Global Conversations at this Year's ICF Annual Conference

We at Interculturalist pride ourselves in offering quality coaching which aligns with the philosophy of the world’s largest professional coaching association, the International Coach Federation (ICF). As such, here is an update on the ICF’s new direction in utilizing the expertise of Master Certified Coaches (MCCs).

The ICF is implementing a new format for some of its educational sessions at this year’s ICF conference. (See a report by Mark Joyella on The Coaching Commons.)

We like this change.

One of the reasons is that the ICF is utilizing the expertise of the most experienced coaches (Master Certified Coaches) and offering a place for them to take active roles in facilitating learning at the conference. This means they will be moderating table discussions on the topics considered most relevant to the current practice and future of coaching profession.

MCCs are the role models and leaders of those who follow them — and, they should be. This new conference session style can be an opportunity for all of us to know who are ready and willing to step up and lead us, all coaching professionals, and engage all of us in the dialogue and action.

Among the five trends to be discussed at discussion tables are:
1. Internationalism Becomes the Norm
2. Transforming the Fragmented Community
3. Embracing Complexity and New Roots to Change
4. Aging: Increased Lifespan and How Long We Will Work
5. Listening Organizations: What Is a Chief Listening Officer?

As a company which specializes in training and coaching individuals and organizations interact and dialogue beyond differences across cultures, we are excited to see these particular topics.

Intercultural Schools: The Future of Minnesota Public Education

The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) Education Summit that was held May 25 and 26 was a significant benchmark in the transformation of Minnesota’s P-12 public education. All together, there were about one hundred participants which included school assistant superintendents, principals, assistant principals, directors of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in various school districts, education researchers from various higher education institutions (particularly teacher preparation programs), and intercultural training and coaching professionals who utilize the IDI in consulting for education organizations (including Interculturalist). It was a good mix of people from various educational and professional organizations.

We came together to discuss the challenges and visions that the education leadership in Minnesota P-12 schools are facing with regard to the continuously changing dynamics of cultural demographics. These challenges include the continuing achievement gap, the disparity between different racial and ethnic groups in disciplinary incidents. The approach at the Summit was to examine the context and situation from an intercultural perspective. The discussion revolved around what it means to integrate intercultural competence work and more traditional “antiracism” work. We now know that the challenges we face cannot be addressed solely through the lens of “eliminating racism” as this lens does not speak to greater and more complex differences among cultures. Intercultural and antiracism work must be integrated and work hand-in-hand – they should be partners in achieving the goal of creating public schools that can educate all students.

Culture plays a crucial role in determining how teachers teach, how leadership leads, and how schools engage students, families, and the surrounding community. Some of the topics discussed were: connecting educators’ continuing professional development to eliminating achievement disparities, identifying key intercultural “stress points” (for example, parent-teacher conferences), developing strategies for handling these stress points, clarifying how people with different intercultural orientations respond to these stress points, and assessing how having a more sophisticated intercultural orientation leads to better (i.e. more effective) strategies.  The Summit concluded with discussion on creating a Cultural Resource System in Minnesota, a system that would serve as a resource and support for addressing the multi-cultural needs of schools. It was exciting to see such an innovative initiative started at this scale. As a Minnesota-based intercultural firm (and parents of Minnesota public school students!), it’s special to see this new educational development emerge.

A School is a Multicultural Community

A school is a multicultural community. Whether it is racially diverse or, (for example) looks all “white,” when you have a community of people—teachers, administrators, staff, students and families—it is multicultural. Sometimes the diversity is very visible, sometimes it is not.

Some intercultural professionals, including Interculturalist’s lead coach Akiko Maeker, have been working with schools in various school districts to support the intercultural transformation of education. The collaboration among education professionals and intercultural professionals has evolved into amazing initiatives and began the transformation process at individual and system-wide levels. Take a look at p.9 of the Osseo Area Schools "Strategic Plan 2009-10" for a good example (a 12-page document). The district clearly states as a system-wide priority:

"System leaders model intercultural competence that supports all students achieving our mission and strategic objectives."

On May 25-26, many of these key players are gathering for the first time, with Mitchell Hammer, the developer of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI), at the IDI Education Summit in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA.

Akiko Maeker and Paul Maeker from Interculturalist will be attending the Summit. We look forward to having inspiring dialogue with educational and intercultural colleagues, learning from one another, and taking away innovative ideas for our continuing work. We look forward to seeing some of you who are reading this blog at the Summit. For those of you who will not be attending, we will be sure to share some of the learning and outcomes after the Summit!

Exploring the Unseen - Part II

The previous Interculturalist blog post was about the pervasiveness and hidden nature of culture. Today’s blog post continues with this theme and explores an example of the unseen part of culture. A recent Time magazine article offers a great testament to and illustration of the manifestation of this unseen side of culture in daily life. The article is about a career path that is foreign to most of us – being an astronaut. Specifically, the article reports on the criteria that female astronauts in China must meet and how it contrasts with the norm in the US. By reading this article, I think we can gain insight into the hidden nature of both Chinese and US culture. Here’s an abridged version of the article:

Would-be taikonauts have to meet near impossible standards that are meant to weed out the less-than-flawless. And if China's spacemen are expected to satisfy an unlikely string of qualifications, so too are its new spacewomen — with two notable additional criteria. China's first two female reserve astronauts, selected earlier this month from a pool of 15 female fighter pilots, were required to be wives and mothers.

The reasoning behind the prerequisite, according to officials, is that spaceflight could potentially harm the women's fertility. "It's out of the consideration of being responsible for the female pilots," Xu Xianrong, director of the PLA's Clinical Aerospace Medicine Center in Beijing and a member of the selection panel, told the official government news agency Xinhua. "Though there is little evidence on how the space experience will affect the female constitution, we have to be extra cautious, because this is a first for China." Ensuring that the female astronauts have already reproduced, he said, will guarantee that their family planning is not disrupted.

A 2005 study on reproductive health and spaceflight in the International Journal of Impotence Research, reports that about 80% of the American female astronauts who came to NASA were not mothers. Most female astronauts in the U.S. and other countries don't have children not because of the adverse effects of spaceflight but because they have intentionally delayed getting pregnant. Female astronauts who want to have kids tend to put it off early in their careers because of unpredictable flight schedules and because much of their training is forbidden if they're expecting. "Most prefer to get at least one spaceflight in before pregnancy," says Jennings, and are approaching their early 40s by the time they begin trying for children, when the risk of genetic defects and miscarriage is much increased.

As a potential solution, the report proposes not that female pilots begin having children earlier, but that members of both sexes store reproductive cells for future use. For women, banking eggs would not only eliminate the theoretical difficulty of damage to reproductive tissues by cosmic radiation, but also solve the problem of age-related fertility decline.

When you read the above account, did you feel more in line with the Chinese policy or the US standpoint? If we look at this status from a cultural standpoint, there are certainly some values that are underpinning the rationale for both the Chinese policy and the US orientation. What does China’s policy toward female astronauts say about its values? What values or beliefs are underpinning and supporting this as an acceptable policy? At the same time, what does the US’s non-policy, tendency to delay childbirth, and proposal to store reproductive cells say about its values and beliefs?