Our class at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication was a half day today. Good thing, I think many of us needed the time to process all we are learning.

We started out talking about the most common challenges for global virtual teams.

• difference in time orientation
• difference in problem solving approach
• difference in decision placement in org
• who gets to participate?
• differing degrees of formality
• differing expectations of leadership behavior

The person who is key is the leader. But not just any leader. A leader with some tech skill certainly, but more important, one who has collaborative leadership skills. The competitive advantage is gained through collaborative advantage. How can we truly leverage the diversity on our teams?

Trust is a decision

We spent quite a bit of time talking about trust. How to gain it and lose it virtually, across cultures, and virtually across cultures. How can you help a team build both swift trust and deeper trust?

Virtual teams are totally dependent on trust, but technology doesn’t really support it. Research has shown these things build trust:
Swift trust

• competence demonstrated
• cooperation, mutual support— offers of help
• open with each other about issues
• reliability

Deepening trust

• accessibility over time, have presence
• compatibility
• predictable
• caring as individuals
• safety ( I can say things and it won’t come back to haunt me, what is said in meeting, stays in meeting)
• inclusion

Technical challenge of the day!

Now I’m pretty sure there is an inverse relationship between the amount of time you have to accomplish a task and the number of challenges that arise. I recorded a really great podcast interview with our class instructor Terry Brake. Only it was the first time I did it without my technical guru co-host. So I managed to record my questions, but none of Terry’s answers. Not so interesting! I’ll try again, now that I have determined what I was doing wrong. If Terry is willing and we can find the time.

See also:

Exploring Culture and Technology

Exploring Culture and Technology: Day 2

I can only begin to skim the surface of the learning. Cross-cultural dialogue unfolds over time for me. I understand on a simple level what I am learning today, but I know it will seep in and affect my behavior over a longer period of time.

Worldprism

We spend much of the day exploring cultural dimensions and how they might impact our communication over technology. Using the Worldprism™, each class member played the role of cultural informant for the country they were born in. We took our best guess about where the business culture fell on average in the different countries.

The conversations were very rich. We were not looking to identify simple lists of what to do in specific countries, but rather to look at the factors that might be influencing communication. To begin to understand the type of drivers which might be under particular responses, and to learn what in our own behavior over technology may be difficult for others. I’ll have to spend some time combing through the notes to organize our collective thoughts.

Identifying my people

I was on the USA team. At the end of the part where we were charting the USA, I commented that I felt like a deviant. While I recognized the pattern, I was also aware how I felt different. Then I saw the French Canadian from Quebec chart. My grandparents were French Canadian, and though I only knew one of them, I see now how their norms have passed through to me. I had never heard someone speak from this perspective before. I always wondered why descriptions of French and Canadian separately had never felt familiar to me.

There was part of me that felt very emotional, like I had found my people. Ok, so I realize that part is very US American. It takes many of us quite a while to discover and define our cultural identities. Many other aspects are very clear to me, but this national piece has been elusive.

Our first virtual team experiment

I’m on the technology in business team. We are working virtually (in theory) on a project to explore how to identify and intervene when things go poorly. We ended the day with an hour working on our project over Google Chat. Lets just say that we experienced a full range of the things that go wrong on virtual teams. I think we are doing action research. Just a few things we noticed:

What created challenges

1. hadn’t thought about process or content
2. got into trouble right away, but kept going anyway
3. were answering different questions
4. German Google was not working technically (no indication in US chat windows)
   
5. assumed universal chat vocabulary which wasn’t true
   
6. no one was responsible for checking in around technology
7. no common cohesive problem
8. no defined roles
9. no direction
10. no turn taking
11. no clear facilitator

And after an hour of struggling, we are resorting to email since we have a deliverable on Friday. I no longer wonder why business doesn’t adopt more technology! Oh did I mention we ended up in the hall talking face to face?

Have you experienced any of these challenges? What did you do?

One of our class members is also reflecting on the class here.

Also see: Exploring Culture and Technology Day 1

Exploring Culture and Technology: Day 3

One of the things I find very special about this particular setting is the people who assemble here, from all around the world, yet all passionate about learning about each other. There are people working a wide variety of settings: education, business, non-profit, ngo’s.

