Thoughtful Travel and Cultural Intelligence

In 2009, I had the opportunity to backpack through Europe with my sister. We didn’t really know the logistics of doing so but fortunately our cousin, who has worked and backpacked there, advised us to buy Rick Steves’ guidebook. Ever since I’ve used Rick Steves’ guidebooks for Europe, I haven’t turned back (and I have used Lonely Planet, Fodor, Frommer’s, etc. you name it). When you read his books, it’s like you have an travel guide there with you, actually talking to you and telling you to “walk past the colorful walls” and “turn left after you go down the little steps on your right” (yes, his walking guides are that detailed). I highly recommend anyone going to Europe, backpacking or not, to buy one of his books.

But beyond Rick’s books, I’ve really grown to admire his travel philosophy. Although I’m paraphrasing, Rick’s introduction in his Best of Europe book basically tries to tell his reader/fellow traveler that we’re no longer in North America (the US, specifically, where his company is based), and we can’t bring with us our North American assumptions and expectations on our journey. It is with this mindset that we’ll have a great traveling experience.

More recently, Rick gave a TEDxRainier talk on The Value of Travel, which you can find below. Rick is a great story teller and although you might or might not already enjoy traveling, you should definitely watch this video. (If you don’t have 20 mins to spare, I’ve added my favorite quotes from the talk at the end of this post). Rick stressed the point that it’s not just travel, but thoughtful travel, that “is well worth the time and the money.”

One example of a “Eureka!” moment that Rick had on his travels to Iran (Rick says, “Why am I going to Iran?…and it occurred to me I’m going there because I think it’s good character to know people before you…bomb them.”) was when he was in a cab in a traffic jam and suddenly the cab driver, who mainly only spoke Farsi yelled out, “Death to traffic!”

Rick was surprised and asked the driver, “Death to traffic? Is it not ‘Death to Israelis’ or ‘Death to the Americas’?” And the driver responded, “No, right now, death to traffic.”

The driver goes on to explain that “Here in Iran, when anything is frustrating or out of our control, we say ‘death to that’.”

And Rick realized that this was equivalent to him saying “Damn those teenagers!” when he’s back in the states, although he doesn’t wish that the teenagers burn and rot in hell for eternity.

Now, you don’t have to be a researcher in cultural intelligence (CQ)—defined as the capability to function effectively in situations characterized by cultural diversity—to realize that someone like Rick would score high on CQ. To break it down into its component parts though, CQ consists of:

Metacognitive CQ = the higher order cognitive functioning that is used to acquire and understand cultural knowledge. Individuals high on this component consciously monitor and reflect upon their own cultural assumptions and their interactions with culturally different others. They are able to suspend their judgment, be mindful, and adjust their own cultural knowledge in an unfamiliar cultural situation.

Cognitive CQ = refers to the knowledge the individuals possess of cultural universals in addition to differences in cultural norms, practices, and conventions, Those are who score high on cognitive CQ have knowledge of other cultures’ economic, legal, and social systems.

Motivational CQ = is “a source of drive” which leads individuals to direct their attention and energy towards effectively functioning in situations with culturally different others. Individuals who possess high motivational CQ are confident in their abilities to do well in contexts characterized by cultural diversity and are intrinsically motivated to do so.

Behavioural CQ = reflects the capability of individuals to exhibit appropriate verbal and nonverbal behaviours, such as appropriate words, tones, gestures, and facial expressions depending on the cultural context. Individuals with high behavioural CQ should possess a wide range of culturally appropriate behaviours, understand the display rules of different cultures, and be proficient at interpreting the meanings of culturally different others’ behaviours.

Now the chicken or the egg question: Did Rick Steves score high on CQ because he traveled lots? Or did he gain successful travel experiences because he already scored high on CQ?

If CQ is like (cognitive) intelligence, then it might be the latter. But actually, researchers in the field of CQ think that it’s a trainable/changeable capability.

To score high on CQ, for me, it really all comes down to being mindful, knowledgeable, motivated, and flexible.

1)      Be mindful that there are cultural differences. Reflect on your experiences and rethink your assumptions.

