Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Do people in Switzerland whistle, it's all you mean?
Speaker 1 00:00:20 Hello, Joseph Scholz. Welcome to the deep culture podcast, where we explore culture and the science of mind. I am here in Tokyo where the weather is heating up. And I'm speaking today with Yvonne Vanderpoel. How are you Yvonne?
Speaker 0 00:00:37 Hi, Joseph. Wonderful to be here again. I'm fine. And the weather is not only heating up on your sides also here in the Netherlands where I'm based. It's quite warm today.
Speaker 1 00:00:49 Well, I've had a busy week, but I'm looking forward to this chance to hang out with you and talk about things. So what is our topic for today, Yvonne?
Speaker 0 00:00:59 Well, we're going to talk about the do's and don'ts dilemma
Speaker 1 00:01:03 Do's and don'ts dilemma. So what is the do's and don'ts dilemma?
Speaker 0 00:01:08 Well, it's something that many intercultural trainers might experience. It happens to many of us. It's the request for a training that focused on cultural etiquettes or do's and don'ts. And then client, for instance, comes to me and says, well, my team is going to be working in Tanzania. So I would like to give them a training, just the basics, you know, what they need to hit the ground running.
Speaker 1 00:01:36 This is dilemma, right? Because for someone who's going to be working in Tanzania who doesn't have experience with that, just learning some tips or tricks will not really help them that much,
Speaker 0 00:01:49 That fact, that they recognized that they need preferation is good, but it's very superficial. And so did the dilemma is how do I tell the customer that what they're asking for is quite superficial and might not help them actually. Also
Speaker 1 00:02:06 The request itself has assumptions that you don't agree with in this case, the request to kind of assumes that knowing some cultural etiquette is all you really need.
Speaker 0 00:02:17 Yes. And there's a cultural bridge person, you know, that's not true, but the question itself takes me in a direction that I don't want to go.
Speaker 1 00:02:26 And it's a dilemma because the person asking may be sincerely trying to do the right thing. Um, but simply have simplistic ideas.
Speaker 0 00:02:35 So the do's and don'ts dilemma is actually quite profound. We also found this problem in everyday life when someone says something rather naive about cultural difference. So in the end, the do's and don'ts dilemma is about this question. How do you go from a more surface understanding of culture to a deeper understanding? And that brings us to part one do day whistle in Switzerland, before we get into anything theoretical, we should give some more examples of the do's and don'ts dilemma. Joseph. No. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:03:19 Good idea. Um, of course this dilemma, isn't just for intercultural trainers talking about cultural etiquette. You can have this dilemma, anytime someone is talking about culture in a simplistic way. Okay. And do you have an example? Uh, when I was about 18, I remember that I became friends with a Swiss guy. I was living in San Diego at the time and he was visiting. And I remember once asking him, do people in Switzerland whistle,
Speaker 0 00:03:54 It's all you mean?
Speaker 1 00:04:02 I was thinking, well, this guy is pretty serious. Maybe Swiss people are, are pretty serious. You know, he should loosen up a little bit. And somehow I thought that whistling is something that easygoing people do. So I guessed that if he told me that people in Switzerland don't whistle, that I could confirm that Swiss people are
Speaker 0 00:04:26 It's interesting out it's work. It's an impossible question.
Speaker 1 00:04:32 He just, he just shook his head and looked at me like I was crazy.
Speaker 0 00:04:36 Oh, wow. Understandable. You meant well, but you had a really naive understanding of cultural difference. We have any other examples.
Speaker 1 00:04:46 Someone once said to me, Hey, Joseph, you've been to a lot of foreign places. Uh, and I've been thinking about doing some foreign travel. So I was wondering, where is good? Wow. Where is, where is good? Like where there's our country. And then there are foreign places. And if I'm going to go to one of those foreign places, where is a good to go, what do you say? There's, it's a very simple mental category that this person is using. It's, you know, home or here and then foreign. So Yvonne, do you have any examples?
Speaker 0 00:05:22 Well, the most frequently asked question to me is, is everyone in Amsterdam, smoking marijuana. That's quite a negative assumption built in there.
Speaker 1 00:05:35 It also occurs to me that you get very difficult questions. When you come back from a trip, for example, someone will say, oh, so how was China? Like as though you can answer about China or about the Chinese experience there in a sentence or something.
Speaker 0 00:05:53 So the point we need to ask is why do some people have simple or stereotypical attitudes about cultural difference?
