Here’s the thing with social media. Everyone keeps telling you that you must be on social media to develop your brand, but what nobody is telling you when you are a newbie is how much work it actually takes to develop a personal brand on social media. I’m not talking about being featured on posts that your employer (and their big marketing team and budget) developed to attract more clients. I’m talking about you and me as human beings. We thought about your struggle and came up with the Social Media Newbie Series for Global Nomads to help you understand LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, but we got stuck in the detail ourselves and I realized from the questions you are asking that you might still wonder:
What for?
Is it worth my time and money?
So, I thought that today we should take a step back and revisit why it is worth having a digital media presence and share with you my top seven killer tips for job seekers and solopreneurs (and those of you who share my vision of becoming digital global nomads).
As a Career Coach, I have encountered job seekers and freelancers, who still believe that they can thrive in today’s world without a digital presence. In short, they refuse social and professional networking as they feel they will be stalked or annoyed by others. I started with online networking on XING in 2004. Before that “networking” for me meant only person-to-person (or IRL – in real life if you are my age and don’t know what IRL means).
I would regularly have lunch with different internal and external colleagues to find out about what is going on in their line of work. In the early Millenium, the lunch date roster was your “dance card” and showed how popular you were.
It was almost embarrassing to lunch alone and if you were booked for several weeks this meant you had made it. It was part of the culture of that organization, but networking helped me to understand background stories, to build trust, and get support on a variety of topics. I still prefer lunch dates over any type of online interaction, but as a creator, I have more influence and a bigger circle to reach out to if I leverage my online network too.
Remember that in Germany, Switzerland, and other “Coconut” cultures we tend to be very task-focused and have to invest in building relationships. (Yes, it takes us a lot of energy to get out of that Coconut-Face.)
If I look back, I also pulled my team members, trainers, providers, and friends from my network. The network expanded to external contacts and it got harder to maintain when I left Frankfurt for Zurich, but I started to build a new network, which helped me to build and maintain a start-up in a rather difficult economic environment. If I was looking for a full-time role now, I would certainly try and source it through my network. If I am looking to hire an intern, designer, or specialist I am going to rely on my network. We are teaching the idea of leveraging your network to find a job in Switzerland rather than only applying online in our HireMeExpress program.
I know that you might be afraid to put yourself out there and have people laughing at you or trolling you or giving you negative feedback and comments. How do you even deal with that when you are already fragile and full of self-doubt on a daily basis?
Would it help you if I told you that I still go through the same fear and anxiety? Would it help you if I said: Yes, there are weird people on the Internet and many of them just want your money…but what if 10% of those following you, reading you, hearing you need to hear exactly what you have to say? What if there is one person out there who like me lost half of their family in a tragic accident and thought they would never, ever recover from that? What if one woman that you speak to just lost her child or her husband and needs to hear that it will be okay and that you are there for her? What if there is one person listening to you who is about to commit suicide because they are so desperate and you tell them that they are loved and they hear that and they reconsider.
What if what you have to say is important for one person only?
Don’t you think it’s worth it?
Don’t you think it is worth half an hour of your time?
Remember that you are loved, you are safe, and you are among friends here.
1) Focus on Your Followers
In all likelihood, you will meet most of your followers on LinkedIn if you are in a professional field like banking, accounting, or human resources. If you are a creative writer, you might want to focus on Twitter because this is where readers will gather their information. On the other hand, if you provide makeup tips in short videos you should focus on Instagram or Youtube. Try not to overwhelm yourself by joining all platforms at once.
2) Develop A Digital Home
In times of social media, it is hard to understand why you need to have your digital home. Imagine it this way: When you are on Twitter it is like you are attending a huge networking event where you exchange information with colleagues and potential clients. If you want them to look at the information (“content”) that you produce you have to invite them to your “home”. And when you host a party at your place you have to give people directions on how to find you and a good reason to party with you. When you go to a party you don’t expect to be asked to buy something or pay for your beer, right? So, when you start out you would probably provide some of your content for free until you have a followership. Then you can move to a membership model. A membership model guru is Stu McLaren.
3) Build Trust First
The Internet is full of offers and scams. Before anyone wants to give you their email ID and bank details you will need to have their trust. You can develop trust by being a helpful source of information and by solving people’s problems. You can also build trust by being personable and by avoiding any sales touch in your content and copywriting. You can provide helpful advice and invite people to join your party, but you need to remember that building trust online is step-by-step process that takes mastery. You can follow Amy Porterfield and Ash Ambirge for further advice.