2)      Gain knowledge about cultural differences, either by reading about it, asking culturally different others, or traveling to another place.

3)      Motivate or push yourself to actually acquire the knowledge, talk to culturally different others, ask questions, and change yourself.

4)      Be flexible in your own behaviour so that it’s appropriate in the current culture/situation. Not only will you “fit in” more and gain trust or respect from culturally different others, it might also open your eyes to why people do things a certain way.

As our world becomes more globalized and different cultures are increasingly coming in contact due to work, leisure, curiosity, change in policies (e.g., the ASEAN’s AEC), or other necessities (i.e., home displacement due to war), perhaps waiting for someone to develop their own CQ is not enough. I think that it should almost be a necessity to incorporate diversity and cultural training into educational and training programs for both children and adults.

The world would definitely be a better place if one day, everyone becomes someone who would say something like this:

“This man is very different from us, but he’s fundamentally the same. And if we can take home that understanding, that’s the best souvenir possible. And for the rest of our lives, when we look at the rest of the world, rather than fear its diversity we can better celebrate it.” Rick Steves

 My other favorite quotes from the talk:

“Travel opens us up to the wonders of the world…It helps you appreciate nature…It connects you with culture…It connects you with people…It’s people that makes your experience vital.”

“[The American] dream is beautiful but so is theirs.”

“When we travel, we gain a better appreciation of what is the baggage that people are carrying when they respond to us.”

“My friends in Europe always remind me a society always has to make a choice: tolerate alternative lifestyles or build more prisons.”

“European example of pragmatic harm reduction when it comes to soft drugs.”

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” Mark Twain

“Cultured meat”, change management, and social influence

My dad was watching some technology-related show in the next room, and I was eavesdropping. The part that got him excited was when a scientist was saying they’ve successfully created a bladder from a donor’s cells and also successfully implanted that bladder into the donor.

The part that excited me was when the show mentioned that scientists are trying to create “meat” in the lab, called “cultured meat“. As mass farming is currently part of what’s destroying the environment, the scientists are creating “meat” in the lab to replace people’s demand for it and helping the environment at the same time. I didn’t realize this was already happening, because I have envisioned that this could be a solution for all, because 1) it’ll appeal to current meat-eaters who care about the environment and 2) it’ll get people who are vegetarian/vegan for ethical reasons to be able to eat meat.

But what does creating “meat” in the lab have anything to do with change management and social influence?

A professor of Business Ethics at York University (sorry didn’t catch his name) was interviewed about his thoughts on the above, and he mentioned that by nature, people are habitual creatures and are opposed to change. If change occurs slowly, it would be easier to accept the change. This made me immediately think of change management, and how its bottom line process is so easy, but it’s so difficult to execute because people have change-resistant tendencies. The same resistance people will have over whether or not to support and eat lab meat is pretty much the same resistance they have over new policies being implemented at work…even if the new policies would benefit themselves. This natural resistance is also why consultants make a living out of change management.

And then there is social influence. How would society start accepting lab meat if it were to be available in the market? Robert Cialdini outlined the basic principles of influence in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and the one I think most relevant here is “social proof” or how people are influenced by the social norms (i.e., what others are doing…see an article of using this tactic in real life here). I would predict that if eating lab meat becomes the “norm,” even more people would accept it. Using this knowledge, consultants trained in psychology (or at least those who know about Cialdini’s work) can again better help implement change in organizations.

Beyond the technology to create lab meat, I hope that one day world-wide change management and social influence will in fact move people towards more sustainable consumption and lifestyle.

Expat Eavesdropping

Two cool things (to me) overheard on the Skytrain today from a (probably) British business man to a Thai colleague.

1) British business man, “When I was on the board, we had code names for a lot of our projects so that nothing would be written down when the secretary took notes. The problem was, our chairman couldn’t remember to which project the code names referred. So we had to remind him and each other every time. We did try to have a naming convention but it was always somewhat arbitrary. For example, the CEO of the other company’s name was White so we called our project “Black.” But we still couldn’t remember.”

It’s stories like these that allow me to glimpse into the corporate world, especially into the C-suite.

