Cultural Detective Newsletter September 2010

September 2010

Clues to Intercultural Effectiveness
Tips, Techniques and Resources

Cultural Detective & the Training of Students Abroad

Mick Vande Berg, Ph.D.

How One Customer Makes Exemplary Use of the Series

For the past two years, the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) has been relying extensively on Cultural Detective to help us train students to learn to interact more effectively and appropriately in the new cultures where they're studying. Cultural Detective packages now make up an integral and highly successful part of our Seminar on Living and Learning Abroad ("the Seminar").

There is no question that our decision to invest in Cultural Detective has turned out, pedagogically and financially, to be a very effective way to teach our students about local values and beliefs that they want and need, and to do so in a way that also teaches them key culture general concepts and skills. Students learn to apply key intercultural concepts and foundational intercultural skills, including the relationship between culture and identity, stereotyping and cultural variability, seeking cultural reasons to explain behavior, sharpening observation, suspending judgment, and shifting perspectives.

Cultural Detective is contributing very significantly to CIEE's efforts to help students abroad understand core cultural concepts, and develop key intercultural perspectives and skills; and it is doing all of this in cost-effective ways.

Read or download the use case

IDI-Guided Development Using Cultural Detective

Register Now! · October 2010 · Minneapolis, USA

The Intercultural Development Inventory is one of the field's most statistically reliable measures of intercultural competence. Many Cultural Detective clients use our products in combination with the IDI as an organizational or team benchmark or pre- and post-test.

Recently IDI's Dr. Mitch Hammer has focused his efforts towards pairing his instrument with IDI-guided development tools. First on his list has been the Cultural Detective. At the second Intercultural Development Inventory conference October 29-30 in Minneapolis, Cultural Detectives will present three sessions.

One, conducted by Dianne Hofner Saphiere and Heather Robinson, will focus on using Cultural Detective as an IDI-guided development tool. During this session we plan to unveil a new booklet which will only be available to IDI-qualified administrators.

A second session, conducted by Heather Robinson and Brian Schroeder, will lay out how a Microsoft organization has been designing, developing and
implementing an integrated, sequenced and innovative intervention that focuses on Cultural Detective as a central methodology for training, train-the-trainer and coaching skills programs in a spiral curriculum that has gotten breakthrough results as measured on the IDI.

The third will be a post-conference event, a Cultural Detective Facilitator Certification. This is the only facilitator certification scheduled for the remainder of 2010, so be sure to secure the opportunity.

Learn more about the conference

Cultural Detective: A Tool for All (DMIS) Orientations!

Heather Robinson and Laura Bathurst

The Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity or "DMIS" (M. J. Bennett, 1993) is an important framework that explains how people develop from an ethnocentric mindset to an ethnorelativistic orientation. It can help increase the effectiveness of intercultural training, coaching, teambuilding and organization development. Let's take a closer look at how Cultural Detective can support and challenge learners at each stage of the DMIS, as they develop from difference avoiders to difference seekers.

Read the full article

Our First Public Online Facilitated Learning!

27 & 29 September - Register Now
Interactive, Engaging and Amazingly Productive!

Our online training is getting RAVE reviews from customers! Site license customers tell us that, as a supplement to certification workshops, these online learning programs make a huge difference in their roll-out of the Cultural Detective method and materials to people around the world, without the hassle and expense of travel. For those of you who have not yet been able to attend a certification, these webinars will get you started with the Cultural Detective method and materials.

Here is what a recent sponsor, an organizational vice president, has to say:

"I remain extremely impressed with what your Cultural Detective team has been able to achieve with our staff, in a very short time, through these online facilitated learning events. You adapted the material to our world, you actively engaged the participants from a wide assortment of our international locations, helping us to learn a memorable and seemingly simple process that is incredibly deep and complex. These workshops have been a major step forward in enabling us to achieve our organizational goals and objectives."

These online workshops have to date not been open to the public. Sign up now online to reserve your space, as the sessions are limited to 20 people.

If you are looking for an affordable way to enable dispersed team members to collaborate more effectively across cultures, to resolve conflict and make the most of diversity, register today. Email or telephone Kris at +1-913-764-2624 to learn more.

Learn more or register

Critical Incidents: From the Paper to the Floor!

Cristina Palma

Forum Theatre and the Cultural Detective Approach

During the Cultural Detective^® Facilitator Certificate Training at Luzern in June this year we were presented with the different tools for its application, including the concept of the critical incident. Critical incidents (CIs) make an impact by showing how different angles, perceptions or experiences of the same story can illustrate cultural differences. Analyzing CIs helps us find values that can be used to build bridges between the parties, and through this process bringing up positive change.

Coming from a community development background and as a theatre practitioner (in my very early years), I could not help but think how I could translate the process of the critical incident into a small scene, in order to help the participants to see, feel and practice the solution to their dilemma. I would make it as fun and powerful as possible by moving from the heavy intellectual (and sometime frustrated) mind to the dynamic actions of the body! And, not just acting out the incident itself, but participants could practice the debriefing and bridging as well, allowing them to experience both failure and the sweet taste of success.

Read the article

The Hungry Planet: What the World Eats

Dietary Habits and Lifestyles of People Around the World

The creators of "The Material World: A Global Family Portrait" extend their efforts to dietary habits in this new volume. Photographer Peter Menzel and his partner Faith D'Aluisiocan travelled the world to take photos of working and middle class families and families living in refugee camps, along with the food they eat.

An Ecuadorian family is pictured with a week's worth of of grains, vegetables and fruits (they can not afford meat, fish or eggs), for which they paid $31.55. A Sudanese family is photographed with meat, fish, eggs, fruits, vegetables and nuts, for which they paid $1.69. A US American family is surrounded by stacks of packaged food and soft drinks, while an Italian family is pictured with loaves of bread, fruits and bags of pasta.

The text of the book explains more about the families and the foods they buy, grow or barter for, and the lifestyles surrounding the food including how far and how they journey to obtain their food and how they prepare and eat it.

Learn more about The Hungry Planet: What the World Eats

2nd Edition of CD USA Now Available!

One of our Best Sellers Completely Updated

Culture is in motion; it is a dynamic process. We seek to understand culture in context. In the case of the USA, the context over the last decade has changed considerably: demographic changes, Obama's election, recession, talk of the decline of US influence on the global stage.

Even though core values remain relatively constant, the understanding and application of cultural values and how they are spoken about develops quickly. Outsiders' views of US Americans' high profile in economic, political and international relations means that our users are asking more questions as well as more penetrating ones that we seek to answer as openly and usefully as possible.

This new edition of Cultural Detective USA has been packaged in a new cover. It contains a brand new introduction, fully updated Values Lens and explanations, newly vetted Critical Incidents, and an updated bibliography.

We are committed to making sure that our products are up to date factually and sociologically, so we regularly revise and update content, as well as incorporate input from users to continuously improve the learning process.

Learn more about CD USA 2nd edition

European Year of Volunteering 2011

Diversophy Human Rights

To enable volunteers and volunteering organizations, the EU has proclaimed 2011 the "Year of Volunteering". SIETAR Europa has pledged to involve its membership in supporting these goals. One effort is headed up by Cultural Detective author George Simons.

Aiming to be ready for the SIETAR France congress in October 2010, George is gathering quiz cards for an online Diversophy game on Human Rights. It will be distributed freely, usable by anyone, and exist in both French and English.

Learn more and submit your card!