[00:00:00] Trisha: I know it's becoming a little controversial here in Australia at least, but I will continue to acknowledge the Dharawal people, the aboriginal people of Australia, whose country I live and work on. To pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging, and to thank them for sharing their cultural knowledge and awareness with us.

[00:00:20]

[00:00:45] Trisha: Hi there everyone. I'm Trisha Carter, an organizational psychologist and explore 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, the shifts in our thinking.

[00:01:08] Well, friends, I'm welcoming you to series two of the Shift, and before we dive in, I do want to briefly remind you of the four areas of cultural intelligence that form the foundation of our discussions. There's the motivational CQ, CQ drive, which is our interest and confidence in functioning effectively in culturally diverse settings.

[00:01:31] There's the cognitive element, the CQ knowledge, our knowledge about how cultures are similar and different. There's the metacognitive area, CQ strategy. Which is about how we make sense of culturally diverse experiences, how we think about our thinking about culture, and there's behavioral cq, the CQ action, our capability to adapt and to operate differently when we need to, when relating and working in multicultural context.

[00:02:03] Today. As always, we especially focus on the metacognitive aspects. Thinking about our thinking when it comes to culture.

[00:02:12] In this first episode of our new series, I want to introduce something special Throughout series two, I'll be sharing practical resources and guides to help you develop your cultural intelligence. I'll also continue to interview some interesting people and uncover their moments of shift as well as providing the resources that I think and hope will be helpful for you.

[00:02:39] Today we're focusing on a framework I've developed called the Shift Signals Guide, a tool to help you recognize when you're experiencing one of those pivotal moments of cultural shift, and maybe for those of you who are coaches, to be able to sense when maybe your coachees are in that moment as well.

[00:02:57] So what exactly are moments of shift? They're those experiences when we suddenly become aware of a different perspective or we might recognize our own cultural biases, or we might see a need to do something differently or to respond differently. These moments, often uncomfortable, hopefully transformative.

[00:03:22] They're essentially gateways to developing cultural intelligence. There's research from neuroscience, psychology, and intercultural studies that show that these moments do follow patterns. The shift framework. We'll help you identify when you are experiencing a cultural shift by paying attention to the five signals.

[00:03:41] So let me walk you through each one with some fascinating examples from our previous guests. And for this resource, I'm gonna focus on some of our earlier episodes. So if you've joined us, you know, in the last series of episodes, you might not have heard some of these, so you can always go back and listen to them in more detail.

[00:04:00] So the shift acronym stands for S is for sensations in your body. H is for hesitations in your thinking. I is for intense emotions. F is for frames of reference that might clash and T is for a time perception that might alter. So let's explore each one of these signals in detail. First of all, s for sensations in your body.

[00:04:30] Often your body recognizes cultural differences before your conscious mind does these physical sensations, they might include, you know, tension patterns like your jaw clenching or shoulder tightness, or energy changes, maybe shifts in your breathing posture. Or even, you know, feeling temperature differences.

[00:04:51] In previous episodes, we've heard several guests speak about how physical sensations can manifest as intuitive feelings and Cath brew shared this experience,

[00:05:03] Cath: I had a really, really strong feeling to not use my credit card and I was, oh, it's really odd. And it was really high, feeling high up in my chest.

[00:05:11] Trisha: Mark Williams explained the neuroscience behind this when he spoke about the part of our brain that recognizes faces.

[00:05:21] Mark: One of the original ways that are actually seems to be in all mammals is this face perception. template. So even cows recognize each other by their faces, by this area called the fusiform Face area, which is pretty amazing. And that template is the average of all the faces we've ever seen. Which of course are normally our family and people of our race are closer to that template than people are who are from other races.

[00:05:48] But now if you think back in evolutionary history, we would have originally spent most of our time with our family. We would have been in really small groups and we would have been traveling around and we would have wanted to know who was in that family. And therefore that that template and method works really well, because what it does is it sets off the fight or flight response.

[00:06:06] If you see a face which is greatly dissimilar to your template. So something that deviates a long way from it, isn’t somebody who's a member of your family and so therefore is somebody that might be potentially dangerous and it sets off a fight or flight response, which gets your heart rate racing. It pumps blood to your muscles and makes your eyes widen. And all those things are associated with fight or flight response.

[00:06:30] Trisha: But these physical sensations aren't always negative or alarming. Sometimes they signal positive shift moments as Grace Boker Mungkaje described when hearing Welsh spoken for the first time.

[00:06:43] Grace: And I was like, oh my God. It's, it's that, it's their language. It's so beautiful. Yeah. I remember feeling, I actually got goosebumps at the train station because I thought back to Papua New Guinea. How we have over 800 languages.

[00:06:58] Trisha: Greg Desley shared a similar positive physical reaction when he used language to connect with people in one of his workshops

[00:07:06] Greg: Their faces just lit up. And, and it really just changed, certainly the way that I felt, uh, during the rest of the day at that, at that course. And, um, hopefully it had some impact on them.

