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[00:00:05] I would like to acknowledge the Dharawal people, the Aboriginal people of Australia, whose country I live and work on. I would like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and thank them for sharing their cultural knowledge and awareness with us.

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[00:00:45] Trisha: Hi there everyone. I'm Trisha Carter, an organizational psychologist and explorer of cultural intelligence. I'm on a bit of a quest to discover what enables us to see things from different perspectives. Especially different cultural perspectives and why sometimes it's easier than others to experience those moments of awareness, the shifts in our thinking today, I am thrilled to welcome my friend and colleague, Hanlie van Wyk a systems thinker. Social scientist and cultural insights advisor whose work spans continents and cultures. Hanlie's journey began in South Africa and has taken her to the United Kingdom, Singapore, and now the United States, where she helps leaders design human eco cultures and navigate cross-cultural collaboration.

[00:01:36] She's almost completed her PhD in psychology any day now with a focus on organizational change, conflict management, and violence prevention. And she has been accepted into the 2026 CQ Fellows. Yay, Hanlie and I recently co-presented at the A.P.S. The Australian Psychological Society's Conference, and we presented on increasing cultural intelligence to foster workplace inclusion and community cohesion.

[00:02:07] We have stuff to unpack from that and so much more. Hanlie, welcome to the shift.

[00:02:12] Hanlie: Hey Trisha. Lovely to be here.

[00:02:14] Trisha: And before we dive into our conversation, I'd like to remind our listeners that cultural intelligence covers four key areas, motivational, the CQ Drive, cognitive, the CQ Knowledge, metacognitive CQ Strategy, and Behavioral cq Action. And on this podcast we particularly focus on the metacognitive aspects. That means thinking about our thinking. And today with Hanlie, we're gonna explore how these elements come together in her fascinating work across cultures. So Hanlie, what is a culture other than the culture you grew up in, that you have learned to love and appreciate?

[00:02:55] Hanlie: I was thinking a lot about that when you posed the question. And I think it, I'm gonna say Hawaii.

[00:03:01] Trisha: Okay.

[00:03:02] Hanlie: I landed in Hawaii first. When I moved to the US for a project there and I spent nine months there and I was absolutely fascinated by the strength of their culture, the cohesion of their culture and strong cultural identity that is significantly different to that of mainland us.

[00:03:22] Trisha: Of course.

[00:03:23] Hanlie: It's also there that I got exposed to the Japanese culture because there's a very strong Japanese influence on the island as well. And I found that very fascinating. And for the Hawaiian culture, what amazed me was there were so many interesting similarities with the African cultures in terms of very community and relationship based the way that they saw time.

[00:03:48] And so, in a strange way, it was familiar but very unfamiliar. And I really loved how they honored and celebrated their culture. Because that's not really something that, you know, I would typically do with my own culture. And so that for me was beautiful to see and I really appreciated that about the Hawaiian culture.

[00:04:08] Trisha: Yeah, I love that. And I think for me, I can sort of, identify, because I think Pacifica cultures would be at the top of my list. I certainly have that sense of China as well because of the time spent there, but the Pacifica cultures, because you know, in New Zealand the Maori culture is the, tangata whenua, or the people of the land and you know, they would trace back.

[00:04:30] Their connections to Hawaii So very much understand how you could connect to the joys there. So our second standard question, Hanlie, is can you tell me about a time when you experienced the shift, when you suddenly became aware of a new perspective?

[00:04:49] Hanlie: In South Africa for about five years. We did a longitudinal study going around the country and physically interviewing victims of hate crime or what is now called a hate crime. And there were a few instances during that time in which my perspective was like fundamentally shifted,

[00:05:10] And one that stood out for me and that I remember to this day was interviewing the woman who was sharing stories about during childbirth or any difficulties they were having during pregnancies and going to the hospitals or the clinics.

[00:05:29] The way that they were neglected or mistreated in those instances, in those healthcare spaces where you would be expecting something completely different, Right. And having absolutely no recourse. And that for me was such a big shift in my perspective of believing that healthcare places, you know, are reasonably fair and will treat everyone you know, kind of equally and make sure that people are taken care of no matter what.