Global Perspectives from global citizens

My day started hearing from the institute faculty who are teaching a range of workshops on diversity, inclusion, cross-cultural, and intercultural communication. Each shared something they have been thinking about, or what I think of how they are changing their little corner of the world. The interns follow, professionals in their own right, greeting us in the many languages they speak, from the countries they have lived in. Can’t remember how many, but more than 35.

Starting Class

To get us fully engaged in understanding the challenges of global teams, our faculty Terence Brake from tmaworld broke us into two teams. All but one person on each team was blindfolded. The rest of us where told we had something to find near us, which we were to assemble once we found it.

This was a very effective exercise to force us to communicate clearly (or not), find ways to connect and collaborate (or not), and challenge all sorts of assumptions. It was not easy, even though we were able to actually reach out and touch each other, giving us another sense we would not have over technology.

We’ll be exploring all week

I’ll be working with my team to investigate a number of technologies, and investigating the cross-cultural implications of the choices we make. My small group is particularly interested in exploring what we can do when the online communication starts going bad. How do we tell? What can we do about it?

Any insights? What are the signs you look for to tell something is wrong in a conversation using technology?

What do visuals have to do with it?

The Zaltmans have developed a patented process, Zaltman Methaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET). It involves asking people to find photographs about their feelings toward something specific. Through structured interviews and working with a graphic designer, a collage image is digitally constructed about the topic. You can see some small pieces of the process in this video.

What stands out for me in this video, and as it did in the book is the description how often we are lead astray in our thinking by focusing on surface differences rather than searching for the significant similarities expressed in deep metaphors.

Three Levels of Metaphors

The Zaltmans describe three levels of metaphors, and use this example:

Surface Metaphors

• Money runs through his fingers
• I am drowning in debt
• Don’t pour your money down the drain
• The bank froze his assets

Metaphor Theme

• Money is like liquid

Deep Metaphor

• Resource

It is through understanding the deep metaphors that we understand the roots of our business challenges. Visual exploration identifies the subconscious drivers of behavior by helping us see the deep metaphors.

As I developed the VisualsSpeak ImageSet, we looked a lot at metaphor. In the testing of potential images, we found that the images that depicted surface metaphors did not inspire deep insights as readily as images that were more elemental. We decided to offer participants the opportunity to construct their own metaphors by providing a visual language set to do it with. This is one part of why we consistently hear people get new insights when they work with our tools.

Thinking Deeply

One of the more interesting articles coming from the publicity for the book was published by the Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge Newsletter, Why Don’t Managers Think Deeply?.

In decrying the lack of what they call “deep thinking” among managers and especially those responsible for marketing, they suggest some things that get in its way. Among them are:

1. reluctance to take risk, especially when short-term performance is at stake,
2. the fear of disruption resulting from “thinking differently and deeply,”
3. the potential psychological cost of changing one’s mind resulting from deep thinking,
4. the lack of information providing deep insights on which to base deep thinking.

The articles inspired 136 comments. Many of comments pointed to the limitations of thinking embedded into the management levels of many organizations. Even more pointed to the perception of a lack of time. Yet, doesn’t it take way more time when an organization is not thinking deeply enough about what it is doing?

Why don’t managers use visuals to help them think?

Even though the ZMET uses visuals and words to uncover the core metaphors that drive customer behavior, a a major portion of this book is describing the seven metaphors. Might part of the problem be managers don’t have the visual thinking skills or access to the tools that allow for deep thinking? Seems there is an almost obsessive focus on finding the ‘answer’, but not so much on making sure the process used to get there can actually accommodate the scale of the issue.

Visual Thinking resources

In the past many of the resources for learning to use visual thinking have been scattered. There are a number of companies who work in the space across a wide range of price points, who take a range of approaches. Luckily, we now have Vizthink, which is helping to form a worldwide community of people who work in this space. The inaugural conference was held in Jan, and I was fortunate to participate as a facilitator and exhibitor. You can see the ways we used VisualsSpeak, graphic facilitation, and mind mapping to explore market position in this series of posts:

• Artrain’s Challenge
• VizThink Challege: Overview
• VizThink Challenge: Which images were used and why it matters
• VizThink Challenge: What the words tell us

The VizThink blog has series of webinars from leaders in the space including Dave Gray, David Sibbet, Nancy Duarte, Jamie Nast, and Chuck Frey. There is also a series of podcasts on a variety of visual topics.

