[00:00:00] Trisha: 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.

[00:00:14] Trisha: Hi there everyone. I'm Trisha Carter, an organizational psychologist and an explorer of cultural intelligence. I'm on 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.

[00:00:59] Trisha: the shifts in thinking. For those of you who've listened to some of the earlier episodes, you'll know that cultural intelligence, CQ, the capability to be effective in situations of diversity, is made up of four areas. We've got motivational, the drive, cognitive, the knowledge, metacognitive, the strategy, and behavioral, the action.

[00:01:23] Trisha: And all four of these capabilities can help us to be effective in situations of diversity. And in this podcast, we're focusing more on the metacognitive aspect. So we're thinking about our thinking and it's called CQ strategy. Today's guest is another CQ fellow, this time from the 2024 cohort. Mikkel Olovsky is a diversity and inclusion professional with a specific focus on integrating D& I into HR processes in global organizations.

[00:01:56] Trisha: He's worked as an internal consultant in both public and private organizations and now works in his own consulting business. His background is in intercultural psychology and communication, experienced in a range of HR tools, psychometric capabilities, systemic consulting, and training and education within strategy and leadership development.

[00:02:21] Trisha: And I have it on good authority that he is keen on football as It's great to have this time to talk in depth about CQ training and helping others to build their cultural intelligence. Welcome to Mikkel Orlovski

[00:02:34] Mikkel: Thank you so much, Trisha.

[00:02:36] Trisha: It's wonderful to have you here. I should probably add that Mikkel is originally from Denmark. He has family from the Balkans and he's lived and worked in France. So, uh, bringing a lot of cultures here to the picture. Um, I'm really curious today to unpack the CQ training that Mikkel delivers, what makes it powerful and how he helps people shift in their thinking.

[00:02:57] Trisha: But first, let's ask the questions that we ask all our guests. So Mikkel, what is a culture, other than the culture you grew up in, that you have learned to love and appreciate?

[00:03:08] Mikkel: Well, it's, well, basically, I think we can start with the surname, because, you know, you, you, you aced them both, both the first name and the surname. Very nicely done. They're from two very, very different cultures. So the first name is Mikkel. It's, it's very Danish. The surname is, is Orlovski, which is very, Macedonian.

[00:03:27] Mikkel: And, North Macedonia is this little, country in, in, in the Balkans, as, as you mentioned. And I think that the Orlovski is actually not my own name. So when I was born, I was called Kristensen, which is a very Danish name. But then I met my lovely wife, Tanja, 20 years ago. We got married and I looked at her name and I thought, this is going to give me a huge boost.

[00:03:47] Mikkel: in where I want to work in my consultancy because being an Orlovski is so much more exotic and interesting in Denmark than being a Kristensen. So, you know, that was my first culturally intelligent move. I think strategically there. But I think that that, That's actually not even the first place. I think that there's a couple of situations, I think, in terms of really embracing a new culture, that, that is obviously it.

[00:04:10] Mikkel: So half my family is, is, first or second generation North Macedonian living in Denmark, and then obviously, I've inherited or I've been married into this beautiful family in Macedonia as well, which are, you know, all over the place as, as, you and I just talked about when we, when we started the call, I visited Australia because I have family there or she has family there all over Europe.

[00:04:31] Mikkel: So, and I think one of the places or one of the feelings that I started having with this North Macedonian family and what it kind of means to be a part of a much more, uh, collectivist type of family than the individual types that we have up here in the, in the cold north that I've really brought in, even to my consultancy is the way that they embrace family members, you know, the way that they just immediately say you're part of the family because you now not only are you married, but you also, you know, you've taken the name even.

[00:05:01] Mikkel: you're part of the family. Welcome, sit down and let me ask you 10, 000 questions and introduce you to everybody if I've ever met and tell you everything about what you need to know to be here. And by the way, there's food from here to You know, the end of the room, you can eat as much as we, you know, eat more, eat more.

[00:05:18] Mikkel: All of these things where you kind of feel that you're not just being taken care of, but you feel as if they, you know, they, they think that you're the most interesting person that's ever been born. And, um, up here in the North, we are very much the opposite. We feel that any type of formality or any type of, you know, putting people up on a pedestal, Is awkward and uncomfortable and weird and strange.

[00:05:44] Mikkel: So we do it very, you know, in the opposite way. If I wanted you to feel at home, when you come visit me at some point here in Copenhagen, I would probably make sure that I have no food ready and I'll probably ask you to go help me peel potatoes. So we can have a little bit of a chat in the kitchen

[00:06:01] Mikkel: because I want to take away all formality.

[00:06:03] Mikkel: I actually want you to feel as if you're basically just. coming home and you're a part of, so the ways that we make each other feel comfortable and welcome is so different. So I've, I've brought that into my consultancy because I want to train the Danes and the Northern Europeans on creating a little bit of fanfare.

[00:06:23] Mikkel: When you meet somebody new, do something that makes them feel welcome and interesting because we don't do that instinctively.

[00:06:29] Trisha: Yeah.

[00:06:29] Mikkel: think that's probably the biggest one, but I think that when I was a kid, I grew up in this city that for, um, that is, that is, you know, it's in Denmark, it's, it's the city with the highest level of, uh, of, of people coming with other cultural backgrounds than Danish.

[00:06:46] Mikkel: Right. So that's the nice way of saying that in the seventies, when, when we had a big push in terms of immigration, that was where they were all placed and that's where I grew up.

[00:06:56] Mikkel: So I just remember this. For me, it was fantastic seeing all these different names and skin colors and languages and foods and and um, yeah.

[00:07:07] Mikkel: So, so I think that that's what's, you know, the feeling of going home to my friends and just noticing things look completely different here. They talk to each other in a, you know, In a different way, and they make me feel welcome

[00:07:22] Mikkel: in a different way than, you know, than my family would, would, would do with my friends.

[00:07:25] Mikkel: So, so yeah. So I, you know, I would probably say the big Balkan thing obviously is, is the other culture that's in my, my life, 24 7. Um, but yeah, it's, it's been since childhood.

[00:07:36] Trisha: I love that. And how lovely to marry into a culture that you learn to love. I think, yeah, that's Really special. So can you tell me about a time when you experienced a shift, you know, when you suddenly became aware of a new perspective?

[00:07:52] Mikkel: Yeah. So again, I think probably a few times, um, the first time I remember, and I tell this story sometimes because obviously as you went through the, the, the drive and knowledge and strategy and action, you know, I always try to tie in a feeling. So create a feeling that associates with each one of these four different ones, because I feel that people really connect with it.

