3 actions that create an inclusive culture

Posted on 15. May 201925. November 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

Being aware of our biases is the first of three actions that help us create an inclusive culture.

A few weeks ago I was staying in a hotel in central Amsterdam. I had just gone out for breakfast and strolled back into the hotel to go up to my room. I stepped into the elevator and a young woman followed me in. The trip up to my 5th-floor-room took around 10 seconds. Within less than 5 seconds, I had summed up the young woman. I started to panic thinking, oh no, she’s a drug addict, she’s going to steal my purse, I won’t make it to my business appointment this afternoon and I won’t be able to fly home tomorrow without my passport !!!!

Our unconscious bias is intuitive and leads us to false judgments

All of that in 5 seconds. Of course she did nothing of the sort. She was a 26-year-old (I think) Italian tourist who had just been out partying all night and forgot to take her key-card out with her. So why did I, in less than 10 seconds, judge her so harshly?

That was my unconscious bias talking. I was piecing together information that was missing and I pieced it together wrongly. I had 5 pieces of information.

She had droopy-looking eyes at 7.30am
She was very skinny
She had a bad complexion
She hadn’t pressed a floor button when she entered the elevator with me
She said in a strong-accented, broken English, while bringing two fingers up to her mouth, “I need cigarette.”

Assumption is the mother of all disaster...

I pieced together the very little information I had and all of a sudden, I thought I had a starving drug addict who needed a quick fix and was following me to my room to steal all my money.

I only realised my mistake when we finally reached the fifth floor and I insisted she exit the elevator before me. I almost pushed her out and she resisted, shaking her head. Finally she found the energy to lift 4 fingers and say in Italian, “Quattro”. So, I pressed the fourth-floor button and she then stepped out. I started laughing at myself, terribly embarrassed for making all of those assumptions about her in 5 seconds and vowed not to do it again.

Our conscious mind is slow and takes a lot of effort

Our conscious mind is slow and effortful, our unconscious mind is fast and intuitive.

It is our unconscious mind that makes assumptions very quickly when we see someone for the first time. Our mind sets judgments according to our past experiences. However we have so many past experiences that our mind needs to filter a lot and we cannot remember everything. We just remember bits and pieces and make our judgments accordingly. Therefor we usually fill in the gaps according to what makes sense to us. If I had an affinity towards this Italian tourist, I could have made her into an ‘Amy Winehouse-style-rockstar’ and would probably have asked her for an autograph. But I couldn’t “see” any affinities, (until she spoke Italian), so I invented the worst.

Three actions that create an inclusive culture

We make these false negative judgments often with our diverse colleagues at work. Here are three actions that can help us create an inclusive culture in the office:

be aware of our biases to avoid making assumptions
discover where our diversities can be complementary rather than a threat and
use small conscious actions to ensure everybody on the team feels valued

What is Diversity?

Diversity is everything that creates differences between us that can generate a different mindset. Age for example; Millennials have a different way of looking at productivity compared to baby-boomers. They believe more flexibility means being able to be more productive. Diversity can refer to our ethnicity, our national culture, our sexual orientation, gender, different physical abilities, the region we were brought up in, our socio-economic background, our education… the list goes on.

Have you ever interviewed a young engineering student and then directly afterwards interviewed a communication student? They seem to be planets apart in the way they describe their attributes and skills and how they demonstrate motivation for the job. So what would be an inclusive action here? Modify your listening skills to take in more than just the words those students are using otherwise you might miss out on hiring the best person for the job.

Diverse teams can take a little longer to become high performing than homogenous teams[1]

Once diverse teams get past the initial stages of prejudging, stereotyping and making assumptions, they can be more effective. We cannot assume though, that just because we hire the eight most creative diverse team members for our next project, that we are going to create an inclusive culture. Diversity without inclusion can lead to underperforming teams[2].

How can we create an inclusive culture?

Avoid exclusion. Not all differences are visible. The invisible differences are generally the ones that generate filling in the gaps with prejudgments. We then start labelling our colleagues as ‘unreliable, lazy, hasn't been with the company long enough, too long in the company, wants to be noticed, shy…’ . If I see that you have different skin colour to mine or if I hear that you have a different accent, I will put two and two together, ask you questions about yourself and eventually will know where our differences lie. This will help me understand how I may have to modify my communication with you or think twice about interpreting what you say. Maybe I will consider the best way to give you feedback in order to not offend you.