4) Reduce Self-Promotion
Instead of promoting yourself, you should promote other people’s work. If you help others you will not come across as a big-headed egomaniac, but as someone who cares about people. There is a point where you can also show your own work, but it needs to be in the context of solving a problem for your followers. For example, they might need a checklist or a how-to guide that you can provide when you often hear them ask you the same questions. I read that there is an 80/20-rule where 80% of the posts should be valuable content, and 20% you should promote your brand. So, in the case of your personal brand, you should talk about your work, what you have achieved, and other stuff related to your greatness for max. 20% of your posts.
5) Curate Content
A retweet does not always mean that you endorse the opinion of the tweeter, but at least you can verify that the information is genuine and up-to-date and that links are actually working. If you are like me, you probably don’t read everything you would like to read, but you know where to find trusted sources and where to be skeptical.
6) Encourage Others to Have a Voice
I know many people who suffer from “imposter syndrome” and who are modest. It helps once in a while when you tell others that their work is helpful and that you are actually reading their updates or their input. Instead of expecting others to support you, you can do a lot more to support others. Be a giver on social media. Learn why this is important by reading and following Adam M. Grant.
7) Charge Your Purpose Batteries
A Digital Presence is great. If people deal with you in real life or on a call, they should be positively surprised by your genuine interest in them. One of the reasons for the lack of trust nowadays is that everyone is putting their own interest in front. Many people have a hard time accepting support because they are not used to free help. They are used to being cheated and pulled over the table and you want to stand out. Charge your purpose batteries and get very clear on your purpose, and one-sentence mission, and become a real giver.
Kind regards
Angie Weinberger
PS: If this intrigues you and you would like to know more about it, please join our free workshop series in April 2023:
Workshop No. 1: Partnering Masters – Building Effective Relationships
Workshop No. 2: Powerful Missions – Having a Voice in a Sea of Noise
Workshop No. 3: Persisting Mindsets – Designing Work to Support a Global Lifestyle
All dates and updates will be shared if you sign up on our HireMeExpress list. #HireMeExpress
Starting a business (and keep running it) is hard work. I mean hard! But it is all worth the time, money, and effort invested in the end for those who have a passion, a plan, and a reliable support system. It’s going to be a rollercoaster ride, though. Between the rewarding highs of seeing the spark of interest in a student’s eyes or the genuinely thankful client, you were able to help. Then, there are the lows of the stress and responsibilities that come with being an entrepreneur, and you might wonder if you did the right thing or if you are going to make it. But the freedom to focus your energy on what you have most at heart allows you to grow, live for your purpose and live from it too!
It requires a lot of discipline, physical and mental fitness, and friends who will not leave you if you have not been in touch for more than a week. You need a life partner and family who is entirely behind your decision, and you need to be prepared to work harder than ever. After almost ten years of building and running an offline and online business with freelancers in different locations and a diverse client base, I consider myself a pro.
A few years back, the business was drained, and the savings were used up. I had invested in two additional courses.
I was ready to give up and get a full-time job.
I even said “yes” to a full-time job offer. But then “fate” kicked in. In a very relaxed moment during our first RockMeRetreat, I knew the answer was a clear “No.”
I was not ready to start a full-time job in a leadership role again, where I would spend all my energy on maneuvering politics, playing the game, coaching a team, and sitting at a desk for more than six hours a day.
Yes, I was very disappointed when the company told me that they wanted to hire somebody else. I was down and scared, but at the same time, I was relieved. And I knew this feeling. It was the freedom smell.
Deep down inside, I knew that I will always fall back on my feet and have all the skills within me to make a living. I once again felt the fear (and did it anyway). (There’s a book about that).
This post is not a pep talk on how we should leap out of our comfort zone and fight for survival daily because this adrenaline level is not suitable in the long run. We only need this kind of adrenaline in an actual emergency during a tornado or a pandemic, but not every day for years on end. A job is great. A paycheck is wonderful. A sick day is sensational. A sponsored coffee is amazing. A paid holiday is fantastic. Burnout isn’t.
You probably wonder how you keep the energy drainers out of your work environment, and my advice about this is a simple one: Focus on your well-being first. Focus on that as long as you need, stop eating junk food, walk regularly, stop working after six hours and change your routine to fit your life. Most of the issues we have at work come from our fear of not being enough. We overcompensate. You might think that you need to achieve that next level, subsequent promotion, or next salary band. Then you will have a wonderful life. But let me be honest with you: There is a price you pay for that. And this price might not be what you are looking for right now.
I am in favor of abandoning many of the typical HR systems. Let us give our people the benefit of the doubt again and help them find their intrinsic motivation. We should help them work on projects where they can thrive, help them develop client relationships they will find engaging, and above all, we should change lives. Passion is a better driver than security for entrepreneurs as employees.