2) Same British man, “Do you think Thai people need more personal space?”
Thai colleague, “Probably, but not with family and friends.”
British man, “Of course. But, I’m talking about in common areas.”
Thai colleague, “Yes, I think Thai people need more personal space.”
British man, “I agree. I notice that Thai people usually leave more space compared to some other cultures.”

I thought about this and on the one hand I didn’t agree because, for example, Bangkok is so crowded = there is almost no personal space and shops and stalls are crammed together. On the other hand, Thai people rarely touch each other. We don’t touch each other through greetings (the “wai” where we put on hands together and bow our heads down) and for strangers to hug even after some team success (besides sports teams) would be really strange.

Imagine the “horror” when Thai people saw me greet my French friends at the airport!

Culture, Indirect Communication, and Your Health

Happy New Year! I haven’t had time to think about a new year resolution yet (too many deadlines, yes, this early in the year, life as an academic…) but perhaps one should be to be more consistent with my blog and not let “the perfect be the enemy of the good” (attributed to Voltaire). I have so many ideas for a blog post but keep postponing it because I want it perfect. Out goes perfect and in comes posts!

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I was at the hospital with my grandmother and aunt the other day for my grandmother’s knee surgery check-up by the Physio doctor (<–if this blog post were perfect, I would’ve spent extra time to look up what they are actually called, but I’m not going to ). According to my aunt, sometimes when the doctor asks my grandmother if she has had any pain at home, she’ll say “No” or that she’s getting better. Also, today, when the doctor was telling my grandmother that she should start pressing on her knee (to get rid of something around the scar), my grandmother said, “Never done it.” And we all assumed that she meant she knew she’s supposed to do it but she never got around to do it at home (like when she’s supposed to do a bunch of exercises for her knees at home).

Here’s where my cultural interpretation comes in.

1) My aunt doesn’t understand why my grandmother (also my grandfather) keeps telling their doctors that they have had no pain at home or that they’re getting better even though they have been in pain and sometimes things aren’t getting better. I think it’s because, in a collectivistic culture like Thailand (yes, I am back in Thailand now, and all my family’s here), the main social goal is group-harmony, and I think that my grandparents are trying to “please” the doctors by saying something they think the doctors would like to hear and not “complain” about their situation.

However, you can see why this is a problem. Doctors need to accurately diagnose the health conditions of their patients and they can’t always use machines to probe…sometimes they rely on verbal reports from the patients. But if the patients are “eager to please” the doctors and not tell them of their actual issue, the doctors can’t help them.

Perhaps there should be a way to educate patients about how to communicate to doctors or doctors ensuring patients that they want to hear the truth because they want to heal them. Or some kind of established norm that might be different from what the patients are used to for their own good.

2) When my grandmother said “Never done it” above, my grandmother meant that the nurse who was rehabilitating her after the surgery never did this one particular knee compression move on her, and therefore she has never been taught or told to do it previously. The confusion is both her fault and the Thai language’s fault.

First, it’s the Thai language’s fault because in Thai, some sentences do not require a subject, in this case, we don’t know who’s “never done it”. Was it my grandmother who’s never done it? (like we all though) or the nurse who’s never done it? (like what my grandmother meant). I am pretty sure because of this Thai is a higher context communication language, consisting of more “implicit, indirect messages” than low context communication, where the message is directly and clearly embedded in the message sent.

Second, it’s my grandmother’s fault for not clarifying this issue at the doctor’s office; it was only revealed that it was the nurse who’s never done it after we got home and my aunt was telling my grandma to do that move. But then again, it might not be her fault as to again her motivation to not cause a problem/conflict with the doctor or the nurse (i.e. telling the doctor that the nurse has never done it could mean the doctor scolding the nurse).

In this case, perhaps the doctor could be trained to probe when there is ambiguous communication. “Who’s never done it?” would’ve clarified the situation. Also, my grandmother, again, could’ve been reassured of the need to reveal all information for the doctor to help her better, so that she is more motivated to reveal information than conceal them (again, characteristics of a collectivistic culture, whose people tend to use high context communication).