[00:05:58] But the level of neglect and. Lack of care that they got and pure victimization in some instances for me was so shocking that it actually galvanized me doing my PhD. And got me through that.

[00:06:14] Trisha: I can understand it would've been difficult to hear and then difficult to support them as they were telling their stories. And yeah, you probably had the sense of connection to them and then recognizing the system of which, you know, you were a representative of. So that's really hard to think about, you know, standing there as part of that system and hearing those stories and, I mean, in the sense that then it galvanized you into to doing what you've done. You spoke about that powerfully at our A.P.S. Conference presentation about the work that you did on, you know, south Africa's hate crime law. Can you share some of that experience with our listeners?

[00:06:54] Hanlie: So it started, I think in 2009 or 10, where we were approached by a not-for-profit organization saying there are these spikes of hate crime or hate victimization in South Africa, specifically aimed at that time to towards foreign nationals. You know, subsequently a lot of information also came out, and it's still happening all across the world, you know, against L-G-B-T-Q folks or folks with disabilities and so on.

[00:07:22] But their particular concern was refugees. 'cause that's the space in which they worked. And so they were looking for data from the university to say, now do we know how often this happens, what the prevalence is, the incidences are? And there was just no information because even though South Africa has a very progressive constitution there are no particular laws against any of these kinds of behaviors.

[00:07:46] And so. We took it on ourselves as part of the university and the Hate Crimes working group to actually gather data from different sources in different provinces in South Africa in order to create this foundational database that we could take to the government to lobby for those laws. So it was a five year study.

[00:08:07] We gathered 946 cases in the end and then the Hate Crimes working group with different representatives. A very multi multidisciplinary group took it to the government, and over time the government crafted the laws and the, and that law is now on the desk of the president and we hope that he will sign it into an act this year.

[00:08:29] So it was really gratifying to see that work. That we did over a long period of time. 15 years actually gets to where it needs to be. And hopefully that will make a difference to, you know, those, the people that we interviewed that had that impact on me that I mentioned earlier.

[00:08:46] Trisha: So how has that experience of interviewing all those people, listening to those stories shaped your understanding of cultural intelligence and its importance, you know, in terms of, I guess, preventing or working against the sort of hate and bias, and how does that fit together?

[00:09:05] Hanlie: So, you know, we were working on the end where it was happening. I was trying to work my way back, trying to understand how do we get here,

[00:09:14] you know, what are the behaviors, the scenarios, the situations, the environments that create this, these kinds of conditions in which this is even possible.

[00:09:24] And what was very helpful for me in that time to get my head around it, was the A.D.L. Anti-Defamation League have got something called the Pyramid of Hate. And it is a pyramid that shows how these foundational behaviors that don't seem very serious, you know, are typical like biases and stereotypes and generalizing and so on. Can sometimes kind of go up a level and become a little bit more like microaggressions and you know, telling the kind of jokes that probably you shouldn't be telling. You know, all those kinds of things that are, listen, just a little bit more barbed. I call them the little foxes. Those little things that just catch people and that can sort of lead up to the next level where violence.

[00:10:09] Becomes a way of being, like discrimination is expressed in violence and very often also in a systemic way. So it may be, you know, in organizations, in laws and policies of the country and so on. And if that is left unchecked and it becomes a way of of the culture to.

[00:10:30] To violently exclude people, and that's left unchecked.

[00:10:35] My belief is that's the kind of thing that can then lead to hate victimization. And if that's left unchecked, it can lead perhaps even to things like genocide

[00:10:43] or what they call this concept of slow genocide, right? Like just slowly eroding an entire culture away, an entire way of being away. So I think cultural intelligence plays an.

[00:10:58] Absolutely fundamental role in those beginning stages because I think if it's used for us to be proximus to each other and to learn about each other and to understand these differences and make space for that and create more than tolerance, acceptance and a healthy, cohesive society, it's much less likely for the rest of that to then escalate to the point where we are dealing with hate victimization.

