Ask a global mobility professional what the most enduring problem is with cultural training, and the answer will probably be the “transfer into real workplace situations”.

Getting return on investment in training, by ensuring that people really use their learning in their work to deliver improved outcomes, is not easy.

It’s a challenge with most kinds of training, but especially with intercultural training because of the nature of “culture” itself.

Why the culture challenge resists simplistic solutions

Culture is present in many layers of our cherished identities, right down to our unconscious habits. This makes cultural differences a complex and multidimensional problem for our clients to successfully solve, in both workplace and social situations.

Here are three examples:

1. Intercultural “friction points” can arise at different points of the day. This is especially marked in expatriation. It is said that there is no such thing as “stress-free expatriation”. Clients need to interact constantly with a culture not one’s own both professionally and personally. The unpredictability, relentlessness and range of these “friction points” can wear down the most resilient and open-minded people.
2. Culture operates at subconscious levels. As our clients encounter something that makes them feel uneasy, offended, or even violated, they may be unable to articulate why it makes them feel that way, because some cultural habits may have been ingrained so deeply that they defy rational explanation. This “below the iceberg” element of culture makes it tricky to apply effective interventions to, because most interventions stay at the level of ideas and the intellect and don’t reach down far enough.
3. Applying new learning is cognitively demanding, especially in complex situations. Our clients often need to apply their intercultural knowledge and skills in high-pressure situations that lack clarity. In these circumstances, making the extra effort to apply what they had learned on a course months or years ago is an unwelcome additional cognitive load when the going is tough, and clients are often demotivated or lack energy to do so. Many people end up defaulting back to conditioned responses and actions that feel comfortingly “instinctive” and “familiar”.

How can we deliver our training in a way that makes it easier for our clients to apply what we teach them, when they most need it, but when it is most difficult to do?

Mindfulness can help learning embed better

Mindfulness practice offers trainers a powerful way to help our clients break out of this unhealthy cycle, and embark on a new positive one that is sustainable.

This is something new in intercultural training because, unlike the cultural interventions and frameworks that form the backbone of many trainings, mindfulness works on the level of practice, not ideas.

There are many definitions of mindfulness. For the purpose of this article, we propose defining mindfulness as

the practice of calming and stilling the mind, training one’s awareness to be fully present in the moment, so that one is sharper, clearer, more focused, more stable, and less prone to the pushes and pulls of one’s thoughts, emotions and drives.

This “mind practice” functions as a truly universal tool to underpin and supercharge whichever intercultural frameworks trainers use in their interventions.

Mindfulness prepares the ground for cultural training to “stick” in two important ways:

• Bypassing thought and emotional resistances which stop cultural training from working
• Increasing awareness of the inherent pleasure and motivation for clients that comes from engaging with cultures in a way that promotes beneficial self-growth.

Done well, mindfulness could be the longed-for magic ingredient to make the training embed and flow into the day-to-day of our clients’ lives.

Ideas alone are not enough

Mind, body, breath – we all use these in every moment of our lives. What makes mindfulness such a helpful tool particularly in intercultural settings is that it is based on these three simple elements common to every human being alive.

Mindfulness is therefore one of the few truly “one size fits all” tools that applies to any culture. It can be used as a powerful unifying force to remind our learners that beneath their disparate cultures, we all possess a universally similar awareness, that is embodied in human form and constantly breathing in and out.

While we are all thinking, breathing bodies, intercultural trainers have traditionally targeted only the mind, specifically the sub-section of the mind that is the intellect, in training. This means that more than two-thirds of the fundamental ways in which we exist – non-thinking awareness, body, and breath – are untapped by intercultural trainers.

This gaping hole is particularly obvious when considering that the experience of other cultures is often physical. New cultures, encountered through meeting people or visiting a place, can be jarring physical experiences. Sounds, sights, smells and tastes, personal distances between individuals, and greeting rituals are just some of many ways in which intercultural experiences can be tangibly “alien” from one’s home customs.

When encountering something new, a person’s response can be instantaneous and physical. It is common for people to “brace themselves” against this unfamiliarity by tensing up and getting defensive.

