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.

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.

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!

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?

So what is this thing called “culture” – what can we say about it other than it’s everywhere and in everyone? The word is thrown around often. You can see it used in the arts section of blogs or newspapers (for you Luddites out there) or talked about when discussing the artifacts of ancient civilizations. These are certainly parts of “culture”, but it’s really a small part. 

There’s a greater part to culture that is less visible, that comprises basic assumptions about how life is and should be. This includes what people think is important (values), what people think holds true (beliefs) and what people think should be the “correct” way to live life (norms). It means that ideas about beauty, communication styles, perceptions about time, conceptions of justice, problem solving, handling emotions, definitions of cleanliness, politeness, are all a part of culture.  This covers a lot of ground doesn’t it? What’s more is that we don’t often think about these things, we just live them. They are so natural and innate that we usually don’t talk about this stuff.

We were socialized into a certain way of “doing things” and we simply live that socialization out in daily life.  However, in a multicultural environment, we need to talk about it and get this stuff out on the table so that we can know where similarities and contrasts are, so we can know where bridges need to be built, and so we can know who is better suited for certain roles and tasks.

When I worked in Japan, my colleagues would often ask me to go out with them after work. I would sometimes go, but being a new father, I would often choose to go home to see my new son. What I didn’t sufficiently realize was that going out with colleagues was not just to have a good time. It served a purpose and was the result of values for formality and status. Work time in Japan has a formality that undergirds efficiency and getting things done. But this formality also can inhibit relationship-building and lines of communication. Going out with colleagues after work is then a method for opening up those lines of communication so that formality and efficiency can start all over at work the next day. I knew this at a superficial level, but what I didn’t adequately realize was how it contrasted with my own values.

I had a value for a separation between work and family and less formality at work.  If I had better known where the values contrast existed between me and my Japanese cultural hosts, I could have articulated the contrast to my Japanese cultural counterparts so that: 1) they would not interpret my declining to go out as a reluctance to bond with them or, worse, dissatisfaction with who my colleagues were; and 2) the prominence of the role of culture in an intercultural relationship could be illustrated.

Today, I have a much better understanding of culture. But I must admit, there’s a lot to explore. There are so many basic assumptions that we are socialized into. I would say exploration of culture is an ongoing process. The good thing is that culture is a big thing and it’s everywhere, meaning that we have plenty of places to discover its testament in daily life.

Have you heard someone say (or perhaps you’ve said yourself), “I’ve never paid much attention to culture.” In intercultural training situations, we, intercultural coaches and trainers, hear comments like this quite often. Participants come into training with very limited awareness and leave the training with the newly found awareness that culture matters.

Yes, culture matters. But is it enough to know this?

It is great to become aware that culture matters. Cultural difference impacts our lives daily and in very profound ways. However, should it be the end goal of intercultural learning?

Awareness benefits us individuals. When we are more aware, we are able to pay attention to culture and interpret everyday life and work using culture as a lens. The problem with this is that the benefit is confined to only your own life and work. You are aware, and so what?

Awareness becomes visible and beneficial to others around you, when you act on it. When you integrate that awareness and change your actions and behaviors based on that awareness, it benefits—makes a positive impact on—your family’s, friends’ neighbors’, and colleagues’ lives. This ability to act on your awareness is intercultural competence.

In order to be a positive impact in your context, you have to become the change, utilizing your intercultural competence. Exercising intercultural competence in every aspect of your life takes awareness, commitment to self-development, motivation to improve, courage to make mistakes, and creativity to try new ways of living. So, is developing intercultural competence the end goal of intercultural learning? Interculturalist would still say no.

Let’s face it. Some of us develop intercultural awareness and intercultural competence more quickly than others. There are number of contributing factors to intercultural development, including general self-awareness, degree of exposure to different cultures, traveling experiences, educational background, etc. Of course, another contributing factor to fast development is having good training and coaching to guide your learning and development. Whatever the reasons are, some of us acquire more highly developed intercultural competence than others, more quickly. So when you do have more developed intercultural competence, what do you do with it? We would answer that you lead with it.

We, at Interculturalist, hold our mission to be the supporter, guide, and educator for your intercultural learning. We serve to raise intercultural awareness, to develop intercultural competence, and most importantly to help you transform your awareness and competence into intercultural leadership.

Raise awareness. Develop competence. When you do, you are ready to lead your life and work interculturally. Your intercultural leadership is called for in a multicultural world. Awareness isn’t enough. Become an intercultural leader.

There are many good practices employed by companies, such as selecting people with previous international experience to send abroad or selecting people with a local language proficiency. These are a good start.

Many companies are beginning to notice the rule:

Being professionally competent in one’s home context does not always translate to being competent in another context.

The key is in the ability to transfer the professional competence, which works just fine in the home culture, into another cultural context. You cannot assume your professional knowledge, skills, and attitudes will automatically transfer into any other contexts and that you would be magically effective. Changing contexts requires preparation, intention, support, motivation, and continuous intercultural learning. One must acquire intercultural competence to allow him or herself to move, live, and work effectively across cultures. As the job market becomes globally and locally multicultural, it is our wish and commitment at Interculturalist to be a resource for competent professionals working across cultures.     

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http://www.understandingrace.org/lived/global_census.html

Photo by Quinn  Dombrowski

 
Check out International Coach Federation’s tips for going green at http://bit.ly/dwMF8e.

As ICF makes efforts to go green, we at Interculturalist also value caring for our environment and learning about new ideas to do so. Ultimately, being intercultural is about creating good relationships with everything surrounding us, which of course includes the environment of our planet.