In this episode, Trisha interviews Emma Jordaan, founder and CEO of Infinite Consulting, TEDx speaker, and author of Dubai Decode, who helps leaders navigate cultural dynamics in one of the world's most diverse workplaces—the UAE.

What happens when your team knows you're making the wrong decision but stays silent because "you are the boss"? How do you bridge the gap between having cultural knowledge and actually applying it with intentionality? Emma unpacks her proprietary RAPID framework—a cultural intelligence strategy tool that helps professionals slow down their cross-cultural interactions before they react. Discover how recognising, assessing, pausing, interpreting, and deciding can transform cultural complexity from a barrier into a competitive advantage, and why listening with your whole body might be the CQ strategy skill you've been missing.

Connect with Emma on LinkedIn and explore her book Dubai Decoded for deeper insights into navigating cultural diversity. You can also check out Emma's podcast, The HR and CQ Show with Emma Jordaan and Sarah Brooks.

Make sure you join Trisha in this journey of growth and discovery throughout the year via Substack or LinkedIn.

[00:00:39] Trisha: Hi there everyone. I'm Trisha Carter, an organizational psychologist and an explorer of cultural intelligence. I'm on a bit of 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 experience those moments of awareness.

[00:01:35] In this podcast, we focus a bit more on the metacognitive aspect, thinking about our thinking, that CQ strategy. So today I'm going to unpack that with my guest, Emma Jordan, a cultural intelligence expert, a TEDx speaker, and the author of Dubai Decode. Emma is the founder and CEO of Infinite Consulting, where she helps leaders, HR teams, and organizations decode the cultural dynamics in one of the world's most diverse workplaces, the United Arab Emirates, the UAE.

[00:02:36] Welcome, Emma. Great to have you here.

[00:02:43] Trisha: It's lovely to have, you know, a whole different part of the world represented as well. So, Emma, the first question is, and we don't know what the answer will be, it could be anywhere in the world. What is a culture other than the culture you grew up in, that you have learned to love and appreciate?

[00:03:19] I feel like it's deep rooted in that idea of, you know, just respect for one another. Showing immense hospitality the kind of community orientated culture where we kind of look out for one another and we care for one another and we show that immense level of hospitality. But I also think that they.

[00:04:02] You know, the, it's modeled with a level of grace a level of composure and even restraint.

[00:04:24] And I think that. I would say that in the UAE, that's not always modeled in the same way. There may be that, you know, feeling and emotion of I'm being disrespected, but would they necessarily show. Show that outwardly is another thing. I think that there's a level of constraint that's shown.

[00:04:51] Trisha: And I love the word grace that you used. 'cause I think that's a beautiful lens to look through. Because sometimes people might say, oh, restraint, you know, it's different. But grace gives it a, almost a regal, which is, sounds silly, but it's just, yeah, it's speaking in a way that's quite beautiful about what might be seen sometimes through a negative perspective.

[00:05:36] Emma: Yeah, I think it was when I was leading a team myself here in the UAE, having come from the uk my perception of the way that conversations take place in the workplace is. That if you disagree with the decision that your manager is taking and you are confident that you have a good level of knowledge on the matter in question, that you feel comfortable to speak up and share your thoughts and ideas and maybe challenge upwards.

[00:06:18] made. When I questioned that and said, well, how come no one said anything? Why didn't anyone speak up? Why didn't anyone question my decision making? The simple response that I got was, well, you are the boss. That was a moment of revelation for me where I realized that, you know, I suddenly, I'm surrounded by team members that don't feel the freedom to speak up.

[00:07:07] So, Yeah,

[00:07:29] And I guess you framing that as grace for me showed it as a strength rather than as a limitation. So, yeah. That's, yeah, I can imagine. I'm feeling for the Emma before, you know, and during that shift, but I can imagine that, you know, when you had it then it was probably from then on it would've been extremely helpful.

[00:08:08] Emma: I think, you know, people maybe come to Dubai. I think some people are coming to Dubai at the moment because of the glitz and glamor that they maybe see on Instagram. But I, you know, I, but I think some, you know, so some people may have come to Dubai having then spent some time learning about the culture, but typically they are thinking about Emirati culture and how does that impact their day to day and that's a good start.

[00:08:59] So the challenge of decoding Dubai culture isn't just understanding Emirati culture alone. It's actually thinking about how do I navigate the intersection between East meets West? Old versus new kind of cultural values, you know, like traditions versus modern day. And that hierarchy. And the, you know, the innovation that's going on in this country as well is phenomenal.

[00:09:50] And, that can create its challenges obviously, within the workplace. But then those that are coming in from cultures that do align to indirect more power high power, distance orientated cultures the. Scale is all relative, right? So you could be still yourself coming from a hierarchical culture, but it could be more or less than the other nationalities and cultures that you're going to be living and working amongst.

