Argonaut

Three new routes into the cultures of Africa

Richard Farkas — Wed, 03 Nov 2021 19:07:36 +0000

Three outstanding intercultural consultants have produced a remarkable set of learning material on Algeria, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, now newly available in CultureConnector.

Abayneh Haile, educator in international communication

Advising on the development of CultureConnector’s material on Ethiopia, Abayneh Haile is an entrepreneur based in Addis Ababa, founder of a Bridge Centre for Professional Development. Bridge CPD serves international organisations operating out of Ethiopia’s capital, a city home to many institutions which consider Addis Ababa to be the head quarters for operations across the entire continent of Africa. Now in CultureConnector, you can discover the uniting characteristics of members of Ethiopian culture as well as the complexities of the diverse peoples who live there, not least the Oromo, the Amhara, the Tigrayans, Somalis, Guragi and even the influence of the Ethiopian diaspora elsewhere in the world. Create your CultureConnector account to start learning about Ethiopian culture.

Anissa Lamrani, intercultural trainer

Switching smoothly between Algerian, French, British and international perspectives, Anissa Lamrani was the cultural intelligence driving CultureConnector’s new material on Algeria. She has long experience developing intercultural training programmes in the corporate world and now works on a wide range of projects for higher education institutions, while also finding time to volunteer in the third sector. CultureConnector’s profile of Algeria weaves together the major influences shaping Algerian culture, including Islam and the cultures of the Middle East, the French colonial era and the struggle for independence, the indigenous Berber traditions as well as more recent trends in the young generation and expatriate Algerians. Create your CultureConnector account to start learning about Algerian culture.

Tamara Makoni, interculturalist and entrepreneur

Combining a talent for communication and culture, Tamara Makoni is the originator of the sensitive and qualitative portrayal of Zimbabwean culture in CultureConnector. A rich blend of modern urban institutions in a high-functioning business sector alongside excluded yet resourceful people engaged in the daily struggle for survival in the informal economy, Zimbabwe is a microcosm of the global race for development and the diverse speeds at which that is happening. In CultureConnector’s new material on Zimbabwe, you can discover the (to newcomers) hidden hierarchies of traditional cultures which run parallel to formal, above-the-surface hierarchies in Zimbabwean institutions, tips on how some foreigners have succeeded in bridging the social distance with new contacts in Zimbabwe, and much more practical and analytical information on the culture. Create your CultureConnector account to start learning about Zimbabwean culture.

The new profiles cover a total population of 175 million including a diversity of ethnic and social groups within these nations and relationships with other cultures, near and far. We’re extending our coverage of Africa fast. Look out for more cultures of this fast-growing continent, coming to CultureConnector soon. Current coverage is always up to date in the CultureConnector cultures page.

Three new routes into the cultures of Africa

Richard Farkas — Sat, 30 Oct 2021 19:59:32 +0000

Three outstanding intercultural consultants have produced a remarkable set of learning material on Algeria, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, now newly available in CultureConnector.

Abayneh Haile, educator in international communication

Anissa Lamrani, intercultural trainer

Tamara Makoni, interculturalist and entrepreneur

What’s in your intercultural toolbox?

Richard Farkas — Wed, 07 Jul 2021 11:59:00 +0000

Some ideas take years to bear fruit. This morning, I was finally able to see the fruit ripen and it was an Apple, so to speak. At last the Intercultural Toolbox podcast got listed by Apple, the world’s biggest podcasting platform and our new intercultural podcast is up and running!

interculturaltoolbox.org

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on Google Podcasts

I say “our” new podcast, but really the Intercultural Toolbox podcast belongs to the guests and the audience. The guests are the stars of the show and the audience are the community of interculturalists we are proud to play a part in.

The Intercultural Toolbox guests include our much-loved Cultural Correspondents as well as many others who are contributing to the intercultural field. One of the great pleasures of my role running Argonaut and developing the CultureConnector service is getting to meet the fascinating people who do intercultural work. I feel privileged to hear their stories, see the impact they have and often to collaborate with them.

But one thing has always bothered me. So many ideas are exchanged and freely shared in private or semi-public conversations, but those ideas are lost to the community who were not present in the moment. The Intercultural Toolbox is a way to capture the best of those conversations and to make more useful, inspiring and sometimes just fun stuff available to more interculturalists.

What would you put into the intercultural toolbox? Who would you like to see appear as a guest? You can register and get involved at https://www.interculturaltoolbox.org/register

Image info: “David Adamec Interview with ABC News” by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed with CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

The dangers of stereotypes we are not aware of

Guy Bondonneau — Tue, 06 Jul 2021 12:47:49 +0000

I was having dinner in the hotel restaurant, a teenager in his blazer looking very European in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was visiting business schools. A family a few tables away invited me over and to dinner at their home next day. I immediately created the stereotype that American people were most welcoming and friendly. Being my first experience with the Anglo-Saxon world, by inference, I extended it to all English-speaking people.

Based on my observation, I have created for myself the stereotype that native English speakers are welcoming and friendly. Later on, I would learn to nuance my stereotype when moving to the UK.

My observations have led me to attribute behaviour to individual members of a group according to the group characteristics or traits. In other words, each member of the group will behave as per the description of such behaviour of the group.

