About this talk
This talk explores the significance of cultural intelligence in tech teams and how effective leadership across diverse cultures can influence team performance. The speakers, experts in organizational culture and community building, emphasize that culture shapes the way teams collaborate and communicate. By understanding different cultural frameworks, individuals can bridge communication gaps and foster an inclusive work environment. They highlight the complexities of interaction between different cultural backgrounds and stress the importance of self-awareness for leaders. The session concludes with practical advice to embrace curiosity and sensitivity towards cultural differences, which ultimately leads to enhanced team dynamics and productivity.
Full transcript
Can you hear? Hello. Is the mic on? All right. I want to I want to see the thumbs up from everyone if the mic is on. Almost that that's that's not everyone. Come on, people. All right, thumbs up from everyone if you can hear us. There you go. Now the mic is working. So, are you ready to start? Yes? Let's go. We going to get started. Did
you finish having the lunch and then stuff? Yeah? Good. All right. >> We have a couple of people still finding their seats. Welcome. Welcome, everyone. Good afternoon. Lovely to see all of you here. We'll spend the next half an hour talking, having a conversation with my lovely two panelists who I'll introduce in just a second. And we'll be talking about culture as strategy. We'll be talking about
what does it take to lead tech teams across cultures. Let me start by introducing the two speakers. Gwen, right next to me. As an ex-vice president of people and culture in tech, Gwen has spent her career building teams and cultures that are adaptive, inclusive, and future-ready. She has been responsible for multiple countries and regions, led various mergers, integrations, and culture change, and has built talent and leadership
development programs. What she has learned is that when high performance and growth stall, the problem usually isn't the talent, but the invisible friction that strangles progress. Cultural intelligence is one of the approaches that she uses to solve that friction. Today, she enjoys helping forward-thinking leaders who aren't afraid to be challenged and are ready to look deeper than the surface-level fixes. Welcome, Gwen. And my second guest today
is Kimo Kimo Camara. Kimo is a respected diaspora expert, social entrepreneur, and community builder, and a visionary behind OMEC, a community-driven career and professional development platform that connects top bicultural talents with leading brands, meaningful resources, and global network. Kimo is renowned for championing the power of identity, bicultural fluency, and collaboration in the future of work. His passion lies in empowering individuals to achieve extraordinary feats. He enjoys
bringing together people from diverse backgrounds to drive social change. His mission is to enable bicultural individuals of African descent to become future transformational leaders. Welcome both to this conversation. My name is Magdalena Shumna. I will be the your moderator for today. Very briefly about myself, I'm a founder of Indigo Diversity Consulting, uh an intercultural and inclusive leadership facilitator with over two decades of experience in international corporate
environments, and I work at the intersection of cultural intelligence and organizational performance, um helping global tech and otherwise organizations build environments where diverse teams don't only coexist but collaborate well. Very happy to be leading this Um so let's jump straight into the topic. And to set a little bit of the stage of the context for that conversation, let me start by saying something that everyone probably in
this room recognizes very well, and that is that in today's globalized tech world, the best engineering teams bring together people from different cultural backgrounds, ways of thinking, different approaches to collaboration. And that both is an opportunity and a challenge. This is uh going to be therefore a conversation that explores about explores exactly that, uh talks about what it takes to build inclusive high-performing teams across cultures and
that complexity. So with those two practitioners next to me, uh who live this work daily, we'll get concrete and share some real examples and leave you with something you can actually use going back to your daily work. Um let's start. We talked about culture, or I mentioned culture already couple of times in my introduction. Culture is the word that we use a lot, but we don't always
mean the same thing. So before we go any further, how do each of you define culture? And why does this definition matter for the tech environment? >> You go first. >> [clears throat] >> Okay. Um for me, actually, sometime we talk about cultural intelligence, we talk about all these fancy terms that that's been coming now, and then I think it was going to stay for a long
time. But at the end of the day, it's very important that we align like what exactly culture mean. And I think that's why for a Like when we are having a conversation, can we start from there? And for me, in my perspective, culture is nothing else but like when human come together, when people come together, they have to decide how to live together. Right? That's how society
