Cultural Intelligence, Leadership, Our Blog

Three Ways Cross-Cultural Communication Can Help You Become More Inclusive

I was recently asked what the top reasons would be that a professional should get started and to learn about cross-cultural communication. I have three key reasons why I think this is an important topic for any professional, but especially for leaders.

  1. The first reason is, the better you understand yourself, the better you can understand others. As you understand others, you can adapt and connect with them, build strong connections, and find those win-win outcomes that we talk about in business so much. “Understand yourself to understand others.” 
  1. The second reason is that learning cross-cultural communication helps you develop a respect for differences. When you see people from Korea doing things very differently from Americans, you can say,  “Oh, that’s because it’s a different culture.” However, when you see your neighbors down the street doing something different from how your family does things, we don’t usually think, “Oh, it’s because it’s a different culture.” We tend to expect everyone to interact with the world the same way we do, but that is unreasonable. There are many ways to do things right in a lot of cases, so developing that respect for differences is the second reason. 
  1. The third reason is to learn to honor and value differences. It’s not enough to recognize and respect differences. You might find another person’s way of doing something is more effective. Just because your family or your community did it one way doesn’t mean it’s the most effective or the best way. As I’ve learned about different cultures and different ways of doing things through interacting with professionals from other countries, I’ve been able to create my own way of approaching things.

In the end, I think it’s human nature to gravitate towards what’s familiar, but I love what John Maxwell says. 

In his book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, he has the Law of Magnetism, which states, “Who you are is who you attract.” A lot of times we attract the people who look and act and sound like us; that’s natural. But when you’re intentional, you can attract the people who have the same values, who might look and sound and act differently, but have similarities that go deeper than the surface.

Again, it’s human nature to connect with people who are familiar, but when you step out of your own perspective, there’s so much you can learn, and you can benefit from the enrichment that comes from diverse perspectives.

Not sure where to start? I offer complimentary, no obligation introductory consultations. Schedule your consultation at https://calendly.com/tasham-troy/consultation, or contact Tasha M. Troy at tmtroy@troycommunications.net.

Cultural Intelligence, Leadership, Our Blog

The Truth About Building A Diverse Team

If you want to know how to get your diverse team members to start working together as a cohesive team, then this strategy holds the keys you need to succeed.

The Bottom Line Here Is: Inclusion Begins When You Respect Others 

Want a quick strategy on a widely overlooked fact for most people who want to improve their inclusive leadership skills? It’s the fact that the starting point on the ROADMAP to inclusion is learning to respect people no matter who they are, where they come from, what personality traits they exhibit, which political party they support, etc.   

While humans are by nature tribal (just observe any sports fans to see the truth of this!), the bottom line is that we are all human and worthy of respect, of being treated fairly and with dignity.  If you can learn to look at even “the least of these” as worthy of respect, then you’ve taken your first step on the ROADMAP..

The most important thing to understand with this is that if you find that you don’t respect people who think, act, or believe differently than you, it’s time to spend some time with them.  Get to know them on a personal level, a human level.  This will give you the opportunity to discover a couple of things.  

1. We are more alike than we are different.  We have similar hopes, dreams, struggles, and challenges, no matter where we come from.  

2. Each individual has unique strengths and talents to offer the world.  When we take the time to get to know each other, we begin to see these strengths.  The truth here is that we are stronger together, celebrating our differences, instead of separating over them. 

This spells the difference between success and failure when building a diverse team because you cannot be inclusive if you don’t respect the people around you.  This is where the rubber meets the road, where “inclusion” becomes more than a word; it becomes an action that can eventually become a lifestyle. 

So the next logical step here is to find someone in your personal or professional circle who you don’t automatically get along with.  Perhaps their personality rubs you the wrong way, or their culture doesn’t make sense to you.  Make a point to schedule a lunch or coffee break with them and get to know them as a person.  Find where you have points in common instead of focusing on the differences.

Did this get you excited? Well, this article is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to building a diverse team! This article series “You Need a ROADMAP!” I just started gives you the rest of the story… and a whole lot more. 

Sign up to be notified when the next article drops at Troy Communications Blog.  

Interpersonal Communication, Leadership, Our Blog

How to Influence Groups toward Positive, Productive Outcomes

“To connect with people in a group, relate to them as individuals.”