[00:10:38] And so. If you are somebody that regularly reverts to facial gestures and body language as a means to communicate that's perhaps understood in your own cultural context. But then when you apply that to somebody that's also an indirect communicator who uses facial gestures and body language, but from a different cultural context, there's still huge amounts of miscommunication.

[00:11:04] Trisha: So from a team perspective, it would mean unpacking all of those things with the individuals that you're working with.

[00:11:12] Trisha: I guess too, there's also, like you referenced the very modern aspect of Dubai in and of itself, which could create false expectations for some people too. Are there. Common cultural mistakes that you see people make.

[00:11:50] So they come with this knowledge or understanding that they're technically competent and therefore they must, they're going to be, you know, they're going to be good and successful at the job that they've been employed to do. The common misconception is that what I did or what worked well elsewhere in my home country will work well here.

[00:12:29] That could be the team that's involved in the work that you are doing. It could be the manager that you report to, or it could even be the clients that you're liaising with, like how. You know, how do we negotiate cross-culturally looks very different to how we might negotiate in a sales interaction with clients in our home country.

[00:12:49] Trisha: Yeah. And then so many so many other factors are different as well, you know, from climate and geography and history and all of those things that we often forget To take into account you mentioned before the different nationalities and there are, you know, over 200 nationalities.

[00:13:18] Emma: So I've been here in Dubai since 2015

[00:13:22] Emma: When I first

[00:13:27] Emma: That's right. Yes. No, there's no problem. Yeah. So I've been here for about 10 years. And as you say, there is lots of different nationalities that are living and working here. And so you do almost have this kind of cultural overload. Every interaction that you go into is different from the last, and it's different from the next that's gonna come.

[00:14:07] Somebody from Lebanon, somebody from India, somebody from the uk, somebody from South Africa. And we all come into those meetings, interactions with very differing assumptions on things like the way that we value time, the way that we perceive, you know, hierarchy or the way that we communicate. And so, as a professional in this space, and even in your social circles as well because culture isn't just in the workplace, it's also in our cultural uh, in our social interactions as well. You have to be very agile in your approach. You have to be willing to flex and adapt your approach and also be willing to be open-minded to recognizing that others are gonna have a different perspective on what's happening in this interaction to the one that you are perhaps having.

[00:15:19] Emma: Yeah, I think, um. so Arabic is the national language of the UAE. But in business world, traditional or typically people are speaking English. And so not only are you having those cultural dynamics that are being played out within your interactions, but most people are speaking in their second language as well.

[00:16:04] Communicating in the most simplistic way that we can, basically, so that everybody you know, around the table or in the interaction that we're having is able to. Continue to follow the conversation because we haven't thrown in these over complicated, over extravagant English words that aren't in Yeah.

[00:16:26] expression? Idio idioms. That's the one

[00:16:31] understand.

[00:16:52] It sounds really stupid. So yeah, that, that sort of thing. You need to think about things before you say them sometimes.

[00:17:21] 'cause it's one that most people are familiar with, I've found. And you don't know what I'm saying. Or I've used just some British slang word. You've never heard before, please, you know, feel the freedom to speak up and say, but that, I mean, but there's an example. I'm saying, please speak up if you want to, but there'll be people in that room that wouldn't necessarily feel the freedom to interrupt me or interject as the facilitator because they don't feel positioned to do so.

[00:18:13] And it's made up of the, of lots of different, symbols, which means that when we listen not only with our ears, but we also listen with our eyes to see the context of the behavior, of the conversation. We are also listening with our hearts. So we're showing empathy to the communicator.

[00:18:54] Trisha: that's right. And that is CQ strategy. That just, that whole description that you just said, that is that awareness and that checking that we need to have happening. people often think what they really need is CQ knowledge. But what you're talking about there and really demonstrating is much more CQ strategy, but people do need CQ knowledge and you've spoken about some of the things that people there, you know, have all need to know you know, when you are seeing what people need to know and you're trying to help them understand that. And it's not simple because it's not just, as you say, Emirati culture, it's other aspects. So the knowledge that you need to have is very broad. And it is, it's more than just country knowledge.

[00:19:53] Emma: So I think when we talk about knowledge, it knowledge is data and information. It, you know, and it's the tacit information that we have in our head, but cultural intelligence or when we are. Cultural intelligence turns into CQ strategy is when we actually applying that knowledge in practice.

[00:20:37] And what level of intentionality am I going to apply to this interaction to make it as effective as it can be?

