Building Resilience for 2012

At a recent networking event I was asked to share some of my thoughts on Building Resilience based on living for many years in another culture.

Moving to another culture and living there for an extended period of time leads to ‘culture shock’ – a sense of bewilderment, insecurity and disillusionment. It has this affect because moving to another culture strips us, to one degree or another, of many of the things that we rely on for our sense of security and wellbeing. It is the very familiarity of our lives which gives us our sense of security. When these things are taken away, suddenly we feel that life is dangerous and precarious.

So what have I learned in building resilience?

1. Develop a sense of identity that does not depend only on the things you do.

Our view of ourselves and our sense of identity is often tied to our work. We often define ourselves by what we do in our work, and our culture affirms that identity. Moving to another culture, however, often means that we cannot work as well as we would usually do, sometimes language and cultural expectations differ and suddenly we feel our sense of identity is undermined. This can also happen when we lose our job or leave one job to go to another. We then lose the security of our own sense of self, of who we are and what we are capable of.

When we moved to Tanzania, although my husband and I worked together for a charity organisation, only he had a job description, and so I felt at a loss for a long time, until I was able to develop an identity that did not depend on ‘having a job’.

What we need is a sense of identity that is not only linked to what we do, but also our family relationships, our volunteering, our social commitments and our own personal development. Our work is a part of our identity, but it is not the only thing that gives us our identity. By acknowledging the importance of the other things in our lives we give ourselves a secure identity which is not rocked completely when our work is either changed or taken away from us.

2. Develop a sense of purpose that is not directly linked to where you are, or what your job is.

Again, we often only have a sense of purpose about our work situation. We set goals and targets, we acquire qualifications, and we seek promotion. But if we lose our job or if it changes, or if we do not progress as we once thought we would, then our sense of purpose is taken away from us.

When I found that I had no designated ‘job’ in Tanzania, I spent several years struggling to try and change things so that I could ‘do’ what I thought I should be doing. But I was thwarted at every turn. Then I realised that if my circumstances were not going to change, there was still one thing that I could change – that one thing was Me.

My sense of purpose changed from ‘what I could or could not do’ to ‘who’ I was and ‘how’ I wanted to be. This did not depend on the job I was doing, it was something that I could work on and take with me whatever job I was doing.

Steven Naismith, who plays for Rangers football team has an unusual ambition. ‘I want to be good’ he says. This does not just mean that he wants to be a good footballer, although that is certainly part of his focus at the minute, but he also wants to be good in other areas of his life and so he is developing his activities in charitable work. Naismith’s purpose is not tied to his job and so it is one that will still give him focus even when he has to retire from football.

3. Develop a sense of realism by challenging illusions and false expectations.

Many of the motivational speakers that we hear and much of the motivational literature that we read tells us that we can achieve great things, that if we follow this process or that one we will find ourselves on the road to success, that we can make the money roll in, or become the CEO of a multi-million pound enterprise.

But in reality, most of us will not achieve those things. We will do the best we can at whatever we do well, we will provide for our families, raise our children, and hopefully progress to some degree in our career. This is a good thing. There is nothing wrong with this.

When we lived in a third world country where the standard of living was considerably lower than we have it here in the UK it surprised me to see that many people lived contented lives. When terrible things happened to them, they did not ask ‘why me?’ they simply accepted that sometimes bad things happen, but also that good things happen too.

Life will always be a series of ups and downs, good times and difficult times, successes and failures, gains and losses. It is an illusion to think that things will always get better because sometimes they won’t.

So,

•  if we have a sense of identity that is broader than what we do in our job
• if we have a sense of purpose that is deeper than our work and
• if we have a sense of realism that life is full of downs as well as ups

then we will be able to be resilient and survive the toughest of times in 2012 and beyond.

Profile or Performance?

At the recent award for Sports Personality of the Year in the UK there was some controversy raised as there were no women on the final shortlist of 10. The BBC’s programme Women’s Hour discussed the situation and interviewed Claire Spalding, a well-known sports reporter and presenter. She looked at the main newspapers that day and listed the following statistics on their coverage of women in sport:

• Times: 14 pages of sport – no mention of a woman
• Daily Mail: 13 pages of sport – 3 lines about Venus Williams, tennis player
• Independent: 12 pages of sport – no mention of a woman
• Telegraph: 20 pages of sport – one piece about the female BBC head of sport
• Guardian: 10 pages of sport – one piece about Hayley Turner, jockey
• Mirror: 13 pages of sport – one piece about Hayley Turner.