For those who prefer to learn from books, here are some of the books you might start with. (Really I just wanted to put the interesting spinning visual on my blog, but these really are favorite books)

Other posts I have written on visual language include

• Discovering the essence of visuals
• Visual Language: Shape
• Visual Language: About Line
• Are your visuals saying what you want? Part 1 Visual Elements
• Are your visuals saying what you want? Part 2 Color & Contrast
• Are your visuals saying what you want? Part 3 Texture & Pattern

What can we do to get visuals in the hands of managers to help them think more deeply? What do you need to know in order to be willing to use visuals? What would help?

How can we define culture by what it is not? After all, don’t we define culture based on what it is such as our values, languages, religions, etc? Anthropologists talk of worldview, which also includes basic assumptions about how things work. Values are derivative of worldview.

I’m going to share with you how I learned a little about my European American culture through a story a friend told me recently and how I came to see my own culture a little clearer because of what it isn’t.

But before I do, let me give you some things to snack on.

A little about me

I am a European American male. 51 years old. My parents are from Irish and Scottish stock. I was raised and spent most of my life in the Northeast. Now living in the Pacific Northwest.

Verbalizing European American culture

I know when I’m asked to talk about my culture, I sometimes have difficulty doing so. I have to think about it and usually come up with some kind of generic answer. I have heard the same sorts of responses from other European Americans (EA).

For example these are some of the responses I have given and have also heard other EA’s say.

• I’m American
• We’re all Americans (When we start to drill down into this response, we don’t have to go very far to discover that there are big differences in what this means depending on who is speaking

I celebrate

• The 4th of July
• Thanksgiving
• Christmas

In my family we acknowledged our Irish background by celebrating St Patrick’s Day. My stomach still turns over when I think of all that over-boiled corned beef and cabbage I was made to eat.

Somehow all of these things leave me with a feeling that something is missing. There’s more to the story, but I can’t put my finger on it.

Lost in St Louis

As I mentioned, a friend told me a story recently that gave me greater insight into my own culture. Let’s call him Michael.

Michael is from the Northwest and holds numerous high level degrees. The word brilliant comes to mind when I think about him. A thirst for knowledge, curiosity, and making relevance of the world has been his path through life.

A number of years ago, Michael attended a professional conference in St Louis, Missouri. He decides to save money by taking a bus instead of a taxi to his hotel. Unfortunately, he finds out that the bus line ends far away from his hotel. Now he is lost and is walking around trying to find another connection to his hotel. After an hour of walking in business attire, he finds himself on the edge of Washington University. Michael has never been to this city, so everything is new.

At some point in his wanderings, he notices a sheriff is following him. What makes the act so apparent is that the sheriff is in an official car and driving at the speed Michael is walking. There is no attempt to conceal the surveillance. Michael makes nothing of this at first chalking it up to a bored cop with nothing better to do.

After two, or has it been three, hours of this, Michael is feeling panicked. He cannot understand why he has drawn the attention of this sheriff. He has no history in St. Louis, so no reason to be harassed. He is well dressed and has broken no laws. He is a professional not some street thug in need of chaperoning.

He is lost and feeling desperate. He tries to call a cab from a phone booth, but the cab company wants to know ‘where’r you at’. He doesn’t understand the question. He’s telling them the location. He goes into an Asian restaurant to get change to call another cab. The workers look at him with fear and suspicion. They nervously inspect his money and give him change. Finally someone tells him that in St. Louis, cabs will only pick up people at a specific location such as at a restaurant. Unwritten rules.

What Michael didn’t know at the time was that the county had a sort of curfew in effect. The curfew was not geared towards protecting children by ensuring they were home at a safe hour. It was a local rule aimed at keeping specific groups of people off the streets. There were no signs spelling out the curfew guidelines, so only the locals would know of its existence.

