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 everyone, I'm Trisha Carter, an organizational psychologist and 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.

[00:01:00] Trisha: What can we do to help ourselves and to help others to experience shifts when we need? Today I'm doing what we've done before. It's a little bit Practicing what we talk about, taking time to reflect and review on what we've learnt. So this is the balcony review, if you like, of the past five episodes, so episodes 26 to 30.

[00:01:23] Trisha: So we're looking at what we've learnt lately. This is part six because we have done this before. And it has been really helpful to sort of draw out some of threads that even though the people who are speaking have nothing, that they haven't spoken to each other about being on the podcast, but , there are some commonalities of thought and ideas that run through, which is both encouraging and sometimes challenging.

[00:01:51] Trisha: And also, perhaps we should take a moment to celebrate that this is episode 31, which is pretty amazing. I'm very grateful to all the guests we've spoken to so far. I don't know about you, but I am certainly learning a lot. And I hope that as well as learning, it is also moments of fun, as Mikkel, who is one of the guests from the last five episodes, would say, because he thinks it should always be fun.

[00:02:19] Trisha: So in the last five episodes we have listened to Mikkel Orlovski -Using Games to Build Cultural Intelligence, Kristin Ekkens - Edgewalking with Cultural Intelligence, Sharon Gray - Winangar Guru: Listen Deeply, Go Slowly and Respect Everything. Bridget Romanes - Cultural Shifts with Global Mobility And Cheryl Doig - Walking with the Futures Aunty.

[00:02:47] Trisha: So we'll be pulling on their ideas as I summarize now. As with always, I asked them the standard questions and we had some lovely perceptions of different cultures that they have grown to love. And also I asked them about shifts they've made. As with so many times before, many of these shifts, while they were in the long term, really beneficial and quite lovely, in the moment, they were often quite painful.

[00:03:13] Trisha: If we think about Mikkel's shift, When he was celebrating his wedding with his wife in her cultural environment and the angst that he felt as nobody turned up, as people didn't arrive, and how disruptive he found that emotion of feeling like he'd been abandoned. And perhaps worried that people were rejecting him as a potential family member.

[00:03:37] Trisha: And Kristen speaking about returning back to the United States after time in Spain and how difficult that repatriation process was for her, disruptive, I think was one of the words that she used and she spoke about feeling depressed and challenged. Bridget spoke about the day to day frustrations that she experienced on her very first, expat assignment in India and how she dealt with those frustrations. And Cheryl spoke about shifts in terms of recognizing different histories and the challenge that that is. As we sort of suddenly see things from a different perspective and how disruptive that can feel. So a number of different shifts that people recognized and each of them opened their eyes to a new perspective and each of those things helped them to live and work better in the diverse world that they're in.

[00:04:33] Trisha: And beyond those shifts, as always, there was some key themes that repeated. First of all, one that was actually the exact same words were spoken by a number of people. Cultural training isn't about learning a piece of knowledge. That was something that Mikkel, who is a Dane, lives in Europe, said, and also Sharon, who is a Kamilaroi woman living in Australia an indigenous woman of Australia, and she said that also.

[00:05:00] Trisha: They both said that it's really much more about absorbing something into your awareness, your emotional awareness, and also your physical understanding. Mikkel talked about taking that knowledge and it becoming part of just the way you operate. But it's certainly not about learning a piece of knowledge.

[00:05:19] Trisha: Both Mikkel and Kristen spoke quite a bit about creating safe spaces for learning. Mikkel is often in the classroom, so there it's about an environment that he intentionally creates. Where people aren't worried about having to perform a role play, but they are comfortable laughing at themselves because of the environment that he creates.

[00:05:42] Trisha: Kristen spoke about everyone's values being acknowledged and the recognition of the, the personal internal work that people often need to do as they learn about their own culture and their own values and how much that learning needs a safe space. We had a number of people this time speak about creating champions, creating champions in others.

[00:06:06] Trisha: Sometimes they were referred to as champions, sometimes as change makers, sometimes as edge walkers, cultural champions, and Cheryl spoke about co lab workers. So, the recognition that the work of changing people To think in different ways about culture, to think differently about how we operate. It doesn't belong to one group.

[00:06:27] Trisha: It isn't the domain of one influencer. It's everyone's work. Some of us might be doing that work at a citizen level, as Cheryl described it, and others might be thinking and playing at a systems level, as Kristen described it. But either way, we need to work with these other people, these champions, and help them to grow and develop so that they can spread out and create that web of change that Kristen speaks about and Sharon speaks about in terms of the communities of change that are happening.

[00:07:03] Trisha: And that's really encouraging when you think about it. It does take our eyes from the individual level to much more of a systems level. And that is really interesting and perhaps a little bit challenging for some of us who may have been thinking more how to change individuals. But it's encouraging to learn about something like social value as a concept.

[00:07:25] Trisha: So Sharon shared about social value and that was echoed by a couple of other people as well. Cheryl spoke about it explicitly as well. So it's creating more than learning, more even than changed people, but it's creating change within society. And as Kristen said, it's intentionally creating communities that can impact people's perception of being human. Cheryl spoke about the concept of intergenerational fairness and how that impacts on that social value. Those are really big ideas and encouraging to have us sort of lift our eyes up to and see possibilities. These are things that I'm hoping to dive into a bit more in the future so that we can all learn and grow in our understanding.

[00:08:10] Trisha: So how do we get to You know, seeing social value and achieving systems change. While there are many different strategies that were shared to help people see different perspectives from Mikkel's point of using humor to, work with people. And please do go and listen if you haven't, because his ways of doing that was both humorous and thought provoking.

[00:08:34] Trisha: And Kristen speaking about creating personas and empathy wheels. Cheryl spoke about finding pockets of promise, but the most commonly mentioned strategy, which was described really well by Bridget, was the power of personal relationships. And if we think about that, and how personal relationships can help us most as we're working to achieve change, as we're working to grow ourselves.

[00:09:02] Trisha: And within that, learning to use deep listening, which was another aspect that Bridget spoke about, Cheryl spoke about, and Sharon spoke about. Cheryl spoke about deep listening in the context of learning from the Māori culture in New Zealand, and in supporting people as they look at possible futures, which can sometimes be a scary thing for people.

[00:09:24] Trisha: Cheryl is the future's auntie, so that is her role, to walk with people as they consider the possible futures. Sharon, in Australia, shared the wisdom of Winangar Guru, words from her Kamilaroi language, meaning, listen deeply, go slowly. Respect everything. She spoke about walking alongside people with these ideas.

[00:09:49] Trisha: I think this wisdom is extremely powerful and encouraging. And in lots of ways, it's not that complicated. And so it's an encouragement to us all that we can be doing this and we can do it better. So go back and listen to any of those episodes you might have missed. Thank you for being with me on this journey, and I look forward to continue to unpack things.

[00:10:15] Trisha: We have a few more episodes to go in Series 1, and then we might take a short break and we'll move into Series 2. And in Series 2, I'm going to be interviewing some researchers. As we think about what's the research behind helping people to shift their thinking. What is the research behind metacognition?

[00:10:36] Trisha: So if there's a researcher that you'd love me to speak with, please do let me know. Just reach out on LinkedIn or email me or, you know, in whatever way you can get in touch with me and let me know, because I'm keen to discover some new researchers and to learn what's happening in the research field.

[00:10:55] Trisha: Thank you so much for listening and please make sure that you have pushed follow or subscribe on your podcast app so that you can hear the next episode of The Shift.