Invisible differences mean more questions and likely more effort

However, when the diversity is not so obvious, we don’t realise that we need to modify our behaviour because we don’t ask our colleagues the same questions that could enlighten us to their differences.

Imagine you have a team member who doesn’t hear very well. You don't see the tiny hearing aid she wears, so it is difficult for you to be aware of this disability. If you don’t know about her disability, you won’t make any changes to the way you communicate with her. She may end up feeling a little excluded from the team because she isn’t able to leap in and exchange ideas as freely at meetings, feeling she may not have understood all the details. You also note that she doesn’t offer many suggestions at meetings and you write her off as not very interested in the project and you end up hardly ever asking her for input. In the end, she will likely feel excluded and lose motivation.

Ask yourself which actions you can modify to create an inclusive culture

However, if you know she has a hearing disability, you start to consider how you can include her more in the team meetings. ‘Should I look at her when I speak so she can read my lips? Should I use Skype with camera rather than just the phone when we speak to help her get the message? Should I ensure the whole team knows about this so that when we have team meetings everybody is more careful?’ That is Inclusion. Making every team member feel valued.

Creating an inclusive culture means avoid making assumptions

Inclusion means to avoid making assumptions that we are all the same. We are all different and we need to be treated differently. We think differently, behave differently, react differently and therefore we need to communicate differently with each of the people on our team. Inclusion is about modifying small actions to make everyone on the team feel valued and feel as though they belong. This allows everyone to feel they can be themselves.

A person who feels they belong, will be more motivated to participate in reaching objectives of the team. They will feel that they have everything to gain in being creative and the team spirit will soar, meaning more retention and better collaboration[1]. Inclusive teams make better business decisions up to 87% of the time and take decisions two times faster with half of the meetings.[2]

Small conscious actions can create inclusiveness

What kind of small actions create inclusiveness? They are simpler than you think. Open up, be curious about your colleagues and think before you speak. Say good morning to everyone when you enter the office. Occasionally go and have a coffee with someone you normally wouldn’t share a coffee with. Ensure you give the opportunity to introverts to speak up in meetings. Be aware of your biases when interviewing job candidates or when considering who to promote.

As a test, write a list of the people you promoted last year. How similar were they? Were they all men, all women, all white, all engineers, same age, same nationality, same education background, same outgoing personality? If so, why?

Break bad habits...

Even when we have good intentions, our assumptions get in the way, so don’t be too hard on yourself if you occasionally say the wrong thing. Put the error into your bag of 'things to be aware of'. I was at a networking conference in Zurich a couple of years ago where I met an Australian woman who had just moved to Switzerland. She was wearing a wedding ring and carried a beautiful black, patent-leather Prada handbag over her wrist. While chatting to her I asked, “Did you move to Zurich with your husband?” “Actually”, she replied, ‘I moved here with my wife.”

Oops. There I was telling her I train D&I and I am the first to make assumptions. I made a mental note to myself to avoid using the word husband and wife in the future and just use, ‘spouse’ or ‘partner’. In English these words are genderless. But we forget our good intentions. Six months later I was talking to a young British man who had just moved to Central America. I saw he was wearing a wedding ring and I was curious how he and his family were integrating, so I asked, “Did you move here with your wife?” “Actually,” he replied, “I came over with my husband.’’ Grrrr….

[1] Diversity Matters, McKinsey, 2015 Inclusive Leadership: The View From Six Countries, Catalyst, 2014, Driving Retention and Performance Through Employee Engagement, Corporate Leadership Council, 2008 ;

[2] Diversity + Inclusion = Better Decision Making at Work, Erik Larson, Forbes Magazine, September 2017

Working Down Under with Cultural Intelligence

Posted on 10. February 201626. June 2022 by Tania Pellegrini

So you’ve finally got the chance to head Down Under on assignment for a couple of years or you have an Australian colleague or two who have joined your project team for the next fifteen months. Don’t be fooled by the laid-back reputation that Australians are renowned for; deadlines will be met and your Aussie colleagues will let you know if they don’t agree with your decisions.

