The People & Culture Podcast: navigating cross-cultural communication

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The People & Culture Podcast with James Judge are a series of in depth discussions with practitioners and leading experts on emergent trends impacting on the shape of the future workforce. In this episode James is joined by Tamerlaine Beasley to talk about critical, cross-cultural communication issues.

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Tamerlaine is the Managing Director of Beasley Intercultural, a company that has provided cross-cultural training and advisory services for over 20 years. She has worked with business, government and international agencies and in this episode I get her insights on how to navigate cross-cultural communication.

We discuss how her background got her interested in this issue and consider whether what constitutes a ‘global and diverse’ workplace has changed in Australia. We cover the work she does with public sector agencies, as well as ASX top 20 leadership teams, and unpack the model the company has evolved that moves beyond a focus on cultural ‘awareness.’

I also ask her about instances where there has been a breakdown in cross-cultural communication and how the limited pool of candidates that make up the top echelons of board and senior leaders can impact organisational culture.

In our conversation we explore the concepts of the ‘glass’ and ‘bamboo’ ceilings, consider approaches to overcome unconscious bias (like blind auditioning) and the shortcomings in some common recruitment practices.

The importance of focusing on inclusion and not just diversity is discussed, as is how to actually implement these concepts at both a leadership and organisational level.

Links and resources

Here is the link to Beasley Intercultural

In the interview I refer to ‘Blind Auditioning’ but didn’t go into detail of what that entails. This piece from The Guardian provides an explanation of how it came about. For a longer read, here is an article from the American Economic Review that examines its impact on the hiring of female musicians in orchestras.

We also talked briefly about a mid-2017 report on unconscious bias in Australian Public Service shortlisting processes by the Behavioural Economics Team at the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Connect and share

If you enjoyed the discussion please like and share with those you think might be interested in the discussion. Drop me an email at jjudge@themandarin.com.au if you have any suggestions for further shows. I am on twitter @JamesAJudge and feel free to connect via Linkedin.

Thanks for listening.