That is the essence of stereotype, a word which comes from the printing world. It was in 1798 that Firmin Didot coined the phrase to describe a printing plate that duplicates any typography. The duplicate printing plate or stereotype was used instead of the original. It was first used in its modern psychological sense in 1922 by journalist Walter Lippmann.

The well-known iceberg analogy used in intercultural to illustrate the national cultural values in which the visible part of the iceberg represents the conscious actions, and the much bigger and hidden section represents the subconscious and cultural values, can be used for stereotypes.

We can distinguish between explicit stereotypes and implicit ones.

An explicit stereotype is the one in which individuals are aware of holding and use it to judge people. Reverting to the iceberg analogy the explicit stereotype would fall in the visible portion of the iceberg. Individuals may try to mitigate the stereotype they hold but they often fail to be impartial by either overestimating or underestimating the amount of bias created by the stereotype. The stereotype created in the example above would fall in the category explicit stereotype.

Implicit stereotypes are those that are in the subconscious of the individual and therefore they have little awareness of it, if any at all, and thus have little control over it. Such stereotypes are frequently assumptions about members of out-groups, such as other cultures.

Meeting a member of an out-group for the first time may trigger a cognitive process during which the individual will either have his or her assumption in the stereotype confirmed or refuted, or the individual can resist the recognition of the assumption and reject it. In the above example, if I meet an American and I note that he or she is welcoming and friendly my assumption will be reinforced and in so doing strengthen my stereotype. To the contrary, should the American I meet clearly not be friendly and welcoming, my assumption will be challenged to the point of doubt or even annihilation.

Stereotypes impact not only the individual holding the stereotype but also the member of the out-group subject to the stereotype. This happens in very many ways, it can be ambiguity, threat, self-fulfilling or even self-evaluating.

We are told over and over again not to use stereotypes, but we keep doing it. Why is that?

Stereotypes are an efficient tool to create categories and to make sense of the world around us. Our senses are constantly bombarded with information. If we try to retain all of it, our brain would explode, so it is for the brain a matter of survival and the way it does that is by retaining only the information that is relevant to its survival, discarding the rest and organising what is kept into some sort of order including creating categories into which content can be added.

There is a dual danger with stereotyping. One is that the stereotype may well not be accurate in reflecting reality, and two is that it may impede any new information on the individual in front of us differing from the stereotype from being accepted and therefore being locked-in in the assumption or belief and becoming impervious to any notion of revising the holder’s assumptions.

Stereotypes held by individuals are likely to impact on the social behaviour and communication with members of groups other than the one to which the individual belongs.

Stereotypes in themselves are not bad, it is the way we use them we have to be attentive to. In other words, if we meet a member from a group other than ours or out-group, and certain traits and behaviour of that individual do not correspond to what is expected from the stereotype, we must keep an open mind and accept that a group is made up of individuals who may show some characteristics of the group but these are not universal to all the member of the group.

Therefore, awareness and understanding of other cultures and an open mind to notions that may be going against assumptions in stereotypes are crucial in the framework of international exchanges.

Image licensed as Creative Commons 2.0 Share Alike by Cochese via Flickr, adapted

The flexible French

Richard Farkas — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 11:59:00 +0000

A generation has passed since Kathryn Libioulle-Clutz arrived in France as a young American business consultant. We asked for her perspective on what’s changed in French culture.

More entrepreneurs

“France has become really supportive of entrepreneurial culture. They are really trying to foster small businesses and help startups to flourish. The French State has simplified accounting rules. It has been pushing lots of different kinds of funds and pépinières, the little groups and incubators helping new businesses to get started administratively, get funding, find mentors et cetera.”

Télétravail gradually replacing presence in some workplaces

By comparison with other European countries, employers in France traditionally seemed reticent about allowing employees to work from home. Presence at work is important here. But even before the coronavirus hit France, télétravail was increasing and France was catching up fast. “This is not just because of covid. The change was in the air already before that.”

“It’s becoming a much more flexible work environment,” says Kathryn. “There are large numbers of places where entrepreneurs can go, have working spaces, where they can exchange with each other, have mentoring networks. These are mini-communities for entrepreneurs. It’s happening. It’s a very dynamic environment.”

What young people want

“In France, young people want to do their own thing, not get stuck in a big corporate structure. They have very strong ideals. A lot of business schools run courses to help young people set themselves up as entrepreneurs.”

In 2017 Emmanuel Macron campaigned for the presidency with the slogan ‘La France doit être une chance pour tous’ (everyone in France deserves a chance). Young people in particular felt blocked by a bureaucratic system designed to regulate big business but the same regulation was falling heavily on the grassroots startup community. “Macron campaigned on a ‘startup nation’ platform, in response to young people. The regulations on business life are hard to change in France, but he has invested in the business side of things”.

More myths to bust

“Today, France is much more open to foreigners,” continues Kathryn. “The French now understand that, in terms of business, France must think more internationally. There is still a ‘stay-in-France, buy-local’ mentality, but at the same time, young people are going and doing internships in the UK or China, for example. Everyone wants international experience.”

“French people are more used to having foreigners in their workplaces and are becoming more receptive to their foreign colleagues’ perspective. When I arrived in France, 20 years ago, the attitude was very much ‘when in France, do as the French do’. That’s still true, but it is shifting. Everyone’s slowly adapting to the wider world.”

