In this episode, Trisha discusses Moments of Shift and why they are important for developing Cultural Intelligence (CQ). She describes an example in her life when she experienced a mental shift.

Part of her mental shift was an awareness of her cultural value of individualism and how that value and her practices related to that value might appear selfish to someone from a collective culture.

You can learn more about individualism and collectivism here

Hi, everyone. I'm Trisha Carter. I'm an organisational psychologist and I'm an explorer of cultural intelligence. I'm on a quest to discover what enables us to see things from different perspectives, especially different cultural perspectives and why sometimes it's easier than others to make that shift in perspective. This is the introduction episode of the Shift podcast. So, in this session, you're just hearing from me, but I can promise you that we will have some fascinating guests in the upcoming sessions to talk about culture and to talk about how we think and how our thinking relates to cultural intelligence.

And it's not just how we think about our own cultures, but also how we think about other cultures and to become aware of how others might think differently to us. I mean, have you ever had one of those moments where you suddenly become very aware that you are thinking differently to the way the person you're talking to is thinking?

Or maybe you've suddenly realized that you understand something that you didn't previously? I've had many of those moments. Initially, I wasn't sure whether to call them aha moments or WTF moments, but I've decided to call them moments of Shift. I'm sure you know that feeling when the shift happens and suddenly you see things differently. So, we moved to China in the nineties to a city called Hefei in Anhui Province, and a number of those moments of shift were seared into my brain from the early days living there.

In one of them we were at a dinner in our apartment, and we were discussing with local friends their plans and dreams about owning their own apartment. You know, some things are the same in many places around the world. We all have those dinner party property conversations. Anyway, one of our friends said that he had recently given all of his savings to his brother so that he could buy an apartment.

And I'm like, You didn't give him all your savings, did you? And he's like, Yes, I did. He's my brother and I'm: ‘But what if you get a chance to buy someplace and you need the money?’ And he’s, ‘Well, then he'll give me my money back.’ And at this point, part of my brain is thinking, This is crazy.

He'll never get his own place. But I'm also aware that he's not crazy. He's a really intelligent engineer and a really nice guy. So, another part of my brain is saying, This is crazy and it's really generous and kind to do that for your brother. And there's another part of my brain that's saying - I must sound really selfish to him.

And honestly, that thought just horrified me because I don't want to be selfish. Kindness is one of my values. It's the way that I want to show up. But in my culture, his actions weren't part of sensible saving actions. In my culture, my brother is responsible for his savings and I'm responsible for mine. So, you might have heard of it before, this is like the classic difference between individualist and collectivist cultures, the me and the we perspective. Are my needs more important or are the needs of the group?

Maybe I’d heard about it, maybe I'd read about that difference, at that point, but I'd never seen it so strongly. I'd never seen myself so strongly as an individualist or seen that perspective and seen the other perspective as clearly as I did that night. So that's an example of metacognitive awareness when we become aware of our own thinking and assumptions and when we can see how our own thinking might be different to others we're dealing with.

I'm often coaching or training people in how to gain that metacognitive awareness. And to be honest, sometimes it's hard to help people get it. I don't know if you've tried at times and tried to get that other perspective, and that's why I really want to dig into the topic and work out some ways to help us see other perspectives faster and easier.

That awareness, that cultural awareness of metacognition, of awareness, it's just one part of cultural intelligence. And so, in our next session, I want to help us all learn a bit more about cultural intelligence and how we can increase it. I'll be interviewing David Livermore, who is a very respected researcher and author in this area. And he's just a great guy as well.

In case you're still wondering about the engineer, the very generous engineer, he did buy his own home and he now owns a couple of apartments and we're still friends. I'll put some links in the show notes, for those of you who want to learn more about individualism and collectivism and about an introduction to cultural intelligence. So, thank you, everyone, for listening today.

And if you'd like to keep in touch, please follow me on LinkedIn. On your podcast app, please follow so that you can learn about future episodes. And please join us next week to dive deeper into the Shift.