Equally, one’s shifting inner landscape of thoughts and emotions has profound effects on mind, body, and breath. There may be ideas, values and traditions upheld by another culture that one finds hard to reconcile with one’s own. The resulting stress can manifest itself in inner turmoil or resistant body language. One might find it hard to breathe deeply and relax in the face of such unusual or even repulsive ideas.

The limitations of “idea-only” training interventions

When dealing with such physical responses to new and stressful stimuli, it is often inadequate to approach the individual with “idea-only” interventions. Think of the last time you were terrified of something. Perhaps an animal like a snake, spider, lizard, or cockroach; or you are afraid of heights and someone is trying to convince you to go on a rollercoaster ride, go rock-climbing, or jump off a bungee.

How many times have you managed to overcome that fear through “reasoning” only? Perhaps your friend who is not afraid of snakes, spiders, rollercoasters or bungee-jumping is trying to give you all the “rational” reasons why you “should” not be afraid. How does that make you feel? Does it succeed in removing the fear, or is it often ineffectual?

The same thing happens with other strong reactions, such as aversion and repulsion. Given how different cultures can be across so many dimensions of our daily lives, it is virtually a given that at some point we will come across an aspect of a new culture that we really don’t like.

Our reactions of dislike or even disgust are often instant and can last a long time. These are intense emotions that colour our subsequent perceptions and interpretations, and can be very hard to shake off. It takes mindful practice to grow our awareness of the ways in which we quickly and enduringly attach these emotions to these cultural aspects that we find hard to accept.

The problem is that these strong reactions – even those with positive affect, such as infatuation or passionate attraction – obscure our clients’ ability to perceive the full reality of their intercultural situation in a clear, calm, and objective manner. They may believe themselves to be operating reasonably and rationally, when they may actually be blind to their own emotional attachments to their own perspective.

This hampers their ability to be flexible and effective in navigating their intercultural situation, because they don’t know how to let go of their cultural bias and adopt better new mindsets and behaviours. That is, if they are even sufficiently aware of this happening within themselves in the first place.

Dissolve mental obstacles through working with body and breath awareness

Stressed body = stressed mind

The brain is exquisitely tuned to muscle tone; tense muscles produce tense thoughts. Let’s try a little experiment to demonstrate this.

What are you learning from this simple exercise about the intimate link between mind, body and breath? Can you see how interconnected they are? And how what’s happening in one dimension has a “spill-over” effect on the other two?

This is a crucial point for us intercultural trainers. It means we can use the entry points of breath and body to bring about change in the mind.

Resting the mind through calming the body and breath

Now, let’s try the opposite. Let’s focus our awareness on relaxing our breath and body, and see what happens to your mind.

What do you notice? Is it easier now than before? What is different this time round?

Can you feel the peace and clarity emerging, as your nervous reactivity and “hot” emotions, like stress, anger, irritation, and anxiety, get increasingly quietened down? What have you learnt from this simple relaxation exercise of mindful breathing, about the connection of breath, body and mind and how to use the calming of breath and body to also calm the mind?

How does mindfulness work?

Mindfulness practices, such as those popularised by the “father of modern mindfulness” Jon Kabat-Zinn, or deeper-rooted disciplines such as the various forms of meditation, use our awareness of our body and breath to help us escape the tyrannies of our overactive mind.

In our busy modern lives, we are so used to thinking that we easily fall into the trap of thinking that our minds are nothing but thought. This is because for most of us there is a ceaseless chatter going on in our minds. We mistakenly believe that if we were to stop thinking, there would be “nothing” there.

This is simply not true.

When we learn to pay close attention to what is going on in our own minds, we will realise that there are all kinds of things going on in there, including thoughts. For one, our five sensory organs are constantly providing us with a rich variety of sensations moment by moment, which our brain expertly weaves into a sensation of continuity.

Our “inner cinema”

We can liken this to watching a movie. A movie is only a series of stills projected extremely quickly one after the other, but our visual system cannot perceive the individual stills that quickly, and the result is that we feel like we are watching a smooth continuous flowing “reality”.

