Improving Intercultural Meetings

Marco Blankenburgh 0:00

or the worst thing you can do is any questions in an intercultural environment . That's guaranteed to shut some people down and other people will say yeah , I have a question . Culturally , you can always predict who that's going to be . It's going to be a right and wrong oriented on the three colors and individual accountability or directive destiny . Typically , those are also people who want to speak up immediately and empty their mind of their thoughts that they have . 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 KnowledgeWorks , where every day , we help individuals and companies achieve relational success in that same complex world .

Shelley Reinhart 1:14

Welcome to our conversation today . We have such a great topic , a topic that affects all of you , I'm sure , in fact , I'm sure you've had a few of these . Today we're going to talk about meetings .

Marco Blankenburgh 1:30

Great topic .

Shelley Reinhart 1:31

Yes , and our guest speaker today is none other than Marco Blankenburg , and he is going to talk to us about killer meetings how to have a killer meeting . So , marco welcome to the podcast .

Marco Blankenburgh 1:48

Thank you , I love it when we switch roles .

Shelley Reinhart 1:50

Yes , this is fun . I love it as well . It's great . So killer meetings .

Marco Blankenburgh 1:56

Yeah , I mean , it's such a big topic . Every team we work with , every leader we coach , they always want to spend more time talking about meetings and the dilemmas that they face with meetings and how they can make them better . Obviously , in our type of work , it's especially the intercultural side of meetings . Meetings are complicated . Ever since the global pandemic we've become more virtual . We are craving in-person meetings , but it's not always possible and in the midst of that , especially if you live in an intercultural world working with a company where there's lots of diversity , then that becomes even more complicated .

Shelley Reinhart 2:41

Yes .

Marco Blankenburgh 2:43

So I guarantee you everybody we work with , it's always a topic of conversation .

Shelley Reinhart 2:48

I can see why Because meetings can be great or they can be terrible . Yes , they're necessary , they're necessary .

Marco Blankenburgh 2:57

But not all meetings are equal .

Shelley Reinhart 2:59

Yeah , not all meetings are equal and they fill our days .

Marco Blankenburgh 3:03

Absolutely yes .

Shelley Reinhart 3:05

So I'm just curious what you're hearing about . You know you're hearing and seeing when it comes to meeting kind of you know big picture from people , from your clients .

Marco Blankenburgh 3:15

Yeah .

Shelley Reinhart 3:15

What are you sort of hearing ?

Marco Blankenburgh 3:17

Well , just to give perspective . So at the moment our team supports initiatives on four continents , most of the time with either NGOs or corporates that have a global footprint or a large regional footprint . So the people we work with . By and large , they deal across cultures , across borders , they have diverse clientele , diverse supply chain challenges and they have colleagues from all over the world .

Marco Blankenburgh 3:49

Not always living in the same location , not always even possible to be in person in meetings . So , in all of that , when you look at what happened since COVID started , most people drifted more online and Microsoft , for instance , did some great research looking at how are we coping with this . They obviously through Office 365 , they have access to billions of data points and what they saw happen was the number of meetings increased and , in the beginning of the pandemic , the amount of time people would spend on hey , how are you doing , how's the family ?

Marco Blankenburgh 4:32

Anybody been sick recently , et cetera . How are you coping with working from home ? People were truly interested in one another , but as the pandemic progressed , less and less talk about me as a person and more and more ticking boxes you could see that Tasks .

Marco Blankenburgh 4:50

And the interesting thing is when you look at what Microsoft discovered as a result of that .

Intercultural Challenges in Meetings

Marco Blankenburgh 4:56

People were craving for more connection and they started to schedule more one-on-one meetings , to have more personal time , more time to say hey , I wanted to ask these questions , but wasn't appropriate to do it during the meeting . Can we have a quick one-on-one ? So one-on-ones jumped with 30% .

Shelley Reinhart 5:14

Wow .

Marco Blankenburgh 5:16

So the meetings scaled off on the personal side of things and became tick box exercises . People wanted to compensate for that and then , as a result , we are actually spending more time in meetings . The number of meetings jumped by like 140 something percent .

Shelley Reinhart 5:33

My goodness . And the numbers really say that . Yeah , we actually spend more time in meetings .

Marco Blankenburgh 5:39

More time in meetings , more time answering short questions that we post to one another on chat or Slack or any of the other tools , but also we spend more time with documents open . That's also another phenomena that they saw , and all of it is a lot of busyness , frantically all trying to figure out how do we deal with this new reality , but we haven't had a chance to pause and say how do we actually deal with this ? How do we become more efficient in this new world , this new reality we've created together ? And in the midst of that , you know , when you look at the research , literally not millions of dollars , not hundreds of millions , but billions of dollars are lost in meeting effectiveness .

Shelley Reinhart 6:27

Really .

Marco Blankenburgh 6:28

Or the lack of meeting effectiveness .