The one qualification a person had to have for the curfew to apply to them was being non-white. You see, Michael is African American. He didn’t know the rules that governed African Americans in that part of the country, because they were enforced but not advertised like so many of these types of rules..

Defining culture by what it’s not

Hearing this story helped me to understand my European American culture better not because I had never heard of this sort of experience before. It helped me, because I realized that I would never expect this to happen to me. It is not in my consciousness or part of my life experience.

What isn’t defines what is

In the art world, there is a term called negative space. It is used to describe the space around an object or form. Negative space is as important to the overall purpose of the work as is the primary focal point, because it gives the work context.

This term is not used as a value judgment. There is no good or bad, right or wrong. It is just context.

Michael’s story is, in a sense, the negative space that gives more context to my experience as a European American. It is about what my experience has not been.

A reverse view of injustice

Part of what all of this is about is coming to understand white privilege. For me, the concept of white privilege has been more about the conscious attitudes of European Americans.

What I’m realizing is that there is an unconscious aspect that has to do with what I don’t ever expect to happen to me. When I was young and had long hair, I did expect the possibility of being harassed by a redneck cop. If my hair had been short I wouldn’t have expected it. But what I never would have expected then or now is to be followed around for hours because of my skin color. It’s not in my consciousness.

I have been aware for a long time that there is discrimination for many people in housing, job promotions, getting credit, etc. Yet, as a European American I have never had the conscious expectation that any of this would happen to me.

For example, I would never expect to be discriminated against for:

• Getting a job
• Being promoted
• Buying a car
• Purchasing a house
• Renting an apartment

I know this happens to others, but the possibility of it happening to me is not in my consciousness when I go about these activities. I never think to myself ‘I wonder if this person is going to treat me fairly because of my skin color’.

No scientific poll needed

I think it’s pretty safe to say that we don’t need a scientific poll to say that many non-dominant groups have the expectation that they may face discrimination in everyday encounters.

This expectation is something that a big percentage of US citizens live with every day of their lives.

And even though we may not be consciously aware of it, not having an expectation that it could happen to us, partly defines European American culture. It’s the negative space of our culture or worldview. The part defined by what it is not.

Incremental learning and diversity

I have found that becoming culturally aware and learning about diversity is about gaining insight through many small, incremental steps. Generally speaking there aren’t a lot of big ah-ha moments, although Michael’s story might be one, because it has caused me to reflect deeply. The reverberations have been many.

For me, understanding diversity and culture is a life-long process. I don’t think I’ll ever arrive at a point where I can say I know what it’s all about. There are layers and layers to uncover. And the layers shift as societies shift. Everything is in movement. Consciousness evolves. Understanding evolves.

What’s your perspective?

• How do you define your culture?
• What is the ‘negative space’ or unconscious parts of understanding cultural?
• What insights can you share to help others understand culture?

Visual Business Cards

The first thing we did was to quickly draw our own visual business cards, and share them with someone else. Simple quick sketches drawn on business card size paper with Sharpie markers.

Mine shows I use the computer and photography to work with groups of people. It’s not a great drawing. People don’t look like a circle with a line below it, yet when I tell you that is what it represents, it works. The person I was paired with in the exercise understood something about what I did.

What does my card say I do?

Image-based Training & Consulting.

I know, no one knows what that means. It is eye-catching with great graphics. I have yet to come up with an effective concise description of what I do.

OK, really I haven’t come up with a paragraph to describe my work. Yet, I can show you in a few minutes. In many ways, the quick rough sketch tells you a lot more than the expensive professionally designed version about what I do.

Now I don’t think I am ready to ditch my cards that actually give you contact information. I do need a new tagline (any ideas???). But I am thinking about ways to use the back of my card to show something more meaningful.

What did other participants think of the visual cards?

When asked to reflect on what it was like to introduce yourself visually, and to hear others’ explanations, this is what participants reported:

• easier
• more enjoyable
• sustainable
• relaxing
• evoked more questions
• learned about the person
• easier to understand what the job entailed
• faster to understand
• gets past the jargon and buzzwords
• engaged interaction
• immediately multidimensional
• focuses on one component
• works when both are on the same plane, similar expectations
• requires talent and confidence
• some jobs are easier to depict than others

I certainly don’t hear those outcomes from exchanging regular business cards. So why don’t we see these methods being used more frequently?

