Beyond Protesting and Donating: 5 Practical Ways to Support BLM
Other than protesting, donating or signing a petition, what can you do – what could you do that would show support for #BlackLivesMatter (BLM)?
Managing Diverse Workforce: 2 Incidents
Can you handle managing a diverse workforce? Read this article to find out the different things you should watch out for in managing a diverse workforce.
Workplace Politics and Me: Do I have to play this game?
You may have encountered politics at your workplace in some way or form. If you are like most people, you probably associate a negative connotation to workplace politics, and would like to stay as far away from it as you can. However, workplace politics need not be a...
Workplace Politics: The Good, the Bad and the In-between
Workplace politics takes on different meanings in different situations, and may be positive in some situations, and negative in others. People understand workplace politics to be the 'dark side' of workplace culture. The Link Between Workplace Culture and Politics...
Workplace Politics: The Basics
Workplace politics is a part of life, and the more informed you are, the better prepared you will be to navigate the ocean of politics at your workplace. Especially as a newcomer to Canada, knowledge can prove to be powerful, helping you make informed decisions....
Unity In Diversity Is A Universal Law. For Business And Life.
Why are we here? Two years...
What to do if your employees don’t speak English: An employer success story
Featuring : The Filter Shop and CCI-LEX Let’s say you have a job that needs to be filled… The job is easy to learn and do well but difficult to hire for. People don’t stay or have the necessary work ethic and orientation to be good team members. How do you find...
How not belonging teaches inclusion
I’m what they call a 3rd culture kid. I belong to the 17.7% of Canadians who had one or two parents born outside of Canada and grew up learning to bridge different cultures, languages, and worldviews. Let me share with you a few stats about immigrants in Canada and a...
Your accent: Shrinking the elephant in the room
Accent. Everyone pretends it doesn’t matter. But after interviewing both employers and internationally trained professionals, it was the one topic that was consistent on both sides of the equation. Immigrants say accent stops them from getting hired. Employers say...
How immigration categories work in Canada (and why you should care)
Ever wondered who comes to Canada, how they are classified, and how many people are actually accepted? If not, maybe this will persuade you to get curious about immigration categories: by 2030 immigration is projected to account for all - not just some, but ALL - of...
3 Typical workplace communication problems you can actually do something about
Workplace communication is a two-way street. It involves people listening to each other and responding, where ideas are shared and then collaboratively built out over time. So, when workplace interactions evolve from poor communication, it is no surprise that a...
The quick guide to increasing cultural comfort in the workplace
Increasingly organizations are looking to hire for "fit." They've become more conscious of the culture that they are trying to create within their company and look for people who have the "right" attitudes, energy, and predilections to meld well with what is already...
Cross cultural negotiation – part three: Personality traits that lead to cultural behaviour change
Turns out that your personality traits impact how effectively you can navigate cultural difference. Learn how “The Big Five,” “The Asian Personality at Work Index,” and how individualism and collectivism impact your ability to negotiate.
Cross cultural negotiation – part two: Using influence
Learn the 6 universal principles of influence you can start using today to improve your negotiations and your relationships.
Cross cultural negotiation – part one: Using power strategies
If you are working with human beings at all you will find yourself negotiating. Two definitions of the word negotiate that I like are "to obtain or bring about by discussion" and "to find a way over or through a difficult path or obstacle." Put those together and...
Integrating international employees to your workplace
Imagine you have just landed in a country where you will be working and living for the first time... Everything is new and strange. People don’t respond the way you expect them to and the environment, food and even the smells around you are completely unfamiliar. When...
Courageous conversations you wish you’d had
Have you ever found yourself wishing you would have had a conversation that could have made a difference for you and for the other person? Maybe you wish you had told that wonderful colleague you appreciated her but were afraid it might be taken the wrong way or “go...
On fasting, culture and family
You may or may not know that I am a Baha’i. One thing that Baha’is do as part of their spiritual practice is to participate in a month of fasting every March from the 1st to the 19th, then celebrate the Baha’i New Year on the first day of the spring equinox. So what...
Getting through to your boss
Have you experienced any of these issues with your boss? Your boss tells you to do something that is completely the opposite, or in contradiction to what he/she told you to do earlier Your boss forgets what he/she asks, and repeats things you already know, or doesn’t...
