Interpersonal Assessments in an Intercultural World with Linda Berlot

Linda Berlot: 0:00

It's the lens through which I look through, I cannot separate that from anything else I do. I when I'm working with a team, I see intercultural issues light up in front of me like string. And it's fascinating if we have a team that has predominantly one worldview, and some of the other worldviews aren't in a minority, and also maybe less lively or less, you know, dominant disc styles, they would tend to be marginalized. So when I see these intercultural issues for me, it becomes very clear what it is rather than personality that it's intercultural. And it gives them an opportunity to talk about this.

Marco Blankenburgh: 0:51

Welcome to the cultural agility podcast, where we explore the stories of some of the most advanced intercultural practitioners from around the world, to help you become culturally agile, and succeed in today's culturally complex world. I'm your host, Marco Blankenburg, international director of knowledge works, where every day we help individuals and companies achieve relational success in that same complex world. Well, welcome everybody to this podcast. Today. Linda Burnett is back in our little studio in the knowledge box office. I'm so glad that you're back again. Thank you, Linda, for joining.

Linda Berlot: 1:34

Hey, Marco, thank you so much for inviting me, I always enjoy the conversations that we have.

Marco Blankenburgh: 1:40

And today's conversation is something that we haven't really talked about on any of our podcasts yet. And it has to do with using assessment tools in an intercultural setting. And the last time we saw over a year ago, now, we talked about teams and your work with intercultural teams and using the combination of ici intercultural intelligence and or SC organization or relational systems coaching. And that in and of itself was a fantastic conversation, many people listened to that. And you have continued to grow from strength to strength with your team, in terms of working with teams working with leaders and managers. And in that process, assessment tools have played a key role. So it's great that we can talk about that today. Because there's there's lots of challenges that people face when it comes to using assessments. Absolutely. So one of the things that we have always fought against almost, is that assessments when you say, Oh, I'm going to do a personality test, or I'm going to do an assessment or any sorts of behavioral assessment. people immediately think, oh, that's the world of psychology. Right? And as from knowledge, workers perspective, we've always said, Well, yes, psychologists could say a lot about human behavior. But we're also cultural human beings. And we've always been advocating this idea that there are actually two spotlights turned on to understand human behavior. But some people, they don't want to go for it. And I'm just curious, from your perspective, what have you seen, you know that, you know, should psychologists own the privilege of explaining human behavior? And it only fits in that camp? Or is there? Is there room for both the cultural side of human behavior and the psychological side of human behavior?

Linda Berlot: 3:35

That's a great question. Monica, thank you for asking me that question. Honestly, I think if the psychologists owned it, and they certainly could, I think other arenas in the world would would, would not get the benefit of, you know, the value of the learning that comes from these assessment tools. In the work that we do. We're working with teams, but what we're really doing is helping them improve their relationships or their team dynamics, as we call them. And by doing that, we want to increase the positivity in the team. Because we know that there's a lot of data that says that positivity equals productivity, the closer that we are, the more connected we are, the better we understand each other, the better we deal with conflict, the more trust there is, the more productive we will be. And so I truly believe that using a psychometric tool with team members gives them more insight in who they are more insight into who their colleagues and their peers are. And it's easier than for them to step into relationship with each other and work on their team dynamics. So I believe it's essential for us as as coaches and as team facilitators to be working with assessment tools and psychometric tools.

Marco Blankenburgh: 4:47

Yeah. The world of assessments is a world of its own. But we want to really zoom in on practical application. That's what we want to talk about and in especially in our work, you probably almost exclusively work with intercultural teams, right? Absolutely. So, how did you start? You know, I know we've known each other for many, many years since the mid 2000s. And it'd be great for our audience to get a little bit of your backstory. How did you get into this?

Linda Berlot: 5:22

How did I become a coach?

Marco Blankenburgh: 5:25

How did you start using tools how to get into team development, learning and development?