What are we really trying to do with a card?

A few weeks ago Guy Kawasaki wrote a post about his new business card . No pictures, but nothing extra. Guy is about his websites, which are all listed there.

They were designed by Justin Ruckman. You can see many examples on his site of simple effective design, and the thing that jumps out at me, is you really get a sense of what people do.

Visuals don’t have to be the answer. Guy’s card is really effective using words. Now I would argue that a large part of the effectiveness of the words are their visual quality. So I don’t think the answer is the same for everyone.

How would you show people what you do?

VisualsSpeak®

Reg. No. 3,435,236

Registered May 27, 2008

Owners’ Response

Co-owner Tiernan ’s response was to say “Now we are finally in a position to challenge Microsoft’s dominance of the global software market.” When reminded that VisualsSpeak® is not involved in developing software, he was quick to point out “But we could be”.

VisualsSpeak’s® principal, Christine Martell, could not be reached for comment as she is currently luxuriating on a private island in the Caribbean awaiting the riches to roll in after the Trademark announcement.

Newsflash: arrived today

I have just been introduced to VisualsSpeak and I am very interested in what it has to offer! However I have read through the manual and I am looking for more information on how to facilitate it. Can you offer any suggestions or point me in the right direction?

I emailed her to ask for more information and received this reply:

I am looking into using VisualsSpeak to try and bring out more personal awareness for individuals. I am not quite sure how to do this, I just know that I would like to attempt to. Do you have any suggestions? I will also use it for companies when trying to discover where their employees stand in relation to things such as the company vision.

Find a way to practice

The images in the VisualsSpeak ImageSet have been tested with thousands of people, so you can have confidence that the tool itself will work. What do I mean by that? Participants will find images that will inspire some kind of significant conversation. Even if someone just finds one image and then spends their time telling you why it really isn’t the right image, you will have learned that person is quite literal and perhaps perfection is important to them.

I would suggest finding someone you know to practice with. If you want to get insight into an individual, try the present and future framework. Using construction paper (or placemats) for a background, ask the person to make one image of the present and another of the future. The space between them can represent the transition if they wish.

Only give them about five minutes to do it, because the time pressure helps get better outcomes. By not allowing too much time to over think the framing question, you will help your clients get to their core values and foster personal awareness.

Ask the participant to tell you the story of their image. Don’t interpret anything for them even if they ask. Pay attention to the visual patterns to give you ideas about questions that will deepen the reflection. Here are some ideas:

• What is in the center of the image?
• Which photographs are on the edges?
• Are all the photos within the frame (background paper)?
• Are there any shapes that appear in multiple images (ex: circles, rectangles)?

If there is a photo of a tree in the middle of one of the panels, you might ask

• Is there any significance to the tree being in the middle?

Strive for clarifying questions about the visual patterns and their verbal input.

In an organization

To get more information about how employees relate to organizational vision, you could ask them to create an image of the organization in general, or the vision specifically. I would lean toward the general, since you tend to get better information about how people really feel if they are not trying to guess what you want. If the framing question is too specific, people will often try to depict what they think they are supposed to. So you may see people doing things like selecting images similar to those that illustrate the company vision poster that hangs in the lobby instead of telling you their vision or understanding.

Does this help?

Are there other things you are wondering about? Or specific examples? Please leave your questions in the comment box or email me at info(at)visualsspeak(dot)com and I’ll be happy to answer them.

Adam works for an interesting company, Focus Adventure ‘Where every moment is a challenge’. They use outdoor adventure of all kinds along with experiential techniques for leadership, team building, and innovation. You can see a video on their homepage. Made me want to sign up!