And if you doubt now how you can help your team get to that level, we should have a conversation. I would say first of all: Everybody still has a ton to learn in this world.
Understanding that we are always learning is the first step toward growth. Many people, especially women, need help to find the confidence to move ahead. In Switzerland, many women grew up in a male-dominated environment where they learned to work more than their peers to be recognized, and when they tried to move up the ladder and had to show their teeth.
Then a manager told them that they were too aggressive and too pushy.
They started to have self-doubts and fell into a complacent state where moving up was no longer an option. I know many excellent women with the busy-bee and Aschenbroedel-syndrome. They run their departments silently in the background, while a male colleague gets the bonus and the honors. They start initiatives and get criticized. They speak out in meetings and someone else picks up the thread and everyone applauds the other guy.
We can all do our share to help them thrive. Sometimes an encouraging hug or a pep talk during lunch or a job referral might just be what they need.
My team and I started helping more diverse women. We work with women from developing countries, women with more seniority, and women from minority backgrounds.
Whatever their backgrounds, women with young children also face obstacles and prejudice in the labor market. Managers often assume they will miss work when their children are sick or that they will leave early.
I’m ashamed to say that, but we diligently exclude certain people from the workforce here in Switzerland, depriving them of the fundamental right to work. It’s not always intentional, but we cannot always blame unconscious bias for our decisions. Some companies forgo excellent candidates because the humans who make up that company cannot move beyond their prejudice about women (even more so if they come from developing countries, have young children, have gaps in their resume, or are LGBTQ+, or disabled).
It is frequent for people with a refugee background who cannot produce the required papers and certificates for specific jobs to face many challenges when accessing the job market. People suffering from mental health problems such as depression and talents who might be on the autism spectrum or have schizophrenia face numerous barriers when searching for a job.
We might not be able to create a significant groundswell today and start a revolution, BUT we can change lives, one person at a time. Join us in our mission. We’re on a mission to bring the Human Touch back into Global Mobility.
We talked about how family challenges and marital issues greatly impact the outcome of international assignments. We also saw that a large number of companies list the Expat Spouse’s unhappiness as the primary cause of “Expatriate Failure”, highlighting the importance of the Expat Spouse and Partner career support programs.
This week, we will talk more extensively about the kind of support you can give to Dual-Career Expat Couples and why that matters if you work in HR and Global Mobility.
I have always advocated for Global Mobility Managers to be more proactive about involving Expat Spouses. Sometimes I sound like a broken record though. Anyway, it’s 2021 so I reiterate what I’ve been repeating for years.
We want to be proactive!
The days of the passive “trailing spouse”, when they were marginally involved in any decision of moving abroad, are definitely gone. Today, according to the 2018 Relocating Partner Survey, 97% of mobile employees actively involve their partners in the discussion before accepting an assignment, so why shouldn’t you?
We want to be inclusive!
Employers cite a variety of reasons for supporting Dual-Career Expat Couples via policy and practice. The primary reason is to increase staff mobility. Some employers also do it to reduce the costs of assignment refusal or early return and promote family-friendly policies. Others want to support diversity or gender initiatives.
One figure, in particular, stands out in the latest KPMG report: 39%. This indicates the percentage of surveyed companies pointing out that sexual orientation is the main demographic reason leading an employee to refuse an assignment. But 39% is also the percentage of companies indicating that the employees’ dependents impact their decisions to accept an assignment. Perhaps, in your career as GMM, you too have witnessed these scenarios and you aim now at broadening the pool of talent by making it more diverse and inclusive.
Here is how you can still help your company achieve its Diversity and Inclusion goals, improving brand, reputation, and global market competitiveness.
- Review the demographics of your global mobility team based on diversity and change policies accordingly.
- Diversify international assignment terms.
- Adjust policies for selecting candidates.
- Broaden communication about opportunities.
- Offer training to reduce unconscious bias.
We want to bring back the Human Touch!
What you can do to help Expats and Expat Spouses is to ease the external stressors to their relationship caused by the international assignment. Most importantly, take the Expat Spouse seriously!
Here are seven provisions you can take up in your guidelines.
1 – Review all your Global Mobility Guidelines
Today’s mobile employees are no longer interested exclusively in the financial aspect of their international assignment package. They are also very concerned about the impact of the move on their spouses’ careers while abroad. This is a consequence of the increased levels of equality within the couple: 77% of Expat Spouses work before the assignment and 82% of them secure a bachelor’s, master’s, or Ph.D. degree (2018 Relocating Partner Survey). In short, the current mobile population won’t accept being treated like their predecessors.
Even if 62% of employers wish to encourage employee acceptance of an assignment by offering support to Expat Spouses, most employees are still frustrated by what employers are offering today.
