Paul White | 00:00  
A lot of people put off personal and professional development because it takes time. And it's in that, you know, to use the Johari window, you know, it's in that important but not urgent category that we often squeeze down to virtually nothing. And so when I think about my own schedule, which often is very busy, if I don't invest the time, it's never going to happen. 
So I say if personal development is important to you, professional development is important to you, the whole area of Intercultural intelligence should be on your list. And therefore, it's just a matter of not if you do it, but when. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 00:43  
Welcome to the Cultural Agility Podcast, 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. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 00:46  
Where we explore the stories. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 00:58  
I'm your host, Marco Blankenburgh, International Director of KnowledgeWorkx, where every day we help individuals and companies achieve relational success in that same complex world. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 01:12  
So this podcast series is all about Intercultural and intercultural intelligence, cultural agility, whatever you want to call it. And I'm really excited that Paul White and Matt Trenchard could join us today in a conversation around their life's journey, their professional journey. We sort of have a list of questions, but we don't know where this conversation So thank you for joining. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 01:33  
Will lead us. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 01:36  
Pleasure to be. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 01:37  
Here. Yeah, I've known the two of you in one way for a very long time. In other ways, professionally, we've drifted in and out of each other's world. And for the sake of our listeners, it would be great if you can introduce yourself to our podcast listeners. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 01:53  
Sure, I can go first. Hello, everyone. I'm Matt Trenchard. I'm from the UK originally, now living in Dubai since 2006, which shocks me, like how long I've been here. I never expected to be here, almost 15 years. I'm the co -founder of Northpointe Academy, which at its core teaches people to be coaches. But we see that more as a vehicle for actually about helping people go through transformation. And we kind of came across Intercultural intelligence through our relationship with you. And we've loved the journey that we've been on. Looking forward to the conversation. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 02:27  
Thank you. Thanks for having me here. 
Yeah, thank you. 
Paul White | 02:29  
Paul. Yeah, my name is Paul William White. And I give you my middle name because I have a number of very famous namesakes, one being the Jungle Doctor Author, if any of you are really old, you'll know that. 
So that's not me. I was born in New Zealand. I married an Australian and I moved to Dubai 20 years ago. My kids are confused because they don't know which country they come from half the time, although they really do come from here. 
So 20 years in Dubai, I started off as a chartered accountant and I went through career change 10 years ago and became a professional coach. And that's how I got involved with Matt. I work alongside with Matt at Northpointe Academy. And I've done a lot of work with people in career transition. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 03:14  
And now I know why William. I knew it was William, Paul, but now I know why. Although for me, you are the most famous one. 
Paul White | 03:21  
Thank you, Matt. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 03:25  
So in some way, of course, our journey through life, which involves cultural elements. And since that's what we're focusing on today, I'm just curious, when did the Intercultural side of life, when did that start to come alive for you? I'm sure that it's not just your professional life. I'm sure there are other moments in your history, your journey. 
Paul White | 03:52  
You look embarrassed, Matt. No, I'm not. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 03:54  
Embarrassed. I'm laughing though. Maybe I'm embarrassed as well. I feel like I've cut you off your question, but I'm going to answer it anyway. 
Yeah, So I think for me, the Intercultural world came alive to me when my wife and I attended an intercultural marriages program. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 04:02  
Go for it. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 04:19  
Led by one of your friends and colleagues and his wife, Julia. Yeah, Julia. We'd already been exposed on some level, but just those sessions, they had my wife and I afterwards just talking through situations from her background, from my background, but then like from other, like, she'd be like yeah, this person at work. And we just ended up talking through other people's lives, our own lives, and just like, shine that light. Things become more clearer. That explains why that. 
So that's kind of how it all began to spark in my life. Great. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 04:54  
Great. How about you, Paul? 
Paul White | 04:56  
Well, it's probably many times, but probably the one time, especially here in the Gulf, was when I was visiting a Gulf national and drinking their delicious coffee. And I was on to my fifth cup. Now, if anyone knows anything about Gulf traditions, you'll realize that by the time you get to your third, you should have stopped and you should shake your head. Nobody had told me this. 
So I just kept putting my cup back. And my friend was very gracious and pointed out what had happened. But on reflection, that was like, I have no idea what I'm doing here. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 05:33  
And did you sleep that night? 