[00:08:14] Mikkel: So a story that I sometimes tell in terms of a cultural shift, the first time I met it. It was when I was eight years old and I went to a birthday party with one of my friends. His parents were originally Pakistani and had moved, of course, to Denmark, you know, maybe some years after he was born or, I don't know, you know, when he was young at least.

[00:08:33] Mikkel: And they had heard that at a Danish birthday party would have this birthday cake, you know, this traditional round cake with, you know, fruit and jams and then whipped cream on top. Or all over and then some candles, of course. And you would also serve French fries and sausages and stuff like that. Very Danish birthday party.

[00:08:50] Mikkel: So they had heard these things, but they hadn't quite, um, been told what the structure was. So they had taken this birthday cake, this layer cake, and then chopped up French fries and sausages and put on top of the layer cake, which looked strange. But I just remember the feeling of thinking, this is.

[00:09:08] Mikkel: Amazing, you know, not just does it fulfill, you know, criteria in terms of efficiency, you know, which is a big Danish trait, you know, the idea that we can do more things at the same time. But it looked fun and I really wanted to taste it. It did not taste very well. So it wasn't a big success, but I just remember that feeling of thinking I'm so thankful that these people try to do something that mimics what I would usually do and then created something that was slightly different because I had this feeling that what if it had tasted good I would otherwise never have tasted it.

[00:09:43] Mikkel: If they hadn't kind of mixed these cultures up, these, these things. So that was probably the first time that I remember it just clicked in my brain that other people do stuff differently, and that can be interesting. And then I started really looking for it, you know, and it's the same when I look at, you know, for instance, my surname.

[00:10:00] Mikkel: that I now have. I remember from when I was a kid, that I would always be able to guess where people were from based on their name. So not just, you know, big regions, you would probably guess Orlovski you would say, Oh, Russia's, you know, Russian, Polish, but had it been Russian, it would have ended with a Y had it been Ukrainian, it would have ended with an I and then a Y had it been Polish, there would have been, you know, double amount of letters would have a W's and C's and sets in there.

[00:10:26] Mikkel: And I just remember that as a kid, I would walk around and try to guess where people were from. And if I could guess where people were from, I would know a little bit more about what type of behavior might they have. What would they probably prefer in ways of talking and discussing and kind of, yeah. So that was my first, I think, shift.

[00:10:45] Mikkel: The second one was. That was probably when I, and which was also kind of, uh, foundational in terms of my approach to how I teach CQ is that I, uh, we had our, we got married, Tanya and I, in, in 27, you know, 2007. And we had a big wedding, uh, 200 people, which is a small wedding for Macedonians. A very big wedding for Danes.

[00:11:09] Mikkel: But about 200 people. But not everybody was able to join us up here. There's a Macedonian church in Malmo in Sweden, just across. the, the bridge there. So, so we went to Macedonia also to have a little celebration and we had invited everybody to meet us in the restaurant at seven o'clock. And at seven o'clock, my, I was there, my wife, father in law, mother in law, sister in law.

[00:11:29] Mikkel: And I just remember taking this picture, taking this photo that I still kind of carry around with me just to remind myself, because I take a photo of at a very long empty table

[00:11:39] Mikkel: with absolutely no guests and I, that photo is taken at 8 45, so almost two hours after we had invited the guests. Now, as a Danish person, I just remember this idea, a complete panic, you know, after, after five minutes, I'm thinking, you know, Oh no, the food is going to get cold after 10 minutes.

[00:11:59] Mikkel: I'm thinking, you know, why hasn't anybody sent a text message? Saying that they were late after 15 minutes. I'm like, okay, something's wrong. You know, they must be on the same bus and that bus has keeled over somewhere and that they can't get out and how awful. and after an hour and a half, I'm like, I'm really thinking, obviously they're not coming.

[00:12:19] Mikkel: So I'm starting to think it must be because they're protesting this wedding, you know, they're demonstrating their, you know, they don't want this weird Danish guy in their family. They're all of these things coming. Yeah, absolutely. And then a few minutes after I take that photo, I, I, and I take the photo because I'm panicking.

[00:12:34] Mikkel: I'm flustered. I'm all, you know, it feels awkward. I don't want to have that conversation, sit down, ask my wife where they are. And she tells me, well, yeah, you can, as you can see, you probably have to leave. And go home by yourself or something. You know, that's all of those panicky, desperate thoughts I have in my head.

[00:12:49] Mikkel: And then I go into the kitchen again, just to pretend to do something, walking around a little bit. And I noticed that there's nobody in the kitchen either. And the staff, obviously they don't know who I am. So why shouldn't they be there? So go out and, you know, as you mentioned in the intro, I've studied intercultural psychology.

[00:13:06] Mikkel: So I should know something about culture. And I think that I have this culturally very, you know, very culturally intelligent question that I can ask my wife. So I asked her, what's wrong with your weird family, which is Not necessarily the best. We'll get into that later. Not necessarily the most productive way of starting a conversation on culture, but she just basically just pats me on the back and sits me down and says, just, you know, don't worry about it.

[00:13:27] Mikkel: There's nobody's going to be here for at least another half hour. And then, you know, nine 30, two and a half hours after that, I thought we would have been sitting down eating. The kitchen staff shows up, starts cooking at about 10, 10, 15 family starts dropping by coming in, sitting down, giving me a huge hug and, you know, asking me all of these questions and just making me feel really, really, you know.

[00:13:48] Mikkel: Good and happy. Nobody mentions that, you know, that they're late. They just come in and start, you know, no at 11 o'clock, everybody's there. And then we start. And then about maybe 10, 15 minutes. After everybody's actually sat down a band comes in and starts playing music and then everybody gets up starts dancing and then we dance for the next eight hours and everything was fantastic.

[00:14:08] Mikkel: It was a beautiful evening, but I just remember that panic

[00:14:12] Mikkel: and everything that I had taught myself and learned and read through books should have prepared me for that situation. I should have known, you know, time orientation, you know, it's different. But all the feelings that I had, especially because it was an important situation, it was a wedding.

[00:14:27] Mikkel: So, you know, all those feelings just completely over, is it overrode? They, there was a, they didn't matter.

[00:14:36] Mikkel: Whatever thoughts I had was just completely overtaken by the emotions. And I tried to take that into my consultancy as well. Because if you don't, if you don't understand the feelings. And how it actually feels to be in a situation where your preferences aren't met, then you'll never be able to apply what you've learned.

[00:14:53] Mikkel: So you have to kind of figure out a way of getting those two. So that was probably this, the biggest shift for me was the, the idea that, okay, people are very different. And the most important thing for me is not learning about other cultures, it's learning to figure out myself first. And then how will I react when I'm in that

[00:15:12] Mikkel: situation?

