Nic Labuschagne | 00:00  
I think the positive that's come out of what has happened is the realization that there is going to be massive systemic change in our world. And what the COVID crisis did is actually highlight to people that certain steps that were seen to be sacred prowls or holy cows have actually been taken. 
So I think the future out there is going to be full of massive systemic change. And that means that we need to make sure that we equip ourselves with the resilience and with the tools to be able to cope with that. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 00:42  
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 Blankenburgh, International Director of KnowledgeWorkx, where every day we help individuals and companies achieve relational success in that same complex world. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 01:11  
Welcome everybody to this next episode of our podcast series. I'm especially excited about today's session, where I'm welcoming Nick Labouchagne into our studio, our virtual studio. And thank you, Nick, for agreeing to join us today on this podcast. 
Nic Labuschagne | 01:30  
Thank you, Marco. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 01:31  
I'm especially excited because Nick has been involved in the Intercultural space for many years, even long before we connected. And he has told me in the past bits and pieces of his story. And I look forward to hearing more of it today, actually. 
So thank you, Nick, for agreeing to join us today. I could try and introduce you, but I think it would be much more beneficial if you would introduce yourself, because there are so many facets of your life's journey. I'll let you pick and choose the pieces that you want to present to our audience. 
So Nick, welcome and please introduce yourself. 
Nic Labuschagne | 02:13  
Thanks, Marco. I work for a company called APCO Worldwide. We are a global public affairs and communications consultancy. There are about 800 or 900 of us now globally. And I head up the strategy, crisis and issue management and sustainability and climate change practices in the Middle East region. 
So we have about 250 people working with us in the Middle East. In terms of my Intercultural journey, I think the easiest way is probably to map the journey through the various geographies. 
So I started off life in South Africa and went out to finish university in Denmark, and then after my military service, I went to study an MBA and an MA in the United States for three years, one year of which was spent in Japan doing the MA part of the studies. Then I went back and worked in the US for another year, UK for three years, returned to South Africa, and then left for the Middle East in 1999 and spent the next 21 years working in the Middle East. 
So a lot of different countries that I've worked in, I've obviously visited many more, and it's really been very much an eye and soul opening journey, if I can put it that way. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 03:33  
Fascinating, eye and soul opening. I'd love to come back to that. But it sounds like your Intercultural life started relatively early. I'm curious, when did the whole Intercultural side of being human, when did that first come alive for you? Any stories that you recall from your younger years? 
Nic Labuschagne | 03:57  
Well, I guess it really started in my very early years in South Africa. In those days, we still had the apartheid system operating in South Africa. And it's something that I was unable to grasp as a young kid. I couldn't understand why there was differentiation between people of color, people of language. And we were subject to fairly draconian laws and regulations by the government in power at the time. I had to go through military service at the same time that we still had that government in power. And they tried to indoctrinate us in what they call the National Christian philosophy. And the closest parallel of anybody's interest in history is probably Nazism. The idea that they said that would probably come out as something unpopular today. But I think that's when I, the first awakenings when I was a young kid in South Africa, the strange way that people were treating one another. When I went to the United States in 1986 to do my MBA is when I really had a broader picture or a broader experience of that. Because the business school invited all the foreign students to go a week in advance of all the courses starting. And the purpose of that was to get us acclimatized to the US way of doing things. 
And then the group of foreigners who were there were some Brits, there were Indians, there were Norwegians, Germans, Japanese, and some Chinese. And we all got on rather well with each other. It was for me the first time to meet certainly people from the Orient and Indians from India. Our country has lots of Indians of second or third generation, but Indians from India, one of whom was Muslim and the other one was a Sikh. And the nuances not only of the different nationalities, but the people within those countries, I mean, I talked about the Indians, but the Brits, there was one Brit who came from the, what we'd call the British upper class. And there was one who came from military background. And for me, it was the first time seeing that schism in British society up close as well, which was quite fascinating. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 06:14  
It sounds like that was, you know, living, studying, doing weekends together, etc. How did, if you could recall, how that impacted you at that time? 
