Videos - Cultural Intelligence
A collection of videos that document and share some of the highlights of our own learning journey with others.
This podcast is about understanding the central role of language in understanding and influencing culture change. Both Dr Nippin Anand and James Pomeroy are uniquely positioned in this space and they offer some practical insights rooted in practice through their background, experiences, and research.
What happens when someone being interviewed during a safety audit is nervous? Can nervousness become the cause of an audit finding? And if the audit was aimed at understanding the human behaviour (Human Factor or plainly Human) can nervousness in itself be considered a cause? Not only this, can calming down this person and giving him more training be considered an appropriate corrective action?
This brief discussion between Dr Robert Long and Dr Nippin Anand is intended to clarify some of the issues raised and raise even more questions. It is a conversation starter to understand why ethics is foundational to all decision making.
A semiotic walk to a Church in Chennai with Dr Robert Long. Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols. In this semiotic walk, Dr Long, a world renowned expert in Semiotics, Theology and Linguistics, explains how semiotic walks can make us curious and culturally intelligent.
In this podcast, I discuss the impact of binary and absolute slogans on perception and behaviour, by drawing upon “Context is everything” as an example. These slogans undermine critical thinking and promote an absolute view where individuals are rendered powerless. I share a case where a workshop participant criticised my methods for not addressing structural issues, highlighting the industry’s focus on efficiency over empathy. I emphasise the importance of critical thinking, challenging assumptions, and recognising the dialectical relationship between context and behaviour. I encourage listeners to be mindful of slogans and to embrace change and learning.
In this podcast, Rob, Matt and Nippin discuss the limitations of bounded rationality after being together in India and conducting a range of social experiments. What surprised them all was the power of sequential, rote learning that is embedded in the Asian Culture and how it challenges some of our fundamental idea about how humans unlearn, learn and make decisions.
Do you have a strategy for learning? In this video we will find out how to create an investigation strategy that aligns with the investigation process in order to foster a culture of learning.
Earlier this year, I interviewed a seafarer whose brother went missing at sea. We don’t know under what circumstances Captain Mathew (name anonymised) went missing or, if you like, what was the cause of this accident. Unfortunately, the sea does not provide many answers but this painful story, told from his brother’s perspective who also happens to be a seafarer, reveals the dark side of the Zero Harm ideology. There’s a lot of debates and discussions in the risk and safety industry whether Zero should be a goal or not. There are practitioners, academics and researchers who believe that there is nothing wrong with having Zero as an aspiration. I hope that this story will serve to slow people down and think about how a seemingly aspiring goal translates into practice in global shipping. I call it a true story but it is shaped by my biased and subjective views. True only to the extent that some may find resonance with this story while others find it deeply uncomfortable.
Many organisations declare safety as one of the values in the vision and mission statements. Can safety be a value? When fallible humans conduct high risk operations, there is no certainty that people will not get injured. When people do get injured we have failed to live by our values. In this video, instead of making an argument, we will use a personal story to illustrate why safety cannot be a value.
This podcast is based on the work of the American Anthropologist Ernest Becker’s perennial thesis – ‘the denial of death’. In this podcast, Professor Sheldon Solomon explains how death anxiety, which is unique to the human species, leads to a quest for meaning, self-esteem and cultural worldviews. Solomon explains why it is so important for us take an interdisciplinary approach to understanding culture and why we must synthesise the wisdom of ages and sages and combine it with science if we truly want to make sense of human behaviour.
We will discuss: Why do humans fear death? How do we react and how do we relate with others when we are confronted with death? How does this explain President Trump’s reaction to Washington midair collision?
In less than 12 hours, President Trump blamed that DEI was behind the Washington mid-air collision. How did Trump connect so many dots at the speed of light and establish what went wrong with such conviction? And why do so many buy into this DEI ideology as the cause of the accident? In this podcast, I suggest that the president is using fear of death to heighten public anxiety, create a divide and spread hatred in the society.
We will discuss: Why do humans fear death? How do we react and how do we relate with others when we are confronted with death? How does this explain President Trump’s reaction to Washington midair collision?
Myth busting i.e. viewing a myth as a false story, is a political ideology. It is not science. Myth busting creates differences and it spreads hatred in the society. In a culturally diverse society, understanding myth busting is our pathway to cultural intelligence and improving our relationships with others. In this podcast, I will explain what is a myth and why myth busting should concern the risk and safety industry and our society at large. What are the dangers of myth busting and how we can avoid falling into this trap.
We will discuss: What is a myth? A short story of a myth. What is the power of a myth? What is myth busting? Why myth busting is an ideology (not science)? Why myth busting should concern us?
This is a conversation that should make us all think about how we as a species have understood and worked with cultural differences historically and across geographies. I’m privileged to be joined by Professor Emerita Kathleen Mahoney specialising in international human rights, humanitarian law, feminist legal theory, Indigenous legal traditions, residential school litigation, and tort law. Professor Mahony is, amongst many things, • Fellow of Royal Society of Canada • Senior Fellow, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights • Member of the Law Societies of Alberta and Manitoba • King’s Counsel Along with Professor Mahoney, I am also joined by Larry Phil Fontaines, an Indigenous Canadian leader and former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, best known for his central role in raising public awareness of the Canadian Indian residential school system and pushing to secure Federal and Papal apologies in 2008 and 2022 respectively.
A conversation with the internationally renowned expert Professor Kathleen Mahoney and Larry Phil Fontaines. We discuss the biases in the legal system and what it takes to reform the culture. This is a short video where we discuss the hidden biases and assumptions in the legal system and how surfacing those biases can create the opportunities for culture change using a true story.
In this video, we discuss how to understand and improve the safety culture in our organizations. The methodology illustrated in this video is referred to MiProfile is based on Social Psychology of Risk meaning how do people make decisions in groups (large and small). The MiProfile survey is more than just a survey. As we explain in the video, the survey is also an exercise in experiencing how human beings make decisions under pressure and how our unconscious beliefs come to surface within a few minutes. The survey design examines sensemaking, implicit knowledge and cognitive dissonance in the group – how far will a group of people hold to their beliefs when they are put under pressure and how can we bring their beliefs to the surface.
How language influence decision making? What can we learn about our assumptions and biases by reflecting on our language? How can we become emotionally and culturally intelligent by reflecting on our words? How can we map stories by listening to others and mapping their words. We use the iCue engagement process to map the story. The iCue engagement process is a verbal and visual method and it is based on the Social Psychology of Risk.
This is a conversation that should make us all think about how we as a species have understood and worked with cultural differences historically and across geographies. I’m privileged to be joined by Professor Emerita Kathleen Mahoney specialising in international human rights, humanitarian law, feminist legal theory, Indigenous legal traditions, residential school litigation, and tort law.