Shelley Reinhart 6:30

That is a big number yeah .

Marco Blankenburgh 6:32

So in effective meetings , some of the research that was published in Forbes . We're talking about like 500 billion plus .

Shelley Reinhart 6:40

Wow .

Marco Blankenburgh 6:41

And we joke with our clients sometimes , you know , and they say , oh , you know , we need to get better at meetings . And then we say , well , why don't you put a timer in the back of the meeting ? You add up all your salaries , divide it by a minute . You know Well how much salary are you quote , unquote burning every minute that you're in a meeting together .

Shelley Reinhart 7:01

That would do it .

Marco Blankenburgh 7:03

And it's staggering , it's really staggering , wow yeah . So , there's a lot to figure out that we haven't really done , but especially in our work , of course the intercultural side of that becomes really interesting and maybe just pull out another research that I thought was fascinating in terms of frustrations that people voice when it comes to meetings , and what I thought was striking is that the frustrations immediately point to intercultural differences .

Marco Blankenburgh 7:35

Yes , so for instance , the most mentioned frustration that people have is so 55% of the people were interviewed by a company called Doodle . They called their research paper State of Meetings and 55% of the people said that if somebody takes a phone call or types a text message during the meeting , 55% said that really frustrates me Interesting . Which , by the way , linked to that , is 50% . Said that if you interrupt me during the meeting .

Marco Blankenburgh 8:14

Now both of those they indicate a certain cultural preference . So already there's a gentleman called Edward T Hall . He said some people see conversations as I speak , you listen and when I pause you start speaking and he calls that monochronic and people who are from monochronic cultures they expect that they don't get interrupted . It's similar two things can't happen at the same time , and so you have monochronic cultures , one thing at a time , and you have polychronic cultures , but lots of things happen all at the same time so interruption is normal .

Marco Blankenburgh 8:54

Picking up the phone when the phone rings while you're in a meeting is quite normal , because it's polychronic there's multiple things happening at the same time . So I was reading this research and I thought yep , there's the intercultural thing once again . It's about listening . It's about arriving late . That's another one . Arriving late for a meeting is pointing to one of the dimensions that we use in our cultural mapping inventory how do you plan your day ? Do you plan your day around people , or do you plan your day around time and those who plan around ?

Shelley Reinhart 9:29

time they say I have half an hour for you and that's what you're going to get , because I plan around time .

Marco Blankenburgh 9:37

People who plan around people . They say I'm with you Now . Therefore , the time it takes to be with you and to finish what we hope to accomplish , that's the time it takes , which then means that the calendar is flexible and the calendar moves and flexes with the people that you need to spend time with for that day . And 49% of the research that Doodle did for the people indicated that they find it hugely frustrating if people don't show up on time . Now with virtual meetings .

Marco Blankenburgh 10:12

I do think we need to change the way we think about being on time , because it's a little bit weird to sit behind your computer for 20 minutes waiting for somebody to arrive .

Shelley Reinhart 10:23

Wonder if they forgot or if they're going to show up at all .

Marco Blankenburgh 10:27

Exactly so there is some modifications that we need to make . Anyway , those frustrations , we all sit with them . But very often there is intercultural undertones underneath those frustrations .

Shelley Reinhart 10:41

Yes , I see that those are very clear . Yes , so there are some challenging things that are interculturally , that underlie meetings interculturally . So if we break the meeting up into three parts , we talk about what do you do before the meeting , during and after . So let's look at some of the before the meeting pieces and some of the intercultural challenges before the meeting OK , well , if I think of what I heard last week , for instance , OK so was with a team that works in a more hierarchical culture , but they are part of a global entity .

Marco Blankenburgh 11:33

So the team members were saying we are frustrated with meetings , and one of the biggest frustrations for us is we get invited to a meeting , but the person who invites us makes it impossible for us to say no , even if we think that we shouldn't be there . And this is especially true if your boss invites you to a meeting and you live in what we call a directed destiny .

Shelley Reinhart 12:00

So that's where the boss ?

Marco Blankenburgh 12:01

tells you what to do , or in a more power hierarchical driven culture where you follow chain of command . So if your boss then invites you to a meeting and you have the suspicion your boss doesn't really think carefully about should my colleague be there yet ? So no , you receive the invite and say , oh no , another meeting where I have to force to show up but , I really don't want to be there . And then what do you do in that situation ? So a lot of people indicate well , then I just show up .

Marco Blankenburgh 12:36

Of course , because it's almost dangerous to not show up in that situation and we had a fantastic conversation just to talk about that and say well , is that how you want to run the team ? The culture around you is saying that in those situations it's very hard or impossible to say no or to push the decline button . How do you want to ?

Shelley Reinhart 13:00

do things .

Marco Blankenburgh 13:01

And they said , no , we can't afford that . The business is moving too fast . We can't afford to sit in unproductive meetings . So I said , well , let's have a conversation with one another ?