started. People come two or three people, 10, 100, 1,000 people come together. They have to figure out how to live together. And so that decision they make, how they get along, how they communicate verbal, nonverbal, like everything that they do to be able to function together, that's what culture is. That's the basic definition from my perspective. That can be aligned with the company in your department. You
figure out how to work together, you build a culture. Right? At home, your family, you figure out how to live together, you build a culture. Your friends, you're building your culture. Because the way you do the way you navigate, the way you communicate, the way you move together, that is a culture. And so everything start from there. And so with that, within that group, within that environment
that you're in, that culture become the lens that you put on once you are in that environment. And so when you take that out on the bigger picture, it could be family, it could be friend group, it could be community, and it could be a nation, and it could even be on the continent level, right? Depending how you zoom out. But each of them become that culture,
the way this group of people decide to function, to live together, and that become the lens that we have individually. Wherever we go, we have that lens. And so it's important to have that concept in the in the mind because everything's going to be built on top of that. >> Yeah, well said. So, I'm somebody that uses the fancy word of cultural intelligence. >> [laughter] >> So
sorry, Kimo. Yeah, cultural intelligence about culture. Let's start with that. To me, is exactly what Kimo already explained. It is a set of beliefs, values, and behaviors that a group has. And as a person, you are part of multiple cultures because you're part of multiple groups. Like Kimo said, school, university, home, your family, but of course also workplaces and then subcultures in teams. So, as a person,
you are part of multiple cultures, but strongest ones are the ones that you are born into, obviously. Your family culture and your country culture. bringing those stronger, deeper ingrained cultures into other situations as workplaces or teams from your football club or whatever group you will be entering into, um, will most probably influence the way that you interact with others. So, becoming more aware of that, how you
behave and look at others into the group that you are part of, you know, it shows the different the differences between people and the differences between cultures. Yeah, so culture is layered. Can be very complex. And when when brought into the workplace, it can, you know, create lots of different values, different ways of looking at things, different approaches to problems that we need to solve nowadays. Uh
but if we don't create the understanding between those cultures, we will have some multiple clashes that maybe uh some of you uh also experienced um in certain situations. At least I did multiple times. So, we will speak some more about that. >> Thank you. Thank you both. Beautiful bridge to to exactly that, which I would like to ask you next about. You both work with organizations where
that cultural diversity, those different cultures, have directly shaped team performance. For good or for bad, we can argue. What does that link actually look like in practice? Where do you see culture showing up and translating to team performance? >> Um I'm very focused on building high performance, uh but what that looks like uh can be very different uh through uh many multiple eyes. So, if you think
about high performance, one of the five of five elements that normally are being discussed in organizations is trust, having, you know, good feedback and healthy conflict so that you can challenge each other, um that there is commitment to the bigger course, uh that there is accountability, people know what to do, and people can challenge the other also to keep the accountability of what has been discussed, and
focus on results. Um and many books are written about this. Many organizations are following this model, but forget the cultural lens. Because if you talk about trust and psychological safety, for instance, in organizations, and also um giving feedback and have a creating an environment for healthy conflict, if you don't look further than your own lens as a leader, you might get into real trouble. Um because, for
instance, if you think about building trust, um and you have countries where they focus much more on building relationships, on getting, you know, to know each other, to build the trust between people to people energy, rather than task-based energy such as we do a project together, we agreed on a deadline, let me first see if you reach that deadline, and then I trust you. If you bring
those elements of cultures into one team, and you don't and and and well and you don't look at the differences at the table, um then you will have cultural clashes. I can imagine that this is something that you might recognize. Who recognizes this? Yeah. Yeah. So, and it's it's it's extremely important to bring that cohesion in teams, to uh acknowledge these kind of differences, and how you
go about that. From an organizational level, how do we build trust in recruitment processes? How do we build trust in retention um uh activities in our organization? How do we make sure that people are being seen, heard, and valued in the way that they want? Um and then from a team level, how do we create this team environment where we can have when all of us can
have trust uh to show ourselves and bring our best so that we can excel as a team. And as a person, how do we make sure that people understand how I build trust and how I'm being perceived as being uh a builder of trust? So, at multiple levels in an organization is extremely important when you think about scaling uh teams and high performance that you have different