[00:15:13] Trisha: and taking notice of that. And also when we often talk about, you know, that strategy component and metacognition, we talk about it as I defined it, which is thinking about your thinking, but in reality it often shows up as feelings like you said. And so it is also taking notice of your feelings and unpacking those feelings and recognizing what's going on from both an emotional as well as a cognitive perspective.

[00:15:39] Trisha: Yeah.

[00:15:40] Mikkel: Yeah,

[00:15:41] Trisha: It's complicated.

[00:15:43] Mikkel: it is. It's not, but it's fun.

[00:15:44] Mikkel: And that's the

[00:15:45] Mikkel: best part.

[00:15:45] Trisha: It's fun. So much fun. Okay. So let's turn to the training that you design and deliver. I think we know how you got into this work, but what do you think that you, you know, you really bring to it that sets your training apart as being different?

[00:16:00] Mikkel: I think, um, so I've been. I've had a different focus. So as you mentioned, I've been studying intercultural psychology, and I think that first and foremost, that put me on a path of trying to understand what is the differences between the feelings that we have around having a personality. Most of us have a personality somehow, and we, we feel that that personality is basically what dictates our behavior.

[00:16:22] Mikkel: But I think that many of us will probably also, especially if they're listening to this podcast, they will also recognize that culture does have quite a big influence on what we do as well. So I've tried to figure out what are the differences. In what it is that we do is when is it more the one or the other and how do you actually distinguish between the two when you meet somebody new?

[00:16:39] Mikkel: So that's always been my interest. So I started out relatively early doing, um, cultural analysis for organizations to trying to figure out, do the things that we say we do, do they match up? With the things that we actually do and even more importantly, how do they then match up with the strategies and the goals that we have and, you know, and, and, and discussions about employee wellbeing and so forth.

[00:17:01] Mikkel: And, and last a couple of years ago now I got a huge I've got a huge grant, to follow. To basically track a very culturally diverse organization for a year and a half. So we're coming up to the, to the, uh, to the conclusion here in, here in August. and track them to figure out what is it that makes an organization culturally intelligent.

[00:17:25] Mikkel: And in that process, I interviewed everybody in the organization and we tried to figure out what's going on. And I actually use, so the CQ model, the four different components, they use those to both analyze the individuals, but even more importantly, try to figure out what goes on with the organization.

[00:17:40] Mikkel: How do we see drive and knowledge and strategy and action taking place as organizational processes. And in that. I found out that especially they were very high on drive. They thought everybody was super interesting because they come from different places. They have diversity as. A very strong, you know, component of what they do there, you know, it's a, it's a medical research facility, lab, research unit, and, they wanted to have people that think differently.

[00:18:12] Mikkel: So they had a huge. desire to hire people that were different. So out of, I think there were 50 people there, probably 35 different nationalities. No one really had any majority, even not, not even the Danes. I actually think that there were more probably Italians or Iranians at some point than there were Danes.

[00:18:31] Mikkel: So a bunch of different people, all age groups, both, maybe I shouldn't say both, but two genders represented, which is, sometimes, especially in, in, In STEM science, that can be difficult to

[00:18:42] Mikkel: get.

[00:18:42] Trisha: Yes true.

[00:18:43] Mikkel: So I wanted to track that and figure out what was going on and what I found out drive was extremely high.

[00:18:49] Mikkel: Perfect. That's great. That's a great starting point. Action was actually also quite high. They had, they organized all of these, you know, uh, they wanted to make sure that people felt welcome, so they decided to have processes that were, you know, the welcoming package was quite, you know, elaborate. They were.

[00:19:06] Mikkel: Helping people out, you know, getting, getting to their offices and finding a place to stay and making friends, all these things, there had so many things also just day to day, they had, figured out a way of making everybody feel, included and, you know, the, on the first day you were in a meeting, the top person in the hierarchy, even though we don't talk a lot about hierarchies here, but they had understood that many people from the outside.

[00:19:31] Mikkel: Think that hierarchies are really important. So the first thing that a person would do from this organization would be to remember that the person who is the, you know, has the most stars on their shoulder in that specific meeting would have to ask the new one. So what do you think about all this? And get them included right away.

[00:19:46] Mikkel: It doesn't matter how old you are, if you're a first year PhD, or if you're a, whatever it is, it's about feeling that you're recognized and valued. So all of these things that we're doing great. However, it also turned out through the analysis that the knowledge and the strategy was basically, it wasn't really that developed.

[00:20:07] Mikkel: So they didn't really know why they were doing the things that they were doing. They didn't have any, while they had a huge curiosity. Towards people. They didn't really ask them any questions about their cultural background and their experiences and what they usually did in other labs in other places around the world.

[00:20:23] Mikkel: And they very specifically didn't want to use knowledge to plan for how to do things because they were afraid that they would be stereotyping people. If they said, well, you're from South Africa, that means that you probably have these preferences. They were so keen. On making sure that people didn't feel as if that they were being stereotyped that they kind of scrapped everything that had to do with knowledge and strategy.

[00:20:47] Mikkel: Um, and also just because I think that strategy is quite difficult, it's something where you have to sit down plan, you know, make sure that you have the right knowledge that you turn it into the right strategies and that those strategies can also turn into something that's actionable.

[00:21:03] Mikkel: It's actually quite a difficult process.

[00:21:05] Mikkel: So I decided that I wanted to focus on those 2 components. Um, and one of the things that came out of this cultural analysis was that they had a very big blind spot. That was, we have too many different ways of handling conflict and conflict is a very important part of research because if you don't, if you don't voice all perspectives, then you're not sure that you're actually creating momentum that you're hearing all the ideas.

[00:21:30] Mikkel: So that's one thing you need to have at this open forum where everybody can say exactly what they're thinking. But on the other hand, you have so many different ways of handling conflict because there's so many cultures. That people actually felt a little bit, they didn't know what to do with this.

[00:21:45] Mikkel: So, now one of the things that they had focused on, as I mentioned, very high drive and very high action. And one of the things that they wanted to focus on was to make people feel welcome. So, you know, it was a very friendly place and they created all of these social activities. Every Friday, there was a Friday bar, every something else that was breakfast.

[00:22:03] Mikkel: They were, uh, for Christmas lunch, which is a big thing up here. They would invite a dance teacher to teach everybody how to

[00:22:11] Mikkel: to

[00:22:12] Mikkel: dance, and you would have the professors dancing with the PhDs and all of those things. So it was very important for them that they mixed up all of these things, which to a great extent had, you know, fantastic results and is something that I'm kind of pushing into other organizations now as well.