The keys to French culture

Kathryn has advice for a newcomer into French culture.

Recognise common values and different styles

“Observe. Understand what your own cultural perspective is. Recognise that while you share the deeper values with your French colleagues such as fairness and honesty and so on, the way those values are expressed in France may be very different from the way you would express them.”

Go for lunch

One stable part of French culture which Kathryn reports is well preserved in today’s workplace is the lunch break.

“Nowadays it is not the end of the world if you take a rushed 15-minute lunch break in France. Lunch is less of a big deal than it used to be. But a good lunch is still something that everyone feels entitled to. It’s a good way to get to know your co-workers and to build informal relationships. Lunch can be the crucial time-out which unblocks difficult negotiations. No-one is going to want to work with you until they really get to know you. Lunch helps to build some of that trust.”

Learn French

“And yet your most important key for unlocking French culture is this: learn French. Even if your French colleagues are fluent in English, learn French.

But here is something that has also changed a lot. When I came to France, I met the attitude ‘nice try with your French’ when foreigners fumbled with less-than-perfect French language skills. But now the French are trying to learn English and they are sensitive about how bad their English is, so they are much more sympathetic when foreigners try to speak French.”

A little less conservative at work

Kathryn led the review and updating of CultureConnector’s profile of France in 2020 and her re-write included a newer perspective on risk-taking in French culture.

“There is a little bit more taste for risk-taking these days, especially among young people, but in general French employees are still conservative in comparison to many countries outside Europe. They want steady employment with good retirement benefits.”

Hearing Kathryn’s insights as a professionally-objective observer of French culture, it quickly becomes clear that she’s also very much a participant who identifies ever more closely with her adopted nation.

“Moving to Nantes in the West of France put me in a situation where everyone around me is French – and traditional French. It has given me a deeper appreciation of the aspects of French culture which I thought were not so great: the sense of entitlement to State benefits, the willingness to go on strike, the education system. Now I understand the logic behind these cultural phenomena.”

“The French don’t care what others think of them.” Not true!

“The French are more curious than they used to be about what foreigners think of them. The emergence of low-cost airlines and globalisation of business have led to French people having more experience of being in other cultures, of leaving France. The desire to connect and compare is stronger in Paris and in the French border- and port-cities.”

“Meanwhile, like many countries, France also has a strong geographic centre where people are more satisfied to continue doing things the local way, without much interest in ideas from outside.” Vive la différence!

Walking the talk as an interculturalist

Executive coaching and team development programmes fill Kathryn’s calendar for most of her work week, as well as leadership development for high potentials which are becoming more common in French corporations. Writing pieces on French culture was a step outside her normal work in 2020.

As well as updating and expanding CultureConnector’s resources on France, Kathryn is continually enhancing her own skills as coach, and applying intercultural techniques in new scenarios.

“Culture is often a good starting point with international clients when I am trying to create team cohesion or even when I get called in to resolve a tension between co-workers or with a boss – tensions that are often labelled as a cultural difference.”

“You can start out with culture and then other factors come into play. Understanding international differences has been very important.”

“When I am coaching, I need to use intercultural techniques myself.” Kathryn lists a few items in her approach:

understand how direct the culture is, how they express their thoughts, how comfortable they are disagreeing
recognise how they deal with hierarchy: in some cases initially they will see you, the coach, as a “higher-up”
know how to build trust: should you achieve that in the professional context of the coaching session? or should you go to lunch with them?
read everything you can find about the culture, talk with people who have experience of the culture, and like I tell my clients too: observe and learn from the people you’re sharing these working moments with.

New perspectives on French culture

“It was great fun thinking about cultural change in France and being part of the review in CultureConnector. We had to recognise that some things had not changed. The French are still bureaucratic (take for example of the filling-in of forms during the corona crisis). They still like a good argument. They will still punish you for making mistakes or for sloppy-thinking in debates.”

“On the other hand we could recognise a great many things which had changed. There is more acceptance of trial and error. The French spend less time spent testing ideas at the concept stage. They expect faster innovation.”

“They want to take more ownership of their own careers. Sometimes they even allow a little optimism to creep into conversation.”

“More and more workplaces are rejecting the traditional command-and-enforce model and instead embracing personal responsibility at work, though still small in number.

“In some sectors, teamwork has become less competitive and there is talk of trendy concepts such as ‘co-creation’.”

“And shock of shocks: you may even see lunch being served during a business meeting in a conference room!”

Kathryn Libioulle-Clutz is an independent executive coach and consultant and for CultureConnector is Cultural Correspondent for France. The updated profile of 2020s France is available now in CultureConnector.

Like feedback?

Richard Farkas — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 10:28:56 +0000

We’ve introduced a powerful new feedback feature for the CultureConnector community.

Now in CultureConnector users can pass comments to each other in many directions while staying in control of their data.

Trainers to learners
Learners to trainers
Learners to management and training providers
Trainers to the Argonaut team

Tell your trainer what you think

It’s quick and efficient to give feedback in CultureConnector. As a learner, you can drop in a comment about your home culture, or a comparison with one of your chosen cultures, or your overall experience. The comment will immediately appear for your trainer.