lenses um uh when when you want the same thing. >> Well, how do I even build on top of that? Um how do I see that coming? I I I'll I'll probably take it outside uh the workspace, and then I'll bring you back. And so like we define culture, right? Being the way that people decide to come together. And so the subculture and then and you can
take it and zoom it out and then all the way to the continent from And so think about it. If you are from Let's look at it from the country perspective. Let's say you're from India. Um and so you come from a very collective cultural background where everything or I'd say India or like maybe like even take a a zoom out. Like let's say you come from
a global majority country where communication is very verbal. Right? Very verbal communication style. The way society live is very collectivism. And you're coming in the West which is a different culture, communication if it's not written, it doesn't exist. If they don't know anything about each other's culture, they have a different expectation. Right? And so if I'm coming from the Western culture or I'm coming from the global
majority culture, I want to say hi to you first before we start the meeting. I want to ask you how you're doing, how's your family? And someone from the Western culture is like you're wasting the time, let's get into it. Why would you ask me about my Do you understand? And so you come in the room and you put these people in the room and if they
don't know nothing about each other, then the clash will happen. And it's the same thing when you bring it in the work space. I'm assuming a lot of people here is uh tech in the tech space, right? So you guys have you already know the stereotype that you have in the company. You sit in your corner, you plug in and you just do your thing. The way
you think, the way your subculture work as a tech people is different from the culture from the HR team. It's different from the finance Right? And so each of these group have their own stereotype, their own cultural thinking. And so if you don't take a time to go to order to cross or get out of your bubble and then go to the other bubbles and understand them,
the communication, the expectation in term of communication, it's going to be different. Right? And so the conversation we having right now about culture, if there's anything for me at least my point that I want you to take away, this whole conversation is about how you become a better human being. That's it. At the end of the day, like how do you become a better human being? And
the way you do that is one to understand the bubble that you in, understand that, own that, be aware of the lens, and be brave enough to know there's a million other bubbles around you that do not know anything about your bubble, do not care about your bubble, and it's your responsibility to go and then learn a bit about their bubble so you can communicate with them.
>> Well, you talked to me. [gasps] >> Beautiful. Thank you so much both. Well, it's actually builds very nicely to what I wanted to to ask next, which is you both touched on the self-awareness piece. So we often frame learning about cultures as learning about other people we work with, right? You just said there's other bubbles that uh that are around us. But where does our own
cultural lens fit into that? Um and what happens when maybe a leader examine it? >> You You want to go first? >> Yeah, it's fine. Um yeah, I work with a lot of companies and I've led uh multiple in international teams. Um, and in my last role, I worked at an Indian company. Um, and um, the Dutch culture, because I'm I'm Dutch, but you know, my my
parents are also from different countries. So, I have sort of a mix in in me, but I'm I'm very Dutch in a way that uh um that I'm born and raised here. Um, but entering uh an Indian company with a culture completely opposite to the Dutch culture is quite a challenge. And again, as you also mentioned, no none of the cultures is uh right or wrong, it's
just different. And if I would have led my team with my Dutch style, um, I think I would be kicked be have been kicked out within 10 minutes, right? Because um the Dutch having, for instance, a very direct feedback style, we will be in front of your face. Uh we will be telling you how it how it is in front of everybody. Um, it's all fine. We
we also use upper words as in very um extremely. Um, and people that come from a culture that are not used to that, um, they will be so offend well, they could be so offended by it, afraid, they experience aggression. And obviously, the the goal of the way that you want to give feedback, for instance, is completely missed. But if you don't know, if you're not aware
of that, you don't understand why half your team will leave within a month or will be called called in sick or or things will not flow or your goals will not be reached. Um, so what I've learned through all the years uh leading international teams is that you that you create a common language. You know, first of all, have a lot of patience, because um me as
a as a Dutchy entering an Indian organization, uh I had to have a lot of patience as as well and adjust a lot because the majority would be in their culture. So, it was a huge learning curve for me as Uh but having a lot of patience to understand each other, to create a common language. So, what is it that we're trying to achieve as a team?