            – John Maxwell

This quote is from John Maxwell’s from book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.  John is globally recognized for his expertise in values-based, people-centric servant leadership.  He understands what it takes to lead groups through influence.

The big idea here is that we often complicate relationships when it comes to relating to a group, but remember – all groups are comprised of individuals!

Here’s how this applies to us and building better work relationships:

No one wants to be considered a “group”; we all want to be recognized for who we are, as individuals.  I know I’ve made the mistake of treating a group as one entity, but my rapport with the group improved when I made a point of connecting with the individuals first. 

This reminds me of The 5 Core Concerns described by Roger Fisher and Dan Shapiro in their book Beyond Reason.  Everyone you meet is concerned with appreciation, affiliation, autonomy, status, and their role.  (There’s so much I could say about this!  You can find a little more about this in my blog post The Magic Key to Persuasion)

When you meet the individual needs of your group, the entire group functions better.  I’ve found that once I’ve established a connection with the individual, I am better able to nurture the connections between members of the group.  When they trust me, they are better able to trust their peers.  This leads to better collaboration and better outcomes. 

These tips can help you whether you have a formal leadership position or not, so let’s put this into action:

  1. Take an inventory of the relationships you have with your group.  This could be your work team, or it could be a group of clients.  (This also works with groups in your personal life.)
  2. Identify which of your group members need their core concerns addressed.
  3. Start doing the little things to show you see and appreciate them as an individual.
  4. Watch how the relationship starts to grow and bloom!  As your relationship strengthens, you can help them connect better to other members of the group, strengthening the entire unit.
Interpersonal Communication, Leadership, Our Blog

The Truth about Your Biggest Goals

“One is too small a number to achieve greatness.”

            – John Maxwell

This quote is from John Maxwell’s book The 17 Indisputable Laws of Teamwork.

John Maxwell is a master at connecting with people one-on-one, in small groups, and as an audience. He truly understands what it takes to achieve big goals.

The big idea here is the “self made man” is a myth.  There are no “lone rangers.” All successful people have a community or network that have contributed to their success.

In his book Creating Minds, Dr. Howard Gardner of Harvard University demonstrates how geniuses like Picasso, Ghandi, and Einstein didn’t become the men who could change the world by working alone.  He shows how each of these geniuses had a community around them that encouraged and challenged them to become the great men they became.  

I have been fortunate to have had two incredible work relationships with women who thought very differently from me.  The first, when I was still in S. Korea, was a very creative thinker who was an auditory learner.  When we collaborated, my organizational skills and visual learning style combined with her skills to create powerful learning activities and materials.  The second, when I was working in Washington, DC, was another extrovert to my introvert.  As we collaborated, we created a rich learning environment for our trainees that neither alone could have achieved.

The truth is we all need people around us to help us achieve our greatest goals.  When we intentionally seek out people WHO THINK DIFFERENTLY FROM US, it enhances your ability to create a plan and execute that plan.

So, let’s put this into action:

  1. Take an inventory of the relationships you have – both personal and professional
  2. Identify those who have been your greatest supporters and encouragers – take time to thank them!
  3. Identify those who bring complimentary skills, talents, and perspectives – become more intentional about collaborating with them
Leadership, Lessons from the Field, Our Blog

A Tale of Two Leaders

In my work at George Mason University Korea, I’m in the unusual (or maybe not so unusual) position of having two sets of administrative leadership – the deans at Mason Korea and the directors at INTO Mason, my home department on the main Fairfax campus in Virginia.  

As the situation here in Korea has been developing, with the rapid spread of COVID-19 throughout the country and the decision to move all instruction to an online format for the first half of the semester, these two sets of leaders have had very different ways of expressing their concern and care for us, their faculty. 

  • One group has been focused on the practical – getting tools and resources to us to facilitate our move to online teaching.  For many of the faculty, this has been their first experience with online instruction, and it can be overwhelming.  
  • One group has been focused more on the personal care side – asking us how we’re holding up and offering emotional as well as practical support.

It would be easy to look at these two groups and think this is a gender-related response; the practical group is all male, the personal group all female.  However, that would be overly simplistic, especially in light of my own reaction – I am a highly task-oriented female!  

