Jenny Plaister-Ten, director of 10 Consulting, explored the richness and diversity of inter-cultural communication and presented an updated version of her model, the Cross-Cultural Kaleidoscope.
By Ros Soulsby
Drawing on seven years of research and being part of an inter-cultural family, Plaister-Ten has distilled her findings into a model and tool for inter-cultural coaching. The intention with the cross-cultural kaleidoscope is to help clients go beyond their stories around culture, reconciling their influences and experiences with the present to get to their true sense of identity, she told delegates at the Coaching at Work annual conference on 5 July in London.
Plaister-Ten, who is an executive coach and facilitator, said her research showed that the western coaching approach was not appropriate when working cross-culturally.
She shared how she uses a desktop and a floor mat model to help clients talk clients elements of their experience that show their values and what their culture means to them, helping them create meaning by looking at wider factors. The floor mat consists of nine lenses: Cultural Norms/Customs, Diversity, History Science and the Arts, Economics, Geography/Climate, Legal/Political/Education, Religion/Spirituality, Communities: Family/Work/Social/Living.
Participants were invited to discuss what was going on for then right now and to explore through one or two of the lenses in the toolkit that they felt held the most importance for them. After talking through why they were important participants were asked to ‘embody’ the experience to get a very different story.
Plaister-Ten stated that after a couple of lenses the full story usually emerges. Clients can pull that story into the present and identify what they can leave behind. From this place she suggests clients explore the lenses that weren’t chosen. When working with teams, the approach can be used to explore similarities of experience, physical sensation and emotion, then take a systemic approach to discuss perspectives of family members (past) and colleagues (now). This information can be drawn on to help move the client or team to choices around what would make sense now in their current culture or organisation.