I was in Brussels I was sitting on Lagaan Plus which is a beautiful square and in the center of that solidly a man came in sat next to me and started talking to me so I turned to him and I answered then I turned back then I asked myself why is he talking to me suddenly I realize Julien you're becoming Norwegian so I turned to the man and I said sorry I live in a country where people don't speak to each other the thing is in Norway is not that people don't speak to each other is that socialization takes part in a much more framed and organized manner.
I was not expecting this man as a stranger to come and talk to me however this is surprising because I come from the french-speaking part of Canada where that type of behavior is totally normal however my mental programming has changed my brain has been rewired because during the last five years I have lived in a tiny little country in the north of Europe which is called Norway when you move to a different country there's three way that you can relate to the culture you can confront complain or conform when you confront you believe that your behaviors are the right behaviors when you complain what it happens is that you will isolate yourself into social bubbles of foreigners living in segregation with the society when you adapt your way to behave when you conform to the whole society then you can truly benefit from diversity but that implies that you are observing learning understanding.
the behaviors of others and adapting your own so that it fits with the behaviors of the society or it I was in the north east of Spain in a beautiful region of Catalunya and I was there with a very good friend of mine he is 2 meter tall long hair and the lies and we were visiting the beautiful region where they're making the cover the Spanish sparkling wine and after the guided tour we asked some more questions to the very charming guy that was there and she was explaining us with passion about what she was doing and then suddenly she stopped she took a step aside she took my friend and she shook him and then she looked at me and said why is he not interested in to what I'm saying because she was not getting the emotional feedback she was used to she was seeing his emotional feedback through her own cultural glasses meaning that she was interpreting the fact that he had a knurled face on what it would mean if someone from her culture would have that face and that would mean that the person was not interested or didn't want to be there and we all see the world through cultural glasses the lens through which your
brain sees the world shapes your reality if you can change the lens not only can you change the way your brain perceives behaviors but you can change the way people relate to conference the cultural differences embedded within that statement is the key to benefiting from diversity three years ago I was sitting on a board of director of one major university in Northern Europe and I was representing 2,000 academic staff and I wanted to become a better leader so I've looked around the whole University for a leadership class that would be suited to my position and I found one and I was thrilled because not only would I learn about leadership but because I would also learn about how women lead because the class was called leadership for women and so as naive as I was I've registered for the class the next morning the gender equality Advisory of the University calls me and said as Julian this is leadership for women you're a man you cannot attack it was the first time in my life that I was denied education based on my gender this is my cultural perspective about what happened that however why is the University doing this because the government had been putting in spay in in place a scheme that allowed university to take candidates in full academic position before someone that has higher academic training if the candidates can document leadership training by offering leadership training only to women the university was fast forwarding the attractive women into full professorship position at a
place were less than 20 percent of women had professorship I call this a quality of result not equality of opportunity equality of results I did not have the same opportunity to flourish to my full potential but the result is that we have a balance in society we enforce diversity and there's good reason to do this study shows that boards composed of both genders will perform 15% better than boards that are composed of mainly one gender but studies also show that boards that are composed of different culture will perform thirty five percent better than boards that are composed of only one culture cultural diversity increases problem-solving ability it increases creativity and innovation the real challenge here is to make people being able to communicate well together and this you do through explaining cultural differences two years ago I was sitting in my living room I was sitting there with a friend and we started to draw typical cultural situations and then we made a Facebook page and then we made a free website and then I started to lecture all around the country I'm happy to say we just crossed 1 million
people that have seen these drawings to help to connect culture and the idea behind that project is to create a simple humoristic way in connecting people of different culture especially in Norway you know that most people around the world are raised with the idea that they will need to contribute to a group that they will be part of a group and enter dependent on their members and it affects the way people behave other parts of the world especially the Western world we raise our children to be independent and to be self-sufficient and we create a certain independence in society and it changes behaviors you see the difference this basic principle tells a lot about how you're going to expect a friendship to look like in certain societies where the group revels the friendship will be much stronger in terms that people will live in symbiosis with each other and dependent on each other and they will be expected to be invited to every single event that the very good friend will do however in other cultures friendship will be much more distant I've asked a Scandinavian man one day what was a good friend you know what he answered it is someone I can sit in silence in a room and feel comfortable if you sell this to a South American they won't understand what is the principle and this is about friendship and love and contact with people is one of six basic human need and if you're not able to see how this friendship and love
is communicated to you because you're blind by your cultural glasses you will spend years believing you have no friends you will spend years believing that people are rejecting you it is about changing these cultural glasses this is when you know that the Norwegian bus stuff is full and that you need to stand what happens if you sit in the middle it could very very well be that one of the two person stands up take a steps aside start playing on his phone now what if you look different what if you're wearing religious symbol how easy it is to believe that the person has moved away because you're of a different skin color or if a different religion a typical cultural misunderstanding at a very basic of human interactions you've came into the personal space of someone who has a much bigger personal space and most cultures in the world there's place for four people on that bench and not understanding these very subtle physical difference with people will actually lead to a lot of miscommunication if you want to observe it yourself go to any international conference and try to observe a South American that tries to communicate with
the North European what will happen there is that the South American will be very eager and will stand at a distance that it's comfortable for him the North European will be also very eager but stand a little bit further away because he's not comfortable that the Satmar can be so close and if you observe it over time you will see there's a little dance that starts and people go around the room none of them realizing that they are feeling uncomfortable or they both feel uncomfortable but they don't realize why and it's just a simple thing of culture and being able to feel that distance between people which is different in every culture and that has to do as well with politeness politeness is a come is a concept which is very much culturally related it's a group of norms and social codes that everyone obeys
to so that communication goes well in a society and in certain society is very strict and you have a way to talk and you have a way to behave you change the way you're changing the words in the sentence in other places for lightness might only me not to disturb others to leave more space forced in friendship and physical space and if you move to another country and no one explains you what politeness means how can you expect people how can you expect that someone will behave as he's expected to in a foreign culture the key here is to benefit from diversity everyone sees the world through cultural glasses it's not about what you see it's about what you perceive it's not about what you see it's about what you perceive and it is by taking small steps that we will one day help the world to truly benefit from diversity thank you
This is my participation post for Initiative:MAYINLEO