Say what you really think

Giving feedback demands sensitivity and trust that the comments will only reach those who should hear them. Sometimes anonymity can improve the quality of feedback. We’ve enabled commenters to decide who can read the comments, be it the organisation’s management, the trainer, the training company or simply the people developing CultureConnector.

Quick and easy for community members

Now it’s easier than ever for trainers to contribute ideas, corrections, criticisms and likes to CultureConnector. The new feedback box appears in specific screens, so you don’t need to describe the topic or feature you’re commenting on. Simply say way you think, and continue with your day. It takes just a few seconds.

Customising how you ask the question

If you’re a business customer using CultureConnector, you can configure comments according to your business needs, asking for feedback in a way that is relevant and valuable for your work.

Feedback on feedback

CultureConnector feedback will auto-adapt to the way you are giving feedback and to your role. We hope that you’ll see the feedback form exactly where and when you want it, without any annoying moments. We’re checking the analytics and feedback daily. Let us know what you think of the new feedback feature.

Check your feedback now

If you are a trainer using CultureConnector, you can check your feedback in the Trainer Dashboard area. Organisation managers and business customers will also find feedback in their own admin panels.

Thanks for sharing!

In the Argonaut team we are joyfully running in a never-ending race to keep our cultural content up to date. Cultures change continuously and sometimes rapidly. Our community has always had a key role in helping to keep CultureConnector as the most up-to-date source of country-specific intercultural information. Thanks to everyone who has contributed so far. Now it’s even easier to join a winning team in this race!

Return on investment in intercultural training: three insights from modelling training impact

Richard Farkas — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 09:51:30 +0000

Project notes on the development of CultureConnector’s tool for modelling training impact in the intercultural field.

For a curious mind, it’s thrilling when something unexpected happens. There’s something new to be probed and understood. So it was with our project to model the real-world economic impact of intercultural training.

After years exploring the available, relevant research and testing different approaches to the mathematical model, I expected diminishing returns from each addition research sprint. The law of diminishing returns is the observation which says the deeper you dive into a new thing, the less reward you get for each additional kick.

The opposite happened. As the model started to spit out results to our research questions, the answers became more interesting and more enlightening.

Here are three striking observations from this work so far.

1. The power of an intercultural lunch and learn

What is the gold standard training format for intercultural competence? A full 3-day module on a year-long leadership development programme, perhaps? A multi-year relationship with an inspirational coach? A multi-channel, multi-session blended learning programme, based on adaptive online learning tech? Yes, these promise impressive results for the learner. Gold standards indeed.

By comparison, a lunch-and-learn intercultural briefing, delivered to busy executives under heavy time pressure, seems like the poor cousin of those Gold Standard formats.

But wait, our training impact model is telling a different story. Based on a new analysis of the cost-side of the ROI equation, a rapid injection of new intercultural knowledge can generate excellent return on investment for organisations which use this method. While the absolute returns on a lunch and learn may be smaller than a full transformational intervention, the rate of return on investment is one of the best, and certainly a good pathway towards more ambitious forms of competence development.

2. An intimate training for 508 participants

The joy and the challenge of modelling intercultural competence are the network effects inside organisations. When a freshly-trained participant starts a collaboration with a colleague who has a low level of intercultural competence, some of the benefit of the training is enjoyed by the non-participant, who gains from more effecient interactions with the trained colleague, and potentially other benefits in achieving their mutual goals.

In this way, intercultural training can impact hundreds of non-participants, who are colleagues of participants. The number in the pool depends on the diversity of the organisation and the participants, the level of isolation of clusters of participants and other assumptions, such as the amount of outward-facing interactions. There can even be benefits of intercultural training for people of the same culture where differences are individual, not cultural.

When your training class attracts just an intimate (small) number of participants, keep in mind that potentially hundreds more who don’t attend will also benefit.

3. The trainer’s bill is a small part of the investment

You can charge the top-end of your price range for your time and provide a gourmet lunch for participants, perhaps with travel and comfortable accommodation, but still the trainer’s and logistical expenses are likely to be dwarfed by the cost of taking productive employees away from their core work tasks, while they participate in your training.

Line managers and anyone with profit and loss accountability knows this. There is some price sensitivity in the market for intercultural training, especially when the procurement department get involved (they are probably not at your meetings to learn about icebergs or onions …). However, what we can see from our model is the importance of looking at the impact side, when an organisation chooses a supplier or selects its own internal training methodology.

Squeezing the trainer’s bill down will have little effect on your return on investment rate. You can truly shift the needle on your return on investment by working together with the intercultural consultant to set the training up for success in achieving performance gains.

The CultureConnector intercultural training impact modelling tool is now available as an early-access programme for customers and contributors in the CultureConnector community.

From surviving on beans and rice to achieving business success as an intercultural coach

Richard Farkas — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 12:41:33 +0000

Erin Reyes is co-founder of the Shababeek language centre in Jordan, perhaps the largest and most successful of its kind in the country, and many neighbouring countries too. The business co-founded by Erin and her partner, Jennifer Killpack, owner of the centre, started the 2020s strong and growing. Outside of the global coronavirus challenges, things are going well.

But it wasn’t always so easy. Back in 2007, Erin was working in a remote village in Latin America enjoying her work as a teacher but living an insecure economic situation, paid in beans and rice – and not advancing up any career or business ladders.

