Cultural IQ

In a diverse society, everybody belongs to a minority group

Five high school graduates with highly successful companies attend a business function that’s designed to raise money for student scholarships. The motivational speaker reminisces about her college days and the importance of higher education.

“You just can’t get anywhere without an advanced degree,” the speaker says. She asks guests to introduce themselves and share how college improved their lives.

Oops. There is awkward silence as the five multi-millionaire entrepreneurs scattered about the room find themselves in the minority group - for this particular moment. The majority’s message to them: If you are not like us, there is something wrong with you.

To understand what it is like to be the odd man or woman out, we really have to stop focusing on race and religion and begin to focus on daily life. Today’s minority groups include: left-handed people, people with college degrees; motorists who never go through red lights, rich people who purposely live in poor neighborhoods and natural blondes.

Every single one of us is likely to experience life in a minority group before we die. Every one of us will know what it feels like to belong to the decision-making group.

Here’s the difficult question: Do our behaviors change as we shift back and forth between the minority and the majority?

Life is good when it is our chance to hang with the cool kids or be part of a winning team. Our character and commitment to democracy are defined by the extent we respect the minority viewpoints, beliefs and attitudes on the days we are in the group holding all the cards.

During last week’s quiz, I asked you to think about what you might do if a minister or preacher started talking about Jesus Christ at a non-religious event where many faiths were represented in the room. Here’s my personal game plan:

       Stand up for the minority faith, race, or group of the day so they will stand up for me on the days I am the minority. (If I am not willing to stand up for them then I have no right to ask them to stand up for me) Strengthen our community, we need to build allies, find partners, and talk to people with opposing views. 

     Always conduct a fact-finding mission before you make assumptions or reach final conclusions: Why did this happen? Where did the breakdown occur? Did the minister overstep his bounds? Did the event planner err in not giving clear instructions?

        Don’t lump the innocent in with the guilty. We all do it. It is less work to blame "all" of them rather than find out which one is responsible.

       Share feelings in a respectful manner. Be a bridge-builder; not a critic. Tell the guilty party you want to help him or her build new relationships in our diverse society. Serve as a lifeline fo a friend or stranger at least once a day.

Should you speak up or walk out when diversity goes awry?

 A funny thing happened on the way to the 21^st century, many cultures merged into one people.

America's communities increasingly are places where cultural and religious groups with differing customs,  backgrounds, languages  and beliefs seek shared purpose and common ground.  Those highly skilled at cultural conversations and coalition-building stand to prosper. 

 This summer, I'll post a series of pop quizzes that serve as a road test for this bumpy cultural terrain.  Best to test your driving skills now - before cultural collisions occur.  Let’s get right to work.

 

 Challenge of the Day:

You are at a fund-raising dinner when the minister gets a little carried away with the benediction. He begins to talk about Jesus Christ and the need for Christian values.  There are Jews, Muslims and Mormons in the room. What do you do?

Answer:

This is one of those sticky situations that tend to make us sweat. I’ll let you in on a secret. Sticky situations are the hot new business currency.  The more you have, the better prepared you’ll be for global markets and challenges.

Next time you are in the hot seat, remind yourself: “I am so lucky. Just think, this opportunity could have been given to anyone but the universe picked me.”

As The Cultural Coach, I am going to propose four responses. Select the one that most closely fits your style and personality:

      Do nothing and hope someone else brings the issue up.

      Get up and walk out the door to show others your displeasure.

      Use the prayer to trigger a conversation among your table's dinner guests. You might say, "I find myself wondering how I might feel now if I were Mormon, Muslim or Jewish. I know I sometimes feel uncomfortable when others preach to me." Your thoughts? 

      Quietly pull the minister aside without making a scene.  Let him or her know that you enjoyed the prayer but you felt the heavy-handed Christian doctrine might have made it hard for guests of other faiths to understand the message. “I wonder if there might be a way to get around this ssue next time?” you might ask.

Now, which response would you select? Discuss, discuss.

 

If you have a question or a situation you would like to discuss, write me at theculturalcoach@aol.com

After We Step Outside of Our Comfort Zone, Then What?

 

 

Life faithfully reminds us what it is like to be the new kid in school, or the Jewish-American couple at the company holiday party or a St. Louis Cardinal fan at a Philadelphia Phillies game.

When we get that anxious feeling in the pit of our stomachs, that may be a sign that we have left behind the comfortable and familiar and are about to encounter contrary ideas, words, values and beliefs that offer us a chance to think and grow.

Everybody has to do it. Even the President doesn’t get excused from these stressful challenges. People who stay in their comfort zones never get the brass ring. Just this weekend President Barack Obama gave the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame knowing his appearance would spark protests. He implored the graduates to embrace these difficult dialogs and stop "reducing those with differing views to caricature. Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words. It's a way of life that always has been the Notre Dame tradition," he said.

 He's right.  A championship basketball team has to win on the road and learn to deal with opposing fans.  Politicians have to represent the folk who did not vote for them and never will give their campaigns a dime.  Business people increasingly must sell to customers don’t look like them and don’t trust them. Take it from someone who has been out in the trenches. It gets more comfortable though it never gets easy.

Here's some advice:

Be yourself – Resist the delicious temptation to blend in and mimic the accent (unless you can do it well). It is OK to pick up new words and use them.  It is OK to show respect. It is OK to adapt and be culturally flexible. It is not OK to steal someone else’s culture or pretend to be something you are not.

