Cultural
Self-Awareness in Leadership Teams
by
Malati Shinazy, M.Ed., George Simons International
Palo
Alto, California, USA
Purpose
and learning objectives
Every
thought, word, and behavior is either biologically adaptive or taught to us.
Learned values, attitudes, and behaviors are often taught to us before we are
old enough to know that we are “learning.” Our first teachers are members
of our nuclear and extended families. Adults model and then articulate what we
need to learn in order to survive and be accepted by the family or community.
Few
leadership-development programs take the time and opportunity to reflect on
the cultural rules, morals, taboos, and world-views that are valued by
managers and leaders. At work, most managers spend less than 3% of their time
in inner-directed discovery, an activity that could improve their own
performance and the success of every member of their organization.
Daniel
Goleman, author of Emotional
Intelligence and Working with
Emotional Intelligence, stresses that self-awareness is one of the
hallmarks of an effective leader.*
Cultural self-awareness and its influence on the social behaviors of
successful leaders, unfortunately, is simply not part of the repertoire of
most organizational leaders or leadership-development programs.
Regardless
of the level of a leadership team (supervisors, managers, senior executives,
or board members), it is a good idea to start a development program by
addressing cultural self-awareness. Try to weave in exercises for this kind of
learning into at least one-third of a two-day program.
For
this part of the session, it is important to slow down the pace from the
lightning velocity that most leaders find themselves working under. Reflection
and self-discovery need germination. A slower pace serves this goal well.
These
activities will tend to unify the leadership group. After this activity, the
leaders will know one another more deeply and intimately, increasing
individual understanding and group trust. This cohesion is carried forward
into the future after each member returns to his or her job site and social
and emotional intelligence are conveyed perhaps only via e-mail and voice
mail.
Target
audience
Leadership
teams of various levels, supervisors, managers, senior executives, or board
members. Less than 20 persons is the ideal size.
Time
60–90
minutes
Materials
One
copy of Daniel Goleman’s “What Makes a Leader?” sent in advance to
participants coming to the program. Postcards, one for each participant.
Procedure
1.
Assign as pre-course reading Daniel Goleman’s article “What Makes a
Leader?” (Harvard Business Review, Reprint
98606*).
This builds the business case for taking group time to uncover salient aspects
of each of our cultures and how these affect our ability to meet or exceed
individual and group performance objectives and organizational goals, and to
carry out our roles as leaders.
2. Following
the statement of course goals and learning outcomes, provide each participant
with a standard-size postcard. Ask them to write the name of a person in their
organization on the back of card. Tell them that the organizational role or
reporting relationship of that person to the participant is not important: The
person should simply be someone they have difficulty working with: peer, board
member, team member, or subordinate. The cards are then put away temporarily
in the back of their binders.
3. Depending
on the weather and the location, encourage participants to take a 30- to
40-minute focused walk with one other person, describing along the way one
major family-of-origin rule and how that rule impacts their professional
capacity as leaders today.
4. Ask
them while they are walking to dissect the usually unspoken childhood rules in
their families with as much depth and detail as they can. Tell them to help
one another by asking probing questions such as: “How does that family rule
impact your interactions with your partners in India or Malaysia, or the
Serbian-Americans working under you?”
5. Model
the activity by telling them about your own family-of-origin experience. Let
them ask you a few probing questions. Here is the author’s example:
As
a child, I attended parties with the Chinese part of my family. All the small
children would be put together in one corner of the room and told to be very
good (read: very quiet). The very old ladies and very old men sat in the other
parts of the room, chatting amongst themselves in their native dialects. The
mothers scurried about, organizing and preparing food before serving it. The
fathers were usually outside, speaking loudly and powerfully (so it seemed to
us, anyway).
If
any of us children spoke too loudly or were too frisky, it usually only took a
singular parental look in our direction to quickly quiet us down. That one
look spoke volumes to us.
I
was good at sitting quietly. However, my mind was constantly in need of
stimulation. So, starting at an early age, I entertained myself by becoming an
observer of adult behavior, nuances, and systems, trying to make sense of them
for myself. As I grew, I studied human behavior formally and also fine-tuned
the art of perceiving the emotional tone of any group of people (regardless of
their overt behavior). I now can swiftly size up individuals and groups, and
make quick, accurate strategic decisions based on this skill. This one
culture-based rule from my childhood now serves my clients well.
The
downside of this unconscious childhood rule was that as a young professional,
I wasn’t sure that I had “cultural permission” to speak up and assert my
observations and assessments. Indeed I was expected to, but an unconscious
childhood message quietly whispered, “Am I one of the grown-ups yet? May I
speak now?” This dynamic showed itself most clearly when I had to challenge
the opinions of an elder (in age or in status). I called these less-functional
embedded messages the “bugs” from my “cultural software, version 1.0.”
Debrief
(20–30 minutes)
-
Upon
returning, ask each pair to report to the whole group what they learned
about themselves and their partner, and how their childhood programming
(“version 1.0”) continues to operate in a year-2000+ system. Ask them
to describe what they need in order to upgrade (change) their roles as
leaders of global or domestically diverse work groups.
-
Sometimes
the trainer can almost see the bulbs lighting up over participants’
heads: “Ah-ha! Do you mean my dad forcing me to compete so compulsively
(‘Son, getting second place just means you’re the first place
loser’) has contributed to making me the most hated manager in my
division, even though we consistently exceed our quarterly goals?”
Option
In
longer leadership team-development sessions, participants form small groups
and then investigate their parents’ generation as well. How was their
behavior toward us unconsciously adaptive in their family? What was it
within our parents’ generation that encouraged the idiosyncratic family
systems in the first place? Encourage curiosity and ask participants to
share what they know about the era or “old country” cultures of each
other’s families.
-
Then
shift the group awareness activity to their organizational culture. How
did the original unspoken rules for acceptance and success begin? How were
they adaptive when the organization first started? Which of them are
considered best-practices now? Are there “rules” posted in the lobby
as organizational values that are not yet practiced by its leaders? What
does this group of leaders plan to do about operationalizing a new release
of “organizational cultural software for 2000+”?
-
When
this is done, ask participants to take out their postcards and look at the
name of that “irritating person” on the back of the card. In a private
20 to 30 minute exercise, ask them to write down what aspects of their own
family cultural experience trigger the “irritation button” toward that
person. What early message surfaces about “those kinds of folks” or
how we should behave around them? Is it like my perennial “children
should be seen and not heard” message? Is it something Grandpa Jason
used to say when he smelled a certain type of food? Is it rank or age or
birth order or a response to authority?
-
Lastly,
ask participants to jot on the back of their postcards several bullet
points from this last self-discovery activity, and then address the cards
to themselves before handing them to the trainer. The trainer will mail
them back to participants in about three weeks, after writing a few words
of support or encouragement immediately after the program.
Cross-cultural
Team Building
Diversity
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