How do we go about it? What would I love for you to do and what would I would love for you to see and let's do that together and failure I think the mic is not Oh, there it is again. Um and failure is fine as long as we learn from it. Um so, if you are not aware of what kind of culture and therefore behaviors, values,
assumptions, uh timing you bring in as a leader, you will break the culture in your team really fast. And then, um it's it's quite pathetic, to be honest, that after a couple of uh couple of months you think, "Why is every- everybody leaving or why aren't we reaching the goals?" Uh without looking at your own style and your own way of leadership that you bring in. >>
What was the question again? Oh, what happened if you don't examine your own lens? Then you [sighs] >> How can you interact with other people if you don't? I always use this example if you don't know who you are, like people always tell you who you're supposed to be. And so, if you're not aware of your culture, it's always going to create this clash, right? Because you
go in the space again like let me let me bring in I think I've been talking about like as a human not from that perspective. The culture conversation is about being human. But like if you bring it in the in the confine of the company, if you're a developer or in the tech team and you want to present a project to the finance team, to the HR,
and you need to understand like the background that you have, the mindset that you have, how in your subculture as a tech, like the way you communicate, because you know each other, you have this cultural code. And then you going out outside that bubble. So, if you're not aware of that, you're going to just take that lens and that way of communication, you're going to take everything
with you and going in the different bubble and then there's going to be a clash. And you have like something to explain and then it would not work. Right? And so, being aware of that and that would allow you to be able to say like, "Oh, I'm going into different cultural bubble that actually is not aware of the way I communicate, the way I engage, the way
I do." So, I think that's why it's important to be like I was saying earlier, it's important to understand the cultural bubble that you're in, the framework that you're in, be extremely aware of that, and that will allow you to be brave enough to understand all the culture and then be able to engage and >> Yeah, but I can imagine also that it's quite tough for an
expert who joins a company with a Dutch culture for instance, where the majority is Dutch with their own behaviors and values and ways of communication and etc. to then stand up and say, "Hey, maybe you should also move a bit towards me, right?" So, I've been speaking to a lot of people about that. People that were coming home crying because they felt that they were shouted at
whilst the Dutch person just thought it was giving feedback. Um Um I believe one of the things that you could do is to find your way of giving feedback or giving you know, evaluate what's happening and and share your thoughts and your experiences. So, you don't have to be in front of the people. You don't have to do that in a team meeting. You don't have to
do that in front of your leader. You can also drop an email. You can also send a text message. You can also find a way of communication and engagement and and and bridging those differences to make sure that you are going to be seen and heard and valued. That of course takes some bravery and some courage, but it's also quite a challenge if you're just the only
one or some of the only ones in a company or in a team. So, we hear you and the leaders out there, we dare you to take a look at yourself and to really take a look at you know the leadership the leadership style you bring into your teams and into your company to understand what it takes for somebody else to adjust. >> Beautiful. Thank you. Thank
you both so much. And I can imagine as well that you know all that knowledge and that sensitivity that cultural intelligence sensitivity can often go out of the window once pressure hits, right? Once deadlines start looming, once we have this kind of go go go moments. That's really when it becomes more difficult to be still consciously examining is this the best way to approach this? Am I
not stepping over, right? Am I actually honoring the communication style or the feedback giving that that someone might find helpful. just to close with what is the one thing a learning a habit or you know a reframe that someone in this room could take back to their team on Monday if they were to leave with one thought. >> You go first, please. what I would love people
to take away I think I give my takeaway before. Um at the end of the day this again, fancy conversation, fancy title, and then all that stuff. The cultural conversation is like how do you become a better human being? And to be a better human being you first need to understand who you are as a human being. Like and I think the cultural conversation is about that
because the environment that we grew up in inform like how we see the world, right? That's the lens that we have. And so and you also inform the lived experience that we have. And that lived experience inform the values, things that we value, and then we see that as a value, right? And that value applying those value become like the legacy that I almost we think like
this is what I want to do. So the culture like goes, you know, from lived experience to values to legacy to the things that I want to do that I don't want to do, right? And so like once you know yourself then you can go in the place and it start becoming easy for you to engage with other people with curiosity that have a different culture. So
if you come from a global majority culture for instance, you come in the western culture, you need to be open to understand what does a individualistic culture entail. What does the how does that work? And how do I engage with them, right? Instead of saying, "Oh, they doing this to me." Right? Then you can be open how do I engage with them? What does that look like?
Where they come from? What's the mindset? What's the you know, the framework that they have they working with. So when you take on that some people may not may not may not work with them, but most people would appreciate that. And those who appreciate will start learning from you. And so for me that's what I want you to take away. Like just understand your cultural framework, where
do you come in, the biases that you have, the things that you might be doing that aware of and be aware of all that. And then with that be very, very intentional how do you engage with other people. Irrespective if you're in the leadership, co-worker, it doesn't matter with the fancy title that you have. Just being a human is a totally different. >> Well, I just have
uh I have one thing to say, just stay curious, um interested in other people. And if you're not intrinsically motivated for that because for whatever reason uh you don't like being interested in other people, then take the uh the business case uh motivator. And that is if you don't you will not get the AI adoption uh as fast as you want, you will not get your leadership
pipeline as strong as you want, you will not reach your deadlines as fast as you as you could, you will not get your uh your your clients in or many more clients in than than you wanted to if you're not interested and curious with other people. So, thank you so much. >> Thank you both. Thank you so much for that. I think uh everyone I hope have
taken a good uh inspiration from that. Thank you so much for joining us today. We are right on time.