[00:11:24] Trisha: that makes perfect sense. And for listeners, we will put the link to the A.D.L. Pyramid in the show notes so that you can see it. Represented pictorially, although Hanlie did explain it very well there to me it makes sense thinking about it even, because often I use cq, the model as a sort of a mnemonic in my head to jump through as I'm coaching people or as I'm training, and I'll be thinking, you know, they really need to increase their drive towards this group of people. You know? So what could help motivate them feel more positively towards this group of people to lean in to this group that they.

[00:12:03] They see as the other, if you like, or what's some knowledge that could help them or you know, what are they thinking in their heads? What are the biases? And then, you know, what's some of the action that we can take? So the model really helps me as I'm looking at the people in front of me and thinking about them.

[00:12:19] And I can see, as you were saying, that I could see thinking about that model and thinking it through. And so, yeah, we can sort of see links to how organizations can use that in a way. In your LinkedIn profile, you mentioned that you help leaders design human eco cultures. Can you explain what you mean by that term and how it might connect to, you know, the sorts of things we're talking about here?

[00:12:44] Hanlie: So I believe that any culture is an ecosystem, and so I call them eco cultures, just like you have, you know, your traditional. Ecosystem in nature.

[00:12:54] This is how humans in my view, also function. There are many of us, there are different ways in which we interact with each other. There are different functions that we all have in communities and societies, and I do think that they often arise organically or if you like naturally, and some of that is healthy and some of that is not.

[00:13:17] In an organization, I feel that you have an opportunity to be more proactive and design that ecoculture in that organization by creating the conditions in which you decide as a leadership team or you know, based on your values of the organization, how to interact with each other, how to be with each other you know how to resolve differences, et cetera.

[00:13:43] So that's part of the work that I do is to make sure that when we engage with organizations small or large, that the leadership team is begins to think of their culture as an ecoculture into which they have actual agency and everyone else in the organization also, but they're the leaders. So know they have to go first.

[00:14:05] Trisha: I was just. In a coaching session with a leader this week, and he said something along the lines of changing an organizational culture is like, I can't remember the analogy he used, but it was sort of like trying to stop a truck going really fast. You know, you can't do it overnight.

[00:14:19] He was sort of saying how hard it is that sense of achieving the change you're talking about. So do you think looking at it as an ecosystem enables. You just see it differently 'cause you're not trying to see the whole thing that you have to change. You can see parts of it. Do you think that's part of how it helps?

[00:14:40] Hanlie: I think it, it helped, it depends on how you look at the world, right?

[00:14:44] You know, if you, some people are naturally more big picture views. Some people are a little bit, you know, more detailed views and both of them are very valid and very important. It's moving between the two that I find is where, you know, a lot of that kind of intelligence comes from.

[00:14:59] So when you are trying to make these changes, I think it helps you be patient because these changes don't happen overnight. We don't decide today that it's gonna be like that tomorrow, and then it's like that tomorrow. But you have to change the behavior. The behavior has to become a habit. You have to continuously encourage people to practice those behaviors so that it becomes part of the way we do things around here.

[00:15:24] And I believe that if you look at it as an ecosystem or an ecoculture, you'll have a little bit more patience with it, knowing that it's probably gonna take Yeah. a year.. For you to get there. And you have to keep your eye on the ball.

[00:15:37] Trisha: at least I would say yeah, that's right. It's a big thing. The conference that we spoke at, you spoke about. Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory, which I think many of the people in the audience weren't completely familiar with. And at that point I could see people sitting up and a lot of people taking pictures of the slide, you know how it is.

[00:15:57] Not that they weren't sitting up while I was speaking about cultural intelligence my friends. Don't get me wrong. But could you explain to our listeners, I guess, how this framework is fitting into what you're saying about the ecosystem, and also we can put that diagram into the show notes as well to help people think.

[00:16:14] Hanlie: Of course. And yes, the original ecological systems theory comes out of the human development, so very focused on children and child development. But I found it such an. Such a helpful way of looking at the world and looking at problems through that lens that I borrowed it to, you know, to make, to help people make those connections and to help me make those connections.