Facilitating his first session

When I met Adam, I could tell he had a lot of interesting ideas. So I asked him to keep in touch as he started using the tool. I just knew he would find creative ways to use it that all of us in the VisualsSpeak community will find useful. Here is his first report:

The internal learning session was conducted on 2 May 08. My peers are absolutely amazed by its (VisualsSpeak ImageSet) ability and potential to create openness at a level they have not experienced before. Apologies, I don’t consider myself as en expert in this so I stayed pretty close to the way you have conducted in the IAF session but a slightly compressed one as I have only 1.5 hour. In summary, this is how it was done;

• Started with a brief introduction on what VisualsSpeaks is.
• Each learner receives handouts on pattern recognition.
• Each learner receives a base (about 40cm by 30cm) to work with.
• Divided into two small group of 6, given only 5 minutes, each learner to select any number of photos that will represent “yourself”.

Some interesting observations captured were,

1. Some did not use the base, they simply lay the photos on the floor. Participants replied, “ creativity has no boundaries” when asked why the base wasn’t used
2. Some selected photos were overturned but were found beside the frame formed by the participant. The participant was asked why those photos were selected but not revealed. We didn’t get a concrete reply but it was interesting enough to just ask the question. We all agreed that the act carries meaning that is implicit and not groundless.
3. Listeners should try to look at the frame with the same perspective as the creator, i.e. nobody should stand opposite of the creator.
4. One participant formed a frame that has no humans in any photos but only nature. It could very well mean he prefers the nature to a crowd, introversion, reserved, etc.
5. A few felt that the least instructions from facilitators, more room can be given to creativity and also allowing more implicit information to surface
6. As a facilitator, the expectation cup should be emptied to avoid any unwarranted influences.

Overall, the experience was great.

Results!

I’m especially excited by Adam’s results for a couple of reasons:

• while we tested the VisualsSpeak ImageSet with people from around the world, most of the images were created in the US
• it worked in a setting that is very different from where it was created
• Adam got excellent results after just three hours of training

Our dream is to create add-on sets of images to broaden the applicability of the tool. We want other photographers who represent very different viewpoints to add to the collection. This will make it more usable globally, with more inclusive images. But, the core set has to be solid, and having facilitators bring it into other countries is a way to test that at a new level. So thanks Adam, we look forward to hearing how we can make the image selection even better for your area of the world.

Affirming Adam’s observations

These are great observations, aligned with much of what we have observed over the years.

• Some did not use the base

Offering a background for people to assemble their images serves a couple of purposes. One, there is a segment of participants that really enjoy working with a defined space. They don’t know what to do without a defined area, so the background is important to them. Second, how someone responds to the idea of a background gives you a lot more information about how they think.

With a group of experiential facilitators and people who work for a super creative company like Focus Adventure, I would expect some to reject the background. There is no end to what people come up with, and the best part about it- it’s all OK. It just provides more to talk about and makes our differences quite vivid and clear.

• photos were overturned

I totally agree that there is meaning to the overturned photos. Not all the time, but it can be very significant. I have seen people have deep insights when asked about images that are hidden in some way. I have also seen a lot of emotion, with crying and even deep sobbing. It can be very powerful in a coaching situation when you are one-on-one. It can be very uncomfortable for some people if that happens in a larger group. Especially in a work setting.

I proceed carefully. With a group, sometimes I will point out to them as a whole that they may want to reflect on things around the edges of their images. Often people who feel safe will share insights, while others will stay quiet and I just respect that.

• same perspective

This is interesting to me. Yes, looking at the image from the same side as where the creator is describing it helps you understand their perspective. So, if that matches your session objective, it could be helpful. I have also observed people who are on the opposite side see something, and when they mention it, it offers an insight to the person who constructed the image.

If you are looking for creative insights, innovation, and breakthrough, I would intentionally look at things from different sides. So this is a good example of how the process might flex depending on your desired outcomes.

• no humans in any photos but only nature

I also suspect I am working with someone who is more reflective when I see images with no people. I listen carefully to their stories for clues that confirm it or not.

• least instructions from facilitators

I’m totally on board with this one. I’m always saying no rules, just a time limit. Participants do amazing things, and I never tire of listening and seeing what they come up with.

• expectation cup should be emptied
  

I love this. So insightful. I think this is the hardest thing for most people to get used to using VisualsSpeak. The more you, as the facilitator, can lessen your expectations of what the outcomes should be about the better the process will be. If you allow it to happen, magic can occur in the room.

Thanks Adam and the team at Focus Adventure for sharing with all of us!