An increasing number of Dual-Career Expat Couples depend on the income of their spouses during international transfers. Today, dividing Expat Spouses into the “working” and the “non-working” categories is too simplified.
Employers should therefore ensure that their partner policies support these choices equally for working and non-working partners to avoid any form of discrimination.
According to a report published by Permits Foundations in 2012, only 33% of the companies surveyed provided career support to Expat Spouses under a formal written policy. Another 11% had informal guidelines, while 27% of them assisted on a case-by-case basis. 29% provided no support at all.
With an Expat Spouse and Partner Support Guideline in place, you will more easily become a more attractive employer.
2 – Involve the Expat Spouse and Partner in the Pre-Assignment Phase
During this phase, there are probably lots of questions going on in the Expat Spouse’s head, and feelings of euphoria and anxiety often alternate with each other. They might be wondering what impact the move will have on their children and whether they will be able to find employment in the new country. It is part of your role as Global Mobility Manager to offer early career assessment for the Expat Spouse as well as information on international schooling options. Additionally, since Expat Spouses are often in charge of the logistics behind the move, you must be able to connect them with relocation services and immigration providers ahead of the move.
3 – Help with the Work Permit
Nowadays, Expat Spouses are allowed to work on a dependent work permit in the vast majority of the top host locations accounting for 80% of today’s global mobility (2018 Relocating Partner Survey). This huge achievement is the fruit of the Permits Foundation, which fights for the rights of relocating partners to be able to work on their dependent permit.
However, some countries present exceptions and subtleties linked to marital status. Non-married partners from opposite sexes, as well as same-sex couples, face more challenges accessing work permits. In countries that do not allow Expat Spouses to work, securing a work permit is almost impossible.
It is therefore your duty to help Expat Spouses navigate the world of bureaucracy specific to each assignment.
4 – Research Work Opportunities for Expat Spouses
Career stagnation is a major stressor to any relationship. Therefore, as one way to avoid putting the success of assignments in jeopardy, your employer could provide work opportunities to the Expat Spouse if they work in a similar field or area. What I’m also doing is to check with other companies if they have availability for the Expat Spouse especially when they work in a related field.
In this initial exploratory phase, it is also important to verify that the Expat Spouse’s degree is in line with what recruiters expect to see in the host country: qualifications obtained in one country are not necessarily recognized in another.
The 2018 Relocating Partner surveys highlight how career and job search support is now offered by 71% of employers, a sharp increase in comparison to previous data.
5 – Provide Transition Coaching For The Expat Couple
Coaching for the Expat Couple is also an option. In my experience, it is also helpful if one person of the couple is going through a coaching program. Your company should take over the cost within the Global Mobility guidelines. Companies offer Expat Spouse Career and Life Support programs to assist Expat Spouses. Most Swiss-based companies provide up to 7’000 CHF in services. This is a lot of money!
Transition coaching for Expats and Expat Spouses is becoming a more and more prominent concept in companies around the world. As a Global Mobility Manager, you already probably know that supporting Expats and Expat Spouses through each different adjustment stage they experience leads to a higher satisfaction rate with the assignment and the service of Global Mobility in general.
The sad part is that Expat Couples often don’t claim support as they haven’t seen the GM policy and have not been involved in the decision-making process.
6 – Offer Host Language Course
The most common forms of assistance already in place addressing spouse career concerns are language training, provided by almost two-thirds of employers (Permits Foundation, 2012). If there is a business need, companies generally pay for a 60-hour course.
7 – Pay for Support for Children and Teenagers
Not only Expats and Expat Spouses, but their children too, need support during the assignment. After all, children are the most critical asset in the expatriation process. One of the tools you can offer them is intercultural training, especially if the children are in local schools. Giving training to Expat Children has a lot of value, and you will see that once you make the children happy, you will have a higher ROI, higher retention rate, and a better satisfaction rate in your KPIs.
When Family Separation is the Best Option
Sometimes, things just don’t work out and the result of that international assignment is family separation. There are also instances where the Expat Spouse and potential children should stay in the home country. One reason could be schooling, another reason health and safety. Consult with me if you have any questions about how can bring the #HumanTouch back into your Global Mobility Program and Team.
Kind Regards,
Angie.
PS: We open HireMeExpress for Sale
We developed the HireMeExpress program to support more Expat Spouses and Partners to find a job in a new country. All of the twelve modules and more than 36 worksheets can be used for other expat hubs from Berlin to Bombay. However, our best network is in Zurich, Zug, and Basel, Switzerland. Hence, we can help best here. If you need help in other locations, contact us anyway, as we have contacts globally.