Linda Berlot: 5:31

Well, my background has always been in learning and development. So understanding how humans operate and how they learn and how they work together, I've always been fascinated by the interactions between intercultural team members and the misunderstanding the potential for missing understanding that exists. So when I'm working with a team, what became very apparent and very important to do before we started to work with them, was to truly try and understand who is in the team. And part of that is culture. The other part is personality, you know, so, prior to us engaging on a team coaching journey, we spent quite a considerable amount of time understanding who they are, and that is in the form of assessments, either face to face assessments, where I asked questions, and we're assessing the dynamics between them, but also using psychometric tools so we can understand who the personalities are, and a team centered tool to understand the culture that currently exists in the team. And with that information, I can then design an appropriate coaching plan that we can then you know, action on our journey together.

Marco Blankenburgh: 6:46

So it sounds like it's, it's more of an inside out approach. You really get to know the inside your inner wiring, absolutely. And use that for self discovery, reflection, but then also to do that at a team level, or even larger, and we'll talk about that organization

Linda Berlot: 7:07

really well. If you want to be in right relationship with some someone else, it's important, first of all, to be in right relationship with yourself and your many aspects of self. And to do that, it requires us to be introspective and know who we are. I think the better we know who we are, the better were able to be in, in relationship with other people.

Marco Blankenburgh: 7:27

Yeah. living and working in the international world. I still remember there was one situation where I won't name the country, but HR director of the company we were working with, and we told him, We have successfully used assessment tools across the emerging market economies. And it's a no no, no, no, forget about that. That will never work in this country. And people have we proved it wrong in the end. But people have said, well, these tools, they're all Western tools. So you shouldn't use those outside the Western world. What would you say to you? Obviously, I am not in that camp. Yeah. Well,

Linda Berlot: 8:09

I live and work here, I live in the UAE, I work across the region, I'm using these tools with every team that I work with, and all the teams are intercultural. Because of the nature of where we live, I would say actually, that many of the tools are more from a Western perspective. And, and so there is always a need to explain the tools explain the language, when you are using those tools. But there are certain tools that I use that I am almost addicted to, because they're simple, they're clean, they've been tested across cultures, and they honor all the different three worldviews. I truly believe that in a, in a multicultural team or an intercultural team, there is so much complexity that's happening, right. So my preference is always to use tools which are simpler, that the language is easy to understand. Maybe it's been translated, and that the context is clear also to understand, then the team can enjoy the results together.

Marco Blankenburgh: 9:14

You raise a very interesting point, forgive me for going into a little bit of a rabbit trail here, but some people say well, I want the tool that describes the human being in the most comprehensive way. And other people say what you said, I need a tool that people can really understand in the moment and really unpack and yes include or incorporate in the way they they grow together as individuals and together as a team. So this whole idea of the tool needs to measure everything about me or the tool needs to have enough substance enough depth so that I can grow as an individual and as a team. So use you use the word simple as simpler to not simplistic. No. So tell me a little bit more about that. Because I think that's an important distinction.

Linda Berlot: 10:07

Yeah, I agree. I think in well, there's so much complexity in the intercultural teams we're working with, right from, from language, different languages that we speak. And so when we are listening or reading something, we perceive it differently, you know, based on where we come from, and our education, the way that we speak to each other, our personality determines how we hear. So all of that is complex, I think, the tools that if they give you enough information, one of the gifts is to create a conversation with the team, and to ask them, you know, how true is this? How relevant is it? How does it play out in your team environment? And how do you move from, from what may what that may show to creating agreements that you guys can honor in your, what you call in, in your third cultural space? Right? So for me, the conversation is also extremely important that the team members have around this, or even the individual actually, because it's in the conversation that we create awareness, and ownership.

Marco Blankenburgh: 11:11

Yeah. So it's, it sounds like it's a delicate balance, you want to have sort of a tool that really illuminates and that's that's valuable. At the same time, if if you bring too much complexity into an already complex situation, people get lost. Yeah.

