FranklinCovey Blog

I met Don Haderle, who was at that time a distinguised engineer at IBM, and he told me that he didn’t mind if new empoyees would try to face the same challenges he had come across. Although he already found an answer and publicised it he said to me “Those new people might come up with a more inventive solution. One I haven’t thought of.. So please challenge my questions and answers to those questions.”
Thiis remark is engraved in my mind and it helps me to keep an open mind to other people.
Regards, Jaap

I have read both The 7 Habits and The 8th Habit and have been deeply impacted by the latter book. Post reading the book as I started drawing out my list of priorities I often find asking myself this question relating to my career – Am I really enjoying what am doing? If not, what is it that I would really enjoy to do?
I am often at a loss to actually answer the 2nd question. Would need help in structuring my thought process

How to use diversity to build organizational performance is indeed an important question in todays world. Experiencing differences can unleash amazing positive energy, creativity and innovation. Unfortunately, it can also lead to cultural misunderstandings and certain forms of exclusion, the sum of which I call Cultural Dynamics.

I believe that to really get the benefit out of diversity, the key question is: how to use cultural differences as a positive stimulus, while minimizing the risks of misunderstandings and unintentional exclusion. We should forget words like integration, but strive for participation. This means making people comfortable with ambuigity and creating flexibility towards changing routines.

In my work as facilitator/coach I find it important to enable people to manage the cultural dynamics between them. This means improving their intercultural competences and giving insight into the psychological processes brought about by experiencing differences. I found that many managers feel that these dynamics are not in their span of control. That is why I described the intercultural interaction proces in a hands on model called the Cultural Steppingstones, the steppingstones being: opening-up, exploring and creating. Each phase has it’s specific set of skills, knowledge, attitude and possible interventions. (Book: “Managing Cultural Dynamics”, available at http://www.amazon.co.uk)

Using this framework brings these sometimes complex cultural dynamics back into the circle of influence of people, resulting in using the divergent power of diversity in a team instead of allow it to become a negative spiral.

Curious to learn more about your approaches to improve and laverage cultural dynamics in teams and orgnizations.

Warm regards,
Jitske Kramer