References:
KPMG. (2018a). „Inclusion and Diversity: How Global Mobility can help move the Needle”, KPMG. Retrieved May 13, 2020, from https://assets.kpmg//content/dam/kpmg/xx/pdf/2018/06/global-mobility-inclusion-and-diversity-how-gms-can-help-move-the-needle-FINAL.pdf
KPMG. (2018b). „Inclusion and Diversity in Global Mobility”, KPMG. Retrieved May 13, 2020, from https://assets.kpmg//content/dam/kpmg/xx/pdf/2018/06/global-mobility-inclusion-and-diversity-how-gms-can-help-move-the-needle.pdf.
NetExpat & EY. (2018). Relocating Partner Survey Report. https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/ey-2018-relocating-partner-survey-final-report/$File/ey-2018-relocating-partner-survey-final-report.pdf
Permits Foundation. (2012). International Mobility and Dual-Career Survey of International Employers. https://www.permitsfoundation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Permits+Global+Survey+2012nw.pdf
An Expert Interview by Sara Micacchioni
Prof. Tamara Pawluk is specialized in cognitive diversity and inclusion. She has collaborated with teams designing Diversity and Inclusion campaigns and training teams to leverage diversity potential. Her professional goal is to contribute to any organization where diversity is seen as a key factor to achieve competitive advantages. Interestingly, she also works as Project Manager for Diego Romero Music to support her husband in bringing Argentinian and Latin American music into the European market.
In early September I met her in her apartment in Berlin to get inspired by what she does.
Who is Tamara Pawluk in a nutshell?
I am an interculturalist by profession and by mindset. I like working with people from different cultural
backgrounds, I am a curious person and I like to listen to stories. I have the feeling that everyone has a story to tell and that even when they think it’s not interesting, I always find it fascinating. I mean, we’re all protagonists of our lives after all.
I also love learning, not only from books and manuals but especially from people. I love to be amazed by what others do in their professions and act as a connecting bridge between them.
I’ve been teaching at college for six years. I love doing classes and helping people develop their talent and discovering their potential together. Currently I am mostly dedicated to webinars but I keep teaching within the startup I work for, Expertlead.
I am a very family-oriented person too and love spending time at home with my husband and my friends, playing cards or board games, watching Netflix…or going outside to practice roller skating (and failing miserably) 😉
Can you tell us a bit more about Expertlead and your projects there?
Our core business is trying to build a solid network of freelancers. However, we do this in a very human-centric way i.e. guiding them through a professional self-discovery journey and helping them plan their career development. We mostly work with IT professionals: front-end and back-end developers, mobile developers, software development engineers, architects, project managers, designers and data scientists. We try to understand what exactly each of them brings to the table and only then we do the matching. We don’t just feel responsible for ensuring that they get paid for their job, but we also worry that they are performing tasks that they really enjoy. Besides that, we also do webinars on professional branding, CV improvement, train the trainers, stakeholder management, and soft skills training.
As the head of freelancer management, I strive to help freelancers be the best versions of themselves.
One of the Diversity and Inclusion projects we’ve just launched is our blog series “Freelancing Women in Tech” about which I am really enthusiastic. We interview female freelancers within the network and discover together their success stories and obstacles they encounter in the IT field as women.
You can have a look at the blog and at our recent articles where we interview a female iOS developer and a female software engineer.
There is a lot of potential in IT when it comes to D&I and we’re trying to get in touch with other associations that might be connected to a wide and diverse talent pool. For example, we’d like to partner with associations for refugees that promote IT educational programs and other initiatives of this kind. If you are one of them, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Would you like to share with our readers the learning and career path that brought you to the position you so passionately hold now?
Well, there are a couple of relevant episodes that really marked my professional development. The first was at the age of 15 when I got into an exchange program with people from around various parts of the world. Thanks to this, I got to spend lots of time with people from Tunisia, South Africa, Russia, you name it. Even if I was “just” a teenager, I was amazed by how much you can learn just by actually allowing yourself to be open to everything. That’s basically how I start to learn from people and about people. This marked me so much that it led me to choose my next degree, a BA in Intercultural Management.
What other salient events happened next?
Then I had the opportunity to work as a ghost in a haunted mansion at the famous Disney World Park in Orlando 😉 You might wonder what this has to do with what I do currently but…
There I had a conversation with a colleague of mine that really made me start reflecting about a reality I hadn’t been faced with much until then. And so I started getting curious about the topic of diversity and more in particular about gender and sexual orientation and the role that this plays in identity. This was such an eye-opener that I decided to make Diversity and Inclusion the focus of my PhD, creating a fusion with the topic of Intercultural Management.