[00:21:00] So when I'm in my training sessions and I talk about cultural intelligence to, you know, leaders and talk about how do we move cultural awareness into cultural intelligence, I give the example of a meeting where, you know you might be having meetings with your team and at the moment you're thinking about meetings in the context of what's the agenda, what do we need to cover, and maybe how long have we got to do that and what's the actions that need to be.

[00:21:47] You know, will they be people that will feel the freedom to speak up? Will there be some voices that are potentially louder because of their cultural background and that, and will there be some that are very silent? How am I going to integrate those silent voices into the conversation to make sure that.

[00:22:16] afterwards. And you can see that light bulb moment when I discuss this with leaders of the fact that's actually something they've been neglecting.

[00:22:49] And maybe they've just been missing some real, gems of information

[00:22:57] meetings.

[00:23:19] Value differences, behavioral preferences that might exist. I'm quite monoclonic and so I do like things to run to time, and so I need to manage myself. If it looks like things are going off time and say it's okay, you know, you've, you can, you've got nothing scheduled after this. You can go over time. Time isn't, you know, it isn't the big, the important thing here.

[00:24:02] Emma: Yeah, so the the rapid model as you say, R.A.P.I.D. is Recognise, Assess, Pause, Interpret and D ecide. So this is a cultural intelligence strategy tool to help people just to start to think more about how can I be intentional with my interactions. And it just helps people to slow down those interactions before they react because.

[00:24:49] Assess then what is the goal of this interaction? You know, are we negotiating? Are we trying to build a relationship? Because. When you think about the purpose of that meeting with you and you're assessing the purpose, it's advantageous for you to think, I'm gonna flex right now because this is gonna help me win this

[00:25:28] I would say and interpret then is how do I think about the cultural perspective? The other person, am I, how do I interpret the other person's behavior? , is it a cultural nuance that I'm seeing? It might actually just be somebody's personality.

[00:25:58] Trisha: That's great. Yeah, I can see how that's been helpful. Yeah. So Emma, your background includes, you know, a lot of, you had a lot of extensive learning and development experience in the UK before you moved to the Middle East. How did that transition shift your understanding of cultural intelligence? You know, were there things you had to unlearn, relearn, you know, so that you could adapt in that rapid way?

[00:26:49] And that's again, not to say that it, it would never be either. It's just what is the interaction that I'm in? Who is involved? What would be, the right response for this specific situation. And so I hammer home that idea of like situational leadership. Ken Blanchard's model talks about people's competence and commitment that like the kind of, it is similar to A, a skill will model, you know, how do you need to flex and adapt your approach as a leader so that it's situational to the individual you're leading. And I would kind of layer that again further with the cultural context and say on top of that though, then how do you need to flex and adapt your approach as a leader to the situation that's in front of you.

[00:27:40] Trisha: I love that you've worked with a lot of organizations in the UAE and often taking cultural intelligence into leadership. And so when you've worked within organizations, what changes do you see when you're equipping their leaders with the cultural intelligence to be more effective?

[00:28:27] But I I think you. You start to see a reduction in biases, a language shift and then thus that follows a behavioral change. A behavioral shift where people are starting to understand the behaviors of others and rationalize them in an entirely different way to perhaps the way that they were before.

[00:29:12] And so, they be, they become more more forgiving and or more gracious as we said earlier.

[00:29:35] So Emma, what advice would you give someone who's hoping to follow in your footsteps? You know, it might be someone who's passionate about cultural intelligence and wanting to help organizations sort of navigate that cultural complexity.

[00:30:04] I like Stephen Covey's habit number five in, in his seven habits. It, which habit number five is seek first to understand, and then be understood. I think we are too quick to try and, force our own point or our own issue or our own beliefs on others. And actually, if we just slow down a little and we were a bit more curious and a little bit more humble in our approach, I think we would see a lot more success.

[00:30:41] Emma: I'd hope that we would get to a point where that people stop seeing difference as a barrier. I'd like a situation where my son or his generation can go into the workplace and it doesn't matter where they're from. Or what you look like that you can be seen as an asset and not a challenge that you know, that, that level of diversity, not just in the way that we look, but that diversity of thought also is not seen as a challenge and actually seen as, you know, as a positive thing.

[00:31:57] Trisha: That's right. There are benefits. Yeah. That's wonderful. Yes, I love that too. And would hope that too. Hey, thanks Emma for sharing your insights and experiences. This has been, you know, really I think Rich in terms of our conversation. Listeners, if you want to learn more about Emma's work, you can get a copy of Dubai Decoded and you can also, I think, is your TEDx on your website.

[00:32:33] Trisha: That's right, and if you want to follow her or connect on LinkedIn, we'll put that link in the show notes as well so that you can make contact with her if you are interested in learning further. Or if you are in the UAE and you want to access the wonderful services that she provides.

[00:33:07] And so you will join us again next week for the Shift.