Whose gender gap?

This post will get the comments rolling.

Sexism

The 2007 Gender Gap list by the World Economic Forum put Italy at the bottom of the European heap and way down at number 84 on a world list of 128 countries.This is the country of veline and vallette and very, very few women in politics.

Although actually my most recent encounter with male assumptions about what women can and cannot do, came from a Brit living in the US. His assumptions about Italian males, brought him to assume that I, a woman, would have difficulties working as a coach with a group of males in a business performance area. So does that mean that this job should, by fault, go to a man?

And who is being sexist here?

a domani,
E

Third culture kids unite

Thanks to my friend Gillian, my inbox this morning held a very interesting article I would like to share, "Obama Brings the Expat Experience to the White House". The author, Ruth E. Van Reken, is an TCK (Third Culture Kid) herself and writes about the TCK traits that Obama (and many of his new staff) will bring to the White House and how they may affect the way the new administration guides the nation, and influences the world.

Please CLICK HERE

Back in February, I read "Dreams of My Father" and was struck by his first 10 years of life. I don't think even he, at the time only 26 years old, understood what those years would bring to him in terms of cross-cultural skills and a truly global mindset. So, if you missed it the first time around, please enjoy one of my favorite posts. If you have read the book or know his childhood story, you can skim the first part and jump further down to see how his background informs the extraordinary skills that eventually brought him all the way to the White House.

Please CLICK HERE

Happy reading on a cold, rainy Sunday. I am waiting for the rain to break to have a run.

a domani,
E

Mobile phones to good use

I have been a very bad blogger these days. My writing has been elsewhere. I had good intentions today, but instead got involved in a USAID Development Challenge project for innovative ideas on using mobile technology for international development projects.

I guess I was feeling innovative, and I added my project to the pot. The winner gets $10,000 seed money and the chance to present their project to major donors. If not, you get some exposure anyway.

I thought, why not try follow up coaching for development training projects and do it through a combination of virtual teleclasses, internet voip and mobile phone text messaging. Studies show that training without follow up does not render the results that can be achieved with training plus follow up coaching. This was the premise of my presentation at the SIETAR conference in Granada last month (link is to your right near the end of "When I'm not blogging..."). SIETAR is the Society of Intercultural Education, Training and Research.

Check it out and leave a comment, or even better, a star! CLICK HERE

a presto,
E

Unfortunate adjectives

Oh dear. Now that I can hold my head back up as an American, I must hang it down once again as an Italian.

Berlusconi did it again -- mouth before brain.

Oh well.

I believe his unfortunate comment that Obama is, "young, good-looking and suntanned" came from a place of unconsciousness not of malice or racism. He is just clueless and unfortunately not alone.

I know a few Asian-Americans here in Rome who are struggling with the constant assumption that they are someone's maid. One is a lawyer and recent arrival to the city. The innocent yet disturbing comments of her new Italian husband's friends leave her confused. How should she react? The children of another Asian-American / Italian couple are referred to by their friends at school as the "cinesine", although they are not even of Chinese origin. It is not with a mean intent, just unconsciousness.

So, at the top of the heap, Prime Minister Berlusconi refers to President-elect Barack Obama as, "suntanned" and continues to insist that he was just being "cute".

There is a long way to go. Wake up Italy.

a domani,
E

Moving forward

I have been pouring through article after article, enjoying the energy of forward moving change.

I am a personal fan of the Italian journalist Vittorio Zucconi who has been in the US for many years and carries a particular insider/outsider voice to his reporting for La Repubblica newspaper. True to form, his front page article highlighted unique characteristics of the American people. In this case, their ability to come down from the electoral high and get on with daily life, while both political sides shake hands and wish each other well. A new day is dawning and we had better get some rest. A spontaneous group formed in front of the White House to sing, "Bye Bye George." There was no need to cry victory and denigrate the other side. In any case, they will be back, when the time is right. American's pragmatic civility in politics is what catches him off guard from his European perspective.

