Unlocking Cultural Agility with Marco Blankenburgh
Unlocking Cultural Agility with Marco Blankenburgh
Counseling Across Cultures with Nancy Wolf
Nancy Wolf captivates us with her experiences of moving from America to Africa, a decision that propelled her family into a whirlwind of cultural discoveries and personal growth. This journey is not just about relocating geographically but also about transitioning through a cultural metamorphosis, which often requires courage and openness to the unknown.
Her insights illuminate the courage it takes to immerse oneself in an unfamiliar culture and the profound growth that results from such an adventure. Working in a foreign country offers a unique opportunity to form intercultural relationships, and it's these connections that can redefine how one perceives and interacts with the world. Nancy sheds light on the complexities of these relationships, especially in the workplace, and the valuable lessons learned.
Through her experiences, we discover the importance of self-awareness and humility in becoming a cultural learner, and how these qualities can lead to trust and effective teamwork within a diverse setting. It's a rich examination of the power of curiosity and understanding in cultivating successful cross-cultural collaborations.
Mental health professionals will find our discussion on intercultural relationships within counseling particularly enlightening. We delve into how varying cultural worldviews impact communication and conflict resolution in therapeutic settings. Nancy emphasizes the need for continuous learning and intercultural competence among counselors, particularly when supporting clients in intercultural marriages and relationships. Join us as we share stories, insights, and the undeniable importance of cultural agility in an interconnected world. Our conversation serves as a heartfelt reminder of the beauty and complexity of our global tapestry.
In this episode, you will learn:
-- How to develop a cultural learner mindset to be successful in intercultural environments.
-- How to bring intercultural agility into the counseling setting.
-- Skills to transition successfully across cultures.
| Learn More about:
-- Perception Management (https://www.knowledgeworkx.com/framework-perception-management)
-- Four Keys for Building Trust on Teams (http://kwx.fyi/building-trust-teams)
-- Cultural Learners Are Critical to M&A Success (https://www.knowledgeworkx.com/post/cultural-learners-are-critical-to-m-a-success)
-- Brought to you by KnowledgeWorkx.com
One of the things that made it a little bit easier was when we moved to Africa, we were living in a culture that was English speaking. Yes, yeah, it does make a difference.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:What was a little bit different for me, I think, is that I carried over this intercultural worldview perception that I had that I could see when I saw someone or heard them, looked at the way they dressed, saw their family rituals, then I knew what their culture was like, mmm. And so I think, moving there and understanding that, I really was lacking in my understanding.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the cultural agility podcast, where we explore the stories of some of the most advanced intercultural practitioners from around the world to help you become culturally agile and succeed in today's culturally complex world. I'm your host, mark R Blankenberg, international Director of KnowledgeWorks, where every day, we help individuals and companies achieve relational success in that same complex world.
Speaker 2:Welcome everyone. We're so excited again. We have a very special guest today. She is a person that I highly respect and I'm so excited to ask her questions about her experience. I actually introduced her to ICI and she has taken it and run with it and done so many things with it, and I'm so excited to hear what she has done and for her to tell her story. Her name is Nancy Wolff. Hello Nancy, hello Shelly.
Speaker 1:Welcome. So the first thing I was excited about the day was when we met and had this conversation that started the whole thing I will never forget it.
Speaker 2:It was such a special memory and to see where we are today, here together, making this podcast, talking about how you've used ICI and the impact it's had.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to do that. It's something I've grown more and more passionate about.
Speaker 2:Can't wait. So thank you for being here today. Let's go ahead and get started, and I'd love to first hear your story, kind of who you are, where you started, kind of your background. Could you just sort of start there and then we'll expand from there, sure.
Speaker 1:Thanks, first of all, for inviting me, absolutely.
Speaker 3:It was a privilege to be able to share today.
Speaker 1:So a little bit about me. I am from the United States originally. I grew up in a really medium sized town with what I thought was an intercultural experience. Thought I was living in a very diverse area, but to me that just meant my Barbies were white and the girl down the street I played with her Barbies were brown.
Speaker 2:You know I mean in the early days. I would have said that was intercultural.
Speaker 1:I grew up and ended up marrying my high school boyfriend and after that we had four daughters and we just happily lived within a number of streets from our entire family. Wow, so very small circumference that I drew from, from my world view, very limited in the exposure. Then, yeah, we ended up having four daughters who are now married, and we have the blessing of 14 grandchildren. So that's kind of me from then until now. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So when did you first kind of experience intercultural living? When did it start for you?