Finally, the last piece of the puzzle fell into place when I met my husband who is a musician. I want to contextualize this: my parents are doctors and when I entered the field of Social Sciences they thought this was already weird. But what they accepted even less easily was me having a musician as my boyfriend. During this phase, I realised how important the role played by professional identity is in our lives. Now they love him as well as his music.
And so I landed in cognitive diversity, i.e. valuing people for the different ideas that they bring at the table and the different experiences they had in life. This brought me to Talent Management and to Berlin, where I currently live.
I can really say that being part of an amazing team at Expertlead really enables me to bring together all the different aspects of culture identity in which I am a specialist.
What are the major challenges that you face in your industry?
When it comes to Talent Management, unconscious bias for me is the main obstacle. Too often, I find that people very easily allow their own prejudices and pre-formed opinions to shape the situation they’re faced with as well as the idea of the person they have in front. The issue with unconscious bias is that in a few seconds, you’ve made up your mind and from that moment you don’t allow yourself to be wrong anymore.
But we need to change this and learn to admit that we can be wrong about the first impression. We need to learn to get rid of our assumptions, become better listeners and let the new information come in. This is especially important when you work with diversity.
This is interesting. How do you help people raise awareness about their own issues with unconscious bias?
When I encounter new clients, I always start with the most simple biases. I avoid talking about biases linked to gender, race, sexual orientation etc from the very beginning because they might make it difficult for people to let their barriers down.
I’d like you to run this small social experiment. Next time you’re in a group, just try to draw three boxes on a paper and ask three volunteers in front of you to write three words about diversity on the sheet. What happened?
I can bet that now all boxes contain a word. But have you actually ever asked them to write the words inside the boxes? If you followed my instructions carefully, you did not.
Yet, if you try to ask people to explain the reasons why they wrote words inside the boxes, you’ll see that they will struggle a lot finding the answers. And this is what a bias is about: thinking/doing something automatically and without second thoughts.
I tried this each semester for six years, and not in a single group was there a volunteer who did this differently.
That’s brilliant and quite an eye-opener.
Now, what education would you recommend to somebody who would like to embark on a career similar to yours?
Well, I’d start by saying that when you deal with jobs around Intercultural and Talent Management, I think it’s really important to find a good mentor. Follow someone in the field to whom you can relate professionally and let yourself be inspired by what they do. It’s not an easy-to-answer question because we, professionals in the intercultural field, very often have a different background.
Definitely, here in Europe there are a lot of academic courses you can decide from if you want to study this at university, and having studied in Argentina where options are really limited, I don’t know even half of them.
I am pretty confident when I say that the field of diversity allows for different career paths and allows you as well to find your own professional identity.
Certificates might open a gate or two but they won’t drive your internal need to make a change. It’s relatively easy to obtain certifications, but the most challenging and most important is finding the inner spark inside. Only this will make you thrive.
What’s your recipe for success?
Be yourself and be authentic to who you are. You’re never going to be happy trying to pretend to be someone you’re not. One of my mottos, and this is borrowed from a teacher, is
“Never stay where you don’t want to be.”
Considering that you probably spend half your existence at work. My tip is, if you have the privilege of deciding where you work, choose well where you want to spend your time.
Is there a final thought you’d like to share with our readers?
You might not be able to change the world, but if you manage to change only one person, you’ve changed a world.
If you want to be in touch with Prof. Tamara Pawluk you can connect on LinkedIn or write to her on Facebook. You can also subscribe to her Youtube channel.
Tamara is also busy writing her book on Diversity Management which she’ll publish in 2021. Stay tuned!
About Sara Micacchioni
Sara Micacchioni is currently working as Academic Intern at Global People Transitions, where she is responsible for research and quality assurance projects. At the beginning of 2020, she graduated from an international English-taught master degree in Intercultural Management at the University of Burgundy, France. In the past, she also carried out several short-term and long-term voluntary work projects in Europe and South America.
Sara lived, studied, and worked in seven European countries and speaks four foreign languages. She considers herself an interculturalist with a real passion for globetrotting. In her mission to travel the world, she has now ticked off 30 countries globally.
Connect with Sara on LinkedIn if you want to talk about Diversity and Inclusion, Intersectionality, Cultural Intelligence (CQ), Bilingualism, Digital Learning, Immigration or Low-Cost Travels.
An Expert Interview by Sara Micacchioni
Csaba Toth is the author of the book Uncommon Sense in Unusual Times (2020), the founder of ICQ Global and the developer of the multi award-winning Global DISC™. I met him virtually at his place in Brighton that almost incidentally became his new home 16 years ago. Let’s discover together what he does in life and what his approach to interculturality is.
If you were to give a pitch of Csaba Toth, how would you best describe him professionally?