Paul White | 05:38  
I've never slept since that happened. Still embarrassed. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 05:44  
So you both are involved professionally with people. That's the direction your career is taking you. Very much so. And when you think about the work you're involved with, the life you lead, in which way was Intercultural intelligence attractive? Why were you drawn into it? And what caused you to pursue it further? 
matt@northpoint.ac | 06:10  
I think for me, multiple levels. One, on the intellectual, just to kind of, like, it's a way, it's a map. It's a way of understanding the world. But as we and I got more into it, the realization that it could help me understand me better. 
And then as a result, like, okay, this is how it applies to coaching. Because when the coach understands themselves better, they can help their client to understand themselves better and therefore be more effective or whatever they need to be in their life. 
So we saw it as adding an extra, what's the phrase, feather to our bow, or that's the wrong phrase, but yeah, actually level to what we were doing. I think it's your cap. 
Paul White | 06:54  
A feather in your cap. Feather in we go. 
Getting your metaphors mixed up. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 07:01  
Here we are, Australian English and British English. 
Paul White | 07:05  
Except I'm actually more New Zealand. Dutch. Gotta love the Dutch. For me, Marco, it's quite different. 
You know, I've known you for a very long time. And when we first met in Dubai, I asked you what you did and found out this Intercultural thing. I thought, that's interesting. 
So ever since then, I've really been tracking what you're doing and seeing how the methodologies and the processes have matured. And I mean, I first met you when you and some of your colleagues were on a disc certification, professionally at least. 
So I decided to engage in this kind of professionally once I'd watched for a while and seen that it stood the test of time. Actually, I felt like it was overdue because I've known you for so long and knew some of the stuff that you've been doing. 
So it was like, yeah, I actually need to take this on board. So I knew of it before coaching, but it has acute relevance for people working with people, especially. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 08:09  
I think I'll add that I think I recognised how different the ICI work was from some of the other cultural or cross -cultural work that I'd seen. A lot of it seemed to be identifying, separating, putting things apart, putting things in boxes. And the result was just to see how we're all different, as opposed to the ICI work, which is much more internal, much more how we're similar, how we're different. 
And then based on that, how can we begin to step across from one area into the other? So I found it much more that the potential for bridging divides was much greater. Right. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 08:51  
Of course, the reality with stepping into the world of Intercultural intelligence, because it is indeed, it starts with you and a very inside -out approach. There are very few people who are not impacted by that in a profound way. 
So I'm curious for you, as you started to learn more about initially, maybe the mechanics and the terminology and the system behind Intercultural intelligence, how has it changed you or impacted you? 
Paul White | 09:21  
Yeah, look, I thought about this question, I think it's on three levels. Firstly, just myself and my own relationships. It's just helped me to change the way I approach people. I think it's fair to say. 
And then more closely, it related to me, myself. It's helped me be more aware of my own worldview. And of course, Northpointe's coaching methodology embraces this term worldview. They're thinking more from a philosophical worldview point of view. You're obviously talking from a cultural worldview point of view. 
So, I mean, this was one area where I was really quite shocked at how multicultural I was, even after living here for quite some time. So that's really changed me. 
And then, surprise, it has had a significant impact and continues to have an impact on the way that I coach. Just because when you consider people as unique cultural beings, it changes the way that you approach them and the assumptions that you have to correct, because we all make them. The bias that we bring in, we re -evaluate it, and we put it on the table, both on both sides of the table. 
So it has a lot of implications. And the ICF, the new ICF competencies take this whole area. The ICF? International Coach Federation. Thank you, Matt. They have taken this a lot more seriously recently, and they've just revised their core competencies. And we see this area being more richly addressed in the upcoming revision, which is due for release quite soon, I believe. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 10:57  
Now, you mentioned something that's part of the terminology of the Intercultural intelligence framework, to treat every human being as uniquely wired cultural human being. What in the world does that mean? 
matt@northpoint.ac | 11:13  
Good spot. 
Paul White | 11:15  
That's your question, Matt. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 11:17  
I'm still on the previous question. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 11:19  
We'll get to that. 
Paul White | 11:21  
Isn't the first question. Just for the along the way. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 11:23  
Sake of our listeners, I want to make sure that we don't lose people. 