[00:22:26] Mikkel: But it also had the disadvantage that people were so. Afraid to burst that happy bubble that they were in

[00:22:35] Mikkel: that they didn't want to have. They didn't, they didn't dare start up any conflict. So they would rather either keep it, keep it to themselves. Were kind of gossip in the corners. And, um, so we decided that we wouldn't, we wanted to, you know, basically tackle these issues to make sure that the culture that they had included all of the things that they've, that we've, and they felt was necessary.

[00:22:58] Mikkel: So really focused on the knowledge and the action. So we started looking into what a different West conflict handling styles around the world. How did the different cultural values than you and I, you know, we all, you know, we can almost wake up at three o'clock in the morning and then we can say Context, all of those things, right?

[00:23:15] Mikkel: How does communication styles, trust building styles, power distance, how do all of these things factor into the ways that we handle conflict? And when we had a set of insights into what are the different styles that are represented in in the group, we could then say, okay, what we need to do is to get somebody in who is a conflict management professional and then teaches What are the steps for a productive, constructive way of handling conflicts, you know, though understanding that that would be kind of a westernized idea, but still people would then just need different learnings to get to the same point and everybody felt more comfortable when they had a specific style.

[00:23:55] Mikkel: So. And this is where the second element comes in. So that's kind of, that was the focus, right? So that was probably where I said, okay, this is where I want to work. But then the second thing came up, which actually ties back to my, you know, the, the empty restaurant and the, uh, the sausages on the layer cake, because I, I very quickly realized that if I want to teach people something, especially if they work.

[00:24:18] Mikkel: With science and research, they are so used to working with their brains

[00:24:22] Mikkel: that they would expect me to come in standing, you know, by the by the blackboard or wherever, and then just give them just load them up on information. So really doing this traditional knowledge filling exercise where I just tell them a bunch of stuff and then leave it up to them to figure out how to put it into action.

[00:24:42] Mikkel: And, um, but I also knew that, especially when it's a field, such as, you know, within culture, had it been psychology as well, it's, it doesn't really have any impact if they don't feel

[00:24:55] Mikkel: if they don't have any physical reaction, um, they'll just hear it and then they'll forget about it. You know, there's, you've probably heard this.

[00:25:03] Mikkel: Science as well that says that, you know, within the first hour already within the first hour, you forget about, you know, at least 20 percent of what you've just heard the next day, it's up to maybe 75 percent and then if you ask again after a month, it's maybe there's maybe 10 percent that they still have.

[00:25:19] Mikkel: So what I needed to do was figure out a way of getting. The knowledge

[00:25:24] Mikkel: not just to be in kind of short term memory space, but actually getting into the more of, you know, the more, the bigger areas in the brain. So where it actually would stick. So I devised, some different games where I put them into a position where they would actually feel how it feels.

[00:25:42] Mikkel: To be in a situation that is difficult or at least a little bit frustrating or maybe even just very, very funny. So different feelings that they would then associate with, with the, with the training. So I would start out with a game

[00:25:58] Mikkel: and it's a very short one. So it's not even, it's not because it's, it's not like I bring out this big board game and say, okay, so, you know, like Monopoly style, it's like, individual little games that last somewhere between five, 10 minutes maximum.

[00:26:11] Mikkel: And then we debrief, what did they feel? What did they encounter? What is different? What is normal? What would you normally do? All of those things. And then I pull up some slides that helped me explain how does this then fit with, you know, cultural values and cultural intelligence and stuff like that. And then I asked them to then now build an approach that fits with your situation.

[00:26:34] Mikkel: So the culture that you want to create. Together, you're not, you're not, you know, you're not just the sum of the different cultures that you represent. You have the opportunity to build your own culture. So how do you want to do this next

[00:26:45] Mikkel: time?

[00:26:47] Mikkel: And that had, that turned out to be, uh, an approach where They would remember much better what we was, what it was we've been through, and they would much more openly share what went on with them when they were in that situation.

[00:27:00] Mikkel: So, so that was, yeah, that's, that's the approach. That's the thing

[00:27:04] Mikkel: that I'm doing.

[00:27:05] Trisha: so it feels like you've created the environment where the shift happens that you've, because you've put them into a situation. Is it like a role play or is it like, you know, how are you generating that, that, that sense of experience for them so that they, they're, because you're almost forcing the shift to happen.

[00:27:28] Mikkel: Right? Yeah, I am. And I think, so I'm glad you said roleplay because that's probably the scariest thing for many people. To be, you know, to be seen. And I, and I think, you know, I, I'm, I'm quite introverted as a person. I'm, I'm actually a little bit bland. So, you know, also the reason why I usually wear, you know, I'm sure this is a podcast, so they can't

[00:27:49] Mikkel: see,

[00:27:49] Mikkel: but this I'm wearing a very

[00:27:51] Trisha: listeners, Mikkel is wearing a beautiful shirt, which has patterns on it. yes, In different colors.

[00:27:58] Mikkel: right. And I do that to basically, it's like a peacock, right? I need to do something because my personality is so bland that I need something else now. But anyway, it's, um. What I try to do is I try to tell them that even though now I'm a consultant and I come in from the outside and I know that they think that all I'm about is like role play and just, you know, throw you out of an airplane without a parachute and see where it lands.

[00:28:20] Mikkel: I'm, I would hate to be in that position myself.

[00:28:24] Mikkel: So as a participant, I would dread having somebody coming in with flowery shirts and just pulling out one role play after the other. So I give it a lot of thought, how do I make this as comfortable for them as possible? As, as, As fun. And also learning so that it actually provokes that shift, as you say, but, but not in a way where they kind of said, I don't want to be a part of this is too scary.

[00:28:47] Mikkel: So, it's, it's, very little things I can give you an example. So, when we do so, so your listeners will know that we are a part of the, um, the, the fellowship, the CQ fellows, right? So, at the, uh, at the 1st retreat, we have to pitch an idea

[00:29:01] Mikkel: to everyone in the house, anyone in the room, and then we get some evaluations and feedback.

[00:29:05] Mikkel: You can actually even win, um, a little thing. So, what I did was. I wanted to pitch the idea that I have, that I'm still building that these, that I'm creating these little games, but instead of just saying that I'm building little games, what it is, I went to the lunch where we just came back from lunch. So I went to the salad bar and I took a little piece of spinach and I put that spinach in between my, my front teeth.

[00:29:29] Mikkel: And then I did my pitch with the spinach between my teeth and I made sure to smile very much and very broadly to everyone. And the funny thing was that, as you know, this room is made up by people from all over the world and they had very different reactions to my spinach in the teeth. The Americans would be sitting there trying to get eye contact with me and kind of, you know, tell me that I had spinach in my teeth.