The interview below is in German and it discusses some communication and behavioural challenges that you may face when working with Australians. The German grammar in the video has plenty of room for improvement although I hope the intention comes through – at least the accent is ‘dinky-di’ Aussie. For the non-German speaking readers, here are some helpful suggestions for creating an atmosphere of trust and making your team effective when working with Australians. There certainly are plenty of Aussies out there working in the sports event world, so don’t consider it to be too unlikely to have one or two on your team.

Equality -Australians strive for equality and will call the Prime Minister, their child’s teacher and their taxi driver by their first name, no titles, surnames or special considerations. In a business situation, treat everybody equally, i.e. if you’re leading a meeting be sure to ask your Aussie subordinates for their opinions, especially if they are the experts on the subject matter.
Be ‘unassuming‘ – play down your accomplishments. Unless somebody has asked you about your engineering discoveries and your technological feats, don’t offer the information. It’s not that your Australian colleagues won’t find your accomplishments interesting, but if someone asks you what you do for a living, there’s no need to start the explanation with where you did your MBA to achieve where you are today; you’ll put the table guests to sleep.
‘Mateship‘ – if you’re the boss, don’t behave in an authoritarian manner with your subordinates, take the time to get to know them and treat them as your ‘mates’. Before you go to the office on Monday morning be sure to read up on the weekend sports results as they’ll surely be discussed before the weekly update meeting. Enjoy an after-work drink together (it doesn’t have to be alcoholic) or invite them to your Sunday BBQ. Keep in mind that if you invite them to a game of golf, your Aussie subordinates are not going to lose the game to make you look better.
Don’t forget to use humour, especially when things aren’t going well. Australian humour is often ironic and self-deprecating. It’s a way to keep the atmosphere relaxed. Even if you have no idea what the joke’s punch line meant, at least give an appreciative smile. One of the worst criticisms you’ll hear from an Australian is, ‘He can’t take a joke.’
Don’t forget that although cities like Melbourne and Sydney are very multicultural, Australia has a lot of British heritage. So remember to always be polite and don’t criticise your colleagues too directly or you’ll create enemies amongst your co-workers and remember that Australians generally support the underdog in any competition, so if that’s not you, you won’t be making mates. Use humour in situations of conflict to lighten up the atmosphere.

Australia is a country of immigrants who have endeavoured to make their children’s lives more prosperous than their own may have been. Each individual you meet will have a lot of different cultural influences that will dominate in certain situations, whether that be their gender, their profession, their generation, religion or their national heritage. Therefore the above five points may not ring true for each individual you meet, however it’s a starting point for building your team.

Generally, when doing business with other cultures the three steps to keep in mind are:

Learn what your values are and your preferred methods of communication. For example, are you offended if your boss doesn’t ask you for your expert opinion in meetings, or on the contrary are you offended and feel your boss is being aggressive if she does ask for your opinion in a group meeting?
Learn what the other person’s cultural values are (whether they be national, generational, gender based etc.) and their preferred methods of communication.
Find out where the largest gap between the two cultures is and learn what you can do to minimise the gap to create a relationship of trust. Or even better, learn what the similarities are and how you can use those similarities to become more effective with your team members.

If you would like to assess your intercultural competencies and see which areas may need development you can do the Intercultural Readiness Check (IRC). Contact Culturelink for more information.

Reach your goals in diverse teams with these three steps.

Posted on 14. January 201625. November 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

An Italian lawyer travelling back home to Rome after a business trip in Japan, (let’s call her Elisabetta), thinks about the meetings she just held in Tokyo. Her gut feeling is that she wasn’t very successful but she can’t really place her finger on what went wrong. Why did she have the feeling that her Japanese business associates didn’t really consider her to be the most competent of lawyers?

Adapting is easier if it’s surface culture

We often hear that when working with people of different cultural backgrounds we need to adapt. OK, great. That doesn’t sound too hard. I mean, how hard is it to learn how to use chopsticks in Japan, or to not use your left hand at the table in Qatar? We usually don’t mind adapting when the situation calls for changing a physical habit but if the adaptation calls for a change in behaviour that contradicts our deep down values and that is contrary to the way we were educated, contrary to how we have learnt to behave naturally, then it becomes almost agonising and sometimes comical.