Nic Labuschagne | 06:28  
Well, it certainly opened my eyes to how different people think about the world. You're quite right. We literally worked 18 -hour days together. They put us into study groups, but the foreign students tended to stick together quite closely. And we had one of our friends who was Norwegian, had an American wife, and she was the sort of mum of the group. And she would feed us and make sure we had cold beers and pizza and movies to watch and stuff like that. But for me, the real eye OpenAI was one day when we were watching a Monty Python movie. And the people of English descent, British descent, I suppose, laughed at certain types of humor in the movie. And the Americans who were in the group laughed at stuff that made no sense to us at all. And for me, that was the first time to understand how we were, you know, although we spoke a common language, our sensibilities were actually entirely different. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 07:26  
Fascinating. Yeah, humor, we both know that. But humor is a huge subject in the Intercultural space. You can easily fire the wrong shot with a joke in an intercultural audience. 
Nic Labuschagne | 07:38  
Absolutely. Well. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 07:40  
It sounds like you, I still remember our first meeting in Dubai. I don't remember the year now. I should have done my homework before this session, but it seems many years ago that we first met. 
Nic Labuschagne | 07:54  
It was probably around 2009 or 10, somewhere around there. Because I think the first formal course that I took with you guys was in 2011. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 08:04  
Yeah. And I think you were still involved with the previous employer before you joined APCO. I was. 
So at that time, we had several conversations around lunch. But as you were introduced to cultural agility, Intercultural intelligence, what attracted you in the first place? 
Nic Labuschagne | 08:30  
I think for me, the most important thing was trying to understand or getting the ability to understand why people said and did the things that they did, things that were incomprehensible at first glance. And were inexplicable. We couldn't understand why a particular group in a certain situation would behave in a certain way. And that was vital to the work that I was doing at the time. I was working for one of the local GCC country governments on some fairly sensitive issues. And these were global in nature. And quite frequently came across issues where we could not understand why our stakeholders in those particular areas were behaving in the ways they were and saying the kinds of things that they were saying. It just didn't gel with our experience or the experience of our principals. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 09:22  
And I know that in your work, confidentiality is crucial. But is there any way you could share a story from that time that made you realize that I need to dig deeper into the why of. 
Nic Labuschagne | 09:36  
These things? Yes, I can. And the easiest one or the most graphic one that I can think of is related to human rights. And we were at that stage under a huge amount of pressure by international human rights group, by the governments to, I suppose, clean up one's act is the best way to put it. And the way that our principals were responding to these requests perplexed us as the folks standing between the external stakeholders and our principals locally. And that was the first time the concept of honor and shame versus innocence and guilt was made apparent to me where the people asking the questions were primarily of a Western upbringing, Western European or American upbringing. And their worldview and their way they want the information presented to them dictated the way they behave towards us and our principals, their reaction, which was a bit confusing to us who were in the middle initially, their worldview was one of honor and shame. 
So they were protecting their reputation. They were protecting their principals as best they could. And there was this huge gap in between. And it was a constant source of friction. One party was saying, please give us this or do this. The other parties were saying, well, yes, we will and we can and we are. But there wouldn't be any of that transmission between the two. We had to act as that connecting piece. 
So we had to learn really quickly what was going on. In those days, that was before I did the training with you guys. I didn't have names for it. But I understood that there was some strange dynamic taking place where two groups of people with completely different perspectives were trying to address the same issue using their particular worldviews. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 11:31  
It sounds like building that communication bridge, either the bridge was never completed or built in different places. It sounds like a lot of things got lost in translation. 
Nic Labuschagne | 11:43  
They did. That's exactly what happened. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 11:46  
Yeah. Yeah. And as you got further exposed to ICI, in most cases, as you know from our programs, we try to get sort of an inside out approach going where it first impacts you personally. And from there, you start to take it to your network of friends, loved ones and your colleagues and into your professional life. I'm curious, how did exploring ICI, how did this impact you personally? On a personal level. 
Nic Labuschagne | 12:23  
I mean, it's interesting. You mentioned the pathway starting with oneself. I think that was the biggest challenge of all, is actually making sense. I mentioned right at the beginning of our conversation about my very early years in South Africa and what was happening at the time. And coming to terms with what actually had happened and how it impacted me and the others around me. Until I started working in a country like the UAE at that stage that had 120 different nationalities. Our social groups were highly complex culturally. Our workspaces equally complex culturally. And our clients, not quite as heterogeneous, but even so, a lot of complexity in their workspace as well. 