A self-imposed intercultural challenge

The bridge between these two contrasting situations was intercultural. Erin set herself an intercultural challenge to immerse herself completely in a culture and a language very, very different from her own. Erin’s chosen country was Jordan, a relatively conservative Islamic kingdom with borders to Iraq, Israel, Saudi Arabia and more. Soon, with her close friend Jennifer, a new goal to build a business was set into motion.

Mission impossible?

The business challenge seemed to embrace the impossible. The mission appeared to ignore the realities. How could two Americans create a business of a kind which had never before scaled in Jordan, where people are openly suspicious of your motivations and earnestly question the soundness of your business idea, where personal connections are everything, and where some familiar bedrock concepts of American business, such as a generally dependable and transparent legal system, were simply not present?

Erin Reyes and Jennifer Killpack, founders of Shababeek-language Center

Imported ideas won’t work

Erin’s response to this challenge was a combination of her own methodology and a voracious appetite for insights and approaches from the intercultural field. Within a short time living in Jordan it was obvious that you could not import your home-culture’s model for business success into this country. You’d need a business approach far more rooted in the local culture.

تعلم اللغة العربية

First, Erin invested fully in learning the language at a very deep level. Language skills opened doors and turned acquaintanceships into friendships which in turn opened doors to a world of social connections, a multiplying network of people willing to help a friend or a friend of a friend.

Suspicious activity

Life is rarely so simple, and learning the language aroused suspicion too. In this tense and volatile region of the world, local people may have in mind that there could be foreign spies in the country, and if true, those spies might look and sound like you do. Gaining acceptance here in Jordan would demand so much more than just knowing the language.

Success was not coming easy, but some early wins with her expanding and deepening network of local friends convinced her to continue to strive on the path she had set herself.

The Jordanian landscape

Out of the cultural comfort zone

With the help of intercultural literature, Erin trained her eye to see important details of culture in everyday situations. She noticed that other people were not seeing – nor not responding – to those cultural differences.

Erin found a way to stay true to herself while adapting authentically to the culture she was in. As their business grew, Erin began to convert her experience and the collected research from the intercultural field into cultural-competence components at the language centre.

Their Shababeek language centre was gaining a reputation as a forum for facilitating relationships between Arabs and others. The centre’s development model was based on the idea of nurturing students. The service provided support as students gained language skills and passed deeper into authentic intercultural experiences, further out of the comfort zone.

Diversifying the management

Within a year, the business was at a scale and complexity where more local talent was needed in the management. Drawing on famous American entrepreneurial characteristics of hard work, persistence and a “we can figure this out” attitude had taken the founders a long way, but recruiting talented local managers for the business was a game-changer.

Recruitment of staff, which was almost entirely by social media and personal networks could now accelerate and expand access to new sources of talent.

Erin continues to be part of the leadership of the Shababeek language centre and has more recently developed an independent business, CultureDive, which focuses 100% on her intercultural practice.

Stepping back from personal crisis

With the CultureDive brand, Erin is delivering a compassionate service to expatriates who are facing challenges often so intense that their entire expatriate assignment is threatened. “I had seen so many early returns from my expatriate circle of friends” says Erin, “I created CultureDive to ensure that people had a way to step back from crisis when they are hurting on an overseas assignment.”

CultureDive is more than a preventive to expat failure. According to Erin, CultureDive exists to enhance people’s lives as expats. The methodology gives clients cultural lenses, helping them adapt to extreme difference while retaining their own strong sense of self.

“We’re here to help expats thrive”, says Erin. “We know that it is hard to live and work in another culture. When people start working with us, they may feel that they are also surviving on a diet of rice and beans, so to speak. My story, and many other stories like mine are proof that stepping whole-heartedly into a new culture can bring the energy and inspiration which turns your whole life around”.

Erin Reyes is CultureConnector’s Cultural Correspondent for Jordan.

Image credits: Erin Reyes

Data-driven development model for intercultural skills

Richard Farkas — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 20:29:15 +0000

It took us years to develop it, but we can bring it to you now. This week we launched a data-driven development (DDD) model for intercultural skills.

This was long in the pipeline. Its goal is that trainers, coaches and organisations can develop intercultural skills much, much faster.

Faster outcomes

The model is set of algorithms which work with cultural data under-the-hood as part of the CultureConnector engine. It supports trainers and learners to find an efficient path to success in the real world. This makes possible an acceleration of the impact trainers and coaches can achieve with learners. It’s not a traditional standalone model or a framework for training.

Flexible implementation

We’re proud that CultureConnector’s flexible toolkit supports a wide diversity of training, coaching and self-directed learning approaches. The new Achievements feature, which is built on the DDD model enables trainers to continue to design and deliver training expertly targeted to their customer needs and to local market conditions. Achievements help stakeholders track and optimise the learning journey.

We’re all looking to achieve more in less time. Now CultureConnector can help interculturalists fast-track their business results.

Available for all

Check out CultureConnector’s Achievements feature now by clicking your next step. If you don’t have an account with CultureConnector, create one today.

Your next step

It’s included at all licence levels, even the Free licence. If you’re training with CultureConnector, you’ll also see the new feature embedded in your one-to-one training view.

Comparing countries in the corona virus? Call an expert!