As Claire commented, you would think that, on any given day, women don’t take part in sport at all.

One football manager, Ian Holloway, thought that the problem was not the media coverage, but the fact that ‘maybe women just haven’t been good enough this year.’ I wonder if he would feel the same way if his team’s press coverage was the same as that of some very successful sports women?

Faced with the above statistics, it seems that the fact remains that to get onto the list for Sport’s Personality of the year the main criteria is profile, not performance. And if your profile is not raised by the media, then your chances of making it onto the list are pretty slim.

What’s in a name?

When we lived in Tanzania it surprised me to hear that some children were called ‘Tabu’ which means ‘distress, misery or difficult conditions’. This was usually because their mother had experienced problems during the birth.  There were other children who were more fortunate, they were called ‘Bahati’ which means ‘luck’. I often wondered how having the name ‘Problem’ would make these children feel about themselves.

In the Associated Press in Oct it was reported that 285 Indian girls had chosen new names for themselves, because they had been named ‘Unwanted’. The birth rate of girls in certain states is sometimes 10-15% lower than that of boys because of abortions or neglect. Being called ‘Unwanted’ makes these girls feel worthless and in fact they are often treated so.

In Rwanda the Tutsis were called cockroaches by the majority Hutu tribe and the Hutus were told ‘Don’t worry, you’re not killing humans like you. You are killing some vermin that belongs under your shoe. You’re killing cockroaches.’ As a result over 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus who did not support the killing were massacred.

When I tried to explain to a group of boys in a Cumbernauld High School that using negative language about others leads us to negative behaviour towards them, they seemed to be visibly moved. Using negative lanuage about those who support the opposing football team  is a common day occurance for them. When I suggested that they could change their language they were not so sure that it would be received favourably by their families or friends. They recognised that they used such language because it had been passed on to them, but did not seem to think that they could change, nor that it would make any difference.

How sad that such negative langauge is still so pervasive in Scotland today and that these young people feel so helpless in the face of the sheer weight of the sectarianism that is around them.

The Power and Fear of Belonging

The first time I asked for volunteers, two people willingly raised their hands. The next time, not one single person in the group would agree to volunteering. What had happened?

I was doing a session on Diversity with 16-18 year olds on a ‘Get ready for Work’ scheme. I wanted to show them the strength of the power of belonging to a group, what it is like to excluded and what people who are excluded will do to belong. I asked the two volunteers to stand to one side while the rest of the group made a circle linking arms. The people in the circle were told that they were to keep the others out, while the volunteers where instructed that they were to try to get into the circle using whatever means they could – without using force or tickling! They walked around the circle asking, cajoling, begging, offering to do whatever the group wanted in order to get into the circle, but those in the circle refused.

I then asked the circle to open up and let the volunteers in and asked for two more people to be on the outside. One after another they all declined. Not one of them was willing to step outside of the circle and face the experience of being excluded, of begging to get in. It was a striking illustration to me and also to them of how strong our desire to be included is.  As we debriefed the group we examined questions like: What did it feel like to be excluded? What would you have done to be included? What did it feel like to be a part of the circle? At this last question the answer was strong, safe, secure etc, but some said they felt uncomfortable in excluding the others. When I then asked why they had not said so and why they had not suggested to their fellow group members that they let the outsiders in, they replied that they had been afraid to suggest a change, afraid of what the others would have said, afraid to be different, afraid they would have been put out with the other outsiders.

This is not just something that is so strong among teenagers, it is also true among professional adults who fear what will happen to them if they speak out about something they feel the group should not be doing.

