Cultural intelligence: learning and leading in risk
A ship runs aground and within 48 hours the captain is convicted as a criminal for passing ‘too close’ to the islands.
The captain, on the other hands, struggles to understand what was so special about this manoeuvre – it’s a normal practice.
How we frame surprises, novel situations and incidents becomes the basis for where we look for solutions and fixes.
Why culture is misunderstood?
In most organisations, culture change is viewed as a top-down initiative, a rational exercise, a leadership problem and a measurable goal.
Typical culture change initiatives include handing surveys and questionaries to employees and seeking their feedback, setting up SMART goals, motivating people through bonuses and sanctions, close surveillance of human behaviour and the central role assigned to ‘leaders’ and top-management to bring change.
Such initiatives assume that culture is:
- A mechanical system;
- Humans are motivated by incentives and fear;
- Success is brought about leaders and top managers (the hero myth);
- Human are objects and a sum of inputs and outputs.
A holistic approach to culture
In this workshop, we will experience a more holistic approach to learning and culture.
Away from the Cartesian, brain-centric view of human mind we will be introduced to the concept of embodied Mind rooted in both conventional wisdom as well as the most advanced research in neurosciences and across disciplines.
The mind extends far beyond the brain. The entire human body is a Mind and unlike brain-centric approaches that tend to think that human beings are conscious of their decisions we will learn why, through the course of evolution, humans have always been largely unconscious and therefore unaware of their decisions and their underlying beliefs, myths and rituals.
Understanding the embodied nature of human Mind has wide implications for how people learn and unlearn and how we can influence the culture of our workplaces in an ethical and sensible manner.
When we become culturally intelligent, we can become deliberate, strategic and more holistic about culture and culture change.
Culture is a wicked problem
Culture is a wicked problem. There are no easy fixes or simple solutions. Anyone who has raised children, read a book on suicides, flown a plane or navigated a ship would know that there are no simple fixes.
Much of culture is lived in emotions and feeling within our bodies. It is not in the knowing (brain). People do not really know why they do what they do at a conscious level. The language of controlling the risk or managing safety is least helpful. We must learn to tackle the risk.
Culture Cloud
Drawing from a vast range of disciplines and by using proven frameworks in Social Psychology of Risk that we call Culture Cloud, you will learn how to observe, feel and experience:
- habits and rituals;
- Behaviours (under stress);
- alternative views on what people consider right and wrong (beyond rule following myth);
- The nature of power and authority
- understanding history beyond recorded events and facts;
- How to frame questions; observe silences (what is not said); and thinking metaphorically;
- The hidden meaning in artefacts displayed on walls
- How to understand slogans and symbols
Learning outcome
Away from brain-centric training and lecturing, you will learn how to feel and experience culture through a vast range of kinaesthetic exercises, somatic methods, music, drama, fun, role-play, storytelling, artwork and a semiotic (visual) walk to a church or a museum.
You will learn:
- The science behind how human beings learn, unlearn and relearn
- A framework for surfacing and listening to beliefs, worldviews, myths, rituals, symbols and more.
- Conversation mapping: an ethical framework for listening and mapping decision making and collective sensemaking.
- Experiential (semiotic) walks to realise our biases and the limits of our ‘observations.’
- Implicit/Tacit Knowing and how myths and beliefs work
- Tools for framing, pitching, priming and listening
- Culture audit and various other tools for practically assessing your culture.
- A pocket guide
Benefits of cultural intelligence
By becoming culturally intelligent we can:
- Better understand our own biases and respond to personal challenges in risk and leadership
- Influence others with confidence
- Become better listeners and observers
- Learn about human decision making and judgments
- Possess tools for thinking, communicating and managing self and others
- Become deliberate and strategic about culture and culture change