Marco Blankenburgh 13:14

How do you want to move forward ? And we actually had them verbally speak out permissions to one another . So the boss saying I give you permission you have to explain it to me , but I give you permission to decline a meeting where you honestly believe you don't need to be present , and let's talk about it . Let's make sure we have a common understanding . So I learn as well when to invite you and when not to invite you . But I thought that was really powerful . That is powerful .

Marco Blankenburgh 13:44

And it's a small thing , but it's actually a big thing , because the same research I quoted earlier from Microsoft , they found that 30% of the meetings that end up on people's calendars , they're invited to them without being consulted .

Shelley Reinhart 14:01

So they have no control , so they just get added to the invite list and the invite gets sent .

Marco Blankenburgh 14:06

There's indeed no control , and especially in a more directed destiny or a more power fear oriented culture . That is a real difficult thing to solve .

Shelley Reinhart 14:19

That is , and so it's time they're in the meeting . They don't feel they need to be there , so that could be time they feel is wasted Wasted , possiblely unproductive .

Marco Blankenburgh 14:33

And it's a bad way to connect with your teammates If it was , for instance , with a team or a group of people on the same project so being able to navigate that the meeting hasn't even started .

Shelley Reinhart 14:48

Yes .

Marco Blankenburgh 14:51

And the other thing is you have the meeting invites , but then also you have people who use , for instance , if it's like an email , where some people are then invited as optional .

Shelley Reinhart 15:09

But what I have found ?

Marco Blankenburgh 15:10

is that some people use the optional as a way to then showcase important people in the optional . So if somebody doesn't need to be there , but they want to find an indirect way to notify that person that this meeting is happening and these people are required to attend that meeting .

Marco Blankenburgh 15:35

So they use indirect methods to send a message . So if I receive one of those and I see the optional line is one of my bosses , what do I do ? Now ? My boss knows that I'm supposed to be in that meeting because he or she was added as optional . And now I have an even more difficult choice to make to decline or to show up and quote ago , waste my time . So those are just some of those dilemmas .

Marco Blankenburgh 16:11

And then the other thing that keeps on coming back time again . I ask people , show me your calendar and there is no gaps between meetings .

Shelley Reinhart 16:22

Yes , this is a problem .

Marco Blankenburgh 16:24

So that's a real issue that we need to learn to solve , because there's some great research that actually hooked people up to an MRI while having meetings and they would compare the brain of somebody who has back to back meetings the whole time for hours on end versus the person who had like 10 minute breaks in between , and the person who has 10 minute breaks in between has less stress at the end of the day .

Shelley Reinhart 16:52

Really .

Marco Blankenburgh 16:53

And the person who has back to back continuously . The stress level just keep going up and up and up and if you imagine having a 10 hour day , or in some parts of the world that happens you do back to back continuously . You come back home totally stressed and that accumulates into burnout .

Shelley Reinhart 17:12

Yes .

Marco Blankenburgh 17:13

So a lot of my coaching , I end up speaking to leaders about this how do you help your people to create gaps ? Because we need those gaps . So it's not just about the breather . But it's also what happened during this meeting . What do I need to do ? Do I need to summarize something ? Is there something I can quickly send to somebody , but also , what do I need to do for the next meeting , being able to be prepared for that ?

Shelley Reinhart 17:45

So time to process what just happened . And I guess also what's about to happen next Exactly , and if you don't give yourself that time .

Marco Blankenburgh 17:55

It just loads and loads , and loads in your brain . And it just never stops . So you actually become unproductive in the process .

Shelley Reinhart 18:03

I could see that .

Marco Blankenburgh 18:05

So I was reading about one of the big multi-nationals . They basically have said people don't prepare for meetings at all . So , let's just give up on humanity and every meeting starts with 15 minutes of silence so that people can prepare for the meeting , because people never read documents before they join a meeting .

Shelley Reinhart 18:26

It's one way to do it , so yeah .

Marco Blankenburgh 18:29

I don't like to give up on humanity . But so I do think it's possible . I've seen that with teams that we've worked with where the first thing they need to do is create breaks . So if you have a back-to-back meeting I've tested this a few times now where I changed the calendar invite if I'm able to do that From an authority point of view . You can't always take that risk , but even just having the meeting start 15 minutes later is a huge win for the whole team for everybody .

Marco Blankenburgh 19:06

But getting people to actually prepare for meetings is not easy in today's world ?

Shelley Reinhart 19:10

It's not no .

Marco Blankenburgh 19:11

Since COVID , we are in more and more meetings . Huge spike in the amount of meetings , huge spike in the number of one-on-ones necessary to stay connected . So preparation , though , is again one of those . It comes back in every team development session we do . How do we agree with one another that we prepare , and what do we need to do to make that happen ?

Shelley Reinhart 19:38

So you mean accountability in a sense ? Yeah , it is a form of accountability , so is it okay ?

