Trends from York

Business Spotlight was one of the sponsors of a conference on high performing international teams that took place last week in York, England. The event, which attracted about 160 participants from as far away as Australia, was organized by York Associates and the Delta Academy.

For me, the conference was a great opportunity to catch up on some of the latest trends in the field. Intercultural guru Fons Trompenaars talked about his recent book, Servant Leadership Across Cultures. He also pointed out the need for intercultural trainers and consultants to go to clients with solutions to business problems and to avoid overusing the word culture.

World Café 

This confirms my experience of the need to speak the language of the customer rather than talking too much about what, for many, is a rather nebulous term. My attempt to discuss the measurability of the impact of culture in an interactive World Café caused some eyebrows to be raised.

Robert Gibson's World Café in action in York

The other trend I noticed was to get away from black-and-white dichotomies (e.g. individualism versus collectivism) and to talk instead about the complexity of the "cultural mosaic" and "multi-faceted anomalous individuals". A related concept that was mentioned frequently in York was "creolization", which can be defined as the hybridization of a culture, as it absorbs and transforms forces from outside. It's the production of new local forms in response to globalization.

In other words, things are not as simple as they might seem. If you want to understand people, it doesn’t help much to put them into cultural boxes.