In my readings, my favorite comment on Barack Obama was from Henry Louis Gates Jr, a Harvard scholar of African - American history,

"People don't see him primarily as black, I think people see him primarily as an agent of change."

and that is the way it should be, seeing people for who they are and what they stand for.

God bless America.

a domani,
E

Obama-mania

As I finally got to the bottom of my emails, I found a stack of NY Times op-eds forwarded by my mother. She continues to send fed-ex envelopes full of article clippings, highlighted and covered with notes, but recently discovered the NY Times online service. Yikes, what will this team bring!

The article that adds to our cross-cultural understanding is by Nicholas D. Kristof, entitled, "Rebranding the US with Obama" "". He suggests that, "Barack Obama’s political success could change global perceptions of the United States, redefining the American “brand” to be less about Guantánamo and more about equality." "

Perceptions" is the word that caught my eye.

In his endorsement, Mr. Powell stated that an Obama election “will also not only electrify our country, I think it’ll electrify the world.” You can already see that. A 22-nation survey by the BBC found that voters abroad preferred Mr. Obama to Mr. McCain in every single country — by four to one over all. Nearly half of those in the BBC poll said that the election of Mr. Obama, an African-American, would “fundamentally change” their perceptions of the United States."

There it is again, "perceptions". In Europe, these new perceptions have been already translated into "Obama-mania".

"Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, which conducted the BBC poll, said that at a recent international conference he attended in Malaysia, many Muslims voiced astonishment at Mr. Obama’s rise because it was so much at odds with their assumptions about the United States. Remember that the one thing countless millions of people around the world “know” about the United States is that it is controlled by a cabal of white bankers and Jews who use police with fire hoses to repress blacks. To them, Mr. Obama’s rise triggers severe cognitive dissonance.

“It’s an anomaly, so contrary to their expectation that it makes them receptive to a new paradigm for the U.S.,” Mr. Kull said.

Now we find, "assumptions," and "expectations," "new paradigms," "what people know about another country," and "cognitive dissonance".

Maybe this election will force all of us to look again at our perceptions, assumptions, expectations, and especially what we think we KNOW about another country. A little cognitive dissonance may not be a bad thing after all -- gets us thinking in new ways.

Who knows, we may have a Chinese-Italian, Romanian-Italian or Albanian-Italian as prime minister some day. Hmmm, first we may need to find a few as doctors, lawyers, government officials or even teachers. Actually right now I would be happily surprised to find a few at my son's old liceo classico - venerable and oddly elite public school in the center of Rome.

There is a long way to go -- hopefully the Obama-mania will create a bit of cognitive dissonance when set side-by-side with the rise of xenophobia and its disturbing question, "what to do with those immigrants" that has been sneaking into the public sphere with increasing regularity.

a domani,
E

Salad bowl

My son just kept me on the phone for an hour. After a long introduction about his upcoming activities -- lots of volleyball matches around Italy and Europe in addition to exams -- he finally got down to business. A girl. They met through a mutual friend and an evening out ensued during which he found out that her mother is from Spain and her father from Southern Italy. They met on neutral ground in Germany, where she was born, before the family finally settled in Trento. She told him that her mother always gets angry when she doesn't respond in Spanish. "Mine too," he added, "but the language is English". And so they discovered that they had multicultural backgrounds in common -- something that wasn't obvious from their sightings around the university halls.

I think people have a sixth sense about these things.

Anyway, she told him that having an American mother was very "fico"*. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.

a domani,
E
* very "cool"

Madonna is back

Not wanting to dwell on the front page with its scary news about the further drop in world stock markets and even scarier news on Italian school reforms, I plunged ahead to the "spettacolo" section to read about Madonna's upcoming divorce from Guy Ritchie.