Marco Blankenburgh 19:44

to come into a meeting and you see people join the meeting they don't turn their camera on , I was going to bring that up and you can almost feel from a distance that what they're doing is they're putting around their computer using two screens , trying to read up on what they didn't have time for . And they're not always to blame for that , it's just the meeting culture that's in the company .

Marco Blankenburgh 20:10

But it's really important for productive meetings , especially virtual ones to have time to read any documents that you need to process beforehand , because you can't do two things at the same time . You can't be listening to your colleagues and processing the document that you haven't read .

Shelley Reinhart 20:32

No , and all the studies coming out currently about multitasking and how we cannot actually multitask .

Marco Blankenburgh 20:40

This is another example . A hard lesson to learn .

Shelley Reinhart 20:43

It is such a hard lesson , yes .

Marco Blankenburgh 20:45

Yeah , and what also happens then is what I find the ability to inter-culturally engage people in a meeting is another . We were talking about that last week with a team that does post-merger integration . So one company bought another company and now they need to integrate those two companies together and there's many countries involved in that process and we were talking with the integration team . How do you get everybody involved in a meeting , and especially the people who have come ? If I use the three colours of worldview language , if they come from an individual accountability culture .

Marco Blankenburgh 21:32

they are likely desiring to speak up . Yes , they might have more of an individual accountability approach . They have a thought and they want to say it , want to share it , yep , but then you have other people in the same group who might be more community accountability , who might be maybe more honour-shame-oriented on the three colours of worldview . They are much more careful , much more calculated about speaking .

Marco Blankenburgh 22:02

And as a result , if you are not aware of that , those people will stay quiet and the ones who do all the talking are typically the individual accountability and innocent , skilled , oriented people , and that's another thing . That's becoming aware of that , and this is actually amplified in a virtual meeting .

Shelley Reinhart 22:23

Yes .

Marco Blankenburgh 22:25

So people who naturally want to speak their mind , they actually speak more . And people who are more community-oriented and wait for the consensus to slowly build before they speak , they even become more quiet , and the finding tools that allow people to in-person , as well as virtually , connect with one another is another thing that we just need to get better

Improving Meeting Participation and Structure

Marco Blankenburgh 22:52

at .

Shelley Reinhart 22:52

Yeah , yeah , because you could get off that call and think , oh well , all the individual accountability . Yeah , that meeting was all about them and their ideas and none from the other .

Marco Blankenburgh 23:05

And it can create the impression that you have a pretty good cross-section of opinion that you harvested during that meeting , for instance , but actually you didn't . But actually you haven't . The way the meeting was run resulted in certain people with certain cultural preferences saying oh yeah we had great time talking our mind and disagreeing with one another . There's some good banter in the meeting , and others were totally not part of that process .

Shelley Reinhart 23:34

Right , so how do we get them to participate in this question ?

Marco Blankenburgh 23:38

Yeah , so getting them to participate could be by better preparing . So if people know that they are expected to speak up but they're not put on a spot , that is very important for community accountability cultures , cultures that are more hierarchical , for instance , we call it power fear on the three colors of worldview but also for people who are more honor , shame oriented . Giving them a heads up say , listen , you're an expert in XYZ . I know you've had a lot of contact with our clients on this subject . I really would love to hear your voice in the next meeting ?

Marco Blankenburgh 24:19

Are you okay with taking us through XYZ or share your opinion ?

Shelley Reinhart 24:25

So you give them advanced notice , ask them to prepare . They know they're going to be asked to share .

Marco Blankenburgh 24:32

Yeah , absolutely , and if they get that chance , they will become equal contributors to the meeting . Yes , and typically that means a balance of opinions is put into the meeting , so you have better decision making , more ownership amongst the participants .

Shelley Reinhart 24:53

Instead of just in the moment . Hey , what do you think ?

Marco Blankenburgh 24:55

Exactly Because , hey , what do you think is ? Brainstorming is classically a method that works well with innocence , guilt oriented , individual accountability , people . Yes so yeah , that's one thing that we continuously try to find creative ways to overcome that . The other thing that we find is that if you do raise a topic that wasn't discussed , wasn't officially put on the agenda , but it is important to then create more anonymous ways for people to contribute or give people time . So there's some cool features . For instance , there are several virtual meeting tools . So , we sometimes use Mentimeter .

Marco Blankenburgh 25:47

If it's a larger group , if it's a smaller group , we use tools like Mural . Your version of that is Miro . Cool is , with Mural you can actually get people to do some alone thinking and that is anonymous , so you can't see what they're doing . So you give them some alone time and say , team , let's think about this issue . I want you to do some thinking on your own for five minutes , let's say for 10 minutes , and then you need to come back with one good idea and you share that idea once we come back together again . Now that's a very clever idea from a three colors of worldview point of view . So their honor is at stake . They want to show that they are a valuable contributor to the team , that they are bringing good thinking to the team . So it actually ticks all of the three colors of worldview .