[00:07:19] I think it did. Um, and yeah, so that was a bit of a shift in understanding that there'd been a connection and that somebody valued recognition of, of their culture.

[00:07:30] Trisha: so there's some examples of s, the sensations in our body.

[00:07:36] And then H stands the hesitation in our thinking. It's the second signal. Cultural shift moments often disrupt normal thought patterns. You might suddenly feel like things have stopped for a moment. You might experience a mental pause or a processing delay.

[00:07:55] You're not quite sure what's going on and you can't quite think things. Maybe there's a sense of uncertainty spiking. You might suddenly become aware of assumptions you've been making in your own head, or struggles where you've been thinking about categorizing someone or something into familiar categories, and it just doesn't work.

[00:08:16] Again, Dr. Mark Williams, the neuroscientist, explain why we experience this hesitation

[00:08:21] Mark: it's a very complex world, and, and we, our perception of the world is based on, um, what we call our working memory.

[00:08:29] And, and you can call it consciousness if you like, but it's, it's. It's your working memory and, and your working memory is really limited. It's, well, we originally talked about seven slots in your working memory, so you're only able to, which is why phone numbers used to be limited to six or seven numbers. cause that's all you could hold in your working memory while you dialed those numbers.

[00:08:48] Trisha: So this limitation in our working memory affects how we process cultural differences because we are usually operating out of the automatic side of our ways of thinking. So if something different happens, we will shift into thinking differently.

[00:09:06] Mark: we don't see everything. We only see what we're actually attending to. Your attention is what determines what goes into your working memory.

[00:09:13] And then your working memory is really limited, so you can only have a certain amount of information in that working memory than what any one time.

[00:09:19] Trisha: David Livermore shared a perfect example of experiencing this hesitation during his story about working with a Chinese interpreter,

[00:09:27] David: What I didn't know is my translator was not translating the story, but instead was saying something like, so our speaker this morning is doing what a lot of Western guests do. He's telling a story that he thinks it's funny, and I go on and tell the next part of the story.

[00:09:41] And she says, I've heard him share this a few times now, but. I still don't really get the point of this story, and I go on and tell the next part of the story and she says, but we don't want our esteemed guests to lose face. So when I cue you laugh very enthusiastically at the part that he thinks is funny.

[00:09:56] And sure enough I say it and the whole room erupts with laughter. And I'm like, yes, this is what we mean by cultural intelligence. And it was only a few days later when I shared the story again and someone in the audience afterwards said to me, are you aware of what's happening when you're sharing your introductory anecdote?

[00:10:15] And I'm like, no.

[00:10:16] Trisha: And so those are examples of those moments of hesitation in our thinking that can warn us that this could be a moment of shift.

[00:10:25] The third factor, the I is for intense emotions that might arise. This is the third signal, and it might be that we just don't expect to have an emotional response and suddenly we're feeling something.

[00:10:42] It could be disproportionate to the situation or it could be a conflicting feeling or even defensive. We might feel angry or upset. It could be curiosity spiking where, Hmm, what is this? What's happening? Or even it could be waves of discomfort. So this emotional sense sometimes without recognizing what's triggering it, even

[00:11:08] David Livermore's story continues with him describing an awareness of this emotional intensity.

[00:11:16] David: quite honestly, when I first heard it, I was ticked off. I felt stupid. I felt defensive. I wasn't sure I could trust my interpreter anymore.

[00:11:25] Trisha: So these are examples of emotions that arise and that accompany the sense of something is different.

[00:11:34] The fourth signal, the F in shift is for frames of reference, which are clashing. Your cultural frameworks, which are the things that you have grown up holding onto as being the norm, if you like. They are being challenged in these moments, and that can manifest as value collisions.

[00:11:56] It might feel like your expectations are being violated or that your judgments are wrong. It could be you're doing a mental translation of what's happening, or you could be questioning your own identity.

[00:12:11] One of our most powerful examples came from Grace Boker Mungkaje with her climbing the tree metaphor,

[00:12:18] Grace: so I never really knew, you know, why I couldn't do that. And later on as I went, like, um, like through life as I went on to further my education and then when like began working life in Papua New Guinea, I realized that um, there will be many moments where I am.

[00:12:38] I'm asked to get off that tree. Yes. And I have to decide when is a time when I will apply what I learned in my American cultural upbringing, which is to speak up and as long as you justify yourself and to stand up for what you believe in. Then that's perfectly fine. And as long as you do it in a respectful manner, you're not harming other people, then it's perfectly okay.

[00:13:00] So when to apply that. Mm-hmm. And then when to apply my melanesian cultural values, which is there's sometimes that, um, I, I, I cannot do certain things. It's not acceptable for me as a woman.

[00:13:11] Trisha: and she later reinforced this concept and described another view of the frame of reference.

[00:13:18] Grace: she told me there's a time to be quietly bold, and there's a time to just be outright bold.