Seems to me she could have used an expat coach for her years in London to help her cross cultures more successfully. In addition to the various personal issues with her husband, she simply has never managed to feel comfortable in London, even after eight years. She has always felt like a "fish out of water", she hasn't really made good friends and she never really understood the pleasures of pub life. Vanity made her strive to appear an English lady by adopting British habits, but her heart wasn't there.

Let's give her a 6 on the Cultural Intelligence scale. (The ability to adapt effectively to new cultural contexts)

The Head -- she could have worked on her cognitive knowledge by reading a good book about British cultural ways, and a few others on cultural dimensions and cross-cultural theory to try to understand the way people behave and the underlying roots of their behavior. In addition to a personal trainer, she could have added a personal cross-cultural trainer to her staff. Then should could have worked on her metacognitive skills to build a new mental framework to help her understand the quirks of daily life.

The Heart -- I don't think she has any self-esteem issues but she could have used some help with her sense of self-efficacy, or belief in her ability to get from incompetence (cross-culturally speaking) to competence. He could have worked on her motivation or desire and abiltity to engage others -- take action to acquire local behaviors that would lead to better interaction.

The Body -- Using knowlege and motivation, actually respond appropriately to the new environment, leading to better feedback and spiraling upwards to a greater personal satisfaction.

Instead, she regularly got on a plane to NY to avoid the whole issue.

NY here she's back!!

a domani,
E

In change we trust

Change is in the air. Big scale change from the US elections to the worldwide financial crisis and small scale change in each of us individually.

As I rumble around getting my coaching and training business up and running, I have been thinking about what it is I actually help people do and through a series of mind jumps, it finally came clear -- I help people manage change and even be transformed in the process. They can be expats living and working abroad who are up against massive change coming at them from 360°, or, like my Italian client coming over this evening, self-initiated change as she explores new professional paths.

So, what else do you do when a concept comes to mind, but plug it into google and have a wander. Somewhere on page two I downloaded an article from a professional Human Resources development journal on, "The Myth of Change Management: A reflection on personal change and its lessons for leadership development" by a guy named Jonathan Gravelis. After having spent a career implementing change in large organizations, he embarked on his own personal change and discovered that the usual goal-setting, programmatic approach to change does not address the messy reality that enacting change generally involves. The "five-step" ect. change models appeal to our desire for illusion that structure is all you need to change things successfully.

(This is all leading up to a great "lets leverage cultural differences" moment, so hang on.)

The stress of change stems from our unrealistic desire to predict and control the outcome (idea from another guy named Firth back in 1999). So, Jonathan asks, "Should we focus on helping people learn to live with a degree of anxiety, uncertainty and ambiguity?" While it's a good idea to have a plan for change, its also important to acknowledge the unpredictable results that will come from every action we undertake. "Constant re-planning and short-term tactical flexibility are as important in change as long-range strategies." "Adaptive leadership" is the buzz word.

Any of you readers that are living and working in Italy know exactly what he is talking about -- I even have a label to your right filled with blog posts on the exquisitely Italian skill of managing ambiguity and uncertainty (which, by the way they learn at school along with Greek and Latin).

Not to mention our perceived Italian "lack of planning" , that clearly acknowledges unpredictable results by relying on constantly adjusted "just in time" plans to account for new new input from a very mobile external environment.

While living and working abroad, why not pick up some "change management" skills by learning to embrace the ambiguity and uncertainty in your life and seek out the rationale for each just-in-time planning experience that comes your way.

a domani,
E

a little CQ

If you don't live in Rome, or have never picked up a copy of The Roman Forum, I would like to introduce you to the monthly English-language magazine on "news and views about Rome". Over the last couple of years I have written a number of articles for them, on subjects ranging from Rome's A1 professional volleyball team to "Cross-Cultural Driving Lessons" and "A Day in Palestrina". Now I keep a column on CQ or Cultural Intelligence and Cross-Cultural Coaching.

For September's column, click Here. I am preparing another column for the November issue today -- so keep you eyes on the newstand!

Buona Domenica,
E