So, it really is a journey of personal discovery. And then sharing as best you can with your nearest in terms of what you're understanding. Now, for me, it ultimately ended up many years later, me marrying somebody from a completely different culture, background and even religion. And it certainly helped me a great deal in understanding issues and managing issues that I guess I would have been completely stuck by had I not. I had this kind of exposure beforehand. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 13:50  
You're saying both managing, understanding and managing. And both of us are in an Intercultural marriage. We know that the understanding part sometimes is a lot easier than the managing part. Anything you want to share on that front in terms of navigating an Intercultural relationship? 
Nic Labuschagne | 14:17  
Yes, actually, there are some very difficult aspects to this because for the person who is Intercultural aware, the onus sits on their shoulders to create the common space. Now, it's a lot easier to do in the workspace and with your clients because there's a level of arm's length to the relationship. 
I mean, at the end of the day, you hopefully can go home and you only come in contact within the next day again. Whereas when you're living with somebody, there are all the other emotional and relationship issues that come into the mix. 
So it's much more complex to deal with in close personal relationships and I think much easier to deal with in professional relationships. But in all cases, the onus is on the person who is aware to create that common space. And I think sometimes, and maybe I'm speaking out of tenure, sometimes it feels like a too heavy a burden to carry. You get the sense, well, why is it always me who has to go into that difficult space in order for us to be able to do whatever it is that we're going to do? And that I find is quite a challenge sometimes. 
Sometimes you just want to, I don't know, take a step back and not expend so much energy in order for these things to happen. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 15:41  
Yeah, I can totally relate to that. You know, the knowledge and hopefully wisdom does come with responsibility. And sometimes you wish you could stand back and just let things happen or let the other person take over. 
Nic Labuschagne | 15:58  
Exactly. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 15:59  
You already alluded to it earlier on, but it seems from when you were working for a GCC government, already using ICI started to have an impact on working with colleagues and clients. But can you share a little bit more about how you started to bring ICI cultural agility to the way you work both with colleagues and with clients? 
Nic Labuschagne | 16:26  
There are actually a number of aspects where it's been incredibly useful. The first one is in terms of internal communications for our clients, particularly when major change management restructurings are taking place, helping the clients because nearly all of them had multicultural workforces or stakeholders. And in the old days, the communication was very two dimensional, if I can call it that. And by being able to bring in an Intercultural sensitive awareness of how to communicate with your different stakeholder groups, we were able to tweak the communications so that various groups resonated with them. But not only the communications, some of the manner in which it was communicated was vital. Not everybody will accept an email for argument's sake or not everybody would be happy to go to a town hall meeting. Not everybody is happy to watch a video. 
So depending on who the audience is and their cultural background, we had to adapt the communications to fit to it. So that was really the first place that it started to play. And we got a lot of benefit out of that. It's helped us a great deal in crisis communications as well, because at that stage, when emotions are high and there's a lack of information, what tends to happen is one's willingness to be accepting of other cultures disappears. We all sort of revert to the crisis type. We throw the niceties out of the window, if I can put it that way, and we try and solve the problem that's right in front of us. And that's when things often go really bad and you're on. 
So we have embedded Intercultural intelligence in our crisis communications work as well, particularly the training that we do for our clients. And then the final stage, really where it has worked out well, is educating our clients, particularly our government clients, about the right way to communicate with their stakeholders. Without this awareness, they were quite happy to do what they thought was the right thing in terms of communicating. And when we made them aware that there were differences or there's a different way to do it more effectively, I think for many of them, that was an eye -opening exercise. It didn't mean that they had to adapt themselves, but they could at least recognize why we were framing the communications for them in the way that we were. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 18:56  
Fascinating. You mentioned there in your second point that when we're under pressure, when there is a crisis, we default to our own way and we're less willing to consider another way. And I'm sure you had to manage difficult situations like that. What is the fallout when that starts happening? 
Nic Labuschagne | 19:16  
Well, it often isn't positive, let me put it that way. You know, crises by their very nature tend to be very stressful. And the unexpected thing about them is you often find that the people who best manage the crises often are not the ones who have been formally appointed to the team. 
That's why the training is so important. Actually, when you do simulation training, you find out quite quickly who's good at it and who's not good at it. The way to deal with this is to have proper protocols in place. 
So with our crisis training, we have a series of fairly robust protocols. And in those protocols, we clearly define the roles of what people are supposed to be doing, not doing, and the things they need to be aware of. 
So it's literally like an astronaut's checklist. We make it as robust and as simple as possible because we know anything that's got a flowchart in it or a decision tree or anything like that in the middle of a crisis is going to get thrown in the rubbish bin. It doesn't work. 
