 Cross-Cultural Skills
for Everyday Communication
Part II:
Befriending
Doubt and Embracing Uncertainty
Dear
Friends and Colleagues,
In last month’s issue of this
newsletter I presented seven suggestions for applying
cross-cultural competency for practicing conscious and
clear communications in our everyday life and work.
These first seven suggestions dealt with the problems
and challenges inherent in language and perception. For
a detailed description of these seven points, please go
to
Part I in last month's issue. In summary, they are:
-
Know that
every interaction is indeed cross-cultural!
-
Accept that
what is most important cannot be put into words, and
what is of secondary importance will probably be
misunderstood!
-
Remember that
without having to say a word, we are forever
delivering and being delivered a truckload of
meaning!
-
Be aware of
how “role” and “context” figure in the mix!
-
Regard what
you perceive as “reality” as a subjective take on a
Rorschach inkblot!
-
Know that we
are forever distorting reality, never free from the
frames through which we perceive it.
-
Beware of the
greatest hazard of communication - the illusion that
it actually took place!
Picking up where
we left off, I would like to complete this list with
five additional suggestions regarding key qualities and
attitudes that are an essential part of cross-cultural
competency that, if applied, could benefit our everyday
interactions and relationships enormously.
8. Treat the
hasty conclusions made by the brain with the scrutiny of
the mind.
Disturbing as it
may be, stereotyping is what our brain does best! If
you were to ask people what associations they have with
words such as taxi drivers, New Yorkers, teenagers,
Hasidic Jews, lesbians, welfare recipients, game show
hosts, or people with mental illness you typically won’t
hear responses that are based in fact or are true by
definition (e.g., “New Yorkers are people who live in
New York” or “Teenagers are somewhere between 13 and 19
years of age”.) Typically you will hear responses based
on either a person’s experience with an individual(s)
from that category, or a culturally-held view about
people of that group. That’s because, in part, the
human brain is designed to generalize. If it weren’t,
we wouldn’t be able to function in the world with its
constant onslaught of stimuli. As children we learn to
generalize our experience and develop patterns in how we
see, think and perceive the world. So a rose, a tulip,
and a lily begin to fall into the flower category just
as popcorn, pizza and pot-tarts fall into the (almost)
food category. The problem arises when we extend the
brain’s capacity for patterning to the world of people!
Depending on how
someone might look, act, or sound, the brain quickly
jumps into action and places them in some kind of
grouping, be it red-neck, radical, rock n’ roller, or
Religious Right. The brain is just doing its job at
this point and there is no point in criticizing it for
doing what it was designed to do. Where we get into
trouble, however, is when we take the simplistic and
automatic conclusions offered up by the brain and allow
them to pass for fact or anything resembling the truth.
While the brain naturally and systematically specializes
in generalization, the mind is capable of the finest
differentiation and keenest discrimination, but only
when it is directed to do so. Therein lies the hope for
creating more inclusive community – the consciousness to
redirect our thinking into mindful presence which allows
for the widest spectrum of human experience to be
applied to any category of people.
9. Put aside
everything you think you know about a group or category
of people and meet the individual with respectful
inquiry.
When I entered
the field of Cross-Cultural Communications in the early
1980’s, we were of the belief that if we became more
knowledgeable about and sensitive to one’s cultural
differences, we would enhance our ability to communicate
and to live and work together in the grand “melting
pot”. (As time went on, we gave up on the melting pot
metaphor as it became clear that people took great pride
in their cultural values and mores and did not wish to
“melt” at all, but rather, to add their own distinct
flavors to a rich “cultural stew”.) During the melting
pot era, however, what I witnessed in others and
exemplified myself, was that in our attempt to achieve
“cultural sensitivity” we instead practiced “cultural
assumptiveness.” For example, it was generally agreed
upon that most of the folks coming from Indochina would
likely agree to anything one asked of them in order to
maintain harmony in the situation, the Ethiopians were
highly educated, assertive and articulate who would
bring a freshness to any job they did, while the
Romanians were a hard-working, industrious and ambitious
lot… and the cultural stereotyping went on and on.
Through trial and
error, what I later came to understand is that learning
about a particular culture did not necessarily shed much
light on what I needed to learn about the individual.
In fact, most of the time it only got in the way! I
hated to think that anyone from outside the U.S. would
presume to understand me based on what they think they
know about Americans, and I realized that it was
important to extend the same courtesy to people from
other cultures. This is equally true of disability,
ethnicity, nationality, and every other dimension of
diversity! Within each of these categories there is
such a fantastic range of experience and individual
distinction, such that anything we think we know about
that group should best be put aside.
Ralph Waldo
Emerson believed that to truly see something, one must
forget the name of the thing one sees. If only we could
apply that wisdom to how we relate to people – knowing
that to see the person, we need to forget the name
(category, position, class, or grouping) through which
we are meeting them. That would entail, among other
things, erasing the influence of role and context,
which, as I wrote about in last month’s issue, is
anything but easy! But just because it’s not easy and
does not come natural, does not mean it is not worth
every bit of our vigilant attention and diligent
effort.
