There has been, in many management and leadership books a big emphasis on culture. The context however is often focused on the organisational culture, the team culture or the sub-cultures that exist within teams, and how leaders should influence or shape culture to achieve productivity, team harmony or excellence.
Since undertaking my Diploma Course in Counselling, I have come to learn that culture focused solely on the workplace is just one dimension of a complex ecosystem whenever you have a gathering of human beings coexisting together, either at home, work or play.
It is acknowledged that a major part of our daily exposure of what we know as culture, for those who are working or studying full time, is at the workplace or at the place of learning. However, culture also plays a huge part in our homes and within the various communities we belong to, for example, in congregational worship, team sports and during special family or cultural celebrations.
In referencing my study material, culture in its simplest description, refers to the values and behaviours shared by a group of individuals.
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It gets more complex when we delve into the patterns of human activity and symbolic structures that give such activity significance. From a sociological perspective, culture is broad and includes the general culture and, importantly, cultures within cultures – including race, family, age, social-economic status, gender, sexual orientation, religion, political affiliation, mental illness, disabilities and so forth.
There is a range of cultural influences which are important to recognise when undertaking cross-cultural work, for example in therapeutic care, counselling, social-work and even in education and training.
Clinical psychologist and author Pamela Hays developed a framework under the acronym ADDRESSING which captures these cultural influences. ADDRESSING stands for Age and generational influences, Developmental disabilities, Disabilities acquired later in life, Religion and spiritual orientation, Ethnic and racial identity, Socioeconomic status, Sexual orientation, Indigenous heritage, National origin, and Gender.
Cultural values are so ingrained in all of us that we often automatically behave in a certain way. As the author of my Unit Reader suggests, this is partly why we find it difficult to understand behaviour that is not the same as ours.
Here is a list of behaviours (Source: Unit Reader – CHCDIV001 & CHCDIV002 v3.1) which are generally influenced by our culture. In fact, not only us, but the people around us.
How we act when we meet people for the first time
Who makes us dinner
Whether we live at home with our parents until we marry or not
Whether and how we pray – and to whom
How we handle crisis
How we ask to speak to someone on the telephone
What we consider to be worthwhile goals
What sort of social functions we attend
How we relate to colleagues who are younger or older than us
How we apologize, and the things we feel we should apologize for
What we believe is polite behaviour
The way we express anger
Our attitudes toward vulnerability
Who, whether and how we marry
What we chat about with people
How we greet our partner or family member each morning, etc.
Gerald Corey, author of ‘Theory and Practice of Counselling and Psychotherapy’, comments that cultural awareness in practice begins with the understanding of our own cultural values, biases and attitudes held. This self-evaluation must be the prerequisite before there can be a sincere dialogue with a person who is culturally diverse to us.
One way a multicultural perspective is built into the counselling or therapeutic practice is by initiating open discussion with persons about cultural identity issues. It is about learning their story, without condescension or conditions. This should not only be limited to the counselling or therapeutic practice, but relevant in any scenario where people from diverse backgrounds come together.
As an exercise I had to use the ADDRESSING framework to firstly reflect on my generational influencers, my ethnic and racial identity and the other cultural influences. This was a very reflective exercise as I related back to my heritage, growing up in the country of my birth and as a first generation migrant in Australia.
Similarly, I had to use the ADDRESSING framework when interviewing three multicultural candidates during my study period. I found this exercise very interesting, inspiring and revealing, especially as a student of cultural diversity.
What I learnt after interviewing the three candidates with Samoan, Fiji-Indian and Aboriginal-Anglo heritage, was the importance of family and kinship in their respective cultures. While other influences varied though nonetheless important to each person, the values surrounding the support of members in the family, community and clan were common across all three cultural backgrounds. These were expressed in various ways but were sustained by the underlying values of respect, responsibility and care for each other, especially for the young and elderly members in each cultural group.
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It was a revelation for me while speaking to my Indigenous Australian candidate on their cultural background, indigenous heritage and generational influences. The perspectives shared with me were heart-felt, sincere and at times sad. The indigenous story told was a far cry from my high school studies of early Australian history and gave me a richer understanding of Australian indigenous history. It also showed me the human spirit of triumph over adversity; which included discrimination, poverty and isolation. As part of my study of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, I found these study videos located in https://australianstogether.org.au/churches/resources/, very informative and timely, as Australia grows in maturity and comes to understand, as a nation, the historical injustices done to her indigenous population. The video series is one of truth telling and about moving forward together.