There is one additional dimension of sensation on top of our five physical senses, and that is the mental dimension. Within this “sixth sense”, there are all kinds of similarly temporary and short-lived phenomena. Thoughts are a perfect example of this. We have many other kinds of mental phenomena, including emotions, impulses, and moods.

The “blank canvas” on which all these various mental phenomena are coming and going is your base awareness. Connecting back to this awareness and resting in it, non-thinking and non-doing, is a central part of mindfulness training.

With practice, one can loosen one’s attachments to one’s own thoughts, emotions, preconceptions and ideas, by returning again and again to one’s underlying awareness, and realising how temporary and “constructed” these seemingly-solid mental concepts are.

The power of using mindfulness to enhance intercultural training

Mindfulness practice is therefore a universal tool that is simple, secular, and only requires that the person has “body, breath and mind” and the ability to pay attention to these three basic elements. From these deceptively simple foundations, a raft of profound benefits to the individual can start to be unlocked.

If we were to pick just one – loosening one’s attachments to one’s own ideas, as described above – we can start to see how powerful it is in enhancing intercultural training.

One of the most stubborn obstacles intercultural trainers face in bringing our clients to open themselves up to a wider scope of cultural ideas and behaviours is the simple fact that everybody is naturally attached to their own perspectives and ways of doing things. “Old habits die hard”, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” and other similar sayings testify to the persistent difficulty of even the most noble-minded individuals in overcoming this deep attachment to “the way we are”.

Think about the multitude of problems this “attachment to self” causes in a typical intercultural context. At the start of this article, we examined some of these reasons why the biggest problem intercultural trainers face is getting their clients to transfer the learning into work situations. These included the multitude and variety of ways in which cultures differ from one another, in professional and social contexts, across all six senses (i.e. the five physical senses and the sixth “inner” sense of the mind, which includes things like ideas and values).

We looked at how encountering a new culture can produce strong reactions of like and dislike, and how these reactions can skew a client’s ability to perceive things clearly and objectively, and therefore make sound decisions based on these clear, objective perceptions and a balanced frame of mind.

Therefore, a tool that can come in to address this problem at its root, which is our clients’ inability to shake free of their own perspective and to embrace other ways of looking at things and behaving, is of critical importance.

The reason for this is obvious. By allowing our clients to start realising just how trapped they had been in their own thoughts and emotions, and showing them how to apply awareness of their breath and body to calm the conceptual turbulence of the mind, mindfulness delivers a universal and effective solution for our clients to this exact problem.

It allows the mind to settle into its natural stillness, stability and clarity. From this position, assessing situations and making decisions is significantly improved, without the corrosive influence exerted on their awareness by the push and pull of their thoughts and emotions.

With consistent practice, further benefits are unlocked for our clients as their minds, breaths and bodies get increasingly aligned, allowing them to practice new behaviours more easily and successfully, and increasing their mental and emotional agility and resilience. The positive effects of this will spill over beyond our clients’ intercultural interactions into other key aspects of their lives such as leadership, parenting, or cultivating friendships.

The biggest tip we can give you is to start practising mindfulness yourself. Mindfulness is a tool that cannot be captured by explaining; its essence can only be grasped once you try it out for yourself and observe its benefits first-hand.

This is easy to understand why when we reconsider the fact that intercultural trainings that focus overly on concepts and ideas are doomed to fail, because these do not address the often visceral component of intercultural conflict.

Teaching our clients through engaging, hands-on activities like simulations and role-plays is a big improvement on theory-driven trainings for this reason, that our clients are able to “try out” different behaviours which allow them to become aware of cultural differences at a physical and emotional level and not merely an abstract intellectual level.

However, these activities are doomed to be partially effective at best unless we prepare the ground for them by raising their awareness of their own inner states in the first place. For example, some clients may hold strong opinions about something or have a stubborn or dismissive attitude towards the training. At the extreme, they may be stuck in the “denial” phase of for example.

Clients like these are extremely attached to their own thoughts and emotions. They lack awareness of other points of view, but worse than that, they lack the motivation to step outside their frameworks. To them, their reality is the only reality that matters.

With clients like these, simply addressing their resistance with an intellectual argument is ineffective. There will be no traction. Their resistance is at a much deeper level. At this level, relying on tools from the “realm of the mind” is not going to help these clients with the necessary step of getting OUT of their mindsets in the first place.