Richard Farkas — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 17:33:02 +0000

The coronavirus stole our 2020 Olympics, but the disease has given us a new way for countries to compete. Journalists are enjoying Olympic-level interest in their articles and video reports as countries battle to rank first for Personal Protective Equipment, to achieve a world-record for pop-up hospital construction or to win the race for contract-tracing apps.

News reports also give us the Covid-19 sporting tragedies, as new countries suffer a humiliating collapse in hospital bed vacancies or care-home survivals. Policy-makers also look to other countries as a measure of how well they are meeting the Covid-1 challenge.

International comparison: a new Olympic sport

The intercultural profession offers valuable expertise here. This is a community of researchers, trainers and consultants specialised in the successful adaptation of people ideas from other cultural contexts and the forming of global solutions in local circumstances.

With nothing to report in the newspapers’ sports-reporting sections, the new sport of international comparison has emerged to fill newspaper columns.

Comparing Country A with Country B sounds simple, and learning from other countries sounds like the obvious thing to do. But what if we are misunderstanding the experience of other countries and taking the wrong lessons from those international comparisons?

International rankings are filling a gap in the science

We have 150 years of epidemiological science and decades of research into the socio-economic determinants of health, but we yet don’t have the peer-reviewed science of Covid-19. With the new science lacking, and traditional epidemiology too mathematical and complicated, simplistic conclusions from international comparison are having a disproportionate impact on political decisions.

Simplistic conclusions from international comparison are having a disproportionate impact on political decisions

Presidents, Mayors, Prime Ministers and Secretary Generals come under pressure to show leadership and “do something” or be more like South Korea, “Do what the Chinese did”, take the example of New Zealand, or follow the Germans.

Effective leaders think interculturally when facing global challenges

What are these comparisons presented to us so confidently by journalists and repeated by politicians? While the smart policy-makers and business leaders these days use sophisticated intercultural models for rolling out global programmes with local sensitivity, this is rare among the media and politicians under pressure.

Mark Twain famously warned that comparison is the death of joy, but there is great advantage to international comparison, done well.

We need to approach international comparison with humility and caution. What principles would inform an international comparison, given the benefit of coaching from interculturalist?

An interculturalist in the coronvirus response team

What contribution might an interculturalist bring to a top coronavirus crisis response team? Some of the best-prepared government bodies, NGOs and businesses have been adapting to the new situation equipped with cultural intelligence developed by intercultural professionals.

Here are ten things to keep in mind when comparing countries in the coronavirus crisis.

Do the maths

Adjust for population and other relevant variables

Comparing absolute numbers gives us a severely distorted view of what is happening. The absolute death figures and other grim national “milestones” are irresistible to some journalists, but we need to look at more variables than just “country”.

The UK’s death toll rose to 233 on Saturday with a total of 5,018 confirmed cases. This is the exact same number of fatalities experienced by Italy two weeks ago

Daily Mail, March 22^nd2020

Deaths per million offers a less distorted view. So now we’re adjusting for population. we’ve made a multi-variate analysis. Let’s continue down this route. In this epidemic, when looking at national figures, it is useful to adjust for

Urbanisation
Population density of cities currently experiencing outbreaks
Age profile of the population
Incidence of multi-generational households,
Representation of minority communities disproportionately affected by the disease
Presence of transport connections and international transport hubs in the country
Physical borders of islands and other geographical features
The local season (hemisphere)

And so on. A multi-variate analysis gives a more useful comparison of the performance of nations tackling the disease.

It’s time to find your inner geodemographer. The least we can do is adjust the numbers for population and age.

Check the stats

Dig down to find what each number represents

Of all things in life which seem to have no grey areas, death seems to be the ultimate example. Counting deaths would seem to be an objective, inarguable exercise. But even here, we have to ask what does each country mean when it records a Covid-19 death?

We could also ask what do we mean by “tests”, “beds”, “deaths among frontline health workers”?

While France seems to be one of the worst-hit countries, its death figures include large categories – such as deaths in care homes – which are excluded in other countries’ death figures.

What tools can help us interpret the validity and veracity of official figures?

In many countries we know that official figures report what the authorities wish to report. The numbers reflect political decisions more than transparent reporting.

It is useful to consider how much trust the official figures traditionally earn among the country’s own residents, and how the country performs in rankings such as Transparency International’s corruption perception index.

We also need to look under the skin of the national figures. Is the data collected consistently or is there internal regional variation? Are there categories of inhabitant conveniently overlooked by the statistics or communities with wildly different outcomes, masked by average numbers?

Don’t get personal

Look at the whole country, not just the leader

The Secret to Germany’s COVID-19 Success: Angela Merkel Is a Scientist, wrote the The Atlantic on 20^th April 2020. Political leaders are sometimes useful symbols of the way a country’s general population thinks and acts.

How much has Merkel’s scientific knowledge benefitted Germans during the coronavirus crisis? Photo by kremlin.ru

In this crisis, Emmanuel Macron is painted as the thinker, pondering the epidemic’s meaning for globalisation and Western society. Donald Trump as (at best) the electioneering liberator from overbearing public authorities. President Xi as the firm hand assuring stability of Chinese society, at all costs. Leo Varadkar as the caring doc, Jair Bolsonaro as the provocateur.

But as the disease sweeps through country after country, what is having far greater effect than the personality of the leader are the hard epidemiological realities of household size, geography, age profile, health system, access to clean water and long-established cultural practices.

