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Understand Yourself to Understand Others
By Paula Drouin
This week I was the Zoom assistant for Niki Kux-Kardos of Nexus Facilitation in the delivery of the Intercultural Communication for Mediators workshop she delivers to our Mediation Training Certificate Program learners.
What continues to amaze me is the simplicity of how getting to know yourself is the journey to get to know others. This simple truth plays out in every mediation we conduct, in every interpersonal conversation we have, whether it is taking place in a workplace or among family and friends. It always comes back to you. Therefore, taking the time to understand yourself better is not a selfish act. It is how each of us can improve our relationships and the world around.
The journey to understand yourself requires an exploration of what you believe to be true. Because what you believe to be true is how you add meaning to the moments in your life. How did you arrive at the beliefs you have? Do those beliefs still hold true for you today? The meaning you add to interactions creates a reaction in your brain that creates how you feel. How you behave is a result of how you are feeling, which is a result of what you were thinking.
Niki reminded me to share a story from my work in Bosnia. I was delivering mediator training to a large group of learners who represented the three religious entities that had been at war. In the district in Bosnia where I worked, there is a call for prayer from the Mosque several times a day. There are also Church bells ringing several times a day. I asked the learners to write down what they thought of when they heard the call to prayer? How they felt? And how they behaved? I then asked them to write down what they thought of when they heard the church bells? How they felt? And how they behaved?
You can image what their responses might have been depending on their religious beliefs, their experiences during the war, their positive experiences with the Mosque or Church, the history of their ancestors’ experiences shared with them through stories, and their experiences with ‘the other’ prior to, during, or since the war. I then mentioned that whether it was a call to pray from the Mosque or the sound of the Church bells, it was simply sound waves travelling through the air. What they think of, how they feel and how they behave is based on the meaning they add to those sounds. If they were raised in a part of the world that has no Mosques or Churches and they heard those sounds for the first time, how different would their answers be.
The exercise was not to lessen their deep connection to those sounds, whether positive or negative. It was to help them understand that when they become aware of the meaning they add to anything, they can begin to have choice. They can also begin to understand why other people may add a different meaning to the same event.
A useful tool that Niki shared during the workshop is Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS). She covers it in the section on Unconscious Biases, which helps learners discover how their unconscious or conscious biases impact how they view people of ethnicities different from their own. Below is a blurb from the course workbook and a copy of the model.
Bennett (1986; 1999) wrote about ethnocentric and ethnorelative mindsets when faced with cultural difference. Put simply, ethnocentric means you believe your culture and way of being is right and better than others. Ethnorelative means you have an appreciation for your own culture as well as other cultures. Take a look below and think of times where you found yourself in various stages.
Taking the time to simply determine if you most frequently fall under the Ethnocentric mindsets or the Ethnorelative mindsets, can be a useful place to start to understand yourself in relationship with people of other ethnicities. Once you identify the category you most frequently fall under, which sub-category are you most inclined to operate from? Culture and our relationship with it are ever changing. Your life experiences, education, exposure to various cultures throughout your life, can create movement from one category to the other. Awareness is the first step to consciously choosing the mindset from Bennett’s model, you want to operate from.
For more information about Niki’s six-hour workshop on Intercultural Communication, keep checking back to this page of our website. https://adrlearninginstitute.ca/course/intercultural-communication-workshop-2/ It will be schedule again in May or June 2022.