Shelley Reinhart 26:47

Yes , it does .

Marco Blankenburgh 26:49

And it's a beautiful way to give people space , because they're not put on the spot and say what do you think ? You give them space to think and come back with their best idea and they could either do that alone , or they could do that in small groups . You could break out in small groups , in person or in a virtual setting , and say come back with your best idea . As a small group , your thinking will be confidential , it's just amongst yourselves , but come back with something valuable .

Shelley Reinhart 27:16

And you've really seen this work .

Marco Blankenburgh 27:18

You've seen people contribute in ways that they never would have otherwise , if you go around the circle and say or the worst thing you can do is any questions in an intercultural environment that's guaranteed to shut some people down and other people will say , yeah , I have a question . Culturally , you can always predict who that's going to be . It's going to be a right and wrong oriented on the three colors and individual accountability or directive destiny . Typically , those are also people who want to speak up immediately and empty their mind of their thoughts that they have .

Shelley Reinhart 27:56

This is gold . This is such good information about meetings . I need to remember this . Okay , that's really helpful . What about the structure of the meeting itself ?

Marco Blankenburgh 28:09

Yeah . So I think there's just universal practices , obviously . So if you don't have an agenda , you don't know what to prepare for . If you don't have an agenda , then how in the world do you know what you need to read , which documents are important , how you might do some thinking of yourself to say I'm going to do some thinking and so that in the meeting I have something to share , I have something valuable to say . But that's just universal practice . The other thing is to do with who moderates the meeting . Yeah , and there's no hard and fast rule for this , but in some situations I was with a client yesterday and the leader of the team actually said for this particular topic , I don't even want to be in the meeting . Interesting yeah . So , and we talked it through and I think it was a wise decision where he felt that the hierarchical structure and culture of the organization was actually too strong . It's one of the things that they want to change .

Marco Blankenburgh 29:33

But he said , as soon as I'm in the room , that kicks into gear .

Shelley Reinhart 29:36

Yes , it's very self-aware of him , yeah .

Marco Blankenburgh 29:40

So automatically he says it's better if I'm not there and if there is an outsider moderating , then everybody feels more as equals in the room . So yeah , there's many . Every situation is different . But if it's okay for the leader to be part of the meeting and obviously in many meetings that's required is it automatic that the leader should moderate the meeting ?

Shelley Reinhart 30:08

Or can you know chair it ? Can someone else do it ? Yeah , and sometimes Be creative .

Marco Blankenburgh 30:12

Yeah , be creative , but also respectful that they might do it in a different way . Yeah , so giving people the chance to step into that role . We typically like to look at both their behavioral style . In our case , we love using the disc profile , so some people are naturally more likely to stay on task . So if you have a pure de-chairing meeting , they might miss details . If you have a sea-chairing meeting , they might talk too much into the details and I might go off on rabbit trails and S might be too focused on harmony and giving people a voice , which is important , but they might overdo it and then the meeting becomes extended and then no decisions are made . So we use the psychological side of it who should be chairing ? Let's try different people and give them space to do it their way . But also the hierarchy issue and thinking about it from a cultural perspective . So how much time do you need to build consensus ? Do you build consensus during ?

Marco Blankenburgh 31:31

the meeting , or do you have lots of one-on-ones before the meeting ? You sort of get the vibe from everybody and get pieces of their opinion and you use that to then bring that consensus and you start with the consensus that you've already established before the meeting .

Shelley Reinhart 31:51

You use that as a base to then step in , and then you can be more productive .

Marco Blankenburgh 31:57

There's many cultures that are more community-accountability-oriented , that are more indirect in their communication . They're masters at doing groundwork , catching people here and there and , hey , we're busy making this and this decision . What are your thoughts on this ? You just keep harvesting , harvesting , harvesting , and you bring that into the meeting , and then you don't need to spend hours on hearing everybody's opinion , right there , and then Right , it's done beforehand .

Shelley Reinhart 32:30

So agenda moderation who moderates , and then what about ? This is kind of a small detail . But what about camera on off ?

Marco Blankenburgh 32:40

Oh yeah , in a virtual meeting . Yeah , yeah , so we've . I always thought camera on is the best , but we've ran into a few situations now where it was very difficult for somebody to turn their camera on .

Shelley Reinhart 32:56

Really .

Marco Blankenburgh 32:57

So , for instance , I've heard both extreme . So I've heard from a gentleman a beautiful family really committed to giving their children the best and they , as a result of that , they invested a lot of their income , their salary , in education of their kids and they chose to live in a smaller apartment and the apartment size culturally wasn't quote , unquote up to par with the salary they were earning .