When a few of the faculty got on a Skype call with our directors in Fairfax, they asked us how we were doing, and my first response was related to how I was adapting to online instruction. The other two faculty on the call responded with their emotional concerns.  Even with my students, I have to be very, very intentional about asking how they are doing before diving into the course work for the day.  

If it’s not gender-related, then I would suggest it is personality-related.  The DiSC model of human behavior identifies two personality types that are primarily task-oriented and two that are primarily people-oriented. I have learned the hard way to be more people-oriented than I am naturally inclined to be.  

Which expression of care and concern is better?  I would argue that we need both – the practical and the personal.   We need both – from all our leaders. 

Cultural Intelligence, Leadership, Our Blog

A Sure Path to Influence

By Tasha M. Troy

One of the key dimensions of culture is the “relationship-oriented / task-oriented” continuum.  As a product of American culture, and as an element of my personality, I began my career highly task-oriented.  I was focused on first, gaining the credentials and education necessary to reach my goals and second, getting as much information into my students as I could.

When I moved to South Korea, I had to learn a new method of operation.  In order to teach well, I had to build relationships with my students first.  It was in that season that I developed a greater appreciation for the people around me – their strengths, opinions, and values.

Today, I’d like to share a mini-lesson from my weekly Professional Development Essentials class on Developing a Greater Appreciation for Others.

In this mini-lesson, I made a reference to an earlier blog article I wrote last year.  Here is a link to that article.

Does Leadership Have to Be Lonely?

Interpersonal Communication, Leadership, Our Blog

Six Common Barriers to Listening

Listening is such a neglected communication skill!

One thing I’ve discovered is people in today’s world often don’t feel like anyone is listening to them everyone is broadcasting: blogs videos YouTube crazy people on the news.  Everyone’s talking, and so few people are listening.  Most of us feel like our perspective is never heard or accepted or even understood.

As an introvert, I consider it to be one of my secret weapons; asking good questions and listening are the two keys for me to be able to connect with others as an introvert without draining myself too much.

Here I share a mini-lesson from my weekly Professional Development Essentials class on Six Common Barriers to Listening.

 

 

If you want to learn more about joining Professional Development Essentials, you can find the details and a link to register at https://troycommunications.net/professional-development-essentials/

 

 

Leadership, Our Blog

The Most Difficult Person to Lead (part 2)

by Tasha M. Troy

I tend to be an independent learner and worker.  I love to shut the door and “get into the zone” with a project.

However, sometimes it’s hard for me to include others in my work.  They don’t move at my pace, and sometimes they interrupt my train of thought.

As I continue to develop my own leadership skills, this is an area of growth for me.

In his book Leadership Gold, John Maxwell gives us four keys to leading yourself well.  These keys are

  • learn followership,
  • develop self-discipline,
  • practice patience, and
  • seek accountability.

 

What stands out to me today is how many of these points involve other people in leading myself.  In my last article, The Most Difficult Person to Lead, I shared the first two keys with you, and now here are the last two.

 

 The third key is to practice patience.

Practicing patience is sometimes a big challenge for me. I am very task-oriented and results-oriented, and I get impatient with the process of developing those good habits that will lead to success.  I’m not often satisfied with the incremental improvements that I’m working towards. However, if we can practice patience and keep at our goals day by day, even if it’s a small step, small steps over time will get you to where you’re going.

 

The fourth key is to seek accountability.

This has been a key for me in the last couple years as I’ve been pursuing very challenging goals.  I’ve always been a pretty independent thinker, and sometimes it’s pretty humbling to sit back, take advice, listen to criticism. I always think I’m teachable, but when I am directly criticized, I find how unteachable I might actually be.

I still don’t always react well to criticism, but I’ve learned the value of listening to other perspectives and trying to see myself through other people’s eyes.  I’ve been able to connect with a number of people who help keep me accountable for my goals.  Now that I’m working on some of these daily goals like getting up at a certain time and developing certain habits that will help me be more successful, I’ve developed some accountability partnerships with friends and colleagues so that it keeps me on track to do things that I wouldn’t normally wantto do but I know that will lead to long term goals.