Linda Berlot: 11:28

Right. Do you know Marco, I've several times been called in to work with a team where they, they had administered and psychometric tool, maybe at an individual level or at a team level. But the the sentences were phrased in a way that was confusing to the intercultural team. The context was not clear. And so it created a lot of upsets and resentment and confusion, actually. And I remember on one occasion, I had to go in with him because I was trained in that tool. We redid the tool, but I had to sit. And every time they answered a question, I had to explain what the question meant. question by question by question. Yeah,

Marco Blankenburgh: 12:09

yeah. So it almost sounds like even the tools are designed by cultural human beings? Yes. Yes. And it's reflected in in the way the questions are designed, the way the feedback is articulated in the report, etc. So that there are probably, you know, we talked about that earlier, this idea, Oh, these are Western tools. So, learning to navigate that seems to be important, like the example you just gave. So, in our intercultural framework, we talk about tools that might be more innocence, guilt oriented, where you're assuming that the the person completing the questions is purely looking for the right answer. Yes. versus somebody who might be looking for the honorable answer, you know, how will I be giving an answer that myself, my colleagues, my boss, will perceive as honorable, or where it might be about hierarchy, positional power and your role within the organization? And that's the main thing in my head, as I'm answering those questions. So that influences both how I perceive the flow of the questions, the way they're articulated the way I'm going to answer them. What motivates me in terms of how I answer, have you seen situations where the tool itself, you gave already an example here, but Well, the tool itself sort of needs cultural agility from you as a facilitator or as a coach to do justice to the tool?

Linda Berlot: 13:43

Yes, I have two clear examples, ones just popped up now as it were speaking, one example is when the tool is a very valuable tool. I love the tool. But the competencies that they're measuring the leaders against are not culturally sensitive, I would say. So for example, looking for transparency, right. So transparency in an in an honor, shame, environments, may not be the right thing to be looking for, depending on, you know, maybe looking for being honorable, as you mentioned a moment ago would be a better measure in that environment. But also an interesting thing that I has have started to notice unless I'm clearly speaking to that is that people respond to the psychometric tool in terms of what it should be. So instead of who I am, and how it is what it should be, and there's a little bit of protectiveness there when when someone is doing that. So if we're using a disk tool, for example, and disk, instead of saying this is who I am, maybe I'm Heidi, or qualities that represents a high D. I will check the s qualities, for example, because I believe that that's the right thing to be or the right behaviors to have in a group setting. Right. So that's super interesting.

Marco Blankenburgh: 15:10

Yeah. And along those lines, there's very little research done on this. I know, in the world of Myers Briggs, they've done a little bit of research on this, where they said, different leadership styles in different countries are more celebrated or less celebrated. And, you know, I've, you probably have seen the same where you go into a development journey with a group of managers or a group of leaders. And they will ask questions like, what's the best profile to have as a manager?

Linda Berlot: 15:40

As if it's aspirational? Yes, yeah.

Marco Blankenburgh: 15:43

Yeah. So we have the application of tools, the tools were designed by a certain person or a group of people who have a certain cultural preference. So they designed the tool in their image in their cultural image, then people like yourself, they take it into the intercultural space, you've talked about that complexity. Could you just share a few examples, we talked about some of the challenges we face in that, but examples of how you use tools with with teams, for instance, or groups of managers or leaders, I have so

Linda Berlot: 16:15

many examples. Last year, I worked with a very large organization. It's an international organization based based overseas, and they have a regional office here in the UAE, the leadership team, or the executive team is a multicultural team, as are all of the employees. And I started working with the executive leadership team. And we use disk, I'm a real fan of disk, because of all the reasons we were just speaking about. For me, this is a very powerful tool, it's validated, it takes culture into consideration, the language is clean and clear to understand as is the context. So I like that the reporting that comes out is also beautiful, because it encourages a coaching conversation. And I'm a fan of both the individual report that the the executive gets, but also the team report, because it allows the conversation then to shift away from self to the team. So I worked with this organization, this is executive leadership team, they were feisty and fun, and they got so much out of it the work, you know, we we assessed the team, we spent hours debriefing and unpacking the tools with the individuals themselves, the executives, and then we took them to a team level. And really, I had two sessions, two team workshops with them, they thought it was so powerful that they asked us to then roll it down to the next two levels in the organization. So we ran this throughout the organization. Of course, the department heads when they went through the program found it powerful too, and and we were asked to then run it throughout the departments, or many of the departments. So all of a sudden, you've got an entire organization, using disk as a common language to describe each other's behavior. It's light, it's fun, it's non threatening. And, and it's a way that they can help each other, be better at being in relationship with each other, to have better conflict to have to raise topics, but also to communicate and approach each other. So this, it was very powerful, it was light, it was fun. And it's transformed their organization.