Marco Blankenburgh 33:35

But it was a choice they made and I only heard this afterwards where I got the dad basically explained to me why that was difficult for him to turn on the camera . And that was at the beginning of COVID , for instance , working from home . Not everybody had a perfect setup good microphones green screen your name . So I was almost like reprimanded and said oh wow now I understand your situation that you are actually making great sacrifices , but your colleagues wouldn't understand .

Shelley Reinhart 34:13

Yes .

Marco Blankenburgh 34:14

And I thought if the camera was on without blurring of the background without green screen that you're living in a smaller apartment than any one of them , right , and I admired them for doing that . But , understanding that I thought , hmm , okay , that's . And I had the flip side as well . I had a CEO who told me I find it difficult to turn my camera on when I work from home because I don't want to show off my house to my team Right and I found that by doing that , it would create distance between him and the team .

Shelley Reinhart 34:47

He wanted to be as close to his team as possible .

Marco Blankenburgh 34:51

Interesting , so I thought yeah , I could appreciate that argument from his perspective .

Shelley Reinhart 34:57

Yeah , I would consider these dynamics . Yeah , but by and large .

Marco Blankenburgh 35:01

I would say camera on is better Right . And there's enough technology available nowadays .

Shelley Reinhart 35:07

To get a neutral screen in the back .

Marco Blankenburgh 35:10

I made my own green screen , for instance . It's a really simple green piece of fabric and it works fantastic , right ? So nowadays , blurring your background is just so good , yeah , that it doesn't look funny anymore with all kinds of funny things sticking out of your hair . And so in that sense , I think it's just healthier to have camera on . Yeah , because even with camera on and of course you're hearing people's voice psychologists say you lose 30% of the human clues that you need to have a constructive conversation .

Shelley Reinhart 35:49

I believe that .

Marco Blankenburgh 35:50

So if , on top of that , you turn the camera off , you lose even more clues , yes , and also it creates the opportunity to not be present it creates the opportunity to multitask , and you just mentioned that multitasking is a hoax . You cannot be effective with multitasking .

Shelley Reinhart 36:10

Yes .

Marco Blankenburgh 36:11

Yeah , so we try . Wherever we can , we try to get people to turn the camera on . But also , if you're , if your team works from home , make sure they have the right technology and , I think , having a better microphone , having a good headset . If necessary , a simple green screen to create a more professional look . There's very small investments for a company that they can use to make people feel more comfortable .

Shelley Reinhart 36:47

Yes , and confident .

Marco Blankenburgh 36:49

Yeah , exactly .

Shelley Reinhart 36:51

That's a good point and that's worth the investment . That's good

Effective Communication in Meetings and Follow-Up

Shelley Reinhart 36:57

. What about just with emails , just during a meeting ? How do you use CC and BCC ? Sorry , just a thought .

Marco Blankenburgh 37:09

Wow , yes , of course , around every meeting there's lots of communication . Hey , did you prepare XYZ ? You were going to produce some slides for the presentation when ?

Shelley Reinhart 37:23

are they .

Marco Blankenburgh 37:25

And yeah , there's all kinds of communication before and after , and the temptation to use CC to let me just put it bluntly , get your way is always there . And we've just had , we've had a simple policy . We don't do that . Ccs are purposefully for people who need to be in the know .

Shelley Reinhart 37:53

And that's all .

Marco Blankenburgh 37:54

That's all , they're not so that you will get so scared because I've CCed the boss of the boss .

Shelley Reinhart 38:03

Yeah , okay , gotcha , and now you don't have a choice but to deliver or to comply . Yes , not as intimidation .

Marco Blankenburgh 38:10

Yes , so again , that is more a .

Shelley Reinhart 38:15

So that needs to be understood .

Marco Blankenburgh 38:17

Yes , it will not be used that way , and it does create a level of toxicity that some cultures is maybe tolerated sometimes but especially on an intercultural team . That is not healthy .

Shelley Reinhart 38:34

So that is , it's an agreement the team needs to make .

Marco Blankenburgh 38:38

They will never use CC to manipulate or to put negative pressure on people . If you need to , if your colleague , if I don't deliver on something , then we need to have another conversation , and it's part of our high performing teams work .

Shelley Reinhart 38:54

Yes .

Marco Blankenburgh 38:55

Where we say , while we pursue what we've agreed on together , there will be reasons to celebrate and there will be reasons to correct , and we always say what do we do if we do and what do we do if we don't ?

Shelley Reinhart 39:12

So , using CC , to get me to do what I didn't do is not a healthy way to deal with it .

Marco Blankenburgh 39:19

So we need to have a conversation about what permissions do we give each other ? If I don't deliver what I promised ? How can you approach me , and if that's clear , amongst team members , then you can hold each other accountable .

Marco Blankenburgh 39:33

And Patrick Lincione and the five behaviors of a cohesive team . He talks about peer to peer accountability , but it needs to , especially in intercultural teams . You need to talk about it . So what do we do if we do ? How do we celebrate , how do we complement each other , how do we affirm each other ? But also , what do we do if we don't ? And obviously , we all drop balls , we all forget things . It happens frequently , yes , but we need to know which behavior is permissible when that happens .