So our protocols are deliberately very simple, very short, but they do have these elements built into them just so that people know there's a box that needs to be ticked. They have to be aware of it when they are drafting the communications or making the statements. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 20:32  
Now, the three application areas you mentioned are more on the client side of things. But when you think about your colleagues, you mentioned you have 200 colleagues in the region here and 800 globally. That must be a very diverse pool of talent as well. 
So how does it help APCO, help you as a team lead? How does it help you to make things flow better on the team? 
Nic Labuschagne | 21:02  
Well, I think understanding the points of view of, let's say, you know, we work across multiple time zones. That's the beauty of having people all over the world. 
So what happens quite frequently with some of our international projects is the ball gets passed from time zone to time zone and keeps on going around the world. But that means that at some stage you're working with colleagues from the Orient and the Middle East, then the Middle East and Europe, then Europe, the United States, then United States and the Orient. And so it goes around. 
So understanding how to brief people, how to give feedback, how to behave under stress when people are not able to deliver because they've got other obligations. All of those are really important and you can't have a standard one methodology fits all. 
So it's really important to understand who's in the teams, what their context is and to frame the requests and the management accordingly. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 22:03  
That's fascinating. Yeah. And you mentioned earlier on a very brief introduction of APCO, but it sounds like some of the projects you maybe couldn't speak about. But I'd love to hear a little bit more about just practically for our audience to understand what does APCO actually do? Maybe, you know, for the non -initiated, just to explain a little bit and what that means for your engagement. I know you gave a one sentence introduction at the beginning, but I'd love to hear more for us outsiders who don't understand the world that APCO operates in. 
Nic Labuschagne | 22:44  
We, a large proportion of our clients are government. So we help governments make sense of the communication space that they're operating in and then help them communicate on whatever policies or projects they would like us to. 
So much of it is to do with alignment. So for argument's sake, if the government is issuing a new policy on economic development, is their focus on the fourth industrial revolution? What we would do is then work with other government entities, work with the corporate sector and make sure that all of them are aligned in terms of understanding what the government's objectives are for the country and for the region. 
So it's a lot of making sure that everything stitches together properly. Policies are very difficult to implement unless everybody actually understands what it's about. You've got to build a compelling narrative and then you've got to give people an opportunity to align whatever they do with what the government is trying to achieve as well. And we found this process of entrainment, I guess is the best way to put it, has worked really successfully for us over the last 15 years. We work for corporate clients in the region as well, so that tends to be standard promotion of products and services that you would find in any sort of PR agency. But we do a lot of issue management in the region, and this is dealing with often complex, long -term issues that have plagued clients in certain areas. And we help them overcome those over a period of time. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 24:24  
Sounds like in almost every project, there's a large number of stakeholders, both individuals as well as entities with quite a lot of cultural diversity. Could you give maybe an example of where in which way ICI made a difference? I know you've generally talked about it, but is there like a recent project you've worked on where you could just tell a little bit of that story? 
Nic Labuschagne | 24:57  
Yes, it's a confidential project, so I'm not quite sure how to sanitize it for public consumption. It was related to -radicalization, I guess is the best way to understand it. 
And what we had to do is get inside the minds of the folks who were causing the issues and the problems. And Intercultural intelligence allowed us or helped us a huge amount to understand some of the motivations of what these folks were doing and how they were expressing themselves. Our role was entirely to counteract the negative content that they were putting out there. But in order to do that, you've got to first understand how the minds of these folks work. And it helped us a huge amount to be able to do that. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 25:52  
Now, I know that world very often people use either sociology or psychology to try and understand the mind of somebody who's either trying to radicalize or being radicalized. So you're saying that's not enough? 
Nic Labuschagne | 26:13  
No. In fact, I think following those traditional silos has actually caused lots and lots of problems. What you've seen and historically what happened is that the authorities, the Western governments, when they appointed people to deal with these issues on their behalf, they often went to the private sector and they picked people out of the advertising space, sometimes out of a public relations space, the people who hadn't been broadly trained in other aspects of human behavior. And it always ended in tears. You ended up with people who, for argument's sake, is a classic case of the United States, where the official who was appointed had a remarkably good history in promoting consumer products. And they were appointed on this basis by the government officials. And as anybody can anticipate, the end result did not work particularly well with their target audience. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 27:13  
This is fascinating to me. So often any form of fringe movement in society, there is, at least from my perspective, maybe I'm just biased, but from my perspective, there should always be a cultural element as to how that fringe movement started. 