Speaker 1 00:06:01 And this is something that we have talked about on this podcast before, uh, in particular in the bias is not bias episode. In that episode, we talked about how the human mind is biased by
Speaker 0 00:06:16 Nature. Yes. We naturally jump to conclusions. We take mental shortcuts, we simplify complex problems and we are biased in favor of those that are similar to us. And we easily overlook diversity in outgroups.
Speaker 1 00:06:32 So in that sense, having stereotypical or simplistic attitudes towards cultural differences, natural, of course, the fact that it's natural doesn't mean that it's good, but we shouldn't be surprised. I mean, if anything, having an intercultural perspective is unnatural. It's not kind of the default setting of the human mind
Speaker 0 00:06:55 Need to be able to explain the difference between a shallow or surface cultural understanding and deeper cultural under
Speaker 1 00:07:03 Well, one thing that helped me with that was the idea of differentiation. So people who have very limited experience with cultural differences have very simple categories in their mind that they are using to differentiate
Speaker 0 00:07:21 Going back to the Netherlands. Again, if you've never been there and only have an image of windmills, two lips, wouldn't choose Mario on that. But that's the image that will come to mind when you hear about Holland or the Netherlands, they cannot really differentiate much because they have so little experience. They're not even where to map it in the Europe map, your mental categories to think about a country are simplistic.
Speaker 1 00:07:47 Just like my question about whistling in Switzerland. And we have all had the experience of asking naive questions because we don't know something about a topic. Right? Right. So
Speaker 0 00:07:58 That's the case. And it reminds us that the do's and don'ts dilemma is natural. It's often a reflection of a shallow level of cultural understanding. The question then becomes what's the difference between surface and deep.
Speaker 1 00:08:13 And that brings us to part two more than kissing Boeing and shaking hands.
Speaker 0 00:08:28 The title of part two is don't just kiss bow and shake hands. Joseph, we need to explain that title. Don't you think?
Speaker 1 00:08:36 I think so. It may sound familiar to some of you, there is a very well-known or pretty well-known book. That's called kiss bow, or shake hands, how to do business in 60 countries. Uh, it's a guide to cultural customs, uh, around the world. And of course the title refers to the different customs for greetings in Japan, you bow in the U S you shake hands in France. You might kiss on the cheek.
Speaker 0 00:09:01 Well, actually, I don't have a copy of that book, but I know it has cultural tips and tricks things to remember if you're going to be doing business in a foreign country. Sweet and
Speaker 1 00:09:11 It's really well done, but culture and cultural difference cannot be explained with information or by giving rules.
Speaker 0 00:09:24 Okay. But maybe some other listeners are thinking, well, what's wrong with cultural tips and tricks. We need to know that
Speaker 1 00:09:32 Stuff, right. Well, certainly if you're going to a foreign country, you want to know some basic courtesies, you know, you should know that in some countries, the left hand is considered unclean, or if you're visiting Thailand, you should avoid sitting with your feet pointing at the altar of a temple. Yes. It's good to know those things.
Speaker 0 00:09:53 So do's, and don'ts can be useful, but talking about culture in terms of rules, in terms of behavior that you should or shouldn't do you want to get very far? Well,
Speaker 1 00:10:05 For example, one common piece of advice that people going to Japan get is, well in Japan, present your business card with both hands.
Speaker 0 00:10:16 I've heard that often. Is that a good
Speaker 1 00:10:20 It's good advice as far as it goes, but it actually doesn't go very far. First of all, it's only useful to you in situations where you exchange business cards and visitors to Japan spend only 0.0 0 0 0 0 7, 8% of their time exchanging business cards.
Speaker 0 00:10:44 That's an interesting percentage. Where does it go? I made it up
Speaker 1 00:10:54 That Joseph made it up Institute, but what the point is, the point is that we spend very little time in Japan, exchanging business cards. And so this kind of advice doesn't actually help you in most situations. So the deeper problem is that this rule about how to act, doesn't tell you the deeper meaning behind business card etiquette,
Speaker 0 00:11:23 But what is the deeper meaning you are talking about? How would you define the difference between surface and deep cultural understanding? Well, from
Speaker 1 00:11:32 The brain and mind perspective, cultural understanding is a form of pattern recognition. It's the ability to understand what people say and do know their intentions, the way they think in Japanese. This is sometimes referred to as reading the air. So when you're in a familiar environment, you know, things mean, and what's expected of you.