A small example of how knowing about a patient’s culture and their communication style can potentially improve their healths and even save their lives.

Resigning Policies

Just heard about what happens to employees in the financial industry when they notify the HR department of their intent to quit. It’s actually pretty ridiculous. But then again, I have only worked for 4 organizations thus far and they were just internships and part-time jobs so I don’t really know how it goes for other industries.

My friend decided to resign from her company because she was going to move abroad with her fiancé who was relocating. So she called up her boss on the phone to inform the boss of her decision. Now, the boss did give her a warning about what was about to happen if she decided to resign but with her implicit communication, my friend misinterpreted the message. The boss said, “Are you absolutely sure? Well, you know all our phone conversations are recorded anyway, so if you are sure you want to resign, I’ll have to call the HR department and they will deal with the situation immediately.”

What my friend thought the boss meant was that the HR people will come give her paperwork to sign right away, which would be a good thing so she can get it all over with a month ahead of time.

But my friend wasn’t prepared for what happened next. A few minutes after she hung up from her boss, some HR people came and asked her to sign some papers, told her to log-off her computer, pack up her stuff, and escorted her out of the building right away without letting her say bye to any of her colleagues!

So, my friend was very confused about this procedure (she’s resigned from other companies before and this has never happened to her) but turns out when she discussed this with others in the financial industry, they said that it’s the norm.

What I wonder about is two things. The first is why show such low trust in the employee once they decide to resign? Don’t employees have to sign some kind of contract when they are first employed with the company that says something like “You are not allowed to share information from our company up to at least one year after you resign”? I was an external consultant for a small project and even I had to sign a form like that! The way the company treated my friend was as if they never trusted her all along. Also, my friend was more confused than mad…it’s like if you’re in a good relationship and one day your boyfriend, out of nowhere, breaks up with you and escorts you out of his apartment; there’s more confusion than anger or sadness.

Procedural justice has been breached for sure. But the HR department was at least good at using interactional justice to alleviate the situation. My friend said, “Well, at least the HR people were nice about it,” to which I replied, “Of course they were nice to you. They know what they’re doing to you is a jerk thing to do so they have to be nice.”

The other thing I wonder about is, why would a company do something like this because now employees would go bad mouth them and give them a bad reputation? At least I now view that company badly in terms of how they treat their employees.

I think there are better ways for companies to deal with honest employees who are resigning for an honest reason who are giving the company a heads-up about their decision.

Has this ever happened to anyone else?

Diversity Issues in Assessment Centres and The Human Factor Project in Nuclear Facilities

Yes long time no post, but I was busy with finishing my Master’s thesis and looking for an internship. Both a success because my thesis has been approved by the Graduate Studies Office of the University of Waterloo (if anyone cares, a copy can be found here: http://hdl.handle.net/10012/6016), and I’m now an intern at the Talent Development Service of GDF SUEZ in Paris, France!

I’ll do a “What I’ve learned from my internship” post at the end of my internship in October, but I learned 2 things today that is quite relevant to the IO field that I thought I really should post.

1) Diversity Issues in Assessment Centres

GDF SUEZ is a large, multinational company and hires external consultants for assessment centres (AC). Although my team mainly focuses on developing the talent after they have already been identified as such, my bosses still attend the AC sometimes or at least meet the candidates beforehand. The interesting practice GDF SUEZ does is that they give AC to different groups based on nationalities. For example, Northern Europeans (mainly Scandinavians or Dutch, etc.) would all be in one AC session while an American would only have interviews because if they put the American in the Northern European group and they have to do the AC in English, there is unfair advantage for the American person. So on the one hand, I think it makes sense with the language issue (the Northern Europeans also get to do the AC in French I believe) but the weird thing is, if the American person does pass the test and starts working for the Group, he/she will be working in a culturally diverse (but mainly French) company, so his/her experience with only English interviews do not reflect the real work environment, whereas the Northern Europeans would’ve had been tested in a situation that has higher fidelity to the real working environment. So there could still be an issue of fairness there. For example, if the Northern European in the group AC did poorly, could they argue that they were not given a fair opportunity because an American got “private” treatment for the selection process?