Collect facts in order to solve the puzzle – Suspend judgment while you are collecting facts. Act like a detective, not like a teacher. Put the clues together and try to make sense of them. Don’t spend all your time telling people about your view. (IF you do, you may miss the lesson.)

Clarify – Ask questions that lead to greater insights and community understanding.  Resist the urge to impose your opinions on others.

Have the courage to speak up – Diversity experiences frequently yield more pain than gain because so many of us choose to keep silent. We want to fit in, which negates the value of diversity of thought.  Learning opportunities arise when the people who are different find the courage to share and transfer cultural knowledge.

Let’s put this information to use with a real-life problem. A liberal is invited to attend a dinner party with her boss who runs with a conservative crowd.  One of the other guests makes the statement: “People with bad credit could not afford home loans. They took them out and now all the rest of us must pay. They should have known better.”

How must we introduce new facts without turning the evening into a hostile debate?

We might say:

1) Wouldn’t it be great if we could actually talk with a family in foreclosure and explore this issue? I wonder what we might learn from them? Does anyone here know a family going through foreclosure right now?   Objective: You have managed to point out – in a non-threatening way  – that some truths are missing from this equation.  If you are lucky, a conservative who knows a family will seize the opportunity to speak up. It is best to let him or her tell the story. They have political capital to spend and we don’t.

2) Not all the lending companies engaged in predatory lending and made exotic loans.  What lessons might we learn from these companies? (This response holds other businesses – and not liberals – up as role models.)

3) Many high schools in the suburbs offer life skills classes that cover money management while those in the city do not. Could this situation present an opportunity to develop an educational system that fully prepares students for citizenship by covering ethics, money management and global responsibilities? (A good traffic cop stands in the middle of the road to yell instructions – not on the side of the street.  This response allows you to stand on neutral ground and encourages discussion of all weaknesses – not just those we see in the people who aren’t like us.)

By getting out of the safe zone, you your boss you are a leader,  a compassionate listener and a troubleshooter – not just another angry voice around the table.

Attention please: It is now OK to divide people!

 

Which lane will you travel?

 

Every day, airline passengers make decisions of great consequence to themselves and their fellow travelers.

In many airports, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) allows us to rate our abilities as travelers. It has established three lanes for security checks and screening: one for expert travelers, one for casual travelers and one for families and individuals in need of special assistance. Our job is to consider which category best describes our level of skill and then get in the line with our people.

As I flew from Houston Hobby airport to Memphis, the lines for expert travelers and casual travelers were nearly empty. Since there was no monitor to check credentials or give pop quizzes, I gave my ego an upgrade. I strolled over to the expert line even though I had no clue if I truly had the right to be there.

According to The New York Times, the TSA defines expert travelers as those who fly two or more times a month. A casual traveler (I pictured a person who had not flown in the last five years) is described by TSA as someone who is knowledgeable about TSA’s procedures and regulations. Travelers in need of special help either don’t understand how things work or they can’t adapt to all the changes.

In most situations, I am against assigning people to hang out with the people most like them. But TSA has a fairly interesting reason for dividing us: they are trying to increase our performance and minimize risks.

Ellen Howe, a spokeswoman for the agency, told The New York Times the system seeks to minimize some of the tension and generally help calm security checkpoints. While there has not been a formal study to determine whether the lanes reduce waiting times, she indicated that this certainly seemed to be the case for the experts, whose lane is affectionately titled “the diamond lanes.”

Days later, I found myself still thinking about TSA’s idea of putting people into lanes by skill level. In the diversity business, we travel in lanes as well – though few of us ever recognize this. Workers who have varying degrees of skills and cultural competencies are thrown together, and guess what, tensions arise just as they do at the airport. That slows us all down.

We have got our experts.  Let’s be honest. Some of them get bent out of shape when they encounter those with less experience and practice, just like our frequent fliers. Then, we have the casual folks. These are the competent people who prefer to stay in their comfort zone and face diversity issues only when required. They are at higher risk for a cultural collision because these novices don’t yet realize all the stuff they don’t know. Then you have the folks who need assistance. Wouldn’t it be great if corporations and nonprofits could ask employees to self-assign diversity lanes – if only for an exercise?

They might ask workers to identify people who belong in the expert lane. Who are the high performers? What skills are required to get into this high-prestige group? What advantages do they have over the rest of us as a result of their collective skills and knowledge?

Next, we might examine the casual route. Ask workers to describe the characteristics we might find in the folks in the middle. What are their risks? What will it take to move them into the league of top performers? And finally, there are folks who don’t yet know what to do or how to handle these situations. The goal would be to give them the type of assistance that allows them to get up to speed.

TSA may be onto something here. It’s OK to divide people as long as we do it by skill level and make our definitions and expectations clear.

Though there is no data or hard-evidence to suggest lines are moving faster, TSA sees some benefits. The lanes apparently have helped to reduce passenger tensions. In addition, Howe told The New York Times that officials have noticed a decrease in alarm rates at checkpoints and fewer sick days used by those who man security checkpoints.

The moral of today’s story: Sometimes in life decent folks will find good reason to divide people. A coach has to trade a popular ball player in order to build a championship team. A company has to sell off a small unit in order to focus on its core business. Equal opportunity businesses need to tell workers that they do not all possess the same level of cultural intelligence or math skills. However our managers are assigned to coach us along the way.  

On many days, it’s the skill deficit that sparks tensions and creates delays; not skin color, gender or religion. Just ask any frequent flier.