[00:29:55] Mikkel: The, the, the Asian group, there was a three or four, they would be very consciously looking away. So they would not, they would simply not have eye contact with me. They would just look away.

[00:30:06] Mikkel: And the Scandinavian, there wasn't any other Scandinavians, but we had a Dutch person. She actually told me after a few seconds, you have spinach between your teeth.

[00:30:15] Mikkel: And I use that because what I said was that that that's exactly what you're feeling right now.

[00:30:20] Mikkel: You'll remember the spinach for the rest of your life. And I associated that with the differences that I then had of reactions in the room. And I said, the reasons why we have this reaction over here is because in indirect cultures, They want to not embarrass you by no, but by you knowing that they know that you have spinach in your teeth.

[00:30:40] Mikkel: So they look away and they try to see or tell you by their level of discomfort that something is going on, you know, go check yourself in

[00:30:48] Mikkel: the

[00:30:49] Mikkel: bathroom, but without saying it

[00:30:50] Trisha: Mm.

[00:30:51] Mikkel: the Americans wanted to save me from the embarrassment of being in this room with spinach. So they would very actively try to tell me, but they wouldn't, they didn't want to interrupt because I'm, you know, I was standing up, I had the authority, I had the room so that they didn't want to interrupt and disrespect.

[00:31:05] Mikkel: My time in the, in the spotlight

[00:31:07] Mikkel: where the,

[00:31:07] Mikkel: you know, a Dutch person doesn't care about the context at all. They just said, you have spinach in your teeth. And for me, that was exactly what I need people to feel. I need to get them in touch with how does it make me feel that this person has spinach in their teeth and how do I then react to it?

[00:31:26] Mikkel: And then showing them that there's different reactions in the room. So next time they're with a person who has spinach in the teeth, the Dutch person will know that if it's a Chinese person I'm talking to, I have to do it in a different way. Otherwise they will feel mortified that they've just had spinach in the teeth in my presence.

[00:31:43] Mikkel: so so yeah, so that's, that's how I do it. And then, I then ask people afterwards. So, for instance, if they have, and this is actually one of the games that I do, I, I tell them half of them. And that's the only role play I have is that I tell them half of them. You have, you notice that your colleague has a piece of spinach between their teeth, um, and you want to help them out, but you can't say spinach.

[00:32:04] Mikkel: You can't say teeth and you can't say mouth and you can't point.

[00:32:08] Mikkel: So how will you do it?

[00:32:10] Mikkel: And then we see all of these different strategies. And the person that they're talking to, they feel, why is this person talking about all of these things? You know, on their card, it says you have to get to a meeting real quick. so they're standing there thinking, what is, what is, you know, I'm going to a meeting. So they're actively feeling the frustration and the impatience of the direct speaker. Uh, of the low context type speaker who is not accustomed to getting all of these mixed messages and, you know, reading the air and in between the lines.

[00:32:41] Mikkel: They just want to kind of, they only trust a person if the words coming out of their mouth represents what's going on in their brain. Um, whereas from, from the indirect and especially from the very hierarchical places around the world, you see just this fantastic repertoire. Of ways to explain that something's going on that you need to take notice of.

[00:33:05] Mikkel: And it can be anything from, I once had one who said, well, did you, uh, did you enjoy lunch? Yeah. I went to the salad bar. There was, I just, I was just in the cramming for something really green and healthy, green, green and healthy. And then they kind of just stood there lingering a little bit. Um, I also heard somebody say, can I, can I, can I walk with you to your meeting and then just leave it there?

[00:33:27] Mikkel: Because that is such a strange request. That just, the strangeness of it should get the other person to think maybe something is wrong, maybe something I should just go check, maybe I should do something. Um, so there's all these different mechanisms. So, the way that we then debrief is to say, okay, how do you want this person to tell you next time?

[00:33:46] Mikkel: If you have spinach in your teeth, how would you like it to happen next time? And then they themselves create a bunch of strategies.

[00:33:53] Mikkel: That they can then attach not only to the spinach, which they will always remember, and everybody in the room, after I've done this exercise, we'll spend the rest of the day trying to get spinach out between their teeth, even though it's not there,

[00:34:06] Mikkel: but then they also create specifics, not only, you know, they create strategies that, that they can hear from the others.

[00:34:12] Mikkel: Okay. This strategy will belong to people from this part of the world. This strategy is really good for people in this part of the world. And then the, they understand intentions better. so

[00:34:21] Trisha: And they'd be in a situation where if somebody started to, to talk about something that made absolutely no sense to them, they might think, why, well, what is, what is the underlying message that they're trying to communicate here? Yeah. Instead of

[00:34:34] Mikkel: Yeah.

[00:34:34] Trisha: making the assumption that you know, they're just not understanding.

[00:34:38] Trisha: Yeah.

[00:34:39] Mikkel: Yeah. They're just talking nonsense. And especially because the, you know, the most direct speakers, for instance, that is the thing that we have. I obviously also do a lot of trainings that has to do with the blind spots that we specifically have up here in the North, which is, you know, we are very direct and, and that actually handicaps us in a way, because that means that we don't do any, we don't do any listening outside of the words.

[00:35:02] Mikkel: If you're not saying what you're thinking, then we have absolutely no methods. To figure out what it is that you're trying to do. So if you're talking Not nonsense, but if you're like small talking at a, at a, you know, at a time where we're in a rush, then we don't, we don't start, you know, analyzing that, you know, maybe, maybe something's going on.

[00:35:23] Mikkel: What we think is this person is wasting our time. What a disrespectful or incompetent or odd person.

[00:35:30] Mikkel: Yeah.

[00:35:30] Trisha: Yeah.

[00:35:31] Mikkel: And we want to just give ourselves the time to just count to three and then ask that very good question. Is this cultural and then make some analysis. Um, but it's, but we need to get across the kind of the initial emotions that, that we're left with in that situation.

[00:35:47] Trisha: Do you ever find people are resistant to playing games or to getting involved like this? Or do you sometimes As with the, um, experience with the CQ fellows, do you sometimes put them in the situation where they're not even aware that they're playing?

[00:36:00] Mikkel: yeah,

[00:36:00] Mikkel: So I think that that was actually the reason why I started developing all of these games was because I wanted to give them the sense that they were having fun

[00:36:09] Mikkel: and that they didn't necessarily know where we were going.

[00:36:13] Mikkel: Um, and even though that might, for some people feel a little bit uncomfortable, I do explain to them in the beginning what it is that we'll do.

[00:36:21] Mikkel: But I don't explain. I don't explain it in so much detail that they start dreading what's going to happen.