Marco Blankenburgh: 18:37

You make it sound like anybody could do that. Of course, being certified as Yes, as an Everything DiSC practitioner, that's the version of this that we use with with Wiley, which is a third generation of disc tools, with Adaptive Testing included, etc. But the fact that you are also an intercultural practitioner, you're very familiar with the knowledge works approach with the three quarters of worldview and 12 dimensions of culture so that that's almost like a second script that runs in your head as you're working with people. How does that make a difference? So you're just certified, but you're also an intercultural practitioner.

Linda Berlot: 19:22

It's the lens through which I look through, I cannot separate that from anything else I do. I when I'm working with a team, I see intercultural issues light up in front of me, like stringy and it's fascinating. And I use the language to reflect back in the team environment what what I'm seeing, for example, I might have a, an Italian, D in the room, and the Japanese D in the room, and they're not relating to each other. In the same way even though the qualities might be the same. They demonstrate it very differently. That would be an intercultural piece that I would then demonstrate between them. Or if we have a team that is predominantly one, one worldview, and some of the other worldviews aren't in a minority, and also maybe less lively or less, you know, dominant disc styles, they would tend to be marginalized. Because they've they've, they have different values around communication, and, you know, the, in the interpersonal space. So when I see these intercultural issues, for me, it becomes very clear what it is rather than personality that it's intercultural. And it gives them an opportunity to talk about this,

Marco Blankenburgh: 20:41

right. So it's not just that you bring it in, but it actually starts to shape how you facilitate. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. That's fascinating. So what does that look like? Because a lot of these psychometric tools, you get trained on them, and you get trained on a certain way of facilitating debriefing, what you're now saying is that you sometimes throw that into when you flow with the culture of diversity and how culture manifests itself in the room, can you say a little bit more,

Linda Berlot: 21:15

I think, all the work that we do is in service of, of the system, the team, and we work with what emerges, we work with what's already there that they may not see. So my job as a systems coach is to welcome prepared well, and then just keep working and revealing what I am seeing whether it's personality differences or misunderstandings because of culture, sometimes it's not a misunderstanding, sometimes they just don't see that they are missing each other, like two ships in the night just because they're speaking a different language, almost.

Marco Blankenburgh: 21:53

I'm reminded of, even last week, I was facilitating a group and, and one of the people in the group was came up to me bit nervous and said, Do we have to share our reports with our colleagues? And that was that wasn't actually a cultural question. It's like, how safe am I? So how do you how do you create that? It's fun, but it's also quite revealing. It's deep, it could be confrontational. But how do you create a safe space? Where eventually people might? Well, hopefully, you know, the majority will start sharing with each other learning from each other? Having fun with it? How do you create that safe space?

Linda Berlot: 22:34

What you're speaking to is very important. And I think one of my biggest failures was overstepping that piece. And I think what's important to do is to in the assessment stage of the team, to notice how much psychological safety is there? How much trust is there? How much openness? And how much is culture playing into that, you know, is the culture of the team toxic, so they don't have psychological safety? Or is it just because we're in an intercultural team, you know, that safety means different things to different cultures. So that's important to know. And some of the techniques might be to, first of all, educate the leader, because depending on what worldview though, they are, they want openness, and let's talk about everything. And so there might be some education there that's needed, then the leader might have to stand up and say, you know, everything that gets said in this workshop stays in the workshop, that there will be no impact to your performance management, to your bonus to your anything back in the workplace. And then, slowly, slowly, it's about when the team does make itself vulnerable does take a tentative step. It's about showing them what they're doing, and letting them know, wow, look, there's a really trust here, you know, and so really affirming, affirming and championing that trust and safety keeps keeps growing.

Marco Blankenburgh: 24:05

Now, you mentioned an example of a leader who says, let's put everything on the table, etc. But I've also met leaders who, in their own practice are totally the opposite. Yeah. So if a leader plays very cautiously, more or less walks with a mask on, how do you deal with leaders like that? How do you use their presence in the room to either shift the willingness from the rest of the team? Do you have any ideas or suggestions?