Paul White | 11:27  
No. I can address this. Back to what Matt said before, some other frameworks that we've been exposed to tend to kind of categorise people, which is helpful. 
You know, if you pigeonhole people, it helps you to classify the world and make sense of it. But unfortunately, what happens with culture is people take that far further than it should, was ever intended, I think, to go. And so this term about people who are culturally unique or culturally wired refers to the fact that we are all unique because all of our cultures are different because we come from different families, different countries, different regions of different countries, different cities, different villages. There's many cultural influences. 
So to put us in a box can be quite a dangerous thing. And so it's a positive recognition of that. It's a curious, it's an encouragement to be curious when we approach people because we realise that this person is a one -off. 
So let's explore that. How can they be better at who they are? This kind of stuff from a coaching perspective. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 12:26  
That's quite a shift. As both of you mentioned, the traditional way of looking at culture is where are you from, which path do you carry to… Every person is unique. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 12:39  
Yeah, every person is unique and yet, and this really matches with the way that we work in coach as well, that although we're all unique, we're all more similar than we are different. So although I can think of it in terms of maybe three colours of paint and they all get mixed together and make a unique colour, but it's three colours of paint in different quantities that get mixed together. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 13:02  
Yeah, and we'll come back to that. How does that impact the way you engage clients, coaches in your work? We'll come back to that, but let's stick to the personal level. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 13:14  
Yeah, you asked me how it impacted me. So I think part of my life story is that I grew up and have remained pretty flexible to other people. I think that served me pretty well as I was growing up. But then as I've got older, it's become more important, actually, particularly when coaching, not to be so flexible that I don't know who I am. 
So my journey has been about, well, what am I? So I was learning, or I have learned through the ISO work about my own cultural makeup, learned that I'm pretty monocultural in that way. I haven't really felt a need to adjust that at all, because for me, it's been like, OK, so that places me within this, particularly in Dubai, places me within this multicultural context. I'm still flexible, engaging with other people, but now with an additional thing, OK, I know who I am, let's discover where someone else is. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 14:14  
We sometimes use the word anchoring. Would that connect with what you just mentioned? 
matt@northpoint.ac | 14:22  
Yeah, I would think so. For all my flexibility, there's a need for me sometimes to be more grounded. And so the more I can know who I am, how I'm made, it grounds me more, anchors me more. 
Yeah. So yes. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 14:40  
Now, both of you indicate that this is not just intellectually stimulating or fun. This is actually helpful. It changes how I do life on all fronts. I'm just curious, do you have examples off the cuff of real life situations where I see either the lack of it caused a messy situation or the existence of it or your ability to apply it, save the day, for instance? 
Marco Blankenburgh | 14:56  
Any. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 15:11  
Anything that comes to mind? 
matt@northpoint.ac | 15:14  
Yeah. I'm from home. I'm trying to choose examples which are safe to share because you guys know the listeners don't. 
So my wife's from a different culture to me. So we had a particular situation where she wasn't feeling so good for dinner. She said, I'm not going to have dinner. We'd eaten dinner the night before and there was some dinner left over. And so I said, it's OK. I'll just go make myself a sandwich. It's fine. You look after yourself. She takes offence. And I'm really thrown by this. And I think we both understood enough of this work. 
So this is the positive story that I was able to ask her, OK, I'm missing this here. Can you tell me what's going on? And she was able to go one next step further and tell me, hey, I made that food for you. And now you don't want it. Now I know. 
So I realized that actually it's about she was trying to honor me and I wasn't returning the honor. So I was able to say to her, I understand, but can I explain from my perspective? I wanted us to have that meal that you'd cooked yesterday. We thought we'd have today because you're not feeling well. We'll have it tomorrow together. And for me, that's me honoring you by making sure we have it together. And I just have a sandwich now. It changed everything. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 16:45  
Right. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 16:47  
And if I hadn't had the ICI, I wouldn't have known how to walk that. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 16:51  
Road. Yeah. You used the term earlier on shining a light on a situation. To me, it sounds like both of you, because you know, in this case, the Three Colors of Worldview framework, you're able to turn that spotlight on and it helps you move. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 17:06  
Forward. It diffused the whole situation. Because it wasn't about the food. It was actually about honor and respect. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 17:13  
Any examples that come to mind, Paul? 