[00:36:29] Mikkel: I very quickly get them in a situation where they're either competing or they're trying to figure something out.

[00:36:36] Mikkel: And I would say, especially with, uh, like most of the organizations that I work with are, you know, professional, big private companies with a lot of it's, you know, it's usually people that work with, you know, knowledge.

[00:36:50] Mikkel: And, and that's what they, they're, they're, uh, they're, they're there to do. And they usually enjoy either something where they can be competing against each other or where they have to figure something out,

[00:37:02] Mikkel: um, on an intellectual level. And all of the games that I've devised are not necessarily, you, you don't, you can't, you can't see where the culture is.

[00:37:12] Mikkel: It's not like a cultural analysis game. Please guess where this person is from or something like that. It's, it's a game that actually doesn't necessarily have anything to do with culture, but I've then infused it with some challenges and some tricks. That means it becomes cultural, but they just feel that it's rules of the game, so to speak.

[00:37:29] Trisha: okay. So it's not, um, a lot of the people listening, I think, Actually, I'm not too sure who listens, but you know, are uh, cultural intelligent people or, um, interculturalists. And so it's not like Barnga Barnga, which, you know, lots of people know about where there are rules established and you set up two different fake cultures.

[00:37:48] Trisha: So you're not setting up fake cultures.

[00:37:50] Mikkel: no, not at all. And I'm not asking him to play. And I, especially, I think also to your question about role playing, I very rarely, unless I know that it's a group that already worked with culture in some way, already find it super fascinating. Um, because many, I would say like 80, 90 percent of the groups that I meet, it is the manager or the company or HR that have, you know, asked me to come and do this workshop for this group.

[00:38:19] Mikkel: They haven't necessarily themselves said culture, that's what we need. They, they probably just

[00:38:24] Mikkel: are

[00:38:25] Trisha: Who says that?,

[00:38:26] Mikkel: yeah, what, what does this then I know, and they don't know what cultural intelligence is. It's it's, you know, somebody's either read a book or met me somewhere and then we've talked about it.

[00:38:35] Mikkel: And then the thing, I think we could use some of that, but the team doesn't know anything about it. And sometimes they're resistant because they don't. Like having, you know, this, this guy in a jacket and a colorful shirt come in and they just want to talk about what goes on in the lab. Right. But I think that I can convince them to play and to have fun because everybody always wants to play and have fun,

[00:38:58] Mikkel: uh, for at least for a little bit of time.

[00:39:00] Mikkel: And then because I so quickly. relate it to a cultural insight and tell them that if you learn this stuff, you'll be even more efficient together. So that's also one of the promises that you get with cultural intelligence that you didn't get with cultural awareness back in the day, though, you know, when I started becoming interested, cultural intelligence tells you that if you learn this stuff, you can be better at what you do, you know, in a situation where there's always different cultures, there's always diversity.

[00:39:27] Mikkel: In a room doesn't matter if you know, even if it's just you and me, there's still diversity because even though, you know, imagining that we came from the same country, then there's either the age difference or the personality differences or something that means that we're, we're different and you can use CQ for that and you can become even better.

[00:39:44] Mikkel: So I, I very quickly, I put this and I think maybe even subconsciously, but kind of my brain has told me that the, the attention span is around 20 to 25 minutes.

[00:39:56] Mikkel: So I play a game, I debrief it using their words and asking them, how did that feel? I tell them that everything that they've just told me, I can predict using cultural values and cultural intelligence.

[00:40:10] Mikkel: So I already knew what was going to happen and I, and I make them laugh and I tell some anecdotes and I share with all these things with them and then I say, and you can learn this too,

[00:40:20] Mikkel: you know, there are strategies that you can develop. That means that if you sit down, you predict, you plan, you are aware enough that a person also has a personality.

[00:40:31] Mikkel: So you don't stereotype, you just prepare as well as possible. then then you can actually do all of this that I just did as well

[00:40:39] Mikkel: I know it's it's a little bit I think almost there's a little bit of uh, illusionist mentalist like magician sometimes in this it's I think I provoke the same feeling sometimes I think I provoke this feeling of Why did this guy know exactly what was going to happen?

[00:40:55] Mikkel: We're a hundred people in the room and we had all of these individual experiences, but he just on a slide said this happened, this happened and that happened. So he knew this in advance. How does, what, where does that come from? And I tell them it's because I've studied culture and I've studied culture and intelligence and you can do that too.

[00:41:15] Mikkel: You can predict what's going to happen in a meeting with people that are culturally different from yourself. So spend the time. And then I tell them, um, so on this. next 20 minutes. So that's the 20 minute block of learning, you know, feeling and learning. And then I give them maybe 15 minutes, either in pairs, depending on the exercise or in a bit bigger group to analyze what is it that we do together?

[00:41:38] Mikkel: What are the different expectations and preferences and what should we do together to be as effective as possible? And then, you know, so they actually devise the strategies themselves. Um, and I think that the other leap that I help them with is that when they've actually been in a situation where they felt, how does it feel to be with this person and acting this stuff out and trying this stuff out?

[00:42:02] Mikkel: It feels as if they're actually, they've done something. So the action becomes easier as well,

[00:42:07] Trisha: Yes, yes of course

[00:42:07] Mikkel: you know, and I think that you and I could probably also go into a big discussion about the leap from the metacognition, you know, developing strategies into actually acting on them and adapting behavior.

[00:42:17] Trisha: yeah, that was,

[00:42:18] Mikkel: the next big shift.

[00:42:20] Trisha: that was just what I was thinking about as you were saying what you were doing then. And there was also an element as you were describing it where you, you hooked on their motivation as well. So you sort of, you got them thinking about what they were doing, which is the metacognition, but you also swung back to that you will be more effective once you understand this.

[00:42:38] Trisha: So you got swung back to the drive and increasing their motivation to learn. And to be able to, and then that second process where you got them sitting, working through things would be building up the plan so that they can become actions. I'm, I'm wondering, do you know anything about what's happening in the brain as people do this?

[00:42:58] Mikkel: Yeah. So I've, I've heard a few things that I've, I've studied, uh, as well. So, so the, and I think I've probably gone in a different route from to many of our colleagues, because I think that the first thing that I wanted to do when I started looking into how do I actually create change? One thing was what, you know, I can stand up and talk about cultures all day, but how do I actually create changes?

[00:43:18] Mikkel: And that. For that, I've added a couple of educations or a couple of places where I've done, you know, behavioral economics and behavioral design. So actually, you know, nudging, figuring out how do people, how do I get people to do things without them knowing that they're doing it? That's, that's one place of inspiration.