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, yeah, pretty eye-opening experience that in our mid-30s we were very settled and in our life, but we traveled for the first time outside of our home country into a pretty small island nation in Asia and it opened our eyes to the world. Wow, it became more than just what we saw on TV and movies. Places that we saw look different, but to be able to experience it firsthand on the ground really changed our whole look at life. Wow, we came home and thought are we doing what we really want to be doing with our life? And, yeah, that created a desire to move cross-culturally to serve. We ended up joining a faith-based organization to be able to live abroad and to be able to serve people outside of the home country. That we knew. Wow, and you took your daughters, we did, we did. It was quite a big change for them. They ranged in age at that point from 7 to 17.
Speaker 1:Wow, it was a huge transition for every member of our family.
Speaker 2:Wow, yes, and the 17-year-old?
Speaker 1:she was, yeah, close to being a son and daughter, and I would say that even now, all of our children are different people because we made that change in our life. In fact, two of them did return and live in our home country, but two of them still live in Africa.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:And that's where we ended up moving, just before we turned 40. Amazing. So kind of a late-life change.
Speaker 2:Yes, but how brave and risky.
Speaker 3:I do agree with the risky part.
Speaker 1:It seemed risky at the time. You know, my husband left a thriving business career, wow and it seemed like our daughters were all at ages where we knew this was going to be really pivotal and formative for them in their future.
Speaker 2:Wow yeah.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that made it a little bit easier was when we moved to Africa, we were living in a culture that was English-speaking. Yes, that doesn't make a difference. Yes, and what made it a little bit different for me, I think, is that I carried over this intercultural worldview perception that I had that I could see when I saw someone or heard them, looked at the way they dressed, saw their family rituals, then I knew what their culture was like. So I think, moving there and understanding that I really was lacking in my understanding of what an intercultural worldview really is, and recognizing that I wasn't agile in navigating all of those things, yes, so yeah, so that was my question what were some of your impressions?
Speaker 2:So you've come from a generally monocultural way of seeing the world up to almost the age of 40. Yeah, and you completely live abroad, and what were some of your impressions?
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I think one way to give some perspective to our personal experience is to understand that we moved to South Africa only seven years past the election of Nelson Mandela as president. So that gives you a bit of perception of what was happening in the country at the time and, coming from a faith-based organization, we had the desire to bring together cultures within.
Speaker 1:South Africa, and so my perception that I could look at someone and hear them speak and kind of look at how they dress, and that led me to understand them, was crashed and burned right away. And I understood that there were so many things I didn't know, so many things that were so much deeper than what I could see and perceive on the surface. So I appreciate the ICI training that I've received. I just wish I'd had it about 25 years ago.
Speaker 2:Yes, In your interpersonal relationships there early on. So you saw that someone had a different cultural worldview than you. You saw that they maybe thought, spoke differently on a deeper level and you thought, wow, OK, this is different and I'm not sure how to relate.
Speaker 1:Yes, because soon after arriving we started desiring to build teams, intercultural teams and you find very quickly that people don't respond the way that you would expect them to. I came from a culture that was predominantly very direct speakers and I went into a culture that was a complex mixture of power, fear and honor shame, and when we started building teams it seemed as though we were all focusing on the same common purpose and the same vision and mission.
Speaker 1:But at the end of the day, I think in those early years I just didn't understand how some of the dynamics of my worldview and culture were impacting communication, trust, relationships, and once I started to understand that I was navigating a new terrain and I don't think other people understood me and I certainly didn't understand them Right that I started realizing there's so much below the surface, kind of in that iceberg visual that we use in the training I recognized there was so much more under the surface than what I could see above the surface, and that's the part of the training. I think that's helped me the most.
Speaker 2:You wrote up. Something that I love about the way we train is that we start with ourselves First. We understand our own worldview and from that place of self-understanding we can understand others, so that I love that and I love that use, you know, once we understand that part.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean. Another way that I've learned is I'm very time-oriented, and so when relationship building takes time before you can get to those deeper levels, to have open communication and build trust, I'm very quick to get to the point and let's move on with this and let's decide. And sometimes I can leave people behind in that or uncomfortable, in a feeling of tension, like I don't know if I can share my true feelings with with her. So yeah, that's been helpful to learn that through the training.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's, that's one of the dimensions on the 12 dimensions of culture that we talk about. Were there any other problems, like specific things that you saw, like any other, you know, relational things that, looking back, what about friendships? Were they easy to make in South Africa?
Speaker 1:If they were easy to make, because it's. It's a culture where a lot of people are very revealing of their emotions and I'm very much like that too, and so I could connect with most of the people that I came into contact with.