Dan Ellsberg was the man who exposed the lies that had started and perpetuated the US war in Vietnam. Reflecting on this experience after he had stood up and spoken out he said:

I was a leper with a bell around my neck. I’ve come to realise the fear of being cut out from the group of people you respect and whose respect you want and normally expect. That’s what keeps people participating in anything, no matter how terrible. The courage we need is not the courage, the fortitude, to be obedient in the service of an unjust war, to help conceal lies, to do our job for a body who has usurped power and is acting as an outlaw government. It is the courage at last to face honestly the truth and the reality of what we are doing in the world and act responsibly to change it.*

*Quoted from Dan Ellsberg: the Most Dangerous Man in America, a documentary shown on BBC4

For an interactive fun session on Diversity and dealing with difference see Diverse by Design

Bribery and Culture

On a recent Economist blog – Blighty – about the new Bribery Act which came into effect in the UK in July this year one person commented:

“Indeed it is ultimately helpful to eliminate bribes in poorer countries, as their corruption is a major (though not the only) factor in keeping them poor.”

Also, in the recent edition of HR Network Scotland, Innes Clark of Morton Fraser’s Employment Law team is reported as saying:

“Implementing the Bribery Act very much depends on factors such as the location an organisation is trading in and the nature of its business. For example, if it operates purely in the UK without dealing overseas then the risks are likely to be low. Naturally the risks will increase when it conducts business abroad, especially in countries where there is a known bribery culture.”

The implication is that bribery, which benefits only the privileged few and is detrimental to the wellbeing and economic prosperity of others, is more likely to happen in other countries, especially poorer ones. But bribery doesn’t only happen in other countries, or only poorer countries, but in all countries, it is just the level of economic deprivation that is different. Just because we have a higher GDP and better living standards does not make bribery any less effective in depriving many of wealth that is illegally leveraged into someone else’s pocket. And the less likely the country is to think of itself as having a bribery culture, the more bribery will be hidden, and so will not be reported in surveys such as those done by Transparency International.

Cultural differences regarding the behaviour of those in power does play some part, however, in determining how their behaviour will be judged. For some cultures, where those in power are considered exempt from the standards which others are required to follow, their behaviour will be acceptable simply because they are in power. There is a certain level of assumed privilege and protection. Whereas in other cultures, those in power are meant to be held to account as much as everyone else, if not more so.

However, as events in the last few years have shown with the banking crisis, MP’s expenses and the News International phone tapping and paying police officers has shown, these things can be as common in our own culture as much as in any other.

We are simply more likely to see someone else’s corruption more clearly than we can see our own.

Integration – whose responsibility is it?

Glasgow has become home to a large number of asylum seekers and refugees who are allocated a place in social housing around the city. When people arrive in a new country, especially those who have fled for their lives from a dangerous situation and who assume they are heading to a place of relative safety, they often face extreme difficulties with bureaucracy, legislation and also a less than welcoming attitude from the communities in which they find themselves.

At a meeting yesterday with a worker with the Integration Network in Glasgow we spoke of the difficulties people in the host community have of understanding and communicating with those who are from a different culture. Often the onus to change and integrate is placed only on the shoulders of the person coming into the new culture. The Project Co-ordinator of one of the network centres explained to me that she sees ‘integration’ in a slightly different way. While the person arriving in the new culture will have to learn new ways of doing things we also need to recognise that if we are going to provide a place of refuge and safety for people then ‘integration’ must be a community responsibility as well.  For this reason she prefers to see her work as ‘community development’ with integration as a main goal within that rather than integration as the only purpose. This means that she makes sure that all the events and services she provides are advertised across the whole community and not just targeted at those who are ‘foreigners’. She encourages everyone in the community to see ‘integration’ as something they can be involved in.

In an article in the The Researcher in 2008, Tiffy Allen, now National Co-ordinator of City of Sanctuary, highlighted the effect of culture shock on newly arrived refugees and asylum seekers. She encouraged governments and agencies to be aware that the adjustment and integration process is going to be more effective if everyone plays a part, rather than leaving it all to those who have had to leave their home, family and friends and all things familiar behind.

 

Too smart to stereotype?

Often, when I do culture or diversity training and we begin to talk about stereotypes people frequently say, ‘It only takes education, once people are educated they won’t stereotype, they will know better.’ Unfortunately, I have found that this is not necessarily the case.