Germans are no doubt benefitting from having a federal leader who is comfortable with numbers, but it is beyond the influence of one woman to have created a society that falls so naturally into the role of cautious, systematic, hygiene-conscious, law-abiding, mask-wearing expert distancers.

Beware the narcissism of small differences

Zoom out to see how things look on a global scale

Historian Elaine Doyle sparked a fiery debate recently on the comparison between the UK and Ireland.

Her Twitter thread and later article explored the different outcomes for the two countries in terms of deaths per million. This seemed to be fertile ground for comparison: two countries sharing the same islands and with much common cultural heritage. However, when we zoom out and think global, the differences shrink to a level which seems to fall within the range of sampling errors and phasing. Zooming out also gives the opportunity to compare with countries where there are other interesting comparisons: NZ, Japan, Finland, Australia.

Measure success against the goals in each case

Check what each country is trying to achieve

The standardised tables ranking countries in the corona virus crisis seem to put all countries into the same race, like a league table of football clubs all chasing the top spot or sprinters listing for qualification into the Olympic 100m final.

New Zealand is succeeding in its goal to prevent new cases of the Corona virus. Sweden is not trying to win that race.

But in the coronavirus crisis and other national projects, different countries have different goals. While one country may be competing in the 100m sprint, another country is playing the relay race amongst its regions, or merely warming up for tomorrow’s marathon.

From population studies such as the World Values Survey, we know that values vary significantly between nations. And between governments, operational priorities vary. Public authorities manage within different constraints of health service resources, economic resilience, long-term thinking, short-term survival.

In the corona virus crisis, we see the very different ways that nations approach the uncomfortable task of putting value on human life as they experiment with various lockdown tightening and easing actions.

In Denmark, a country not afraid to run social experiments, we see policy-makers finding a “Danish balance” between maintaining democratic freedoms and risking higher levels of infections. The balance is different in countries where authorities place a higher value on certainty and security.

In Germany is it the same self-confidence and determination that helped them absorb the shock of reunification in 1990 and in the migrant crisis of 2015 which today gives them the belief that they can engineer themselves out of almost any problem and so beat the virus? The goal here is to win by well-coordinated technological and social action.

Meanwhile in Haiti, a country which has suffered recent epidemics of AIDS, cholera and TB, where clean water is a privilege enjoyed by the minority and crowded, insanitary living conditions are normal, should we be surprise to find fatalistic acceptance that the country’s weak health system will simply not cope? Here the goal is not to beat the virus but something more modest. NGOs and local organisations are aiming to increase access to water and soap for hand-washing. With workplaces re-opening even before the first wave of infections had passed, many Haitians expect to keep the rhythm of normality, which is the only way for most families to ensure that they can continue to put food on the table.

When we’re comparing performance in the corona competition, the fairest metric is how well each nation is achieving its own goals.

Don’t make countries into symbols of something

Allow some complexity and some internal contradictions into your understanding of each country

Countries differ, but they are complex and we must resist the temptation to caricature national cultures.

For the bloggers and journalists, Sweden has become the symbol of the carefree business-as-usual approach, Italy’s hospitals the symbol of crisis management, the USA the symbol of top-down chaos. Germany is given the role of supremely-confident Best-Prepared Western Country. China is painted as the victorious regime where the disease is beaten. New Zealand gets the role of quiet backwater which the virus never really reached. And Singapore is praised as the over-achieving Asian nation which administered the disease out of existence.

In each case the myth is false or hides a far more complex situation. In Germany, fear was a major motivator, as Die Welt put it “Politik der Angst”. In Sweden, everyday life has seen dramatic changes.

Which scene will you find in Sweden’s restaurants during the coronavirus epidemic?

In the USA charismatic and competent leaders are shining at State, City and enterprise levels. In Singapore, the cracks in the country’s immaculate image are showing, in the desperate situation in the dormitories of low-wage workers and the emergence of a second wave of infection.

When a country is presented to you as a simple case of Category X or Category Y, there may be some truth or even hard evidence to support the story. But drill deeper and you’ll find plenty of confounding exceptions.

Look for contrasts

Find the surprising as well as the familiar

At times of uncertainty, we are drawn to the comfortable and familiar. No doubt with good intentions, journalists are falling into an easy trap of believing that people are the same everywhere you go.

Italy’s Coronavirus Response Is a Warning From the Future
The Atlantic

Italy’s Nightmare Offers a Chilling Preview of What’s Coming
Bloomberg

Headlines suggest that all countries inevitably follow the same path.

But when we look into another culture, sometimes the contrasts and surprises are more enlightening than the similarities.

Are the journalists succeeding exploring the immense cultural diversity apparent in the coronavirus crisis, and its implications for readers back home? Have readers been asked to put themselves into the shoes of a truly foreign person, perhaps like…

the Seoul resident who receives a call from the police, because she have left the State-loaned tracking device untouched for two hours
the Swede whose public health authorities say they cannot and will not try to stop the deaths completely
the Brazilian or American who joins a crowd of politically-motivated protestors at a time of lockdown
the elderly British person who refuses to visit a hospital where there are plenty of staff and space to care for them

Around Europe and the USA, commentators looked at the experience of Northern Italy and concluded that that would inevitably come to their country too. With the best intentions and a belief in our common humanity, they missed the fact that local conditions can vary so much.