Speaker 1:What is interesting, shelley, is about five years ago we moved away from Africa and into the Middle East South Asian region, and that was really my first time of being in more of an honor shame culture and some of the ways that I found easy to connect in one culture were completely different, and so the journey to learn more about myself and how to relate to others just continued to expand and grow.
Speaker 2:Wow, yes, so you mean you're living in one and you're like I can connect Finally, am I understanding? This Well in South Africa. They're more like you.
Speaker 2:They're more expressive again that's a 12th dimension, 12th, one of the dimensions. And then in South Asia they were not. So you're like this is so different and we're learning a new way of connecting Exactly. Wow. What about when? So let's talk about when you. You came to Dubai and we met, and talking about when you were first introduced to ICI. What made you interested in ICI, like at the gut level, like what was happening, that you were like this meets a need, sort of on that level.
Speaker 1:At that point, my husband was in a leadership position, and so we were working quite a bit with teams, intercultural teams and a variety of different countries, and I found each one to be very different and the dynamics were harder to understand, because there were so many new things that we needed to relate to, and some of them were quite surprising. One instance is we were working with a team that was experiencing some conflict, and it was an older team that had developed over many years, and so some of the workers not only were they older in age, but they'd been in their new culture long enough that their primary driver or the worldview that they came into the country with was a different because of their 25, 30 35 years of serving and acclimating to the people that they were working with and so we would bring new workers into that dynamic from the same culture, thinking they would be the same in their thinking, only to realize that, coming from the same passport country, not only did their generational differences have an impact, but the change of their worldview.
Speaker 1:Just because they came from the same place didn't mean they were gonna see their new culture or their work environment or their relationships and how to do team, how to hold meetings all of those things were impacted.
Speaker 2:Interesting, even though on the surface they seemed like they would have been the same right so, in other words, you're thinking these workers are from the same country, so they're from the same country. They were all raised there, we're working with them, right. So we should agree on how to hold a meeting, how to do the things of these things. But the workers that have been there for 20 years have sort of adapted to the cultural norms around them and the cultural worldviews and made that a part of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not just a part of them, but their preference Interesting, wow, yes, and preference is huge, I think, when you're working in intercultural relationships, because there are so many preferences that we have Just naturally built into our wiring in the way we think that in other cultures, if they're not valued highly or they're just looked at as honorable or shameful or how do you interact in public versus at home, versus on team, and who do you respect and honor, who don't you?
Speaker 1:I mean, there's so many dynamics but sometimes we found that workers who had been there and established in their team longer agreed more with their international partners than they did with people we brought in and mobilized into that environment. So, yeah, it was an interesting twist that just created a desire for me to learn more. And then I met you, and the ICI training was a tool that has equipped us a lot more than we had been before.
Speaker 2:So you got certified and do you think you were able to apply it right away?
Speaker 1:Well, I think I have been working to apply it. I'm fairly newly certified I'm two to three years in and I've been able to apply it in preparing other workers who are going to the field, or leaders who are working to train intercultural workers, and that's kind of where my passion is now. In fact, we'll soon be making a move back to our home country where I'll be able to work more on an organizational level, and my goal is to train people who are going to other countries to work and serve so that they don't have to go through the same growing pains that I personally experienced before I had this training. I find it to be so helpful.
Speaker 2:So you think that just by understanding someone's own worldview before they leave?
Speaker 1:Completely. If we don't understand who we are, we are not going to be able to prefer and love others well. That's really at the heart, I feel, of my mission is living cross-culturally is for us to have effective relationships, effective teams. We need to be the ones who are willing to prefer others rather than well, this is how I am. You just need to acknowledge how I do things and how I see things. So I think understanding yourself better is key to being but being able to work effectively and be highly productive in whatever your common purpose is to work together.
Speaker 2:Wow, nancy. I love that. It's beautiful. So you're going to train workers to understand themselves better and then give them the tools to understand others better. Give them the cultural worldviews that will help them give grace, understand. Give them the tools to work better.
Speaker 1:So to be less judgmental and stand typical and put people in Exactly, and I think it will help workers that are going to establish teams and works that are going that have been ongoing for some time, as I mentioned earlier. But I think it's going to be particularly helpful for teams that are going to a new place.
Speaker 2:Yeah when there's not.
Speaker 1:There aren't the people there that they can ask why is this happening? Why are we connecting? I don't feel like there's trust or I'm sensing tension. If you're going to a new place and doing something that nobody's done before which happens frequently or you're working in a way where there's lots of remote workers here in one location, but the people you're working with are spread out in different countries on different continents, it's just going to be a whole lot more effective to understand how to work with them, build teams with them and really build relationships.
Speaker 2:You know, one thing I hear you saying is really humility.