Paul White | 17:15  
Yeah. I mean, I think there's many examples living here, probably in the same space in terms of honor and shame. But probably more recently for me, the influence of, you know, to talk Three Colors of Worldview language, the influence of power fear is something that I was not sure of what it actually meant. 
You know, I've had these images in my mind of, you know, witch doctors standing around casting spells on their tribes. And, you know, it's not about that. And I think I really, I've probably witnessed it more now than I've actually experienced it. But I've just seen particularly in organizations as well as in cultures. And I think that power fear can, the domain of power fear, the sphere of power fear can be seen as a very negative thing. And often it is. But it can be quite positive. And I think one of our intents in organizations is to empower people, which is the light side, is the positive side of power fear. And to actually just to see smaller changes in people's lives. 
You know, I'm just trying to think of a specific example where perhaps they change the way they engage with their staff. And I mean, I have to be careful with not giving specifics away here, but just so that they are actually more engaged rather than kind of dictatorial. You can't change the way you kind of are personally. 
You know, your personal style is maybe something that's more difficult to change, but you can change the way that you interact with people, if you're conscious of these kind of things. So I think for me, that's the area where I've seen the most visible manifestation recently. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 19:07  
It's interesting you mentioned that, because even this morning, I had a conversation with a client where we've had the privilege of working with them throughout 2020, the first COVID year. And one of the issues that they were facing was along the same lines of what you were just saying that leaders found it hard to create a safe, open space for their staff. And if that happens, staff didn't feel confident and free to step into that space to voice their opinion, talk about what they were struggling with. And today, the HR director was saying that has totally changed. Fantastic. Where leaders are seeing their position of power, not as a place where they decide who is going to speak and who is not going to speak, as opposed to using that power to actually open the space. Hey, let's talk about what's real for you and what you're struggling with and what we need to change together. 
So that's a great example of a positive shift in the way people look at power. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 20:17  
Thanks for bringing that in, because what you're talking about relates to what we do as well. Because it's a shift in the direction of communication from a tell you what to do to a more coaching style, which is I invite. In my experience, senior leaders, particularly in organizations where there is a strong power fear, they themselves fear what would happen if they stopped doing what they were doing. And the work that Paul and I and the rest of the team do actually tells me, if you're going to let go of this kind of power, here's another way that you can exercise your power. 
Yeah. But in a way that is then more empowering. 
So it's not just about letting go and letting it all go to bits. Yeah. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 21:01  
Yeah. Now, you've referred to the work you're involved with several times already. But just a quick summary, North Point, what do you guys do? Where do you guys work? And how does that impact the world? 
matt@northpoint.ac | 21:16  
What do we do? I don't think I'll jump for taglines, but... 
Paul White | 21:21  
I can do that. Yeah. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 21:25  
But on a corporately, when a corporate comes to us, for example, they're wanting us to help them help their managers become better leaders. And often that's through helping them shift from command and control to being more open, being more collaborative, asking better questions, helping to empower other people. And all of these things are coach skills. That's what we do is we train individuals and teams around how to be coaches. And all of that is founded in a body of knowledge and a body of wisdom, which is all around, let's find out what's inside and how can we bring what's inside outside? How can we lower our guards and actually be more vulnerable, show people who we are? And as you were saying earlier, by doing so, create safe spaces where others can be vulnerable and therefore we can all be more human. 
Paul White | 22:15  
So can I drop the taglines now? Go So recently, North Point Academy has kind of changed their vision a bit. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 22:17  
Right ahead. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 22:18  
Go for it. 
Paul White | 22:26  
And their vision now is to build transformational communities from the inside out. So it's talking more about what, from Matt's point of view, is living from the inside out, looking inside how that impacts your external behaviour, and then taking that into a community setting where everyone is more open and collaborating together and changing the communities and organisations they're a part of. 
So it's more than, it sounds a bit stereotypical, but it's more than a coaching company. It's more than a provider of coach training. Now I'm going to drop the other one. Because it really, I mean, I love this. It really helps people in their organisation or in personal contacts, get awake to themselves and alive to others. 
So that's the other tagline. But I like that. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 23:14  
And then you asked, where are we? Yeah. 
Paul White | 23:18  
We're in a podcast booth, I think. We are. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 23:21  
We are. Where is North Point? 