 

So those are the four keys that John gives: learn followership, develop self-discipline, practice patience, and seek accountability. They sound so simple, but don’t be fooled – simple actions can have powerful results.

Where do you need to grow? In what areas do you feel like you need to become more than you are today?  Could it be in the area of self-discipline? Could it be in the area of followership or developing patience? Who is there in your life who could help you become by becoming an accountability partner?  These are some things to consider.

 

Take It Deeper

Which of these areas is a challenge for you?  Do you have a hard time “trusting the process”?  Or do you need to find an accountability partner to help you move forward?  Good news – you can always start right where you are.

I know that sometimes it’s hard to know exactly where to start.

If you would like to go deeper on this topic, I offer an ongoing live online course on personal and professional development:  Professional Development Essentials.   We meet online every Monday night to discuss different elements of personal and professional growth and challenge each other to apply what we’ve learned.  Let me know if you’d like to experience one lesson for free (tmtroy@troycommunications.net)!

If you enjoyed this article and would like to receive these monthly posts in your inbox, you can subscribe at Troy Communications Blog.

 

 

Leadership, Our Blog

The Most Difficult Person to Lead

by Tasha M. Troy

I might be a goal setting junkie. I love to look at the future, think about what it might mean, chart out a path to achieve different goals, and plan a course of action. I am a very future-oriented type of person.

Because of this, I’ve managed to accomplish quite a number of goals, but the truth is there are countless other things that never made it past the idea stage. They remained simply an aspiration. And even today, I can remember some of those ideas and I think, “I wonder what life would have been like if I’d pursued X, Y, or Z.”  Why did I let these great ideas die?

When you’re trying to achieve anything or to improve yourself in any way, self-leadership is definitely the starting point. Where I find I tend to fall is with the little things, for example, getting up without hitting the snooze button too many times or choosing to read a book instead of watching TV in the evening. Little decisions affect the big picture.

In his book Leadership Gold, John Maxwell gives us four keys to leading yourself well.  I will share the first two keys with you now and the last two next month.

 

The first key is to learn followership.

Everyone’s out there trying to learn how to be a good leader, learning leadership, but John argues that you need to start with becoming a good follower first. An area where that has been an important element for me has been in my own continuing efforts to engage in education, to learn more, and to grow.

For example, for many, many, many years, my focus has been to teach English to adult professionals.  As an adult, I chose to learn a new foreign language – Korean – after I finished college. I will be honest: it was a much more challenging endeavor than I expected it to be at the time. In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense that it was a challenge, and because I engaged in that difficult challenge, I was able to relate to my adult students a lot better as they were grappling with learning a foreign language as adults.

Today, some of the skills that I am struggling with that I’m learning and getting better at implementing, I have mentors who are teaching me.  The more I try to do things my own way, the harder it is. The more I relax and listen and follow the instructions of my mentors, the easier my endeavors become, the easier it is for me to reach my goals.  Bottom line? If we can become good followers, it helps us relate to the people we’re trying to lead in a more effective way.

 

The second key is to develop self-discipline.

In his book, Developing The Leader Within You, John Maxwell calls self-discipline the price tag of leadership.  This is an area where I think everyone struggles from time to time. The truth is, if you can learn how to make commitments and follow through – even when no one is watching, even when no one notices – you’ll be able to lead yourself and all others much more effectively.

This is the area I still need to grow in a bit.  My goal is to wake up at a certain time so that I can get things done before I go into the office, and I have not yet had the self-discipline to actually get out of bed at that time.  Fortunately, every day is a new opportunity to accomplish that goal!

 

Take It Deeper

Which of these areas is a challenge for you?  Do you have a hard time following someone else’s lead?  Or do you sometimes let your self-discipline slide?  Have you let that discipline slide for so long, it’s out of sight?! Good news – you can always start right where you are.

I know that sometimes it’s hard to know exactly where to start.

If you would like to go deeper on this topic, I offer an ongoing live online course on personal and professional development:  Professional Development Essentials.   We meet online every Monday night to discuss different elements of personal and professional growth and challenge each other to apply what we’ve learned.  Let me know if you’d like to experience one lesson for free (tmtroy@troycommunications.net)!