Side funny European cultural thing: if there is one French person in the Northern European AC, the Northern European complains because the French person (from the “South”) would talk too much. LOL.

The weirder/even funnier thing is regarding gender diversity. They try to set up 50% males and females in the group AC. However, there was a particular incident that 2 of the males did not show up. Turns out one male complained that he couldn’t perform well because there were too many females! Now that is a first (for me). My reaction when I heard this was, “Wow, so we know who’s not making it far in [the working] life.” Reality is that there are some industries or departments or teams with more or less males/females and one would just have to adapt to that. But on the other hand, if a female were to complain that there were too many males and she can’t perform well, perhaps that would be viewed differently, for example, “Yes, she has a point, we need to be fair to the woman.” So perhaps this is my own personal bias and that males have the right to complain that way, but it’s still strange to use that as an excuse for one’s poor performance in an AC.

2) The Human Factor Project in Nuclear Facilities

One of my bosses got sent a video that she couldn’t view and because I’m more tech savvy (it’s funny because I’ve helped 2 people with “how to watch a video that was sent to me” already!) I figured out how to watch it (I’m actually surprised at how quick I can solve these problems, too, because I’ve never encountered watching a video through a security-enabled ftp site before). Anyway, the video was about safety at a nuclear power plant in Russia. The video started with “errare humanum est” (“to err is human”) and they talk about how people make mistakes, but with a culture of punishment from management, employees would hide their mistakes and it could lead to disastrous consequences, especially in a nuclear power plant. So this particular plant started implementing a Human Factors Project (originating in Belgium) where they want to change the culture of the organization so that employees would report their mistakes and there would be an investigation board to help prevent the problem in the future and not punish or blame the individual who made mistakes. The point was that progress could not be made if people keep hiding mistakes. Someone in the video was saying that this was a difficult shift for the mindset of some Russians because it’s a culture with high authority and employees are used to being “scared” of management. They had to work to get the employees to trust the management so that the would actually report the mistakes…a “progressive change of mentality.”

They even had psychologists on the team (yay, representing!) and this one lady talked about how when someone makes a mistake, they tend to blame the machine because they feel guilt and shame. So they had to find ways to work around that to, again, build trust and, although they didn’t use these words (I’m sure this is the same point), psychological safety.

The concept of “transparency” also came up in the video and although I don’t study that at all, I’ve heard of it more now because GDF SUEZ’s policy is also one of transparency. So to me, I thought that was the norm for companies, but apparently being “transparent” is an “innovative” thing that companies that want to be leaders are trying to do and promote. My response, “Well, duh.”

So many things I’m learning here, I’m so glad I got this internship!

How to think like a Department Chair

When do you get a rare visit from the Department Chair?

a) He owes your money
b) He wants to collect the item the aforementioned money was paid for
c) He wants to pitch an idea to you
d) All of the above

Today our Department Chair paid a visit to the VP of the Graduate Association of Students in Psychology and I (the President) to collect the psych tshirt he ordered. He then took this opportunity to pitch us an idea that he’s had for awhile that no GASP exec has actually taken up.

I actually like the idea a lot and would love to get it started. The Chair proposed that we should have an intra-departmental poster session for graduate students. These posters can just be the ones students have already presented at conferences around the world. In this way, students and faculty members from different divisions can see what amazing research we’re all doing.

Another thing the Chair proposed was to start a booklet that contains all the poster/presentation abstracts from all the conferences students have presented throughout the year. Doing so will allow the psych department to have permanent records of these presentations, and we can build a library of this collection.

Now, this is the part that made the aforementioned ideas go from “just a thought from some old, famous psych prof” to “a thought from the forward thinking Department Chair;” he proposed that we should forward these booklet/evidence of research awesomeness to the Associate Provost, Graduate Studies; Dean of Arts; and other Senior Administrators, etc.* because, I paraphrase, “Some departments are better than others.”

My respect for our Department Chair just went up 10-fold.

*Whoever can figure out the political structure of universities, please fill me in.

This picture isn't that relevant, but you get the idea. Also, I think it's funny, and I want one.