Well, as of 2020, we're everywhere. Right. 
Where do we base ourselves? Well, there's a bunch of us in UAE, and there's a small number of us in UK. 
Yeah. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 23:39  
But to your point, how has COVID changed your go -to -market? You said we're everywhere. 
Yeah. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 23:47  
I think it's probably safer to say how is it changing, because it's still a change. I mean, it's taken all of our work online. It's now taking more of our marketing and sales work online. But yeah, so that's been the big shift. I remember reading quite early on in the pandemic, we're looking at kind of April, May time. Already, people are saying that, like, health issues aside, this thing, this situation has accelerated the direction that both companies and learning was already going five, 10 years faster than it would have been anyway. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 24:22  
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Now, Northpointe existed before we started to engage with ICI. 
So, there was a version of Northpointe coaching, the certification to become a coach existed before ICI was sort of brought into that same space. How has Intercultural intelligence shifted the way you look at coaching, the way you train people to become coaches, the way you engage with your clients? 
Paul White | 24:54  
I think it's fair to say the core coach training program that Northpointe offers has not changed in content. But this is a very loud voice into that content, because actually what the whole methodology of Northpointe, as we talked about before, does is ask you to look inside out. 
So, when you look inside yourself, many people don't do that. So, it gives you another very strong, rich lens to look inside of yourself and then obviously to look at other people. 
So, I think in the core training, coach training we do, it's woven in there more as we do it more. I think it's impacted our corporate work in a more significant way, because it's helped us to engage with clients with more understanding and respond to their needs better, because we understand where they're coming from, as well as what they think they need. And we have seen an opportunity, which of course, Marco, we've all worked on together to extend and deepen our coach training. 
So, we've then gone on and built another course on top of the certification, which is a certificate of Intercultural coaching, which can help people to keep themselves current for their CCEUs for the ICF, which is continual education for ICF credential coaches. And it can be used as coach training hours to go to the next level of certification, which is…. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 26:21  
I'll come back to the certificate in Intercultural coaching, because I think that's a very exciting project that we worked on together. But, Matt, you were one of the founders of Northpointe. 
Yeah. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 26:32  
I can build on what Paul's saying. I mean, I think one thing that ICI did for us is that, in some ways, showed us why we were already attracting people from a great variety of cultures already. 
Yeah, it's true. Even before we were involved, it was like, hey, we're not trying to do this. But in a typical room, we're having a couple of Emiratis and some people from Europe and just like a real mix set of people right from the beginning. And I think for us, what ICI did was show us like, okay, so actually there's a real mesh. And actually not just a real mesh between the two ideas, but both of these ideas are actually fitting with how reality really is. I think what it's done for us is it's helped us with our engagement with the market when we're speaking to people. Right. 
So it's not just about like, yes, do you want to do it or not? In some ways, it helps us see a longer picture, a longer journey, how people are engaging in a longer way. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 27:31  
Paul, you already jumped into the fact that the collaboration has gone to the extent that we created the certificate in Intercultural coaching together. Now, if I was even thinking about coaching, or maybe I have extensive experience in coaching, the world of coaching by and large is sort of infused with a psychological perspective on humanity. There's a lot of psychological thinking in the world of coaching. And coaching has existed for quite a lot of years. Why bother with infusing the Intercultural stuff into somebody who's already a good coach? Why do they need it? 
matt@northpoint.ac | 28:14  
So I'm just laughing at your question. I think I'd probably pull on some of what you told us before, just from a strictly ICI perspective, Marco, that people are already living cross culturally, Intercultural more than ever before, that's likely just to only increase. And actually, the pandemic has made that more and more, although we're not actually moving around as much physically, working wise, virtually, we're working with people from all over the world. And if I don't know what drives me, for me, this is almost like a universal truth. If I don't know what is driving me or what's about me, I'll very likely point it out there erroneously. 
So actually, hey, if I can know about my own cultural makeup, when someone is different, I know that it's not that they're wrong or that I can see me and then I can go, okay, so this is different. So now I'm curious. I'm not criticizing, I'm not a critic. I'm like, hey, so what's going on there for you? And just being curious is one of the grand talents of being a coach, just to help both themselves and others get curious about what's going on, learn from it, rather than shut down thinking by being critical. 