Nobody had told Elisabetta that she needed to control her emotions during her business meetings in Japan. However, even if somebody had informed her, would she have felt comfortable behaving so unnaturally? Italians tend to wear their heart on their sleeves. If they’re happy they’ll smile and laugh with joy, if they’re angry they’ll grimace with frustration, if they’re confused their forehead will wrinkle in a puzzled frown, irrespective of whether they are in a business meeting or having lunch with the family. Japanese tend to say, “Only a dead fish has an open mouth,” and a true professional controls his/her feelings in a business meeting. Any loss of control is deemed unprofessional. So Elisabetta’s gut feeling was probably spot on, the meeting probably was not successful.

Being able to build trust with your clients, colleagues or service providers of different cultural backgrounds requires “code-switching” or adapting your communication and behaviour.

Intercultural Sensitivity is not natural

Milton Bennet says that intercultural sensitivity is not natural and that ‘Adaptation means we need to consciously shift our perspective and intentionally alter our behaviour[1]. Therefore in order to become interculturally competent we need to deliberately work at certain skills that are not innate such as giving direct negative feedback to one of our very direct German subordinates even though we are the type of person who usually speaks very indirectly. It’s the kind of thought that gives you a stomach-ache just imagining the scene. The evening before an evaluation meeting, you stand in front of the mirror at home practising all the negative things you need to say and then you get to the meeting the next morning and pofff… it just doesn’t come out as you wanted. You couldn’t help but camouflage the negative points with niceties and flattery even though you really needed to tell the person in front of you that her delegation techniques are not working. So she walks away from the meeting thinking she’s had an extremely good year and that her management skills are great. So much for directness.

Step 1: Know yourself

The first step to becoming interculturally competent is not to know how the other culture functions, but rather to know yourself. You need to take a good look at yourself and ask yourself, “What are my preferred ways of communicating, what are my most common ways of behaving in meetings and in situations of conflict and how do I problem solve?”

Let’s take a concrete example. You’re the head of your department and you were brought up in an egalitarian society. In meetings you always consider asking the opinion of your subordinates before making an important decision because you know that their advice is likely to be vital. Now, go and sit in a meeting with colleagues who were brought up in a culture that does not veneer a subordinate’s opinion and you’ll likely come out of that meeting pulling your hair out, wondering, “Why are they all just agreeing with me, why didn’t anybody question the upcoming deadlines?” If you are used to debating in meetings and receiving assorted input, this kind of behaviour will frustrate you and worse you’ll likely start labelling your colleagues as incompetent, unreliable and just plain lazy.

Step 2: Learn about the values of the ‘other’ culture

Working with people of different cultural backgrounds involves developing competencies that we do not necessarily have naturally, such as learning to ‘read the air’ in Japan. If you’re classified as Kuuki Yomenai in Japan, it probably means that you cannot ‘read the air’, or you cannot decipher social situations, such as not understanding body language. The Japanese are usually non-conflictual and your Japanese service provider would not embarrass you or make you lose face by replying to a last minute outrageous request of yours with an outright ‘No’. He will likely say, “It would be very difficult.” Reading his body language you will hopefully understand that he is actually saying, ‘Are you insane, your request is completely out of the question!’ If you had ’read the air’ then you would quickly move on and find a new service provider. If you aren’t capable of reading the air and you’re an eternal optimist, then you’re probably still sitting around waiting for the difficult situation in Tokyo to be made possible.

Step 3: Code switching – adapting your style

So, if step 1 is knowing how you behave and step 2 is understanding how the person in front of you behaves, then step 3 is to ‘code switch’ or adapt your behaviour and communication to be more comprehensible to the person opposite you.

Code-switching could be verbal or non-verbal. It could be the the way you write your emails or even which media format you use. For example switching on the webcam when speaking to a culture that needs to read body language is important to help them understand your message.

So rather than just read the financial pages of the Sydney Morning Herald before you start your merger in Australia, consider if it might be more impactful to learn how to talk about Aussie Rules football while sipping at a caffé latte at Monday morning meetings with your colleagues.

[1] Milton Bennett, “Towards Ethnorelativism: A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity”, Intercultural Press, 1993. 21-71.