[00:16:40] So it's these five nested environmental layers, if you like, or yeah, five layers. There is, in the middle is the individual. Around that is the microsystem, which is sort of immediate relationship. The Miso system, which is connections between these microsystems and Exosystem, which are more indirect influences, and that could include things like media, a macrosystem, which are the cultural values within that system

[00:17:12] and then the final layer is a chrono system, so historical context. Which I think is so key and so important and often sort of maybe forgotten about a little bit.

[00:17:25] Trisha: Absolutely.

[00:17:26] Hanlie: And I think if we continuously look at the world through these different layers in the system, it helps us sort of plug where we're at and where our attention and our intentions might go when we're working, especially cross-culturally, right?

[00:17:44] Trisha: And so many people want to simplify things and just see the issue as between two people and we as psychologists can see so much more, and social scientists as well because is Bronfenbrenner, a psychologist, I think, Came more from the social science side. I think. I think one of the interesting things, and when we spoke about this in our presentation at the A.P.S., is that so often.

[00:18:10] Psychology thinks it's either or. So you're either thinking about society or you're thinking about individuals. And as organizational psychologists, we are merging those together because we are thinking about the system of the organization. We are thinking about achieving individual change and we are working between all those aspects that you spoke about and recognizing that the organization has its history, in time, but it also sits within the history of the place where it is. And so sometimes organizations which might. Be moving into another culture or maybe they're already established in another culture, but they may never have acknowledged the history of that place and the relevance of the history of that place to what happens inside the organization.

[00:18:59] We do hope they have thought about the culture of that place, but we're also aware that some organizations who are working multi nationally don't always blend the culture of place for the different places that they are. In a way that is helpful to the individuals as well. And so being able to take that complexity and see it is probably helpful.

[00:19:20] But we recognize that many people probably struggle to think at that level. So I guess that's somewhere where we can be helpful to people. you've worked yourself in lots of different places, lots of different countries. You've lived South Africa, the uk, Singapore, the USA you spoke before about the nine months in, in Hawaii. Tell us a bit about those different working experiences and how navigating the different cultural context has sort of influenced the work that you're doing.

[00:19:50] Hanlie: It was very interesting when I started doing a little bit of training in the CQ model that, I think the travel and the exposure certainly helped me. I think with the first three, and you can certainly correct me here, which is like the motivational one, the cognitive one, and the me metacognitive one, right? So drive knowledge, strategy because you know, obviously you learn about cultures as you go there. You have to learn how to adapt. You have to modify your language, you have to buy different things. You have to find, you know, a pharmacy that.

[00:20:22] It doesn't look the same as the pharmacy you know, and so on.

[00:20:24] So I think in all of those things, but what surprised me when I was doing the training is that I had to keep on working on the CQ action piece.

[00:20:35] And I use a change model for that as well, because I found the prompts very helpful to try and really down and check in with people and see how, what I'm saying or not saying is landing on their side and what the interpretation is.

[00:20:50] So that piece for me was really interesting because I think I tend to adapt, but I forget that other people are also trying to adapt to me as I'm moving in that driven context. Right. So, so it, it was kind of a fun thing to, to go through the model and have that realization as well.

[00:21:07] Trisha: And listeners who listen to the last episode will be thinking about the pause model that I introduced, which is helping people to stop and think in those moments where you might be with somebody who's different to you. And I think we were setting that pause model within the context of the, you know, CQ strategy and metacognition.

[00:21:28] 'cause it is, it starts in your thinking and then. It will blend into your action. And so what happens at the end is that the e for engagement, authentic engagement means that you are then operating and acting in a way that's more about the other person than about the traditional ways that you would automatically have behaved before.

[00:21:50] So yeah, I love that, that you're thinking, you were thinking so much about engagement and the behaviors in the different places.

[00:21:56] Hanlie: So the other tendency that I learned about myself through the work that I'm doing is that I think because of the history of South Africa and the 1994 transition into a democratically run government. Elected and run government country. There was a big move towards finding common ground because there was, we, you know, we were so fractured and so far apart and so the whole thing was trying to find common ground in all different ways. And perhaps, you know, your listeners will remember that like the rugby was a very big deal in bringing the country together and there was a whole movie made about and so on, right?