Paul White | 29:36  
Yeah, look, for me, when I started thinking about the influence of ICI on coaching, there's kind of three things. It's not exclusively this, but there's three ways to think about Intercultural factors influencing coaching specifically. It's the coach, it's the coachee, and it's the topic of coaching. 
So Matt was talking about how his own culture impacts or cultural blindness impacts his ability to interact with other people effectively. So that's super important because you may just completely miss things as a coach if you don't see them, which sounds incredibly obvious as we say, but it can happen very easily. Or, you know, like I wear corrective lenses. 
So if we wear lenses that distort the way we see things, then again, we may completely miss the true meaning of what's going on in a coaching relationship simply because of who we are, nothing to do with the coach. On the coachee side of things, to bring these frameworks in into this thinking can bring a whole new world to someone if they haven't thought it through, or if they have actually been influenced by this kind of thinking before, then you're basically playing on the same ground. And so then the insight that can be realized is shared because you have a mutual understanding of how culture operates. 
So that's the coach and the coachee. And then, of course, there's the topic. 
Well, this one is probably more obvious because there's a lot of consultancy, you know, done on situations, you know, consultants are employed to look at situations, people look at situations. So we're used to looking at things from the outside. And therefore, you know, we can see cultural influences affecting the way people engage and do business and how successful or unsuccessful they are. But I think that one, the last one is probably the one that we're the most aware of. And therefore, the one that we, well, it's not that we need to pay the least attention to it in coaching, but we probably need to be more cognizant of the individuals involved first before we look at the situations. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 31:46  
Give you like some examples. So I remember earlier in my coaching career, coaching an Emirati gentleman. And as I'm coaching, in my mind, I'm thinking, man, it's like he's circling around and not actually talking about the issue at hand. And thinking, like, it's like he doesn't really know what he wants. 
So I remember thinking that I wasn't, I hadn't been very effective. I didn't know why. Having done ICI and coached subsequently and looked back, I realized that actually, he didn't have sufficient trust with me that we hadn't yet built enough of a trust between us for him to allow himself to open up to me and tell me really what was going on. And when it came to making decisions, he actually wanted, he needed to think through who he was going to speak to, who in his community was important to speak into his life, to help him make decisions. And I was kind of blindly pushing him towards us to make decisions because of where I come from, which is much more about, this is what I want to do, because I come from more individualistic society. 
So then translate that into a coach mentoring session I was doing a few months ago. And we had a Saudi national on that coach mentoring group call. And a very similar topic came up. And it was for me a joy to hear from him describing that, yeah, what he would do was he would ask someone else, so who would you go and speak to? And what would you like to get from that? Who is important in your community? And so hearing this someone of a very similar cultural background expressing that, me realizing the mistakes that I made, that helped me understand, okay, so this is what ICI can do to add to my community. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 33:39  
Yeah. So you're referring to one of the 12 dimensions that we use, community accountability versus individual accountability. And it seems just from the story you just told that if you as a coach would continue to operate purely based on an individual accountability versus your coachee being more from a community accountability point of view, what would happen if you would have never discovered that? I Yeah. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 34:06  
Would continue to find it difficult to help my coachees to make decisions and move forward. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 34:13  
Now, we've talked about coaching. We talked a little bit about the fact that we created a program. I think all three of us are quite excited about the fact that the certificate in Intercultural coaching exists. It's these types of certifications, they take a lot of time and energy and resources. If you had a chance to say to people in the audience, this is why you should consider investing this and in this, what would you say to them? 
Paul White | 34:44  
For me, I'm originally a finance guy, right? So I cut my teeth in charted accountancy. And so I'm not sure I think about money a lot, but I certainly think about how you measure things. And I think about investment. 
So a lot of people put off personal and professional development because it takes time. And it's in that, you know, to use the Johari window, you know, it's in that important, but not urgent category that we often squeeze down to virtually nothing. And so when I think about my own schedule, which often is very busy, if I don't invest the time, if I don't set the time aside and actually keep it that way, it's never going to happen. It's not even a money thing, to be honest. It's about time because time is arguably one of the most valuable resources that we have in the world, perhaps along with water. 