[00:43:34] Mikkel: And the other place of inspiration is basically process, Facilitation. So there's a lot of stuff about how do you get people to think, you know, in different sizes of groups and what matches, you know, if you have four people, what's really good to do there. If you want to get them to brainstorm or think or create strategies, but also if you have a hundred people, what then do you do?

[00:43:53] Mikkel: So I'm very much into that, you know, that process facilitative part of it as well, figuring out what actually needs to be done, but yeah, so I think that within, within that, I've figured out that we as biological beings. Have a brain that tells us do something that feels as natural and as easy as possible. And it has very much to do with the fact I have this, you know, if you and your listeners want to do a fun little exercise, you know, you can just write your name real quick, you know, to an autograph. And then look at it, you know, very beautiful. It looks perfect. And then you take the pen and you put it over in the other hand.

[00:44:30] Mikkel: And then you write your autograph once more.

[00:44:32] Mikkel: And that's, that's the feeling that I've, it's one of the places that I start just to tell people, I say, okay, we've done this little exercise and say, that's one of the challenges that I'll give you today. Is that working in a very, in a more culturally intelligent way to become more efficient.

[00:44:51] Mikkel: It's not going to feel more efficient in the beginning. It's going to feel as if it's hard work because you need to establish new stat. You need to establish new routines and new habits. You need to do things in a different way. And for a while, it'll feel like writing with the wrong hand. You're thinking about every little move.

[00:45:06] Mikkel: You're slower. You don't feel that you're as productive and you can also look at the result and say, I don't think the performance was as good as it was before.

[00:45:16] Trisha: I know. When I've done that exercise, people will always laugh at what they've created because they just sort of recognize that it's useless compared to the way they usually sign. Yeah.

[00:45:26] Mikkel: And you, you know what I do? I, I give them, um, to be really just put everything on the spot there. I, I give them a name tag. And then the, the other hand. Autograph is their name tag for the rest of the day.

[00:45:41] Trisha: Oh, wow.

[00:45:42] Mikkel: It's just because I want to get, I want to get people to laugh and they, everybody can laugh at that.

[00:45:46] Mikkel: And then I want to get people to feel that it's a safe space. We're vulnerable. It's okay to make mistakes. It doesn't have to be pretty. So slapping it on their chest and saying, this is your name tag for the day. It's actually a fun thing to do.

[00:45:58] Trisha: I like that.

[00:45:58] Mikkel: Um, but I think that what it also does. Is that it creates this idea and I think that it's uh, when I do that exercise with them You know one of the things that we do when we're brain wise we have short term memory and we have long term memory, right?

[00:46:13] Mikkel: And then short term memory basically also has a very big Influence on what is our, where's our attention focused? Where is it that, what are we looking at and how to react to it? And most of us actually on a day to day basis, we kind of enjoy being in that short term memory space where we can just basically react to things.

[00:46:33] Mikkel: We don't have to think too much about what goes on. And then when we want to. Instinctively react and we go to our, you know, long term memory and we choose the routines and standards and what we've done before. And then we just do stuff. and one of the things that that I noticed happening when I did these cultural intelligence trainings is that people would be involved.

[00:46:54] Mikkel: And they would listen to what I was saying, but because it was all lodged in the short term memory,

[00:47:00] Mikkel: they would lose everything that they just heard relatively quickly, unless it really, really resonated with them. Like it, like it explained a personal experience, you know, your, your work with expats, for instance, people who are moving around, um, and, and, you know, figuring out how to live in a new country.

[00:47:18] Mikkel: There's a lot of the stuff that we talk about that resonates with them. So they, you know, it helps them understand something. So that will stick. But for people that don't instinctively have an issue, it just kind of flies in one ear and out the other. Um, so

[00:47:32] Trisha: Especially if they're a of a dominant culture,

[00:47:34] Mikkel: yes.

[00:47:35] Trisha: And, and so for them, everything is the way that, that they've naturally grown up.

[00:47:41] Mikkel: Exactly. So they, they very heavily rely on, you know, everything that has been kind of, uh, logged into the, the, the long term memory, that place where, you know, where your routines and your habits and everything is, is kind of stored. And then they use that, um, and it's very difficult to change those habits and those routines, unless you actually get people to change, you know, neurological pathways in their brain, do something different.

[00:48:10] Mikkel: and I found out through, uh, there is a Swedish American author called Sissela Nutley, um, who studies focus and short term, long term memory and distractions and everything related to what your brain does. That is not necessarily constructive for what you want to do.

[00:48:30] Mikkel: And that really helped me understand that if I want people to actually adapt behavior, change the way that they think, change their, you know, the ways of doing things, I need to get them to a place where I start moving their focus and what they do when I train them from the short term place to the long term

[00:48:50] Mikkel: place. And a place, a way to get there is to actually. basically train the movements. So not just train their brain, you know, train their interest or their focus for that time when I have them, but actually train their bodies to feel why am I doing this and why should I do it differently? And then maybe even train what is then the new way to do things.

[00:49:12] Mikkel: So I have a specific exercise, for instance, on, well, feedback is a big thing in many organizations, and especially, you know, You know, feedback is associated with cultural preferences in terms of, you know, the, uh, power distance, who can we give feedback to and context? How do I give feedback? And there's so many of these cultural values that has an effect on whether we give feedback and how we give feedback.

[00:49:36] Mikkel: So

[00:49:36] Trisha: and it ties back into what you were saying before around the context communication. So the high context communication,

[00:49:42] Mikkel: Yes,

[00:49:43] Trisha: the Dutch person in the, in the spinach. So direct.

[00:49:46] Mikkel: yeah,

[00:49:47] Mikkel: yeah, but then again, only directs in a negative way, because there's also the idea that especially maybe not the Dutch as much the Dutch do like a

[00:49:56] Mikkel: little bit

[00:49:57] Mikkel: of

[00:49:57] Mikkel: hierarchy,

[00:49:58] Trisha: They are comfortable

[00:49:58] Mikkel: um, but us up in Scandinavia, for instance, we are both directs. But we're also very egalitarian. We don't like power distance. So we don't like giving feedback because that feels as if we're evaluating you.

[00:50:10] Mikkel: And we're setting ourselves up on a pedestal and saying, I'm, I know something that you don't, and we don't like that. So we actually say instead that the lack of feedback is praise, because if I don't tell you that you should do things differently, then just go ahead and continue doing what you're doing.

[00:50:26] Mikkel: So if I don't talk to you, if you have no interactions with your manager, that is good news. That is freedom. I trust you. I don't need to talk to you. If you see your manager looking at you, you know, from the office door and they wanted to talk to you a couple of times every day, then you're in trouble. So that actually also means that we don't even give positive feedback either.