Speaker 1:Wow, it takes a lot of that, doesn't it, Shelly?
Speaker 2:I mean, you've lived cross-culturally and you know that sometimes pride is our biggest obstacle and sometimes we don't even realize that pride is an obstacle, because I don't even realize that I have a cultural worldview that I'm looking at the rest of the world through. I don't even realize that this is my lens and it's shaping how I see other people and I'm expecting them to be a certain way. I don't even realize it.
Speaker 1:And we don't understand that a lot of what we do should be done with the goal of how it's going to be perceived.
Speaker 3:How will?
Speaker 1:they perceive me instead of what do I want to present. You know, I think when you're starting to look at the end goal of your communication, it doesn't matter so much in how you do it. It's whether you're going in the right direction to build the relationship, to come to an agreement, to resolve a conflict.
Speaker 2:Yes, and one of the things that we learn about in the training which I think is challenging and almost provoking is that we need to take responsibility for the responses that we trigger in an intercultural setting. And wow, and we can do that. When we're humble, when we're open, when we say OK, I triggered a defensive response in someone, or someone was offended, instead of responding and like well, but being curious.
Speaker 1:You know, my goodness, being curious is huge. I think, just recognizing that we may have more education, we may have more experience, that doesn't mean that we're the expert Right. Yeah, and that takes a lot of humility to realize that you come into every situation as a learner.
Speaker 2:As a learner, as a cultural learner.
Speaker 1:A cultural learner versus a cultural critic, which is another thing that was pointed out to me in the training, is I don't think I actually recognize the fact that I lacked humility when being exposed to a culture that was different than my own and trying to find the value in their differences rather than proving why my way was right.
Speaker 2:Right? Yes, and sometimes you don't even realize you're trying to prove that your way is right. You know you're doing it and you're like this I'm so uncomfortable right now. Why? Exactly Because there's this other way and I don't understand it and it's making me uncomfortable. But yes, it's all of that.
Speaker 1:We talk about culture shock and I think one of the reasons I wanna work with workers who are just starting their journey is to understand if you're experiencing tension and emotional drain from working so hard to maybe learn a new language and understand relationship building, and why is there tension on my team? That that's okay. It should be expected it should be understood.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's normal.
Speaker 1:It's normal because you're working so hard to work outside of your preferences and what are your own personal behavioral norms so that you can build trust with someone who sees things differently than you. And that's not something that goes away after four months or a year. It could be completely ongoing, that extra tension and stress and it needs to be managed?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it does, and I think that intercultural agility, the tools that we teach at Nelljorks, give you practical ways to keep going, to not give up.
Speaker 1:They do and, shelley, one of the privileges that I have in the role that I have been able to do is to provide counseling and coaching to workers, whether they've been there a long time or a short time or just getting ready to go, and the ICI training has influenced my counseling and coaching to such a great degree. Really, intercultural relationships, such as marriage, parenting, finances, the structure of the society, who leads in the home I mean when a worker is working outside of their norm there are so many levels of understanding that they need to function and to counsel others, and I find that to be very true when working with someone who's involved in an intercultural relationship.
Speaker 2:So interculturally married or counseling someone outside your home country? They have a different cultural world to you than you.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and I anticipate that it's going to impact me even to the same or possibly a greater degree when we relocate, after the first year, back to our home country, which is the United States, because I don't expect it to be the same as it was when we left there 25 years ago and I'm going to probably have some of my own culture shock, but it is so multicultural and intercultural they are more so than when I was growing up in this little town in the Midwest but to be able to apply some things that I've learned living globally to the intercultural relationships that we're trying, as a nation and as a country, to build, and so I think it's applicable no matter where you are in your home country or if you're living abroad.
Speaker 2:So just with your neighbors, with anyone you're interacting with. I would really love to hear more about the counseling piece. So, intercultural agility and counseling how does it just practically impact the way that you counsel, knowing that the person you're counseling may have a very different cultural worldview than you do?
Speaker 1:Does that? I think it does impact counselors. One reason is that over time I've just created a bit of a deeper conviction, I suppose, that my expectations of how the counseling is going to go, the methods that are more productive than others and sometimes even my desired outcomes.
Speaker 1:Like, if I counsel this person to say, restore a relationship, what is that going to look like? Well, in my worldview I have a picture of what that restored relationship is going to look like and how they're going to get there. But to understand that in other cultural worldviews forgiveness looks different, apologies are different, all of those things would impact a counselor if they've just been trained in a certain way through the lens of a certain worldview.