10. Always
enter through the door marked, “Prejudiced”.
A friend of mine
visited the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles and later
reported that there are two doors at the entrance of the
museum, one with the sign marked “Prejudiced” overhead,
and the other unmarked. Interestingly, only the one
marked “Prejudiced” opens to the museum. What a
brilliant concept!
Clearly, those
who enter the museum believing that they are a person of
strong morality, good virtue, and open-mindedness will
not have the same experience as those who enter knowing
that the attitudes and judgments that allowed Nazi
Germany to pull off one of the most horrific instances
of genocide in human history are not out of their own
realm of possibility. Perhaps the most potent lesson
that the Holocaust Museum has to offer is not about
human suffering and sacrifice, but the potential for
violence and injustice that can spring from arrogance,
self-righteousness, and the conviction of being ‘right’
or somehow superior to those who are not “you”.
When we separate
ourselves from those who we would deem to be racist,
sexist, chauvinist, ageist, homophobic, classist, or in
any way “prejudiced”, we have become part of the problem
rather than the solution. In the same way that sobriety
begins with the realization that there is in fact a drug
or alcohol problem, I do not believe that we will create
an inclusive and fair-minded society until those who
work towards it cop to our own biases, intolerance and
bigotry. (This issue’s selection for Poem of the Month,
“Please Call Me by My True Names” by Thich Nhat Hanh is
an astonishing plea for self-ownership and acceptance
that leads to the kind of compassion called for to bring
peace and change to the world. Read it and weep!)
As much as I
would love to think that I am tolerant and open-minded,
I can quickly list a slough of topics, social issues,
and political or religious stances about which people of
the opposing view would find me extremely intolerant,
totally partisan, and anything but open-minded! Somehow
I suspect that I am not alone in this. In fact, I will
assume that I share this with the rest of humanity for
one very important reason - we all hold opinions,
convictions and beliefs contrary to that of other
people. Hey, it’s a big world, why not? The problem
does not lie in the fact that we hold varied views and
contradictory opinions. The problem lies in the
insidious but persistent belief that somehow we are
“right”, making those hold the opposing view either
unenlightened, uninformed, or, dare I say, “wrong”.
11. Trade the
word “is” for “seems” – swapping certainty for doubt,
and conviction for a
willingness to learn.
I will never
forget the speech made at my daughter’s high school
graduation by her deeply respected and much-revered
teacher, Mr., Hansen. He began by saying something to
this effect: ”When being asked to make the keynote
address here today, I thought about what I would have to
say to the eighteen year old boy I was who sat at his
own high school graduation. What I would like to say to
that confident and self-assured boy is “Don’t be so
certain… about anything.” He went on to say that
certainty often leads to judgment, laying the groundwork
for cruelty and injustice. Holding no quarter, he
pointed to many instances throughout the history of the
world, as well as to current conflicts in the United
States and abroad. He ended his speech with a
challenge to everyone in the audience and to the
students in the stands: “Everyone here is absolutely
certain about something about which you are completely
wrong – I challenge you to find what that is.”
I was riveted and
deeply moved by Mr. Hansen’s speech, troubled for days
as I went in search for the unquestioned certainty of my
own convictions. When I shared this with my daughter
she said, “Mom, I don’t really think Mr. Hansen was
talking to you!” That is a huge and common problem – we
never think that this is about us! That’s why it is so
hard to fill a room for any kind of diversity training -
everyone believes that it is the attitudes of everyone
else who need changing and we are already “finished”
with regard to our attitudes.
The simplest way
I know of putting Mr. Hansen’s message into action is to
replace the word “is” for the word “seems”. When
speaking about a person, an issue, a social, political
or religious view, what if we were able to hold what we
believe to be true, and still make room for the
possibility that we do not have the whole truth or the
only truth? Surely every belief we hold is incomplete
and imperfect in some way. A belief that goes
unquestioned simply binds us to our own ignorance and
inherent biases. What if we treated doubt not as a
weakness, but as a strength – an attendant of truth and
the servant of our on-going learning, humility, and
discovery? We have nothing to lose and much to gain by
embracing ambiguity and accepting uncertainty as part
and parcel of the deeply complex and widely diverse
world that we belong to.
12. Inquire
first, choose your stance later.
St. Francis put
this another way – “Seek first to understand, then to be
understood.” From childhood we were trained not to
question, but to conclude. We live in a culture that
values answers far more than questions. Unfortunately,
answers are closed, invoking that the investigation is
finished, and all discoveries have been made. Once we
have come to a conclusion and think that we have found
the answer, we look no further.
To thrive,
stereotypes rely on the absence of firsthand knowledge.
If we don’t question our unfounded opinions, we
perpetuate them. In order to uproot our snap judgments,
inherited stances, and absolute allegiances, we need to
courageously question the basis upon which we hold
them. Without having to abandon our values and
interests, what if we inquire first into an opposing
view, and decide later where we wish to stand? I think
at times we hold back our questions in the name of
devotion, believing that we are forced to choose between
loyalty and inquiry. But what does it say about our
convictions if we are afraid to hold them up against an
apposing view? Wouldn’t that which we find worthy of
embracing as “true”, stand up and not be shaken by the
testing?