This study also taught me a number of new words, not previously in my lexicon. Words like:
Cultural Awareness: Sensitivity to the similarities and differences that exist between two different cultures and the use of this sensitivity in effective communication with member of another cultural group.
Cultural Safety: An environment that is safe for people: where there is no assault, challenge or denial of their identity, of who they are and what they need.
Cultural Competence: Becoming aware of the cultural differences that exist, appreciating and having an understanding of these differences and accepting them.
Cultural Broker: A cultural broker is one who thoroughly understands different cultural systems, can interpret cultural systems from one frame of reference to another, can mediate cultural incompatibilities, and knows how to build bridges or establish linkages across cultures that facilitate the process.
Cultural Onion: To describe and compare different cultures, Geert Hofstede developed the so-called 'Cultural Onion'. A culture can be seen like an onion: there are several layers to it. When someone looks at a culture from the outside, they need to slowly work their way past understanding each layer to get to the core.
According to Hofstede, the outer layers are composed of patterns of behaviour, which is what we do and how we act.
The second layer encompasses our underlying cultural assumptions and values. Values are those things we hold to be important - those things which we consider to be good; what is best and why we hold those views.
The third layer represents our beliefs, norms and attitudes - those things we hold to be true.
The middle of the onion, Hofstede suggests is the most hidden layer and the basis upon which all of the other layers are built. Forming the centre of the culture onion are those aspects of our culture which are much harder to recognise and understand, such as what is real, beyond the physical, our personal world view; questions about the past and the future. These concepts are what makes up a person’s worldview.
The study of the ‘Onion Model’ when applied to the understanding of the culture of others, requires firstly an understanding of our own culture, our beliefs, values and behaviours. As it is said, “the key to understanding others is to first understand yourself”.
Careful analysis and a better understanding of the different layers as well as how they interact and influence each other is a necessary part when providing any form of cross-cultural counselling.
This series of learning was about becoming, what Gerald Corey, called a “diversity-competent” counsellor. It is about first challenging our own values, biases and attitudes which might influence the work with culturally diverse communities.
Source: Alex Green from Pexels
In Pamela Hays’ American Psychological Association article, ‘Looking into the Clinician’s Mirror: Cultural Self-Assessment’, she turns the torch-light onto clinician’s potential unconscious-bias when handling cases. It extrapolates studies showing that one’s own cultural identity and how the role of privilege in the context of therapeutic work can lead to an unconscious bias in prescribing an outcome.
In one study reported in her article, it was observed that religiously oriented therapists rated religious values as more important in mental health than did less religious therapists. Practitioners in their first marriage valued marriage more cultural self-assessment highly. Psychiatrists and older therapists valued self-maintenance and physical fitness more than they did non-physicians and younger professionals, and psychodynamically oriented practitioners believed that self-awareness and growth values were more salient to mental health and psychotherapy than did behaviour therapists.
Hays’ report even goes on to point out that sources of information on minority cultures, could be written by authors who may be from predominantly majority culture groups who may also have a potential culture bias. And similarly, information from publications from minority communities, could themselves be bias towards such communities. Hays adds that interpersonal relationships can help to increase self-awareness of one's limitations and biases.
Therefore, it is imperative that anyone working in the fields of therapeutic and general counselling, either as a health professional, social-worker, pastoral counsellor or care-giver across multi-cultural settings are aware of themselves, in a cultural sense.
Hays concludes with the same challenge, saying that culturally responsive practice begins with the therapist's commitment to a lifelong process of learning about diverse people across cultures and life spans. A first step in this process is to explore the influence of one's own cultural heritage on one's beliefs, views, and values.
The article also highlights that the therapeutic service provider needs to recognize the ways in which privilege can limit their experiences and knowledge base. Equally important is the person’s willingness to seek out new sources of information that enable him or her to learn from and with (not simply about) people of diverse cultures.
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We can all do this, irrespective of what we do; from the people we work with, socialize with, congregate with and even with strangers whom we meet from diverse communities.
We are after all, one big human race.
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