So that'll tell me that we should look to adapt or adjust it. Yeah, no, that's great. And, and Veronica, I kind of asked a question that I feel like you started, you answered pretty well there on like what are the differences when it comes to different elements of employee experience, like critical feedback or performance management, right? And where some people is like direct and clear and immediate critical feedback where, you know, we want people to speak up in meetings when there's issues, but in other cultures that's totally against the norm. So, um, I guess you kind of, is that the same approach to some of these things as Yeah, Yeah, for sure. So, so I'll give you an example. One of the main requests we get from, uh, let's go with more western based HQs, us, Canada, some, some countries in Europe for sure, when they're operating throughout, um, the Asia Pacific region, you know, mostly North Asia and Southeast Asia, um, is they're, I always get their, they're like, Michael, we want our, we want them to be a more aer assertive, right? We want them to speak up in meetings, we want them to, you know, say, say these things and, and really push, push back. And I'm like, oh, so you want them to be American? They're like, yeah, right. Okay. And so my my thing is, is like, okay, if you're seeking that data, I get it, but the way you want them to, to kind of share that data, you want them to do it exactly the same way we do it here. And in my experience, that's not gonna work. It's just not gonna work in the long run. So again, to ambiguity, can you, can you, can you find different ways to get them to to, to give you what you're seeking? Um, and for a lot of people it's hard because they just have that one view of how people should be, should, should share their feedback or, or performance. Another thing that we're looking at is psychological safety's a big topic, right? And a lot of people are trying to push that into places around the world. And I don't disagree. I think psychological safety is, is is hugely important, but I'll just say how you demonstrate how you create it could change across cultures and, and, and whether people seek it and how they seek it might be very different across cultures. That's great. So we have a number of other questions. I know we only have five minutes left here. And we also wanna play a, a nice shout out and video from our, our partners from today's webcast and and program. But I did wanna bring Scott's question up here as we kind of wrap up please. Is there any common American cultural norm that would be an absolute no-no. In another culture? I mean for, it'd be absolute no-no. In all other cultures, I guess. Uh, yeah, Scott, uh, we'll, we'll try our best here, but yeah, is there certain norms where, uh, you've typically maybe advised cultural American norms to, to avoid when entering other countries? Yeah, I couldn't say like if, you know, don't ever do this 'cause um, yeah, definitely says Americans say, I'm sorry, way too much. I, I think it's definitely from my thing, it's it's culture to culture, right? Um, I would say though, there are some perceptions around the world of Americans and one of those perceptions, especially when it comes to business or if us is hq, which many companies are these days, of course, um, is the American's gonna come in and gonna tell you the way to do things. And so I think you can bust perceptions and that's a great way to establish early relationship by coming in and going, Hey, I really want to know how you do things here. And they'll be like, wait, what? But you're American. Aren't you gonna tell me what to do? Right? So that's the way I would look at it to say is, Hey, what are the typical perceptions that people have of, of, of one country? And then can you go in there and not live up to that perception? Yeah, Megan, exactly. Seek to understand. I think that's a, that's an important one. Um, versus saying like, yeah, if you're American, definitely don't do this, whatever you do. Um, so those are the kind of things, but I would say, believe it or not, the simplest thing, like the firm handshake, I know, I know the pandemic has allowed us to kind of do some fist bumps or just like, no handshaking at all. But look, you know, look at the, look at the person directly in the eye. Give a firm handshake. Again, us extremely diverse country, but that's probably two of the common ones that get people into a lot of problems because that handshake and that direct eye contact for a lot of us Americans is my first line to determine whether you're a credible, confident person. And if you, if you gimme a limp handshake and you don't look at me, may i, I might be like, Hmm, you're shifty. I don't trust you. Meanwhile, your counterparts thing, you know, you got a firm handshake and they look directly in the eye, they're like, Hmm, you're shifty. I don't think I trust you. So that's your classic kind of culture crash that I look at. Yeah, I love that. Well, thank you Michael. I mean it's just a great, um, reaffirmation for the global rule, right? Like just really coming in to understand how do they best work today? What do they need to thrive within the ways that they operate and their beliefs and whatnot. And yeah, start hypothetically, right? Exactly. And I'd just say the last thing, for those of you who are coaching your executives, coaching your leaders, coaching people, you know, for yourself, recognizing your own preferences is a good start. And then getting clued into what theirs are to help coach them to look at it in a different way. And I'd say the biggest thing that I've had with the most success is asking to get people to change behavior, is to say, what impact are you hoping to have, right? What do you wanna have happen in this relationship? Great. So that's the impact you're seeking. If you continue to do it this way to get that impact, it's not gonna happen because this is how people are seeing you. And that'll be usually clue people in, especially leadership to say, okay, you know what? I better change my behavior 'cause I'm really after the impact. Versus if you just tell someone, Hey, don't do that. You should do it this way. That's not really gonna help them out. But Zach, thanks so much. Uh, great to connect with everybody. Uh, we'll send you the slides as I mentioned, and then if anybody wants to connect with me personally, uh, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I think Zach will share my, my profile. Happy to connect with you. Um, if you wanna talk deeper about anything I am available. Um, but, uh, wish everybody continued success. Stay safe out there in our weird weather that we're having everywhere around the world. Don't say climate change. Sorry. Um, and other than that, um, I really appreciate everybody's time and comments and, uh, and what you're, what, what you're all about. Um, thanks to our sponsors as well. Yeah, thank you Michael. Let's, let's throw some money, some more hands out there, Michael. Uh, let's go put in the chat, definitely connect with them, follow up with them, 'em always sharing amazing resources for you to learn from so you can follow 'em there on LinkedIn. We also have the Sherman H R C I credits in the chat, so if you wanna take advantage of those. But yeah, huge shout out to our partners. Hi Bob, on this program. They've been an amazing partner to support organizations that are operating at a global scale, especially from a tech enablement standpoint. So definitely check them out and I'm really excited to share this quick clip, uh, from their actual internal chief people officer and the person who's leading this work internally at the highest level. Um, we're gonna play a quick minute clip here to wrap us up. So enjoy. Hi everyone, and thanks again for joining us today. My name is Annie Rosen Krantz, and I'm the director of People and culture at Hi Bobb. For those of you who don't know, hi Bobb. We're a global company that's set out to build the best, most engaging HR platform on the market. That means that not only am I a peer to all of you as HR leaders, but I also have the distinct pleasure of leading an HR team at a company that's actually building HR technology. We at hi Bobb use our own platform, Bob, to automate all lifecycle processes from onboarding to offboarding and everything in between, including things like workforce planning, performance management, and compensation management. And as a global organization, we leverage Bob to measure employee engagement and to keep our diverse global workforce connected through our social media like user interface. Hi, Bob is thrilled to sponsor today's event and we hope to see you again soon.

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