Here is an
interesting challenge. What if did not allow ourselves
to take sides in any dispute until we could first
understand and restate the opposing position with
complete accuracy? (We might try this first at home with
our loved ones.) Okay, that’s a tall order, but only
when our lives are founded upon exploration and we are
as comfortable in mystery as we are in certainty, when
we can open to new and differing points of view with the
ease and constancy of breathing – only then will we have
the basis upon which we begin to create a truly
inclusive community.
Even with deep
inquiry and open-mindedness, however, we need to take
care not to come to the conclusion that we ever truly
know another person’s experience. While the intention
of developing empathy is a good one, I fear that the
very belief that we are ever able to walk in another’s
shoes is dangerous as it may lead to another kind of
faulty certainty. I do not believe that we can really
see, feel and understand a situation from another
person’s perspective any more that we can feel their
heart beating in our chest or their breath moving
through our lungs. Perhaps the most we can give another
person is the gift of our humility and our sincerest
attempt at deep listening. Because deep listening is
the skill, posture and attitude that it is at the heart
of all cross-cultural competence and clear, conscious
communications, I will continue our discussion in
December with an article on the Gift of Deep
Listening.
In the meantime,
my friends, I will leave you with a wonderful quote from
the great Sufi poet, Hafiz, and with it, a challenge:
“The small
man builds cages for everyone he knows so that he
can contain others in the only world he
understands. The sage on the other hand, who has to
duck his head when the moon is low, keeps dropping
keys all night for the beautiful, rowdy prisoners to
release themselves from the cages others have put
them in.”
Let us be those
who open the cages that keep others in any way confined,
devalued or misunderstood - beginning, of course, by
releasing ourselves from the cages we ourselves are in.
In the East
Indian expression meaning; ”The spirit in me honors the
spirit in you"…Namaste’
~ Denise
© Denise Bissonnette, November 2006 (If not used for
commercial purposes, this article may be reproduced, all
or in part, providing it is credited to "Denise
Bissonnette, Diversity World - www.diversityworld.com". If included in a newsletter
or other publication, we would appreciate receiving a
copy.)
Read Denise's previous newsletter...
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Putting It into Practice
When our muscles
are stiff, we stretch them. A similar stretching is
required to keep our viewpoints limber. Here are some
ideas to purposely stretching your viewpoints. Choose
one idea from this list that you would be willing to
try:
1. Pick a topic
you feel strongly about. Articulate your opinion about
it with full force. Now consider how your opinion on
this topic might differ if you were an oil baron in
Texas, a beggar in Bombay, if you were in prison, if you
were terminally ill, a monk in Thailand, a major
Hollywood movie star, or an aboriginal mother of six
children on a reservation in Canada. If shifting
perspective in this manner might change your opinion,
what does that tell you? Can a point of view that
determined largely by fate ever be absolutely correct,
or is it possible that there is no “best” way to see
things?
2. Pick a current
issue – the war in Iraq, global warming, the death
penalty, welfare reform, the third strike law - or
something equally contentious. Make sure it’s a subject
about which you have a clear, strong view. Now, seek
out someone with the opposing view and ask for a
detailed explanation. Listen as attentively and openly
as possible and then see if you can repeat back the
argument as you heard it. Check to see if you have done
it justice.
3. Visit a part
of town where you don’t usually frequent that is mainly
populated by a race or class other than your own. Spend
at least a few hours there, making sure to interact with
a variety of residents. Afterward, notice if the
interaction has either confirmed or challenged any
preexisting beliefs.
4. Attend the
weekly service of a faith other than your own.
Participate as much as you feel comfortable. When the
service ends, see if it has shifted anything in the way
you view your own type of worship.
5. Find someone
from an opposing political party. Ask for an unedited
account of the things that bother them about your
party. Later, see if you can find any truth behind the
generalizations.
6. Think of
someone in your work or social sphere with whom you find
it hard to connect or to relate. Ask that person for
coffee or out to lunch. Search out what you have in
common, as well as what you don’t.
7. List ten of
your strongest opinions about people and places, as well
as about social, cultural and political issues. Then
make a candid assessment of how truly educated and
informed you really are on each topic. Are there any of
these topics about which you know every little? If so,
does the concept of ‘embracing uncertainty’ seem not
only more reasonable, but more sensible as well?
8. Think about
all the times in your life when you were absolutely
certain about something (or someone) about which you
later came to understand you were not so “right” after
all.
9. Gather a group
of friends and watch the movie “Crash”. Afterwards,
discuss what was most meaningful or important to each
person in the room.
10. Thich Nhat
Hanh has many of his books on audio tape. See if you can
secure a recorded copy of him reciting “Call Me by My
True Names” and share it with other people you know.
Hearing this poem recited in his gentle voice is truly a
breathtaking experience.
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