Marco Blankenburgh 40:07

And CC or blind copy is not , it's just another form of undercutting , creating toxicity in the system , putting people in impossible corners where they're forced to do something that they might have . Another very compelling reason why they didn't do it yet .

Shelley Reinhart 40:27

Yes , right , that's good . Yes , and what about ? Let's move to after . Okay , okay what about after the meeting . So , yeah , what's culturally appropriate ? How do you follow up after a meeting ?

Marco Blankenburgh 40:45

Well , I would say that the after starts with the finishing . Well , so very often somebody needs to make sure that decisions are mirrored . So one technique we use a lot is mirroring . So I heard you say that you will or let me repeat what I am committing myself to so making sure that that gets articulated and documented so that everybody knows what everybody's going to be doing . Okay , now , I typically , on top of that , try and send an email after the meeting where I capture that .

Shelley Reinhart 41:29

Now the beauty of artificial intelligence .

Marco Blankenburgh 41:31

Nowadays , a lot of these things are summarized in meeting tools meeting capturing tools transcription et cetera . So that has made that a lot easier . So there's no more escape . I said oh really , did I promise ?

Shelley Reinhart 41:46

to do that . Yes , you did yes .

Marco Blankenburgh 41:49

So I captured and summarized by artificial intelligence , but it's still important . So sometimes re-sending that through an email to everybody who was present is a healthy way to keep the process going . And then I often , if it's an important thing , I would actually have one of those one-on-ones as follow up yes , as follow up .

Shelley Reinhart 42:14

Yeah .

Marco Blankenburgh 42:15

And I said hey , thank you so much for stepping into that and taking responsibility for that . Is there any way especially if you say I'm here for you Is there any way I can help ? Is there anything you need from me to do that faster . In that way you can really sort of grease the wheels they say in English make things run smooth .

Shelley Reinhart 42:37

Yeah , that's good . And show your support and again coming back to .

Marco Blankenburgh 42:42

If you have a clear understanding of what do we do if we do and what do we do if we don't , then even if somebody doesn't deliver on time , you have that permission between colleagues to say , hey , what's going on ? You said you were going to get that finished . Is there any reason why that hasn't happened ? Is there any way I can support you to still fast-track and get it done on ?

Shelley Reinhart 43:05

time .

Marco Blankenburgh 43:06

And it's okay . And then people are not sitting on their hands or sweating pearls because they don't know what to do next . Do they confront their colleague ? Do they criticize them ? Do they tell their boss ? So again those permissions and having that intercultural understanding is so incredibly important .

Shelley Reinhart 43:27

That's so good . That's so good . And what about if you sense in the meeting that someone didn't feel very secure in a decision that was made ? Or like you sense some tension there . How would you address that ?

Marco Blankenburgh 43:45

Yeah , so after the meeting . There's a beautiful tool that we use . We've written about it on our blogs , on our Knowledgeworkscom website . It's called the DIR . So separating describing the situation from drawing conclusions , interpreting or decision-making , and then , lastly , responding to that from an emotional point of view . How do I feel about the decision , the conclusion that was drawn during that meeting ?

Marco Blankenburgh 44:20

So creating a space in a meeting where people can first describe how they see the situation , what happened there , what was going on , who was involved , to then say how are we going to deal with that , why did it go wrong , for instance , or why did we succeed in that situation , what can we learn from it , and then making a decision how to move forward . When you make that decision , it's very important to get a feel for how people are feeling . So not every culture will automatically show that on the outside . So some cultures are very revealing it's one of our 12 dimensions when it comes to emotion and other cultures are much more concealing . People who are on the concealing side . They were considered that unprofessional to be revealing your emotions in that way . So , being mindful of that , some people you can read on their face how they feel about the meeting .

Shelley Reinhart 45:21

So the conclusion was drawn .

Marco Blankenburgh 45:24

Now there is an emotional response excitement , disgust , suspicion annoyance , discourage , etc . And other people . They will not show that and still finding a way to check in with them , say hey , can I have a quick chat with you afterwards ? Or I notice to you you are going to take responsibility for this piece in the decision we just made .

Shelley Reinhart 45:54

How do you feel about the decision as a whole ?

Marco Blankenburgh 45:58

How comfortable do you feel with it ? Typically , you don't do that during the meeting .

Shelley Reinhart 46:03

No .

Marco Blankenburgh 46:03

Because if they're not reveal , oriented and sharing emotions openly , then they don't want to . So if you then ask them hey , how do you feel about this ?

Shelley Reinhart 46:13

Putting them on the spot ?

Marco Blankenburgh 46:14

no way yeah you put them on the spot . So finding just small ways afterwards to have those side conversations so that you keep a tap on where people are emotionally related to conclusions and decisions ways forward , the more you understand the emotional field they call that in team coaching , the more likely you can actually use that to navigate the future .

