# 74: Intercultural Being
Story behind the Passage
I am not on any dating platform. But I have blind dates quite often. Today, I had another one. It turned out to be such a wonderful conversation. No, it was not meant to bring Prince Charming to my life. It was a coaching session with someone whom I had never coached before. Sometimes, when I work with groups of graduate students, I offer mini-coaching sessions. Actually, this is not really the best way of promoting coaching as a tool because it gives people the wrong impression that it is about quick fixes. Still, mini-coachings are better than no coaching at all — I think.
In any case, this session was with someone whom I had not met in a workshop before. What I had not expected was that it would actually bring such an eye-opening moment to me, the person coaching. One aspect we discussed was cultural difference. And the way in which we discussed it made both of us — I think — notice very quickly that we were speaking “the same language,” even though we come from very different cultures. It was like this from the first minute onwards. Only afterwards did I realize how wonderful this is but also how difficult it makes life sometimes.
The most difficult thing for me is that this state of being separates you from the “normal” people in your culture. I cannot exactly say what they are like and how they see the world but I definitely know that people like “us” see it a bit differently. It is this intercultural experience of speaking different languages and having traveled and lived in many different countries in the world which makes it impossible for you to have this clear-cut value framework in your head. But these things are underneath the surface, of course. The most obvious thing above the surface is communication. We simply talk differently to each other — a bit wild, maybe, a blending of big- and small-picture thinking, of emotional and rational arguing. I have no words for this kind of communication. It is just intuitive, completely free of any norms when it comes to speaking ‘fluently’ — just deeply human.
All this made me grab the Trompenaars book today. The story behind this is so funny and it explains so well why intercultural learning and being is so deeply rooted in my identity. I bought the book back in 2003/4. It was because I was asked to give a short workshop on intercultural communication at the company where I did my industrial training. And that fact in and of itself is so revealing retrospectively. I was 20 (!!!) at the time, an apprentice. But my boss somehow SENSED that I was the right person to do this. He knew that I had done a highschool year abroad and somehow he also knew or rather suspected that culture was my thing.
How right he was.
But I did not realize this back then.
I did fairly recently.
My Learnings
“Culture is a shared system of meanings.” This sentence might seem so self-evident. I guarantee, though, that 90% of you reading this right now are more or less ignorant of this fact in your daily life. I might even be part of this group — sometimes. Even though we might know about this simple fact that our way of seeing the world is framed by culture, we hardly ever act accordingly. And that takes us to the next sentence already.
“It dictates what we pay attention to, how we act and what we value.” When I say that we hardly ever act as if we knew about this far-reaching meaning of culture, it is because of the verb in the sentence. “Dictate” really signals how powerful the influence of culture is on your actions. You can hardly do anything about it, at least before you become fully aware. The difficult part is that it really shapes your entire perception. And perception means: EVERYTHING. The entire world around you is shaped by it. The problem is: This also applies to all others!
This is also why intercultural identity can be quite difficult to manage, at least sometimes. It is not only that it is difficult to communicate this particular way of seeing the world through many cultural lenses. It is also — and you see this in all my writing — a particular problem for you as the observer. If you simply know and understand so many different values, it becomes almost impossible to judge anything or anybody. But this is exactly what people do who have no or very little intercultural experience. Hence, the way we engage with each other can turn out quite troublesome and even painful, to put it bluntly. And the pain does not come from ignorance. It comes from knowing the intercultural background of the communication problem without being fully able to resolve it.
“The behavior of people within organizations is an enactment of such programmes.” Not resolving intercultural conflicts can really lead to serious problems that cost organizations a lot of money. I still cannot appreciate enough how lucky I was to get into intercultural youth education only two years after this first opportunity during my apprenticeship. I ended up co-facilitating civic education programmes during the summer for more than ten years. It was a university lecturer who sent me to the first seminar, actually. After such a long time, it was time for me to stop. Still, the learning has shaped me and my ability to observe and understand people from all over the world. Even more so, it has equipped me with the tools to actually change people’s way of perceiving the world — of seeing others — of seeing themselves.
This is a gift that I already passed on to some of my students at least. I do not know if I will get the chance again to train more people in universities to reset their “mental programmes” in this way. It changes your life in unprecedented ways and does not make life easier — at least sometimes. Still, I would never ever exchange this with anything. After all, I would never be able to have such deep and meaningful connections with strangers if I were not intercultural to the bone.
Actually, now that I am writing about this, I do want to train more people on intercultural communication. I do not even have to be so visionary about it and so emotional. I rationally know that the tools they get will help them prevent and fix communication problems. This in and of itself creates value. Experiencing less conflict and more understanding improves the quality of your life. If it then happens that you also drift into a form of intercultural being — so be it!
Reflection Questions
1) Do you ever think of culture as the problem behind some conflict at work?
2) How has the culture of your home country shaped your present life situation?
3) If you had the chance of training large amounts of people on one particular topic that is dear to you — what would it be?