Linda Berlot: 24:37

So once I've assessed the team before I actually start working with the team, I spent a considerable amount of time with the leader, asking questions trying to understand number one, what are they what is their personality? What are they comfortable with? What are they where do they feel vulnerable? And also what is their culture? What's appropriate for them and what their mindset and then does assigning some agreements around, how do they want to interact with me and me with them? What's appropriate? Can I give you feedback in the room? Or personally outside privately? What is the culture that you're wanting to create? And how are you as a leader behaving that encourages that or blokes that? And? And then if I see that, how would you like me to feed that back to you? So it's, it's an in depth conversation that I have. I also like to talk about the rank and privilege that leaders have or that exists in the team and ask the leader, how do we want to work with that?

Marco Blankenburgh: 25:39

Right. And I often have seen if if there is more of a hierarchical relationship, that if the leader is willing to sort of demo, you know, what is what might appropriate drill nobility or transparency look like? Then that really opens up? Absolutely.

Linda Berlot: 25:57

Absolutely. I worked once with a local bank. And in the assessment, when I asked the question, I normally ask the question to the team. No one answered, everybody looked at the leader first. Yeah. And once the leader spoke, then they spoke. And that was fascinating to see. And two years on, they achieved amazing return on effectiveness, but also ROI, because they are bank. So they put $1 value to it. They became open, transparent with each other, able to have conflict in a very open and respectful way and to listen to each other. And not to be afraid not to stay away from each other and be afraid of speaking at an inappropriate time or something like that. That's fantastic. It was and the leader was instrumental in helping the team just unlock itself.

Marco Blankenburgh: 26:47

So everything you're saying is, you know, it's not just as simple as Okay, here's the access code, do your questionnaire, we'll bring the reports, see you next week, we'll and we jump straight into the room. There's, there's almost like a slowing down. Yes, of really preparing well, getting to know the team, getting to know the team leader and working with the team leader, almost like you're coaching the team leader, even before a workshop or a learning journey starts.

Linda Berlot: 27:17

Absolutely. And as we're talking now, I'm realizing that you know, it's also working with the leaders culture has built innocence, innocence guilt leader might might say, treat me the same. I'm open. If I'm the one if I'm the blocker pointed out to me. And I can say to them, yes. Okay, and I'm driving this bus, you know, it can be that open that transparent. And other leaders, perhaps I can't I have to not defer but respect the authority that lives and respect the hierarchy and find ways to work inside what already exists.

Marco Blankenburgh: 27:54

Yeah, absolutely. So although you are leading the facilitation itself, the leader is still respected and honored for as being in charge.

Linda Berlot: 28:05

Absolutely. Yeah. And sometimes it's about simple things. Like using their name, like saying something, and I know that you agree you I know you see this too, or giving the leader an opportunity to open the workshop each day, you know, so I'm driving the bus. Here it is. Here's Linda. Yeah, I'm in charge. Yeah, it's small things like that, which makes a

Marco Blankenburgh: 28:27

big difference. Yeah. Now, you know, you've you've done this for many years. And what you've shared so far is, there's a lot of insight that you've gathered over the years. I, sometimes you learn a lot, especially for our listeners, we learn a lot from our mistakes. Are you willing to share a few goof ups? A few situations that didn't go so? Well? Yeah.

Linda Berlot: 28:54

Absolutely. I think we, look, we're human too, right. And as as much as we want to think I'm professional, I'm trained, I'm prepared. I think, working in an intercultural environment, you can prepare as hard as you can. And sometimes there are going to be things that either you've missed or you step over or, or kind of unexpectedly pop up that you didn't, you know, I can think of well to two separate occasions. One was purely an intercultural piece that I stepped over. And yeah, I was working with it with a team and I said something that Dishonored or was perceived as dishonorable by one of the team members. And so, I had to, I had to find a way to quickly allow the person to say face again in front of the group and then take it to a group learning, but I also worked with the team also intercultural, I thought that they would get a lot of value out of becoming self aware, that culture in the organization was quite toxic. And I thought, what if I start with the lead To ship team and help them see the impact they are having on the culture, you know, fix the culture. What I totally did not see that kind of popped up was. So accountability is hard. If you're trying to save face if you the accountability piece shows itself in different ways. So I thought, you know, let's do the tool, let's use this clips, coach them around, coach, each individual leader on the scene and their reports. And that will help them increase emotional intelligence. But it doesn't necessarily change the way that we feel we can take accountability, sometimes. It's not just about I'm unwilling to take accountability, sometimes I don't feel that I can. Because it's not up to me, it's up to someone else, or the group or the leader or, you know, so I missed that piece. And I've since learned and since understood that, before you can do the assessment even. There's questions that are needed to be asked, in terms of accountability, hierarchy, how much can you contribute? You know, and