[00:22:38] So. I think it was that made me realize that I'm functioning off of that as a way of being in the world trying to find those commonalities. But in that I might be missing a lot of the very important nuances and differences. Not that I'm not aware of them, I'm just not really engaging them with them because I'm trying to find this common ground the whole time.

[00:22:59] And so that was interesting and that expanded my thinking into saying, well, how do we look at research? Are we looking at research in a very particular way? And I then came across this concept of weird, which was very interesting saying, you know, our lenses are very much that, of looking at the world and research through a very western lens, a very sort of educated lens.

[00:23:26] And if you look at where all our education comes from in the western world, and it actually has one root.

[00:23:31] Right. And often these countries are industrial. They're reasonably rich. More often than not, they're democratic

[00:23:39] Trisha: Listeners, that is where the word weird comes from. W-E-I-R-D. It's not that Hanlie is saying that we are weird in these cultures, but it is the mnemonic is that this is the research is misrepresentative of the world. Sorry for interrupting.

[00:23:57] Hanlie: No, not at all. And so, you know, if you are interested in that and understanding. As a researcher or as a scholar or someone who's just a psychologist that's interested in that, it might be worth reading a little bit of that work. You know, of course there are people who have opposing views and have a critical lens towards that, but it's, I think it's still very expansive to just make yourself realize that we shouldn't necessarily look at all the research and the facts.

[00:24:23] So-called in In British common.

[00:24:26] Trisha: Where do those facts come from? right. right. Yeah.

[00:24:30] And so talking about research, I'm fascinated by your current PhD research on, you know, combining sort of organizational change, conflict resolution, and the violence prevention. Can you give us a snapshot of the work that you've done and what you've found over this time?

[00:24:48] Hanlie: So my PhD focused on trying to develop a framework or guidelines for psychological organizations and specifically membership organizations like the APAs, like the a PA and so on, like SAS

[00:25:02] Trisha: These are psychology organizations. And what was the last one you referenced? South African.

[00:25:07] Hanlie: South African society. Yeah. So any of the national membership organizations that exist to which psychologists belong. To create a framework for them and specifically for the leaders who play a role in guiding a lot of the strategy, the policies, and have a lot of connections often also with policymakers.

[00:25:28] So for me, they straddle beautifully, the individual psychologist, right through to the policymaker and the systems, because I felt if I could offer them something with which they could. Create more of these, conditions. I call them Ubuntu, like conditions, right to remedy conflict, to teach cultural sensitivity and appropriateness, that might be one avenue to addressing any of the violence that might.

[00:25:59] Spill over in society and the societies in which they exist and give them some of the tools to help psychologists, but also policy makers and practitioners and scientists a lot of the victimized hate victimization that we see in many of our communities nowadays.

[00:26:17] Trisha: Well, we hope that work continues. And it's so important That is recognized at the level of those organizations, especially those ones who are focused on the people supporting the people and setting the standards and the competencies for the people who are caring and responsible for the mental health of society in so many ways.

[00:26:38] And. For those of us who are organizational psychologists, you know, responsible for working within organizations and seeing organizations through those lenses as well.

[00:26:49] Hanlie: I tried really hard to bring a transnational lens as w ell. So I started my work in South Africa, but then I. Also did research in the us in Columbia and in Ireland. And then most recently I started working with the European Federation of psychology. The Student Association has a research summer school every year.

[00:27:09] And if any of you want to be volunteer supervisors for that, they're always looking every year they're looking. But it was great because it allowed me to have a cohort of 10 students from all over Europe. Each of them did their own research on their country of origin and their country of residence, because often they were, those were two different things, I would say nine out of 10.

[00:27:33] And that really expanded our resource base to 24 countries where we could really have a robust discussion about how is psychology different in each country? What is the ratio of psychologists. In those country to population, how easily might a victim of hate find a resource? You know, would it be a psychological resource or a civil society resource?

[00:27:55] You know, if they've been if they've been victimized. You know, and looking at those different countries and the cultures and understanding was for me a very expanding and exciting experience.