I will be very concise here: I teach uncommon sense. It is a mindset that allows people to see the same situation from different perspectives so they can make better decisions and they can choose to respond instead of just reacting so they can get the best possible outcome.
In fact, when looking at cultural and personal differences, at the end of the day we’re dealing primarily with clashes of common sense. If you look at it in that way, the whole topic also becomes much more flexible and humane, instead of reducing it to a binary system where one must be right and the other must be wrong. Or where both are fighting in order to have their truth validated although both just hold their tiny version of the truth.
Let’s move onto what was your journey. In your book you talk quite in detail about how you got to where you are now, but would you mind summarizing your career path for all our readers?
I used to love learning a lot (and I still do). Initially, I didn’t have clarity on where I wanted to get, so I studied Italian and obtained a master’s degree in Italian linguistics – an uncommon and unusual choice for someone who doesn’t know what to do in life (author’s note). As soon as I finished I came to the UK for the summer. That was 16 years ago and I am still here. Three years after arriving, I obtained another Master’s Degree in International Management at the University of Sussex and that was a bit more practical as I specialised in Eastern and Western European joint-ventures. My dissertation was about understanding the differences between Hungarian and Western European managers. Interestingly and against traditional predictions, the data showed that the gap between the old and new generations in Hungary was much bigger than the gap between the same generation in Hungary and Western Europe. This contradicted what we were used to and often are still used to learning in academia, i.e. that culture is country-specific.
And what happened next?
Then I started my own company. It was about a restaurant listing: someone books a table and you get the money. It grew really really fast. We started with 35 restaurants here in Brighton and one year later we had already 5,500 all over the UK. On paper, everything looked perfect, but in practice I couldn’t stand the other CEO. Not because he was French, but because there was a big clash of common sense between the two of us. That was exactly the topic of my dissertation: I ran the largest and fastest growing restaurant listing business in the UK, I had years of experience, and yet could not make it work.
But I was really keen on understanding what went wrong and how we could fix it. The final result of all the research I did led to what is now called the Global DISC™.
What was the major learning that you took away from this experience?
Best solutions are born out of frustration and pain.
And most of us have a choice: do you want to just stay and complain? Or do you want to take responsibility for your growth and work towards finding the best solution? I personally chose the second option.
In your book “Uncommon Sense in Unusual Times”, which I highly recommend to all our readers, you go deep into the topic and give a lot of details about Cultural Intelligence (ICQ). In your view, what are the difficulties that you encounter most often when you need to convince clients and other stakeholders of the importance of having thoughtful conversations around Cultural Intelligence?
I think that the biggest obstacle is the perception that people have about ICQ since for the majority culture automatically equals nationality. So basically, if they don’t work in an international environment, they think this is an irrelevant topic. However, if you look at the research published in Management International Review (Kirkman et al., 2016) where they compare 17 cultural containers, culture, gender and generation were the worst three categories of culture in terms of practicality and range of differences. It makes sense as even if you don’t choose those specific cultural groups, you learn how to conform to them and you can navigate efficiently in that environment.
Culture is not who we are, it’s what we’re used to.
When you look at the different cultural groups that you choose, like your education, profession, hobby, you’re inclined to opt for the one that matches your personal preferences, because it feels comfortable and the right place where you can put your strengths at use. That’s why, to me, to understand who you are, your profession is a way more powerful clue than your country of origin. This is the biggest obstacle, i.e. that people don’t see that we belong to twenty different cultural groups at the same time and that your national culture is just a tiny container of that.
(If you want to read more about cultural overlaps and the concept of intersectionality, we published a post on the topic).
Can you also provide us with a more practical and concrete example of these layers of culture, Csaba?
Sure. Take your family members. Even if you talk with someone in your family, what are the chances that the other person belongs to the same 15-20 cultural groups like you?
Less than zero. That’s why I consider every conversation a cross-cultural dialogue.
This leads the conversation into another topic of your book that you talk about in detail, cognitive diversity. Can you please tell us more about it?
Cognitive diversity is about the diverse ways in which people think, behave and process information. The very different values that each of us share give us different perspectives and priorities. Like I write in my book 90 percent of business is interaction between people who think and behave differently. So, even if you have a team constituted 100 percent by Italians you’ll still be able to find cognitive diversity because all these people have different values.
Just because we learn how to conform to the same norms it doesn’t mean that we are the same.
If you look at research (Management International Review, 2016), having smart people in a team is no guarantee of success. In fact, 79 percent of potential is generally lost due to interaction gap and clashes of common sense. That’s definitely not good for business. To me the biggest obstacle is to raise the awareness that
intercultural equals interpersonal, not just international.