So I say if personal development is important to you, professional development is important to you, the whole area of Intercultural intelligence should be on your list. And therefore, it's just a matter of not if you do it, but when. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 35:54  
Mark, for me, I'd speak to coaches who have a real desire to be the best coach they can be. And just to say that if you're dealing with people from other cultures, so that if you're dealing with anyone online outside your own country, if you're living outside your own country, any of those sorts of situations, and if you're wanting to be the best coach you can be, this is a big step forward. It's not actually an easy step forward. It's not an easy step forward because the big chunk of it, and in some ways, this is the same with all coaching development, the big chunk of it is the self -development. And we often say in the academy that it's the self -learning, the self -knowledge of the coach, which is far more important, really, than any of the tools and other techniques. And what I say it does is give a big bright light on a new area. And so, yeah, if that's you, if you're wanting to be the best coach you can be, you can't really go wrong with this. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 36:51  
Thank you. I would like to sort of wrap this up. We have had an interesting year behind us. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 37:00  
That's one. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 37:01  
Word for it. One word for it. Challenging. There's 2021 is already one month in. And we have, of course, very little insight as to what this year is going to be. But I'm curious, when you think about this year, what do you get excited about? 
Paul White | 37:21  
I can go first. So I'll start with a couple of trivial ones. I'm looking forward to traveling again. 
I mean, I haven't been on an airplane since January last year, and I love to travel. But there's no end in sight for that just yet, for a number of reasons. 
So I'm a passionate Liverpool supporter. So I'm really hoping Liverpool goes head to head. And I have a friend who's a Man United fan who's already spitting taxes. I say that, I hope he's listening. Hi, Martin. But seriously, for me, it's really hard to know what to look forward to in 2021, because the world has changed so much. And we've really been taught a big lesson in 2020 to not plan too far ahead. And so I am looking forward to engaging with my clients this year, but that's every year. But I've really held myself back this year quite a lot, because I just don't necessarily know what's going to happen this year. We don't know how long the pandemic is going to, you know, if you like, hold the world in its grip, you know. 
So it may be we have the same conversation in 12 months' time. We just don't know. 
So probably for me, it's making the best of what I have in front of me, which can be a lot. I. 
matt@northpoint.ac | 38:38  
Think from my side, personally, yeah, looking forward to traveling. I'd love to go and see my family in the UK at some point. It's been quite some time. I think professionally, we're looking forward to, although things haven't changed that much, I think we're all a bit more used to this disruption than we were. 
So it kind of feels like, you know, God willing, business is going to be up on last year. If I stand back, though, from the whole thing, and I look at trends, I think it's probably easier to speak about trends rather than just 2021. I think this shift that we've seen into virtual work is going to continue. I think the shift towards people working home might shift back a bit, but that's here to stay. 
And then politically, like, I went to a talk given by one of the Shahs of Sheikhs recently. He's an economist. And it's like where there's a lot of hidden corruption in the world that's going to come to the surface. And that's going to be a big upset for us for a number of years. We're already seeing some of those things taking place. 
So I think it's going to be a very VUCA world to continue. Volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. 
So that actually gives me great hope for the work that all of us do. Because if I'm going to live in a world that's increasingly like that, increasingly volatile, I've got to know who I am and where I am and how I can navigate a very complex environment. That's what we do. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 40:13  
Well, I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation with the two of you. I wish we had more time. Maybe we'll do a part two later on in the series. Bring it on. Even just talking about coaching specifically, I think it could be very interesting. To talk about what does it look like to bring Intercultural coaching techniques into a relationship. But thank you so much for making the time. And we are looking forward to our partnership. 
So lots to look forward to in this challenging year ahead of us. Keep. 
Paul White | 40:52  
Doing the good work you're doing, Marco. Thanks very much. Thank you. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 40:57  
Much for joining us for this episode of the Cultural Agility Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, share it with someone. The best way to help us out is by leaving a review on your favorite podcast app or channel or forward and recommend this podcast to people around you. As always, if any of the topics we discussed today intrigue 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 KnowledgeWorkx .com. A special thanks to Jason Carter for composing the music on this podcast and to the whole KnowledgeWorkx team for making this podcast a success. Thank you Nita Rodriguez, Ara Azizbekyan, Rajitha Raj and thanks to Vipin George for audio production, Rosalind Raj for scheduling and Caleb Strauss for marketing and helping produce this podcast.