If you enjoyed this article and would like to receive these monthly posts in your inbox, you can subscribe at Troy Communications Blog.

 

 

Leadership, Our Blog

A Sure Path to Progress

As a young teacher in 2003, I started receiving less-than-stellar reviews from my students.  Fortunately for me, the school I was teaching with at the timehad a good system in place to coach struggling instructors to improve their teaching approach.

For two months, I was required to create formal and detailed lesson plans – very detailed plans – for my daily classes.  I also met with my lead instructor, who helped me reflect on my lessons.  The experience completely shifted my approach to teaching, and I see the effects even to this day.

As a young leader, John Maxwell observed that just because someone had more years of experience, it didn’t automatically translate into more wisdom and more understanding. As he pondered this discrepancy, he realized experience is not the best teacher. Evaluated experience is.

We all have bad experiences, things that come up that are unexpected or unplanned – and unwanted!  It is how we respond to those situations that can really make a big difference as to whether those experiences help or hinder us. If you focus on everything that’s wrong and how it’s preventing you from moving forward, you will miss some incredible life lessons that will serve you and others well into the future.

 

Truths about Experience

In his book Leadership Gold, John Maxwell shares some observations about experience:

First – we all experience more than we understand. Life is just too complex for us to absorb everything.  We have so many people who are calling for our attention, and there are so many things that are going on in our lives and in our world that it’s hard to really absorb everything.  Add social media into the mix, and there’s no keeping up!

One simple way to make sense of all the information and demands upon us is simply taking the time to sit back and reflect on what happened that day or what’s happened in the past week. Reviewing and reflecting enrich our understanding of what’s happened.  John Maxwell talks about how he takes time each evening to reflect on what he learned that day.

Second – Our attitude toward unplanned and unpleasant experiences determines our growth. this is a reflection of the Law of Pain in John’s book The 15 Laws of Growth, which states that the good management of bad experiences leads to great growth. It could also be said that the bad management of experiences leads to no growth or maybe negative growth. Your attitude in the situation can determine whether it’s a setback or a lesson that will propel you forward.

Third – not evaluating and learning from experience is more costly than inexperience or gaining experience. If you are growth-oriented, you will look at every opportunity to grow and gain and become better and more understanding, to be a stronger leader. If we ignore the lessons that we are learning or the lessons that life is trying to teach us, we’re losing valuable time or losing valuable insight that could really be costly in the long run.

Fourth – evaluated experience sets a person above the crowd. Most people don’t take the time to reflect. Not everyone takes the time to be self-aware. And among those, even fewer take the time to reflect on a regular basis. But those who do find that their growth is accelerated, that their insights are deepened at a faster pace.

 

Becoming More Reflective

Personally, I am not the most consistent on reflecting on a daily basis. I aim for a weekly reflections. I find that taking time to think through what went well, what didn’t go well, and what I want to do differently in the future can really solidify the lessons that difficult situations can teach us.

As an introvert, I went to reflect. I want to be quiet; I want to read; I want to journal. This lends itself to a reflective lifestyle.  However, my extrovert friends want to process verbally. You might frequently be on the phone with your parents and friends because you process things differently.

If you find that it’s difficult to take that time to sit and reflect, find a friend or a partner who you can talk things through with, a “mastermind” of sorts, so that you can bounce ideas off of each other and learn from those experiences together.

I’ve also found that reflection doesn’t have to be a long drawn out process. For myself, I take about 10 minutes every morning to do some journaling. I might not write the whole time during those ten minutes, but I set the timer on my phone – so I’m not sitting there all day – and whatever thoughts come to me, those are the things I write down. Some days, my mind wanders and I start thinking about other things without writing them down, and that’s okay because I’ve made it a regular practice.

 

Take It Deeper

If regular reflection is not something that you’re practicing but you want to try it, maybe start with five minutes. Just write whatever’s coming to mind. If there was a struggle or a victory during the day, just write down your thoughts. At the end of the week, go back and re-read what you’ve written and look for common threads. That is what will lead to defining the lessons of the week.

Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start.

If you would like to go deeper on this topic, I offer an ongoing live online course on personal and professional development:  Professional Development Essentials.   We meet online every Monday night to discuss different elements of personal and professional growth and challenge each other to apply what we’ve learned.