Welcome to a long-awaited series, where we unlock one of the mysteries of Intercultural Agility, Perception Management. This series will unpack the five tools in the perception management toolbox. We hope it supports you in your journey as a culture creator from novice to artist, weaving Intercultural Agility into your experiences and interactions as naturally as a seasoned painter adorns their canvas.
What is Perception Management?
One of the greatest strengths of Intercultural Agility is the mastery of Perception Management: The idea of slowing down, creating space, and even rewiring your brain in the way it perceives self, others, relationships, and the context in which a given relationship exists.
We have developed a number of ‘tools’ that, when mastered, allow you to fluidly manage your own perception, even within shifting contexts.
The toolbox consists of five tools:
Perception Builders & Breakers - Perception can often be a mirage, and it takes effortful insight to see clearly
DIR - Intentionally slowing down to Describe, Interpret, and Respond to a situation in a new way
Mirroring - Stepping into another’s shoes to experience their reality more clearly
Single Story - Realizing that your perspective on reality is only one piece of the puzzle
Cultural Learner/Cultural Critic - The choice to view another culture from the perspective of a learner, rather than a critic
We at KnowledgeWorkx aren’t just interested in supplying tools. We’re interested in developing Intercultural Agility so that you can intentionally create culture. In every single human interaction, culture is being created. So, are you intentionally doing it, or is it happening to you?
As humans, we aren’t often trained intentionally on how to ‘perceive’. Rather, it’s something that happens organically when we’re young and living in our home cultural context. We learn to look for certain cues, such as intonation, gestures, word choice, body language, etc. and then associate meaning to them, to which we then respond accordingly. While this is the perfectly natural result of a homogenous community that practices cultural norms, it doesn’t set a person up for success on the global stage.
When someone steps into a new or multicultural environment, they will innately begin to ‘perceive’ in the same way they did back home. They will see a hand gesture and associate certain meanings based on their home context. However, in a new culture, that gesture could mean something wildly different than you are perceiving.
To be Interculturally Agile, you need to relearn Perception Management. You need to learn to perceive based on different contexts and within different relationships, not bringing with you the associated meaning of certain communication from back home. The science behind this concept gives helpful insight.
Our brain is full of experiences that lead to the creation of neural pathways. ‘When two neurons fire at the same time, the connection or synapse between them is strengthened, leading to stronger association. This means that if some situation (or thought or action) is encountered in the future causing one of those neurons to respond, it will now be more likely to trigger a response in the other connected neurons, recalling and further reinforcing that association.’
Take a successful salesman, for example.
He may have gone through a sales procedure hundreds of times and attempted different techniques and tactics. Over time, a pattern that works for him (and results in sales) will develop. Neurologically, that becomes a pathway. The more the salesman continues to successfully make sales using that technique, the more reinforced the associated neural pathway becomes.
However, let’s take our salesman and place him in another part of the world to begin making sales to a new market. He soon finds that the way of selling that he spent so many years curating is now failing him and no longer resulting in sales. He’s realizing that something in his process needs to change, yet his brain is continuing to tell him what it knows, “This way works, get on with it! Make that sale!”
So how do you unlearn previously established habits and create a new neural pathway?
You have to go against what the brain is telling you to do because your neural pathways aren’t considering the switch in cultural context. You have to force the brain to gather more information and not draw that conclusion that it has been wired to make.
At this intersection of familiarity and change is where the need for Perception Management lies. These tools are not just beneficial for developing Intercultural Agility for use in a professional setting; they are also helpful for life. We can use them every day at the dinner table, coming together with friends, practicing hobbies, and taking part in society.
The tools are all about rewiring your brain, creating space, and slowing things down. Once the toolbox is under your belt, it becomes so much easier to engage with people who are different from you.
Throughout this series, we’ll be peeling back one tool after another, displaying how Perception Management can transform your interactions and allow you to intentionally and successfully build culture.
If you’d like to take the first step in developing your own Intercultural Agility, take the next step by getting certified in Intercultural Agility.
Over the last 20 years, KnowledgeWorkx has developed solutions that are global, locally relevant, holistic, and practical. Our innovative approach delivers more accurate analysis, which results in integrated and more effective solutions. Our solutions create a progressive and natural connection between national, personal, team, and organizational culture.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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