In fact, the pandemic is turning out to be a series of very different local epidemics, playing out in contrasting ways in different locations. Finns and Bulgarians are finding out that there was nothing inevitable about following the Northern Italian experience in their countries.

A large part of foreign reporting in the corona crisis has been an exercise in finding a narrative in other countries which we want to promote in our own country.

By appreciating the deep differences between nations, we can make more sophisticated predictions about how global phenomena will manifest in different locations.

Know the communication styles

Interpret what people say according to the culture from where the speaker comes

Foreign correspondents of news organisations typically report with deep insight and empathy for their host nation. But the coronavirus crisis has given us journalism based on short-term assignments or even internet research where are articles are penned with very little understanding of the countries which are the subject of the article.

When a travelling journalist sent on a corona virus mission into an unfamiliar culture, or even a Zoom meeting, the signals can be misleading and confusing. Are those journalists equipped with cultural filters to interpret what their interviewees are saying?

While Iranians and Italians may talk of their corona virus experience with colourful, hyperbolic language, stoic Estonians, cautious Russians or fatalistic Indonesians may report similar experiences in very different ways.

Relatively low numbers of coronavirus infections and deaths have been accompanied by strict rules in Poland. Photo Marco Verch

Aside from words, actions also need a cultural lens.

Impressed by the strict rules and harsh punishments in Poland, journalists may wonder why in the Nordics the authorities offer mere “recommendations”. In fact, expert recommendations carry enormous weight in the Nordic region. The effect on behaviour of expert guidance in the apparently soft regimes of Northern Europe can have similar force as the “harsh punishments” of Asian countries.

The Polish and Nordic approaches seem to differ, but in each case the action is appropriate to the culture. These different methods may in fact be very close in their intention and effects.

Don’t declare victory 3km (2 miles) into the marathon

Give more attention to the direction, speed and the route and less to the current position

As the virus moves relentlessly through the global population, it arrives, accelerates and sometimes slows at different moments and different paces and different places. Live comparisons of the racers in this marathon are meaningless. Looking at how countries move along the Corona curve is more informative.

In fact, some countries specialise in a wait-and-see approach, seeking “last-mover advantage”. Luxembourg, for example, has a long pre-epidemic tradition of conservatively waiting to see the trials and failures of its bigger, trend-setting neighbours before deciding what to do, and then usually doing it better than any other country.

In some national cultures, political and factional debate seems like delay, but then implementation is swift and effective. In others, nothing much happens until the shit hits the fan, then resources are mobilised at impressive speed (yes, we are looking at you, US and UK).

New York Times comparison of countries against their own past averages

International comparisons need to be adjusted for time and place. In the sporting world and in many Paralympic events, we give attention to personal bests. In the international coronavirus competition, a good measure of performance is how each country is faring in comparison to its own normal fluctuations in mortality or earlier crises. Instead of looking at who is leading the international rankings, a better question is in which country is achieving new “personal bests”?

The Netherlands was one of the first countries to draw attention to the variation on its own historical death rates, rather than looking across borders at how the neighbours are doing. The New York times used this as the basis for a more sophisticated comparison of self-comparisons.

Whether a fast-moving crisis or in slower, longer-term development, appreciating the phases of development is essential to evaluating the performance of different countries.

Stay friendly: you might need each other

Use comparisons to enlighten both sides

A storm blew through the 1984 Olympics when South African Zola Budd tripped American runner Mary Decker. It seemed to be a case of unsporting behaviour. Although spectators and media found the story fascinating, it meant we never got to see two great athletes complete the battle at full strength.

Who tripped whom?

In the coronavirus crisis of 2020 there have been some collisions on the race-track too. Personal protective equipment has been diverted en route from one country to another, leading to accusations of modern-day piracy. Travel has been unilaterally banned, and international comparisons have been used to brag against rivals.

The conversation around UK-Ireland comparison in death rates became so tense that inevitably the Twitter storm summoned shadows of past conflicts and historical injustice.

Similar barely-disguised antagonism exists in the comparison of China and Western countries’ handling of the virus.

Instead of following this dark, combative route, we have an opportunity here. Countries are at different points of the coronavirus curve. They have had different levels of exposure to epidemics in the past. They have complimentary resources of science, data, local experience and social experiments. Together our countries can benefit from fast, effective pooling of knowledge, coupled with mutual understanding of the context from which the information comes.

Not only that, but we’ve seen practical cross-border support brought between friendly neighbours, and there’s plenty more potential for that.

If we hit a second or third wave in 2020, or a worse epidemic in future years, the Irish who share a divided island, the Swedes and Finns, the Canadians and Americans may need to pool resources to get through peaks.

Rather than a source of competition, pride and superiority, the fact that countries are hitting their coronavirus peaks at different times may be an advantage.

International comparisons which are 10x more intercultural

These ten ways to make your international comparisons more intercultural, and more accurate, are built with the toolkit of the intercultural profession.

If your coronavirus work involves taking lessons from the experience of other countries, or giving epidemic guidance across cultural boundaries, consult an interculturalist and borrow some perspectives from the field of cross-cultural research.

More than ever, a clear-sighted view of other cultures could save lives in your own.