Mindfulness exercises reduce resistance to positive change

In challenging situations like these, here is where mindfulness works well as a preparatory exercise, by gently guiding their awareness towards the states of their own bodies and breaths. Resistance often takes the form of tension in the muscles and breathing patterns. Getting clients to taste the relief and comfort that mindful relaxation brings can help render them a little more open and receptive.

Mindfulness exercises that focus on breath and body awareness are also very simple. Anyone can follow the instructions, and they do not need any other equipment other than oneself. This simplicity can be very attractive to a client, as it is uncomplicated and approachable. Most importantly, “the proof is in the pudding” – the client should be able to feel the difference within himself or herself. This will help reduce their scepticism, tilling that stony soil for the gradual introduction of ideas to stimulate intercultural adaptability.

However, it is impossible for you as a trainer to be able to teach these mindfulness exercises unless you have tasted for yourself the positive changes that come with training your awareness this way.

Consider the interconnectedness of mind, body and breath we learnt about in How mindfulness can transform intercultural training. We all can sense it when we meet someone who is calm, centred, and grounded. It is a whole-being display, that goes beyond a merely intellectual attempt to “sort out your thoughts” and “think clearly”.

We all know people, including ourselves at times, when we think we are behaving calmly and rationally, when those other people who are with us can see how our angry or nervous body language contradicts that self-belief.

As a trainer, standing in front of your clients leading the intervention, can you imagine how they will respond to you when you are teaching them a mindfulness exercise, when they can sense that you yourself do not know what it feels like to have a calm, clear, and stable mind?

Therefore, embarking on your own personal practice of mindfulness is really an unavoidable step if you are looking to harness the profound power of this tool to boost your intercultural training.

The good thing is that you stand to benefit in multiple ways. Not only will it increase your effectiveness as a trainer, you will experience increased personal wellbeing and effectiveness that will manifest in other parts of your life.

Kickstart your mindfulness practice

Try out a mindfulness or meditation app

Some good ones include

• Headspace
• Insight Timer
• Imagine Clarity
• Calm.

Some apps like Imagine Clarity offer structured courses that you can follow step-by-step to progress yourself. Others like Insight Timer offer a smorgasbord of different meditations, plus the chance to plug into a community.

Join a class or group, or take a course

An increasing number of centres offer mindfulness, meditation, yoga, and other related disciplines. Many of these have introductory offers, such as class passes that allow you to try out different types of mindfulness practice, meditation, or yoga. Take advantage of these to find out which one suits you best.

There may also be informal groups that meet up in your neighbourhood, or longer and more structured courses offered by these centres or other institutions of learning such as community colleges and adult learning schools. Retreats are a fantastic way of immersing yourself in a tailored and nurturing environment designed to provide conducive conditions for mindfulness practice. They range from a day to several weeks and even months. Have some fun exploring what’s on offer near you that suits your budget.

Read up

Three excellent introductions are:

• The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh
• Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn
• Practical Mindfulness: A Step by Step Guide published by Dorling Kindersley. 

 Get a mentor or teacher.

As you broaden your knowledge of mindfulness taking a course or reading up for example, you may come across individuals in your classes or specific authors whom you really like. Alternatively, within your workplace there may already be leaders or colleagues whom you recognise as being particularly good at applying mindfulness at work. Seek out these individuals as formal or informal mentors or teachers. An individualised relationship like this can be tremendously powerful to your progress.

If these are well-respected teachers, they may have a community of students following their teachings. Being part of this community and sharing its energy, learnings, and mutual support is of tremendous benefit in and of itself.

Try it out!

Let yourself get curious about ways in which you could do your everyday tasks more mindfully. Catch yourself being impatient, learn to notice signs such as gripping the steering wheel more tightly, tapping your pen hard on the table, or noticing your face flushing or your voice rising while in a tough conversation.

Watch the thoughts and emotions fleeting across your mind at times like these. For the next breath, take it slowly, and recentre yourself. Release tension with the outbreath, and inhale relief and nourishment with the next breath. Repeat. See how this changes your inner state and external behaviour.