Marco Blankenburgh: 31:12

I think that's where or SC is also so powerful, because you're not just dealing with individuals, those organizations, those individuals work in an organizational system, yes, that system might be working against you, as individuals might say, I want to change but then they go back to the office or back to the organization. And the system doesn't allow them to do that

Linda Berlot: 31:33

the wider system, I'm currently working with a very well known company here in the UAE. I'm working with the leadership team, but not the executive team. And the leaders are impacted by the culture that's driven by the CEO and the executive team. So so there's a lot that we can do and help them you know, work on what's on their sphere of influence, and that but at a certain point, we're going to have to tackle the elephant in the room, which is how do you want to be with the wider culture?

Marco Blankenburgh: 32:06

Right, right. And as soon as you step into that, then it's not just a few workshops here, and then it becomes a journey. Right? And those things take time. Absolutely. Yeah. Now, I already mentioned that, you know, we're working with everything disc from Wiley. And just historically, because of the history of disc and Marston developing the framework, and eventually there are, you know, it resulted in many different service providers that all use the label disc. But there are many, many different versions out there. Wiley has both Everything DiSC and the five behaviors, they published Patrick Lencioni, his book, so five dysfunctions of a team is published through Wiley and all of his other books. And as a result, they built the five behaviors assessment which integrates disc, why use the Everything DiSC family, so to speak, as well as the five behaviors products from Wiley. While there is so much other choice out there in the disc world.

Linda Berlot: 33:07

You're asking me this, because you know, these are my favorite. Because Mako, I have seen different versions of just out there. I've been using this for many, many years. And the reason why I like Everything DiSC is because well, apart from the reason the fact that it keeps updating itself, the language is easy to understand. It's becoming more and more culturally relevant, translated in different languages. I love the reporting, the reporting is now easier to use in a coaching situation. So it's not just that the psychometric tool is a diagnostic tool. It's also become a developmental tool, which, of course, for a systems coach, like myself is ideal. But also, I believe that the individual then the team create the culture in the team. So for me, it's very important to be looking at who is in the team in terms of individuals, but also, when we are together when we are working together, the dynamics create trust and the ability for us to, to, to be accountable and to drive for team results. So it's important to look at both, I think you can't work, in my opinion, just on the individual for the reason you mentioned earlier, I am an individual, if I have accountability and I know what to do doesn't mean I will be successful in a team environment. So it's important to look at both. And I love both of those tools because they can easily be integrated and they are not simplistic, but the information that they give is extremely powerful and easy to understand. Right? And therefore work with

Marco Blankenburgh: 34:48

and building that bridge from from your behavioral style to how do we do trust, how to create productive conflict commitment, accountability, traffic driving salts, and then doing that with a deep understanding of the cultural dynamics that's incredibly rich.

Linda Berlot: 35:06

Absolutely. I really believe that as humans, we have a lot of expectations and assumptions. And so we, we want to move away from assumptions to agreements. But we can't come up with Team agreements unless we talk about, you know, what does trust mean to us from from different cultures? You know, somebody might say, you have to behave in a trustworthy manner. Someone else might say to you, No, for me trust is if you've got my back no matter what. And so that those are the conversations very rich and deep conversations that we want to create between team members, so that they can get closer,