Shelley Reinhart 46:43

Wow , Okay , that's good . And then and the commitment to the decisions . Again , you're following up with that by .

Marco Blankenburgh 46:51

Yeah , absolutely .

Shelley Reinhart 46:52

Yeah , just everything you said with the accountability and Some .

Marco Blankenburgh 46:57

If you think about more community accountability cultures , small follow-ups are really important . It's not micromanaging .

Shelley Reinhart 47:08

Right .

Marco Blankenburgh 47:09

But it's really showing that you care and it's not the quality per se . Of course it needs to be quality communication , but it's more about frequency and then having one very heavy , very structured , high-powered meeting . So little touch points . And learning to do that well is one of the ways to keep an intercultural team moving forward .

Shelley Reinhart 47:38

And in that way you're building the relationship .

Marco Blankenburgh 47:41

Absolutely so . It's showing that you matter . I see you . I want to keep the connect going . So there's a more frequent way to do that and at the same time it is also a little bit selfish , because you know what's going on if you do that , yes , yeah , and you know how to engage the situate , the changes , anything from the outside that might be thrown at the team . So it's just a clever way to connect with people .

Shelley Reinhart 48:15

And effective .

Marco Blankenburgh 48:16

And it's effective . They appreciate it . So the more intercultural the team , the more you need to have sort of that repertoire of different approaches with different people . Sometimes there's little signed meetings or quick message say hey , how is it going ? So , yeah , keep on being playful with the way that you connect with people .

Shelley Reinhart 48:41

Boy meetings there's a lot of meat here . Meetings yeah . There's a lot of things to consider before , after and during . Yeah .

Marco Blankenburgh 48:54

The last thing to say , then , is really the reality that not every meeting is the same and not every meeting should have the same structure . Okay , so if it's a check-in it's very operational , yes . If it's a decision-making meeting , it probably requires homework . If it's a strategy meeting , it has probably research or independent research that people need to do that they will bring into the meeting . So knowing what the meeting is for helps people to understand okay this meeting is just a check-in .

Shelley Reinhart 49:35

We're talking nuts and bolts . How's it ?

Marco Blankenburgh 49:38

going . Are you on task with this , this , that and the other ? Do you need help ? Are you behind ? Is there a reason for it ? Can we accommodate it ? So that is very different meeting than saying , oh , we need to talk about the next quarter or we need to talk about the launch of this new product . So if you just mix and match all of that together , it becomes very unproductive .

Shelley Reinhart 50:02

Yes . So instead of just saying we're having a meeting about A , B or C , without defining exactly what the purpose of that meeting is , it becomes a mess Exactly Because people just don't know how to prepare they don't know how to be a good contributor into it .

Marco Blankenburgh 50:20

So yeah , finding what type of meetings you need and then actually calling them . That whatever creative name you want to give them , but you know that there are different types of meetings , and those meetings require different things from me .

Shelley Reinhart 50:38

Yeah .

Marco Blankenburgh 50:39

So in our team we have a weekly international meeting for the whole international team and that has a different vibe than our daily check-ins , which are much more nuts and bolts . And then we have another smaller team that meets more from a financial strategic point of view and again that meeting has a very different vibe . It's a different way of preparing for it , a different way of contributing to it .

Shelley Reinhart 51:09

Yeah , I'm part of those international meetings . Yeah , I love the vibe in those meetings .

Marco Blankenburgh 51:16

Yeah , yeah .

Shelley Reinhart 51:17

Yeah , so , boy , this has been so good , lots to think about . Thank you , yeah .

Marco Blankenburgh 51:24

Yeah , it's such a reality for all of us .

Shelley Reinhart 51:27

It is .

Marco Blankenburgh 51:27

And I'm learning every time I'm interacting with teams and with leaders , and this , this , it's an art to do it well . Yeah , I can't say I always do it well , but especially if you're in an intercultural situation , study the three colors of

The Importance of Cultural Mapping Inventory

Marco Blankenburgh 51:46

worldview . Yes use the cultural mapping inventory it really makes a difference . That helps you at least understand why people behave in different ways .

Shelley Reinhart 51:54

Yes .

Marco Blankenburgh 51:55

And that's the beginning point of starting to then structure and design facilitate in different ways as you work with an intercultural group of people .

Shelley Reinhart 52:05

Yes , yes , so helpful . Yeah , I wouldn't . Yeah , you need to start there . Yes , thank you so much , marco . Thank you , this is very helpful . This was great . Yeah , I enjoyed this conversation .

Marco Blankenburgh 52:18

Yes , thank you . 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 , 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 KnowledgeWorkscom . 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 Aziz-Bakyan , rajitha Raj , and thanks to Vip and George for audio production , rosalind Raj for scheduling and Kaleep Strauss for marketing and helping produce this podcast .