How to use your voice more effectively: 4 Critical strategies
To get a job or start a business you probably spend a lot of time perfecting your resume, personal description of strengths, your handshake and your pitch. You likely had a professional head shot taken for your website, or put effort into creating one that would make...
“Why don’t they do things my way?” Practical strategies to deal with the emotions of cultural clash
The non-neutrality of culture Culture is not neutral. When any group of people starts spending time in the same place, over time they develop norms of behaviour. Some of those norms are helpful, healthy, creative and show interesting ways to see the world, take...
5 Disastrously common meeting presentation mistakes & what you can learn from them
For many of us, just the mention of the word “meeting” makes us roll our eyes and groan. We’ve all had the misfortune of sitting through yet another bad presentation and have cursed the heavens for losing an hour (or longer) of our lives to boredom and frustration....
7 Barriers to communication and a lesson from YouTube
Barriers to communication can be removed! Ask employees in any workplace what the company’s biggest internal problem is and the majority will say without hesitation, “communication,” (insert eye rolling and groans here). Why is it that although we are social...
Why you can’t afford to have poor communication in your business or organization
We start with a story... There was a young man driving his car home on the expressway one evening, when he heard a loud bang and felt his left rear tire blow out. He pulled the car over on the shoulder of the expressway, got out, and saw that he had a flat tire. Even...
Reflections on high school reunions and cultural awareness
I had a crazy moment of cultural awareness/flashback/shock at my 40th high school reunion event a couple of weekends ago. Like many people I know, if you are still in touch with even a couple of people from your high school days 10 years afterwards, you are in the...
How to win the interview and get the job, even if you are new to the country
Let me tell you about my friend Mary. She is a very qualified accountant from Cameroon and has her CPA designation - that puts her at the highest level of qualified accountants in Canada. For almost two years she has been single-mindedly trying to find work in her...
8 Social Assumptions and What To Do About Them
Are your social assumptions about people’s motivations accurate? Have you noticed yourself or others making any of these kinds of statements? Engaging in comm skills training can help you challenge these assumptions and improve your understanding of team dynamics....
Basic cultural themes that affect the workplace: Theme #1 speech patterns
Every piece of communication shared requires a sender and a receiver - someone to send the message and someone to receive it. Inevitably, there exists a space between the sender and the receiver where interpretation of the message occurs. Culture and Communication...
Basic cultural themes that affect the workplace: Theme #2 hierarchy
In the last post I spoke about how speech and silence are interpreted differently across cultures and then considered ways to use this knowledge to improve cross-cultural communication. Let's look deeper. When there are differences between how people communicate...
“Three cups of tea”: The principle behind building your network and getting results
Yes, you do need to network! In some countries people are introduced or placed by friends and family into jobs or brought into a business. In other countries, graduates find their first jobs because they are automatically placed by an educational institution,...
Dealing with prejudice during an interview: How even you can find the right words to be direct
You've researched the company, met up with employees who work there, prepped your answers so you can answer the key questions you know the interviewers are going to ask, put on your "power suit," and done everything you can to be ready to deliver the best job...
Biology and business: genes and employee performance
Biology, employee performance, and business systems have more in common than you may think. According to the book “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins (first published in 1978 and widely accepted as the most significant communication about the basics of inheritance...
Five Skills for effective workplace communication
Effective workplace communication can be learned! You may think you know how to communicate to your team or employees. But communication is not about what you think has happened when you speak with someone, it is about what actually happens between two people in...
Me biased? 3 strategies to find out
It is pretty easy to tell other people what they should do, how they should fix a work issue and how to fix their personality foibles. We can quickly see when someone else is so much in favour of a person or a project they can’t see the forest for the trees. We can...
Supervisory Basics 2: Setting Clear Expectations
Setting clear expectations is critical to team success When you are an employee, you expect your team leader to let you know what your job is and to teach you how to get that job done. Many supervisors make the mistake of assuming their team already knows what to do...
Evaluating the effectiveness of diversity and inclusion efforts
They say, “what you measure grows.” But before measuring begins, when you start paying attention to something, it’s importance in your thinking increases. Let’s say you want to buy a car for example. Suddenly you notice things about cars you never noticed before and...
Cultural Intelligence: It’s all about finding the patterns and principles
One of the most useful reads on developing cultural intelligence is David Livermore’s tour of 10 cultural clusters around the world . The author has an approach I greatly appreciate: he is practical about approaching the daunting task of figuring out how to live, work...