Marco Blankenburgh: 35:45

right? Now there's last time I looked at this, this giver takes five 600 psychometric tools in the world. So even you probably have experienced working with clients who use a certain tool. People get certified on these tools. And we then meet people who say, Oh, I'm struggling with implementing this or I'm struggling with making it come alive, or the language in the report, people can't really grasp it, or there's the challenges that we just talked about. So we've come across, you know, strengths finders, for instance, Myers Briggs, we have people on our team who are even using Myers Briggs, we have more complex leadership tools like Hogan and Berkman or leadership circle, we already briefly talked about Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team, for all the listeners that are psychometrically certified in some way or another, but who need to use those tools in an intercultural diverse setting. What would you say to them? How do they start on the journey to get closer to where you are today? Having both those spotlights really clear the cultural side, the psychometric side is clearly in front of you. You said, it lights up like a string you said earlier on? How do you how do you advise people to get to that point,

Linda Berlot: 37:05

I use many of those tools myself, I would say the first the starting point for me is get trained on intercultural intelligence. I think if you're operating in this part of the world, this is a foundation which we cannot step over, I think when cultures collide, and there is so much potential for healing and growth and love as well as misunderstanding and pain. So for me, that's the first step. And then really, truly understand your your team or your system and who is in the system, before making a choice of what psychometric tool to use. So adapt the tool to the team, not the team to the tool that you have would be my best piece of advice.

Marco Blankenburgh: 37:51

Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And for our listeners, you will find information about the the intercultural intelligence certifications in the in the notes, as well as contact information for Linda. There's so many more things we could talk about, you've been doing this for at least 15 plus years. And you could tell many stories, but I would love for us to close up with one more story, where you've seen how it really transformed not just individuals, but also teams and the organization as a whole.

Linda Berlot: 38:26

I recently started working with a small university and the mother University is Western. But there is a branch here in the UAE. And also, I started with the leadership team, and we use disk in this in this case. Yeah, I couldn't, I can't remember if we use the intercultural I don't think we have yet we use disk, the leadership team just loved it. By the end of the the first stage of the journey, which was the assessment, the coaching, the individual coaching, and the first team, this workshop, the, the team leader said, Wow, I feel like for the very first time we are a team. And that was so moving, they just it was almost like all these lights, they started to see each other and pass the frustrations that they had been having. And that triggered the desire to run that throughout the organization. So in around September last year, we were asked, please, Coach another almost 100 people by the 15th of December. So we did that. And it's extremely powerful, what's changed? Not least of all, so we've created a more in depth understanding of who the individuals are and who we're working with, but not least of all it's given them an understanding of Wow. So this is who we are as individuals and as a culture. And this is how we are different went to the mothership, if you will. The mothership is wanting to, you know, just carbon copy in in the UAE. And they're starting to see that that can't work. So now we're doing that piece of work.

Marco Blankenburgh: 40:15

That opens up a whole other conversations, which sometimes gets political as well. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, it's fascinating, always wonderful to listen to you and the wealth of experience you have. So thank you for for joining us again, and talk about this important subject. And for our listeners, as I mentioned, we've always share information to connect with our hosts and our guests. So you'll find that information. If you want to connect with Linda and her team, Linda has a company called burnout group. And we partner extensively with Linda and her team. So it's, uh, find the information in the notes and connect with her or connect with our team. And we will, we'll put you in contact with her. So thank you so much for, for doing this and for for sharing your story today.

Linda Berlot: 41:09

Monica, thank you for inviting me, I always find our conversations priceless, such a gift to be able to talk about a passion that we both share. But also, I want to thank you and your team for the support that you give our team and equipping us and upskilling us and tooling us with all the tools that you you have we could not do the work that we do without the work that you do.

Marco Blankenburgh: 41:34

Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the cultural agility podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, share it with someone. Best way to help us out is by leaving a review on your favorite podcast, app or channel. Force forward and recommend this podcast people around you. As always, if any of the topics we discussed today intrigue you, you will find links to articles discussing them in greater depth in the podcast notes. If you would like to learn more about intercultural intelligence and how you can become more culturally agile, you can find more information and hundreds of articles at knowledge works.com A special thanks to Jason Carter for composing the music on this podcast and to the whole knowledge works team for making this podcast a success. Thank you Anita Rodriquez, Ara as this backyard Raji Suraj. And thanks to VIP and George for audio production, Rosalind Mirage for scheduling, and Caleb Strauss for marketing and helping produce this podcast