Speaker 0 00:11:56 So if you're in a foreign environment, you're often can treat the air. So in the case of someone who's going to work in Tanzania, a list of do's and don'ts once help them understand all of the subtleties, they will find when interacting with the people over there, right?
Speaker 1 00:12:13 People are complex. Situations are complex. Expectations are complex. Culture is complex, and all that complexity takes time to understand. And from the brain mind perspective, the ability to read a complex situation is intuitive. It comes from experience. We get a feel for what things mean. It's not conscious knowledge, it's largely unconscious knowledge. And you simply can't teach that in a half day seminar.
Speaker 0 00:12:45 And that's ultimately why do's and don'ts dilemma is so hard for intercultural trainers. They understand that giving a list of etiquettes, won't take you very far. And not only that, it can give you a false sense of confidence. So
Speaker 1 00:13:00 That's good. We've figured out why. My naive question about whistling in Switzerland was a sign of my simplistic thinking. And we've also seen that do's and don'ts can never capture the complexity of culture, but we could go even deeper. We could ask the question, are there levels of intercultural understanding,
Speaker 0 00:13:25 Which brings us to part three, just give me the facts.
Speaker 1 00:13:44 The funny thing we've asked this very difficult sounding question, are there levels of intercultural understanding?
Speaker 0 00:13:53 Yes. And there are certainly lots of terms floating around like intercultural awareness, cultural intelligence,
Speaker 1 00:14:01 And your cultural sensitivity,
Speaker 0 00:14:03 Critical awareness, intercultural, reality, you name
Speaker 1 00:14:06 It and their models such as the developmental model of intercultural sensitivity, the DMIs,
Speaker 0 00:14:13 To be honest, just thinking about all these models and words, I find all of these terms hard to tell apart.
Speaker 1 00:14:21 I think that the listeners of this podcast, they already understand different levels of intercultural understanding. Even if they aren't familiar with any of that terminology.
Speaker 0 00:14:33 I see where we're going with this because after all we were just saying, that's intercultural, understanding is intuitive. It's something we have a feel for.
Speaker 1 00:15:00 Imagine you're at a party, nice atmosphere, and you're chatting with a small group of four people. And the topic of foreign travel comes up. And you talk about your plan to visit a foreign country. Let's say you're going to El Bonia.
Speaker 0 00:15:22 Yeah. It doesn't sound like a real country to me.
Speaker 1 00:15:25 No, it's, it's not a real country. It's uh, from a comic strip Dilbert. But anyway, uh, let's imagine you're you say you're going to El Bonia and you ask these people at the party. What do you think? I need to understand the culture of El Bonia and each one of them gives you a different answer.
Speaker 0 00:15:47 Okay. So, and this is why the test comes in. The question for you. Their listeners is to rank these four answers from simplest to most sophisticated.
Speaker 1 00:15:59 Burke says, you need to understand the cultural do's and don'ts in El Bonia. And Judah says, oh, you need to learn to look at things from the Albanian perspective. And Gil says, you need to get all the facts and figures about El Bonia. And Milpa says, well, you need to have a critical understanding of the L bony and world view compared to other places. So let me just give that to you again. Burke says, you need to understand the cultural do's and don'ts Jonah says you need to learn to look at things from the Albanian perspective. Gilmore says, you need to get all the facts and figures about oh, Bonia. And male says you need to have a critical understanding of the <inaudible> worldview compared to other places.
Speaker 0 00:16:58 And what I found really fascinating is that when we do this exercise with cultural bridge people, we have extremely similar answers. Number one, the least sophisticated says, gentleman, you need to get all the facts and figures about ammonia. Number two, Burke. You need to understand the cultural do's and don'ts in Albania already a little bit more sophisticated. Number three, then Juna you need to learn to look at things from the <inaudible> perspective. And then number four, the most sophisticated level is Milpa. You need to have a critical understanding of the elbows worldview compared to other places.
Speaker 1 00:17:41 And I'll bet that even if your answers weren't exactly the same as this list, you understood, for example, that you need to look at things from the <inaudible> perspective was a more sophisticated way of looking at culture or cultural difference than you need to get the facts and figures about elbows. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:18:06 Yeah. How did you know, how
Speaker 1 00:18:09 Did you know which was sophisticated? Well, you had a feeling for it based on what they said.
Speaker 0 00:18:17 Yeah. And that means that you're probably, weren't doing a step by step analysis. You weren't using intercultural concepts that you learned, we're
Speaker 1 00:18:26 Using your intuitive mind. You were using your deep cultural understanding that you have gained as a cultural bridge person. And if you try this with people who have very little international experience, you get different answers because their perceptions are different and they're based on their more limited understanding.