[00:13:24] It's still again, about when to know when to climb the tree, get off the tree, and so it's, it's that reminder again.

[00:13:32] Trisha: Grace is a third culture kid at TCK and Tanya Crossman, who also at TCK, who researches third culture kids shared one of her conscious moments of frame shifting

[00:13:46] Tanya: And he just quietly and gently was like, was why, was asking why this was my reaction.

[00:13:52] You know, why, why, why can't you just say thank you? And for whatever reason it, it struck me in that moment. Why? Why can't I just say thank you? Why is it my go-to reaction? To tease and to mock and to give someone a hard time?

[00:14:05] Trisha: and so there might be this awareness of holding frames of thinking in our head and realizing that we are seeing two separate frames and they might be clashing,

[00:14:15] and then we finally get to the T of shift, the final signal. That's when time perception alters. So you might have the sense that. Cultural shift moments are impacting on your sense of time.

[00:14:30] You might see time standing still so that there's a moment of expansion or you might have a sense of needing to process some things and, and needing to stop things. Maybe you have a sense of future uncertainty or just a disruption of the rhythm of what you were going to do.

[00:14:51] When we are in a moment of shift, we need to jump from automatic processing, which happens easily to more deliberate thinking.

[00:15:00] Because it isn't part of our automatic habitual ways of operating, we're engaging different cognitive and neurological processes and that can affect our perception of time. Mariette Rups-Donnelly . Remember the actor from episode five described how time perception changes during a performance for actors.

[00:15:22] Mariette: Your job, in fact, is to think about what's coming next. So you do not think about the costume change. You think then about not just the next scene, but what do I want from this person I'm working with?

[00:15:37] Trisha: Sometimes it can take time to reflect and process other people's thinking or process our own thinking about something that's happened, as David Livermore described in episode two.

[00:15:50] David: And actually I think that's where the Shift happened, I was like, Oh, there was there was a concern. And actually I think the concern was it was a self-effacing story, which would work well in many Western environments. But for them, not only might be losing face for me, but for the audience, for the organizers, the very first thing they hear from this guest is a way that he failed..

[00:16:14] Trisha: So now that we've explored these shift S-H-I-F-T signals, let me share how you can use this framework. When you notice these signals, I recommend a simple four step process. You stop, you pause, you notice. You label what you're experiencing. Maybe label the emotion if it's an emotion or label what's happening in your head.

[00:16:39] Seeing the frames of reference shift and recognize that it's a cultural shift moment and just accept the discomfort that might be happening as part of a natural part of cultural learning, and then respond thoughtfully rather than reactively.

[00:16:56] In future episodes, we'll explore a framework I've developed called Pause. The Pause will help you process, and respond more effectively to these moments of shift. For now, I'll share a quick assessment that you can use to check mentally. If you're experiencing a moment of shift, ask yourself,

[00:17:15] S, sensations?

[00:17:17] What's happening in my body right now? Look for tension, energy changes, breathing shifts.

[00:17:22] H hesitation? Am I struggling to process this normally? Notice your mental pauses, the uncertainty or the awareness that you're making some assumptions.

[00:17:33] I - intensity? Am I feeling stronger emotions than I would've expected for this situation? Consider if you're having some defensive reactions or just curiosity or discomfort.

[00:17:45] F - the framework shifting? Are my cultural values being challenged? Look for those collisions. Or when you do see those extremes of values, different values, and you might see an impulse to judge, or you might feel an identity question, who am I in this moment?

[00:18:05] And then T - is the time perception altering? Notice if things seem to be standing still. Moment expansion. Notice if there's some disruption to the rhythms, the way that you automatically operate. And if you are answering yes to a few of those questions, you are likely in a moment of shift, which as we know is an opportunity for significant cultural intelligence growth.

[00:18:29] As a coach, I hope that you would be able to help the people that you are coaching recognize their shifts as well and help them to process those shifts well.

[00:18:41] As we wrap up this first episode of our new season. I want to emphasize why recognizing moments of shift is so important. These moments are opportunities for growth, for learning, and for developing greater cultural intelligence. By becoming aware of the shift signals in your body, you can then begin to harness the moments rather than feeling overwhelmed by them.

[00:19:05] I've created a downloadable shift signals guide that will be on our substack. This guide includes the framework we've discussed today, along with additional examples and exercises to help you recognize and learn from your own moments of shift and to help your coachees if you are a coach.

[00:19:23] As you go about your week, I invite you to notice if you are experiencing these shift signals. To pause and ask yourself what you're experiencing. That this metacognitive awareness won't resolve every cultural challenge, but it will help you maintain your effectiveness in cross-cultural situations.

[00:19:44] So please reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn if we aren't already. And message me if you'd like to talk more about recognizing your moments of shift. Thank you for being part of the shift today. If our conversation sparked insights for you, consider sharing it with someone who might benefit, whether they're working globally or they're simply interested in expanding their cultural perspective.

[00:20:07] Follow us to be part of more conversations about cultural intelligence and join us next time on the shift.