Lawrence Summers, the President of Harvard, suggested that the lack of women in economics, science and technology had more to do with women having an innate inability to deal with numbers than with prejudice and discrimination. In the recent E. coli outbreak in Germany it seems that German ministers have succumbed to the stereotyping of their southern European neighbours by quickly blaming Spanish vegetable growers, with the insinuation that poor hygiene was the cause. But as Veronika Hackenbroch pointed out in Der Spiegel EU controls on hygiene have transformed all agricultural production and food handling. In fact, outbreaks of E. coli are more common in the USA than in Spain.

In the West we like to pride ourselves on our rationality, basing our decisions and behaviours on science and facts, but we are just as culpable as anyone else when it comes to prejudice and stereotypes. But because we don’t think we are like that it is easy for us to avoid the issue. The biggest barrier to dealing with stereotypes is when someone says, ‘I don’t have any bias, I don’t have any stereotypes.’

So beware, be smart – look out for your own stereotypes and prejudices.

Scottish Government aims for the world

On the 1st June John Swinney, the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth, emphasised that in order to further develop its economy Scotland has to ‘capitalise on its competitive advantages and explore the huge economic opportunities available in global markets.’

He went on to explain that this meant not only inward investment from global firms, but also an increasingly vibrant export market with more Scottish businesses going global.

Going global sounds exciting, it’s a goal that gives Scotland a sense of pride and place in the world. But as with all exciting goals, there needs to be a lot of realism and practical thinking.

Working internationally requires not only the need to look at the different ways other countries do business but also at how people interact. While there is often a general sense in international business that everyone understands how things are done, this is not always the case. Those with much experience will tell you that while on the surface things may look the same, underneath things can be very different. This can lead to supressed frustration, faulty communication and sometimes even the breakdown of relations.

I hope that Mr Swinney will consider the cultural element of international relations as well so that Scotland can indeed become a major player in the global economy, one that interacts with cultural intelligence with its international partners and learns to accept and create advantage of the cultural differences around the world.

Making a choice – how we make decisions

In each of our homes as we were growing up we were taught how to make decisions. Some of us are encouraged to take the time to think through the options and make a decision based on the pros and cons. Others of us are told to go with what feels right to us. Some of us are given a philosophical or moral basis to many of our choices. Some of us learn that we must take others into consideration in all our choices and others of us are told to ignore what others say and make the decision for ourselves.

Each culture also has it’s predominant way of practising the decision making process and also in how we choose one thing over another. In the TED talk by Sheena Iyengar she looks at how we choose and why we choose the way we do, recognising some of the cultural differences around the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDq9-QxvsNU&feature=channel

Dealing with difference.

Yesterday I needed some change for a parking meter in Edinburgh so I went into the newsagents and bought a paper with a £10 note. This morning I picked up the paper to have a read and on the front page there are 3 indications of articles to be  found inside – they are on David Cameron’s comments on Muslims and terrorism, one on the ‘war between generations’ and the third on the ‘very male world of Wikipedia’. On the Politics page there is an article on the treatment of an MP who had cerebral palsy at the hands of his fellow MPs. In the comment on Film is an article on how female actors where treated by male directors. Then there is an article about Christine Lagarde on her experiences as a female in the French world of politics. In the international section there is an article on the destruction of a Cambodian temple by the Thai army.

The world is full of differences and yet we have not found a way to deal with those differences well. We still struggle at a personal level and also at a national level on how to respect and understand those who are different.

The questions we need to ask ourselves is: Where did I learn my attitude to those who are different?  How do I actually treat people who are different to me, (not how do I think they should be treated?)? Do I really understand my attitude to others and do I really want to change it.

When I do diversity training, most people see the problem is with other people. ‘They’ (whoever ‘they’ are) are the ones who are prejudiced and act is a discrimatory way. But the reality is that all of us have our biases against certain groups of people simply because as humans we automatically group with people who are like ourselves and separate ourselves from those who are different. We can only change this situation by first of all admitting that we have a problem with our attitude to those who are different. Only when we admit this can we take steps to change our behaviour.

If we all did this then maybe our newspapers would be full of articles on how we have learned to accept and work or live with others who are different, to respect their opinions as being as valid as our own, to agree that disagreement does not mean we have to fight each other.