[00:50:47] Mikkel: We only kind of correct miniature mini things. Um, where in other places you would give, you know, go to the U S and you would get constant praise and

[00:50:56] Mikkel: all

[00:50:56] Mikkel: of this very positive feedback. And then that would hide little nuggets of negative feedback in there as well for you to find. Which a person like me would never hear. Now,

[00:51:05] Mikkel: so the way of giving feedback, for instance. Um, it's something that everybody wants to do. Everybody wants to have more of it, but depending on the culture you're from, there's always too little, or it's focused in the wrong direction, or you don't actually hear what's going on.

[00:51:20] Mikkel: So, I do a game with them, which is a very short game.

[00:51:23] Mikkel: It's, it's kind of an, it's actually an intelligence test. So, it has nothing to do with culture at all, but I give them a set of challenges. That means that they're competing against others, you know, the other groups in the room. And it's it's time that there's all this buzz and everybody's, you know, running around trying to figure out how to solve this task and do it, you know, as fast as possible, all these things.

[00:51:42] Mikkel: And then I say, well, thank you so much for completing this task. And, you know, we have a winner and we all applaud and blah, blah, blah. And then I say, now, please sit down. And give each other feedback 1 at a time. So everybody can hear on how did they do in this specific challenge. And then they give everybody gives each other feedback.

[00:52:00] Mikkel: And I say, okay, it needs to be something where you say something positive, you know, what did they do? Well, something negative, what could have they had done better and give them a piece of advice for next time. So relatively simple. Now, the thing is, depending on where you're from, I would say maybe 10, 15 percent of a standard room, mixed cultures and stuff like that.

[00:52:20] Mikkel: actually completes the task of giving individualized feedback. Almost everyone else, 80 percent of everybody else in the room, they start doing a bunch of other stuff. So you would have the anti authoritarian Scandinavians who would just start, you know, they thought the exercise was so fun, they want to try it again.

[00:52:38] Mikkel: So screw the guy who's, you know, Given us a task, we just want to try once more. Um, we have the, uh, the, the people who feel that giving feedback to somebody, maybe that we don't know that well, or we've only just gotten kind of acquainted to

[00:52:52] Trisha: It's a bit uncomfortable

[00:52:53] Mikkel: is so uncomfortable because we haven't built that chemistry yet.

[00:52:57] Mikkel: We don't know how they will react if I tell them what I think. So instead we'll joke, Oh, this was so, what a fun game. Or, you know, I want to do this with my team. Or they start. Going for coffee, something completely different because they want to kind of either build some chemistry before they can actually give feedback or they just say, okay, five minutes and that is not enough for us.

[00:53:19] Mikkel: To do this and you know, and then again we can laugh at the dutch again, but they would obviously just say That's not good. You didn't do very well. You could do this better the americans would say, you know, this is we did fantastic. What a fantastic let's try it again This is awesome. You did fantastic and they would focus on a lot of positives and All of this happens in the room and you can hear, you know, table seven laughing and you can hear table three being completely quiet and you can see table one is out by the coffee machines and all of this going on.

[00:53:47] Mikkel: I have that on a slide and I show them this is exactly what will happen if you just give, ask people to give feedback because there are so many different ways of doing it and it requires something first. So now please sit back down, turn to the other person, to the person who just was supposed to give you feedback and tell them, what did you think of the feedback they gave you?

[00:54:07] Mikkel: And how would you like to have feedback next time? So it, again, it becomes this strategic Discussion about what are the processes you need to get through? And because you're sitting in a situation with an actual person and you're giving actual feedback on an actual assignment, it starts moving from the kind of the reaction,

[00:54:27] Mikkel: quick reaction in your brain.

[00:54:29] Mikkel: And it starts moving to the back of your brain to kind of get stored because now all of a sudden you have feelings and emotions attached to it. You have an actual person attached to it as well, and you have the feeling of having done something that is now getting evaluated.

[00:54:44] Mikkel: So that also, you know, is stronger.

[00:54:47] Mikkel: It's stronger than emotional kind of attachment you have to it. So it lodges in the, in the big part of your brain instead of just being this reaction. So those things are what I'm trying that I'm really inspired by trying to move it from reactions and kind of quick, you know, a little bit of learning and can I react to it?

[00:55:07] Mikkel: And then I'll forget it next time I have a cup of coffee and move it from those two areas and then get it lodged in the, uh, in the big long term memory bank that we have.

[00:55:15] Trisha: then we really achieve change. This has been brilliant I think we have probably gone over time And so I'm going to ask how people can follow up with you because I'm sure people will want to And and actually before I just check on that Are you, you know, working on a way that you can help other people with these games?

[00:55:38] Trisha: I think that was part of what you were going to be proposing. so tell

[00:55:41] Mikkel: Yeah,

[00:55:41] Trisha: us just a little bit about that and then how people can connect with you.

[00:55:46] Mikkel: sure. So people, I think the easiest property just to find me on LinkedIn.

[00:55:49] Mikkel: Yeah. And then I think, uh, my. My, um, the games that I have, obviously I use them for myself, but I've now since started with the fellowship or the, uh, uh, you know, talking to peers and being really nerdy and always going over time as every time I have a meeting with somebody is that I hear that there is a great interest.

[00:56:09] Mikkel: In wanting to learn

[00:56:10] Mikkel: these things. So I started to write them down. I've started to create instructions. And, uh, the next step is for me to, to basically create a product around training people, how to do. The trainings that I do. So getting the games out there, the next element after that will probably be some kind of, uh, you know, an actual virtual game where people can sign up either with their own teams or just because they think culture is fun, and then I'll guide them through.

[00:56:38] Mikkel: You know, a range of games so they can learn about cultural intelligence and cultural values through through the medium of playing.

[00:56:46] Mikkel: So that'll be the next element. But I think everybody can reach out. They can borrow and steal and listen into the stuff that I use now. I'm a very open source kind of person.

[00:56:57] Mikkel: So anybody's interested, just yeah, write to me on

[00:57:00] Mikkel: LinkedIn and I'll answer some ideas.

[00:57:02] Trisha: That's great. So people can connect with you and say that they're interested in this when you're ready to, to present it and to make it as an offering. That is fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. Um, and all the stories it's been, it's been wonderful to hear, and I'm sure it's been really, um, impactful for people as they listen.

[00:57:21] Trisha: So thank you so much.

[00:57:23] Mikkel: My pleasure, Trisha. Thanks for inviting me.

[00:57:25] Trisha: Thank you. And so everyone, if you've been listening, please make sure that you have pushed follow on your podcast app so that you can get the next exciting episode that will be coming next week for The Shift.