So in essence, you're saying that currently that's not being considered as much as you would like to see? 
Nic Labuschagne | 27:41  
I think when we were engaged, which was a few years ago, it was not. I do believe it has become a lot more sophisticated now. And you have the likes of companies like, well, I don't believe they exist any longer, Cambridge Analytica, where they have developed very sophisticated algorithms that are able to analyze content and throw it back, let's say, at their target audiences in a very sophisticated micro -targeted way. But at the time we were doing this, there was none of that awareness or capability available. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 28:17  
So you've touched on quite a few areas where ICI seems to make a difference. It almost sounds like continuing to do what you do, but then adding ICI to the equation. How would you explain it? Because it sounds like from a process, from a strategy, from a tactical point of view, a lot of what you do hasn't necessarily changed much. But how you do it and why you do it that way is where the changes start to happen. Could you speak to that? How do you inject or add ICI to the equation? 
Nic Labuschagne | 28:58  
I don't think it's so much a case of adding to it. It's a case of, think of it as an additional sense that you have. 
So you have sight, sound, touch and the like. This is another sense that you create. Now, we don't operate with any of those senses necessarily independently. We need all of them to function as normal human beings. But this is an extra sense that we have, but have not really been made aware of. 
So by being made aware of it and equipping ourselves with the sensitivity or awareness gives you a capability to really expand on all of the other tools that you have out there. So I wouldn't think of it as a bolt -on. It's more like an addition to many other capabilities that one has. 
So almost like an organic growth of what was there originally. And it just makes doing things, yes, it's a little bit tougher because you're more aware and therefore you have a responsibility to deal with it. But it does make it much more effective. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 30:03  
That's wonderful. So in that light, you went through both the regular ICI training, which is more a general certification, but then you joined the certificate in Intercultural coaching or the coaching certificate that was done by our North Point Coach Academy. They are partners of ours. How has investing in coaching made a difference for you? 
Nic Labuschagne | 30:31  
It's made a huge difference. I think what it did is gave me a broad toolbox of how to approach situations, how to deal with situations, how to provide appropriate coaching for the coaches. That was certainly was missing in my toolbox. And I've added a further element to it as well by working in visual coaching as well. 
So because I tend to work with lots of hand drawings and diagrams by adding that visual component, which overcomes some language and cultural issues because pictures, particularly hand -drawn pictures, are easier or much easier for people to understand when English is not their first language. And a lot of the people that I'm dealing with, English is not their first language. 
So having the visual element is really important. Having a framework that sort of starts from the initiation of the relationship all the way through to its conclusion and then having the sort of extra sense of Intercultural intelligence wrapped around all of this makes for quite a powerful offering. And it's not as if one throws a whole toolkit at the coachie at first starting. I think it's simply that having these tools and capabilities available at particular junctures in the coaching journey has proven to be really useful. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 31:57  
I love this addition of visualizing or visual coaching. I'd love to see that in action. 
Sounds like that really, as you mentioned, built some bridges where maybe language could be a challenge. But of course, it triggers that additional sense of our visual capabilities. 
So it's fascinating that you can bring that in. If you were, let's say, if you were to meet somebody who is in an Intercultural space, no matter what role they're in, and they say, what's this ICI thing or what is cultural agility? How do you get it? How would you suggest people to take their first steps because you decided to join the certification years ago because there was a compelling reason to, but that might not be the case for everybody. How would you suggest people start taking steps to develop cultural agility or become more familiar with ICI? Or what would you say to them? 
Nic Labuschagne | 33:05  
Look, I think there are multiple routes. I mean, you can't just expect somebody because they're interested to sign up for a course and go and do the course. But I think there's this now, thanks to the library that you guys have been building. There are a lot of short articles, short and specific articles that give clear examples of where the benefits are. 
So I probably would start by pointing them in that direction. If they are showing an interest of sorts, there are plenty of books as well that they could have a look at. 
And then while they're in that process of moving from step one to step two, is then suggesting to them, maybe attending an Intercultural coaching session where they could get a little bit of a feel of what it feels like to be trained or coached by somebody who actually is Intercultural aware. And I think then at that point, for most people, the penny will drop and they will realize the value of being trained as an Intercultural practitioner. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 34:06  
I like the way you're suggesting incremental steps, which is, you know, it's not an all or nothing approach. It's small steps that indeed don't even have to cost anything except for time. Now, I was reading recently that 2020 was the year of survival. 