Speaker 0 00:18:49 Yeah. So to come back to our question, it was, are there different levels of intercultural understanding, and we're trying here to convince you that there are, and that's, you already have a feeling for that, even if you don't have a conceptual understanding.
Speaker 1 00:19:17 So what are these levels that we're talking about? I mean, there are different models that you can use to understand levels of intercultural understanding.
Speaker 0 00:19:27 Well, the model we use is called the developmental model of lingual cultural learning, the DLL. It's supposed to create it using something called dynamic skills theory.
Speaker 1 00:19:37 Yeah. And that may sound a little technical and there is some theory involved. So we're not going to go into that, uh, in today's podcast,
Speaker 0 00:19:48 But we're planning to do that in a future podcast.
Speaker 1 00:19:51 But for now, we'll just give you a snapshot, the basic idea of the DML L so that you can understand this party.
Speaker 0 00:20:00 Yes, indeed. Well, the DLL has four levels. I won I to <inaudible> and I four, and the, I, I refers to integrating new things into the self. Those levels relate to the way the brain learns complex skills, and that could be any complex pill or like tennis or cooking, new language or new cultural understanding.
Speaker 1 00:20:26 Learning a complex skill requires more than simply adding new knowledge bit by bit.
Speaker 0 00:20:33 For example, learning a new language. It's not just learning more and more words and learning about a foreign culture is not just about learning more effects and new facts. You need to make increasingly complex mental structures.
Speaker 1 00:20:48 So the four levels at the party represent an increasingly complex understanding of culture. Gilmer is interested in facts and figures. Those are individual bits
Speaker 0 00:21:02 Of knowledge. Burke
Speaker 1 00:21:04 Wants to know the cultural do's and don'ts, those are rules Juna is interested in the L bony and perspective. That's much more complex. It requires looking at culture in a complex dynamic way, and Milpa wants a critical understanding of the El bony and worldview. That's even more complex than understanding the elbows in perspective.
Speaker 0 00:21:35 Exactly. You may start by simply adding bits of information, but then you need to connect those bits in a meaningful way. And then at a certain points, things come together at a higher level,
Speaker 1 00:21:47 Like with a language you're not just learning words, you start making sentences. And then eventually things start to come together and almost like magic. You're speaking the language as a dynamic
Speaker 0 00:21:59 System. Yeah. That's the junior level. He's looking at culture in a complex and dynamic way as way of looking at world.
Speaker 1 00:22:09 And finally, the fourth level, isn't met a level of understanding when the language speaker becomes the language teacher or when you understand culture, not just from a new perspective, but from multiple perspectives. Okay. Yvonne. So we've gone through these four levels, but let's relate all of this back to where we started, which was this idea of customers that ask you for dues and yeah.
Speaker 0 00:22:47 Yeah, indeed. And in fact, what they're asking for is the ITU level or the mapping level of intercultural understanding
Speaker 1 00:22:54 They're looking for these rules because that's how they are thinking about cultural difference. And they either haven't experienced, or haven't fully realized that cultural understanding requires a systems level, understanding to go to this deeper level where you actually enter into a new world view, you gain a sense for the local perspective, you can then see that culture cannot be reduced
Speaker 0 00:23:24 To rules. That
Speaker 1 00:23:25 Culture is dynamic and complex. Wow. We've come a long way from, uh, whether they whistle in Switzerland, but it's time to wrap up. And I wanted to thank you today, Yvonne, for sharing this time with me,
Speaker 0 00:23:42 It was a joy to be here and thank you all listeners to be with us and also do the exercise with us. I'm sure you did. Yeah, that was fun too. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:24:03 Culture podcast is sponsored by the Japan intercultural Institute and NPO dedicated to intercultural education and research. I am the director of GI. If you're interested in culture and the mind out GIS brain, mind, and culture masterclass, it's a blended learning course. It's an online community for cultural bridge people, Yvonne and I are both facilitators for that to find out more, just do a web search for the Japan intercultural Institute. If you liked today's episode, we'd really like to hear from you. Leave a comment on apple podcasts or write us at DC podcast at Japan, intercultural.org. Thanks to our sound engineer, Robinson, Fritz, and everyone at GII. And thank you once again, Yvonne for sharing this time. Thank you, Joseph. All right. See you all next time. Okay.