There’s a topic to which you dedicate an entire chapter in your book, debunking the myths of cultural intelligence, So I’d like to dig a bit deeper there. You specifically address eight of these myths, but do you think they’re equally rooted in people and that the same myths keep being reinforced over and over? Or do you see a gradual increase of awareness?
I think that change is slowly happening. What hinders this change is the presence of many established companies that sell international trainings as if they were intercultural ones. In fact, one of the insights of my research was that more than 95 percent of companies buy and sell to people solutions created in the sixties and seventies. You’ll agree with me I guess that there’s nothing wrong with loving our grandparents but we must recognize that we have very different challenges than them. So much has changed since then, just think of the easy access to the internet and international travel.
Why do we want our doctor to be updated with the latest research but we don’t make sure whether who develops intercultural training has our best interest at heart? To me not being updated in your field should not be allowed and I find it unethical that in some less regulated professions this seems to be optional.
Thank you Csaba for these insights and for sharing your view with us. Let’s move onto the projects you’re currently working on. Do you want to tell us more about that?
20 percent of the business we do is training and corporate coaching, while the other 80 percent is certifying coaches and trainers to deliver the Global DISC™ that we created. Because it doesn’t matter how good we are, alone we’re not enough. First of all, we’re smarter together and secondly, our time is limited and so is our potential. That’s why we created a licensing model and that’s why we currently have almost 100 licensed partners in 33 countries.
We also work with higher education institutions. At the moment, eight universities teach the Global DISC™ and this is amazing to us. It means that in academia too there’s the realization that students need to be prepared with solutions for a world that is constantly changing.
I actually wish that this topic was taught in high schools though, or starting even earlier, because I believe that it would have a huge impact in people’s life. You could better understand who you are and what you stand for. Imagine if you could even like yourself. You would not need to bully anyone to feel important or hide to feel safe. If you can accept yourself – and this is where we talk about self-inclusion – it’s much easier to accept others. Instead of depending on external approval, what if you could focus on yourself and who you are? To me this is the super power that I would like to enable others with and it is our final goal.
What would be the benefits for someone who decided to become certified in Global DISC™?
We want to concretely support the coaches who decide to obtain our license and therefore we offer four gigabytes of training, sales and marketing material, and a portfolio of international accredited solutions. Licensed coaches also become members of a community on an interactive platform where they obtain the support and where they can get inspiration and guidance on how to further expand their businesses. In short, they become part of an environment where they can continuously grow. And it becomes a partnership in which we and our licensed coach give and receive in equal part.
What about the ICQ Growth Mindset course that you repropose periodically?
Oh, that’s by far my favourite masterclass. It’s a 4×90 minutes online in-person course through which you understand the underlying root of causes of why we lose most opportunities, time and energy: friction with people who think and behave differently and friction with ourselves (self-sabotage). You also gain guidance on how you can achieve more with the same amount of energy and time. The insights and tools that we offer can be immediately applied on an individual and team level. What I especially love about it is the blissfully challenging and psychologically safe environment that we create altogether. This is where the magic happens. And that’s why I’d never miss facilitating this course personally.
The next one starts on 2 November 2020 and the registration process is already open.
Is there one last message you would like to leave our readers with?
Just remember that we all do what we consider right based on what we consider true to get the best outcome we think we can get, but at the end of the day we have no idea what is right and true or what the exact outcome is going to be. That is why we are smarter together.
Resources
If you want to buy Csaba’s book Uncommon Sense in Uncommon Times, click here.
If you want to get more information on how to become a licensed coach of the Global DISC™ get in touch with Csaba directly. You can send him an email (csaba@icq.global) or add him on LinkedIn.
If you want to sign up for the next ICQ Growth Mindset course and see what it includes, click here.
Last but not least, two books that Csaba would like to recommend:
Goldsmith, M. (2016). Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts–becoming the Person You Want to Be. Profile Books.
Chandler, S. (2017). Reinventing Yourself: How to Become the Person You’ve Always Wanted to be. Career.
About Sara Micacchioni
Sara Micacchioni is about to complete her internship as an Academic Intern at Global People Transitions, where she is responsible for research and quality assurance projects. She also actively supports the Managing Director and the Social Media Manager. At the beginning of 2020, she graduated from an international English-taught master degree in Intercultural Management at the University of Burgundy, France. In the past, she also carried out several short-term and long-term voluntary work projects in Europe and South America.
Sara lived, studied, and worked in seven European countries and speaks four foreign languages. She considers herself an interculturalist with a real passion for globetrotting. In her mission to travel the world, she has now ticked off 30 countries globally.
Connect with Sara on LinkedIn if you want to talk about Diversity and Inclusion, Intersectionality, Cultural Intelligence (CQ), Bilingualism, Digital Learning, Immigration or Low-Cost Travels.