Somebody said this week 2021 is the year of resilience. How do you see the year ahead of us? What are you maybe even excited about or worried about or any wisdom or counsel that you might give our audience from your global perspective in your specialised industry? 
Nic Labuschagne | 34:48  
Well, that's a really good question. Yeah, look, first of all, in terms of the analogy from survival to resilience, I would have put it more along the lines of a sprint that has become a marathon. Now, the problem is that we started off sprinting because we were running away from a crisis and we then had to manage our resources a lot better because we realized that we couldn't carry on sprinting forever. The big problem we are facing is, first of all, we don't know how much longer this whole change is going to last, this particular phase of change. I think the positive that's come out of what has happened is the realization that there is going to be massive systemic change in our world for all the reasons that everybody is aware of. And what the COVID crisis did is actually highlight to people that certain steps that were seen to be sacred prowls or holy cows have actually been taken. The shutting down of the economy in certain countries was something that no politician would ever have contemplated. 
Well, that now has happened. So we know that these are policy actions that governments can take to make significant changes. 
So I think the future out there is going to be full of massive systemic change. And that means that we need to make sure that we equip ourselves with the resilience and with the tools to be able to cope with that. I don't think there's any simple way out of it. Anybody thinks we're going back to the way things were, I think, is severely deluded. The world has changed permanently. And I think we're on a path which is going to be rather bumpy for the next few decades. 
And then depending on how we handle things in the short term, hopefully we will have a better long term ahead of us. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 36:45  
Yeah, and I really like your sense of realism in that way. Because indeed, there is a significant challenge ahead of us. Is there anything as you look into this year, anything that you're excited about that you're looking forward to? 
Well. 
Nic Labuschagne | 37:00  
In my personal space, I'm spending a lot of time trying to understand complexity and complex systems better. It's something I was exposed to five years or so ago when I did a master's in sustainability studies. But we didn't really dig particularly deeply into it. And it's an area that I've become absolutely fascinated with. And I'm using it in the sense of sense making, trying to help myself and our clients understand simply what on earth is going on. 
And then to understand how we can react to what we understand to be going on. So it draws distinctions between simplicity, complexity, complicated spaces and chaotic spaces. And you need different ways of dealing with all of these. But first of all, you've got to know where you are, where you're at. 
So it's understanding that and then putting it together with the coaching work that I'm doing and the visual facilitation. And the three pieces are slowly starting to coalesce into an offering that I hope will be useful not only for myself, but to others in the future. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 38:15  
That's fascinating because when you think about the problems that we've created in the world, as Einstein, I can't quote him exactly, but he said something along the lines of that the problems that were created in this world can't be resolved by the same level of thinking that create them in the first place. So it sounds like you're really focusing on elevating your thinking to handle more the why of complexity better. I really like that. 
So, anything else, Nick, do you want to add as we wrap up here? Anything that you wish I had asked or that you wish we had talked a little bit more about? 
Nic Labuschagne | 38:56  
Not really. I mean, I just want to thank you for the work that you have done and the role that you've played for me in the last 15 years that we've known each other. How you've been a quiet coach in the background guiding me along and showing patience when probably wasn't well deserved and providing advice when I asked for it. I think you've done an amazing job in terms of building this area of knowledge and wisdom. And I think the more people that start practicing, the better the future outcome for our world will be. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 39:32  
Well, thank you for saying that, Nick. I really appreciate it. And I totally agree with you. I hope there will be more people in your space and in other spheres of society that will pick up the baton for cultural agility development because we all, at least on this call, we know how impactful it can be. 
So, thank you so much for sharing your story. I know there's so much more that I could ask and so many fascinating stories that you have in your history. Maybe one day we can do a part two. But for now, I want to thank you for coming on this podcast and we will post further contact details if you want to talk more about what we're involved with and how to plug into that. And details will be posted on the place where this episode is broadcast. 
So, thank you everybody for joining and I hope to see you next time in one of our future ICI stories. 
Nic Labuschagne | 40:33  
Thank you. 
Marco Blankenburgh | 40:35  
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. 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 Knowledgeworks team for making this podcast a success. Thank you, Nita Rodriguez, Ara Azizbekyan, Rajitha Raj and thanks to Vivip and George for audio production, Rosalind Raj for scheduling and Caleb Strauss for marketing and helping produce this podcast.