[00:28:07] Trisha: And expanding and exciting for you individually from that real big picture perspective of seeing how things are and seeing how things sometimes are shifting and sometimes where you want things to shift

[00:28:21] Hanlie: Right, And I think also it was about legacy, right? Like, like making sure that young people in psychology who are passionate about it. and Care about competent care across cultures because often they third generation

[00:28:37] culture kids. Right. You know, they are, you know, one of, one of my students was from Vietnamese extraction, but living in Czechoslovakia.

[00:28:47] So you know all the nuances around that. Because they are gonna be the leaders one day. They are gonna be the people who are gonna take us forward. And I'm hoping to give them some exposure into that so that they can deepen the work

[00:29:02] we go along.

[00:29:03] Trisha: Fantastic. So, so in lots of ways we are looking at membership organizations of psychologists and their actual, like multinational organizations. You know, we don't really think of them usually like that, but they are, you've done a lot of work in MNC. So, if we are thinking about.

[00:29:20] Them and coming back to that individual lens again, what are the most common shift moments that you see leaders experiencing when they begin to, you know, develop greater cultural intelligence and see things differently?

[00:29:37] Hanlie: I see the greatest shift when they realize that actions speak louder than

[00:29:43] words. You know, leaders are smart, they're knowledgeable, they're aware. They know about many of these things, but I think when they fully grasp that what they do matters to such an extent, to those around them, their peers, and everyone in the organization, and they begin to change their behaviors as a result of that is the shift that I see that I think is also one of the most impactful shifts.

[00:30:15] That a behavior change is not a habit. You know, you can't do it just for three weeks and think that it's done. The understanding that this should be a new way of leading, a new way, of being a new, of engaging that's when I see the biggest shift.

[00:30:32] Trisha: Yeah, and embedding that within an organization is hard work. So you can have that shift and then you've got to follow up with embedding it as a habit, not just within the individual leader, but also within the organization. Yeah. Lots of work to be done. What advice Hanlie would you give someone who's hoping to follow in your footsteps?

[00:30:55] Hanlie: It is so interesting. I had this exact conversation with the 10 students that I had that I have

[00:31:01] now. And the encouragement that I always give them is, be brave. 'cause you know, you need to be brave, you need to be persistent,

[00:31:11] Forge your own path because often we try new things. I'm trying something new.

[00:31:16] It doesn't fit very tightly, neatly into all the little boxes. So try something new. You know, forge your own way. It's okay, you know? And you know, don't forget to, just, don't forget to be kind, be kind to everyone around you and do what you can to make the world, your world, a better world to be in.

[00:31:36] Trisha: that is fantastic. And as you look at your life, the people you've worked with, your family community, and look at the future, what are you hoping for?

[00:31:48] Hanlie: Right now I hope that we can be reasonable revolutionaries.

[00:31:52] Trisha: Reasonable revolutionaries. I love it.

[00:31:55] Hanlie: It's my new favorite phrase. I'm like, I wanna be a revolutionary, but I don't know if I can be a real revolutionary. So I'm hoping that I can find a way to be a reasonable revolutionary and that the community around me can find ways to do that Also.

[00:32:09] Trisha: I love that. We need to look for ways to do that. We need to, yeah. We won't talk about guillotines and things like that. Yeah. Hey. Well thank you Hanlie. It's been great to talk today. I'm looking forward to the work that you will do and I'm looking forward to the work that you and I will do together in what we've you know, been doing over the last few years, but especially what we started with the A.P.S. Just recently.

[00:32:37] And yeah. We will be brave and we will be kind and we will forge a path. So thank you for that encouragement and thank you listeners for being a part of the shift today. Cultural intelligence is something that we develop together, and as you've heard from Hanlie and I, we've developed and merged thinking through different ways.

[00:32:57] These conversations are part of that. Shared learning journey. And if you can think of someone that you could share this with and that might help you to work well with them in a sense of building your own cultural journey, please do share. And don't forget to follow us on your preferred podcast platform and join us next week on the shift.

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