Speaker 2:Interesting. So forgiveness and reconciliation are still the goals, but the process could look very different according to someone's cultural worldview.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. I've seen it to be true. If you come from a direct communication culture, you expect words to be shared. You did this and I expect this, and you're going to talk about it more openly and your expectation of restitution is going to be very clear. Someone with an indirect culture, possibly even an honor shame culture, you may not even talk about the incident. Yes, you may tell a story about something else that happened in your community, but it actually is communicating what you want to say to the individual that you've had a conflict with. Yes, and so, as a counselor, if you're unaware that the communication is happening, it just sounds and looks different than what it is you would do in your own culture. Oh, that's challenging. It's very challenging.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because especially if you've a very Concrete way of saying no, it needs to happen this way, mm-hmm. So again, it's that humility piece, understanding the cultural worldviews at play. So that could be. Yeah, that's really interesting. On the counseling level, yeah, and then just you as a counselor, knowing that you have a worldview, cultural worldview, mm-hmm, that you are counseling from, how does that and just what are your thoughts on that? You just keep that in mind as you're. I.
Speaker 1:Think for me personally, reminding myself to stay curious. Oh ask questions. Don't jump to conclusions or assumptions. Hmm, it's, you know. I can't say that for all counselors.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I just know that for me right.
Speaker 1:I just need to Really spend the time to develop a relationship and build the trust with a counseling before I expect Any sort of true emotion and feeling and to come back to me from certain cultures, others not so much. Yeah, walk in the door and tell you yes, more than you want to know.
Speaker 2:You know, but others.
Speaker 1:It takes, takes time, it takes time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we um Nancy and I, are attending the intercultural agility summit this weekend. Yes, yeah, for 2023. And we attended Bart's summit on trust and we looked at trust from An innocence, guilt, honor, shame and power fear perspective. It wasn't that fascinating. It's very fascinating.
Speaker 1:Trust is something that all cultures don't even agree on the definition, let alone whether it's present or not exactly.
Speaker 2:It was so interesting, and even what reconciliation looks like In honor shame versus innocence guilt. You know, we apologize, okay, I'm sorry, I'm never gonna do this again. We wrap it up, it's done. Yeah, but in honor shame, that is not the way it looks or power fear, and he kind of went into that in the session. So good, so interesting. We need to get him on a podcast.
Speaker 1:Yes, you do, yes, you do. Intercultural marriages, I mean, there's just more and more common, and so to have um someone like Bart who's really knowledgeable about how, helping intercultural couples Build strong marriages, it's so important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, again, trust. Um, it just seems like, again, if you're not aware of world views, you just be like, yeah, trust, sure, mm-hmm, I got it. I understand, of course, but it's, it's really affected.
Speaker 1:It is culture.
Speaker 2:So and, and you see that in counseling- yes. Yeah, definitely yeah. So if you had, I'm just curious, if you had a dream for counselors and you know counselors, intercultural counselors what would it be? I mean, if you could wish something for counselors who are doing it overseas, and what would you wish for them?
Speaker 1:I actually think that counselors should be very open and even put it on their bucket list to do the ICI training. It has been so impactful for me personally because we have a lot of resources available to us in the country where I'm from that aren't available in other parts of the world. If we can, as counselors, learn more about doing our counseling interculturally, we can actually model that for others.
Speaker 1:In countries where maybe they don't have the same access to information and training, and that we have the blessing of having so. True, we do we do. That is so true, yes and to realize that you just can't export your training to another country and just expect it to be as effective as the way you've experienced in your own homeland.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, nancy, this has been such a good conversation.
Speaker 1:Thank you, I always enjoy talking to you about this. Me too, I could talk to you a long long time about this.
Speaker 2:Um, we just wish you all the best as you transition back to the us and in your work there. So you'll be, doing counseling and training workers to go overseas. That's the plan, exciting. Yes, I am excited and the impact you'll have on many people.
Speaker 3:Thank you so for having me absolutely.
Speaker 2:Thank you for coming in today and we'll we'll I'm sure we'll talk to you again at some point.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the cultural agility podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, share it with someone. The best way to help us out is by leaving a review on your favorite podcast app or channel, or forward and recommend this podcast to people around you. As always, if any of the topics we discuss today intrigue you, you will find links to articles discussing them in greater depth in the podcast notes. If you would like to learn more about intercultural intelligence and how you can become more culturally agile, you can find more information and hundreds of articles at knowledgeworkscom. A special thanks to Jason Carter for composing the music on this podcast and to the whole knowledgeworks team for making this podcast a success. Thank you, nita Rodriguez, ara, aziz-bakyan, rajitha Raj, and thanks to VIP and George for audio production, rosalind Raj for scheduling and Kalypstraus for marketing and helping produce this podcast.