Listening Across Cultures - with Lucy Butters

Listening across cultures - with Lucy Butters

e she founded the business in: 2010

Before working in various management and leadership roles, the British Council supporting international ambitions of UK universities and leading a transformational leadership programme across nine Arab countries and the UK. And as if that wasn't enough, she is also the mother of triplet boys, who she says have taught her the true meaning of hard work and are a constant reminder of the need to adjust thinking, actions and expectations.

Lucy, welcome. It's lovely to have you here.

Lucy: It's lovely to be here. Thank you.

Sarah: Uh, Lucy, there's so much we could talk about, but I wanted to ask, you're a master facilitator, which means you train lots of people who then go on and train in cultural intelligence, I believe. But I'm wondering where your cultural intelligence journey started.

lly. I started my business in: 2010

Which I had never heard of, but of course you say yes, I'll do that because you've got your own business. Um, and in doing the research for that, I'm based in Glasgow and I discovered Dr David Livermore was doing a certification program in Edinburgh. So the serendipity of it all. So that was my introduction, and I have to say that it totally transformed the way I went about providing training and coaching support to enable people to be more effective and more inclusive in their international spaces. So yeah, so CQ has become my go to approach and what I think of for myself and am I developing my cultural intelligence.

Sarah: Brilliant. Thank you. And I am fortunate enough to have been at one of your workshops recently in Glasgow, which was an absolute treat. And you were developing that with Serious Lego Play.

If you ever get a chance to do that, folks, you've got to go and check out Lucy and Afshan Baksh, um, cause it's extraordinary. But there was one thing, well, there were very many things that you said that resonated with me and that I've thought about afterwards, but one in particular. Was it in a couple of your examples you talked about people not being able to hear someone who maybe was from a different cultural background.

And I wanted to ask you to unpack that a little bit more and tell us what you mean when you talk about not being able to hear someone.

Lucy: Again, I think there's two things. So there's one I would talk about that we can make people feel so uncomfortable sometimes. Um, so for me, I remember it was an interviewing people and I was the interviewer in a program for international students, but I was taught in the northeast of Scotland, quick handshake, sit down, you know, these kind of things.

But of course, around the world, that's not universal. So I think of Nigerians, for example, which hold my hand for quite an extended time. And I'm aware the first few times that happened, I wouldn't be able to hear because I felt really uncomfortable. You know, what's happening to my hand? Is it sweating?

Can I yank it out of there? And so I never forget that my ways of doing can put people into a position where they are not hearing. And I also think culturally, we learn to hear. We learn who to listen to. And we don't really think about it. Um, you mentioned my triplet boys there. I'm aware when they were in their early years at school, they would do lessons on reading, on writing, on speaking, presenting.

There didn't seem to be anything specifically on listening unless you were learning a foreign language, and then you do listening. But it's kind of seen as that passive event that just happens. But it's a verb. To listen. We can get better at it. We have ways of doing and when we do listen and when we do hear others.

And I'm aware of things, for example, research and academia, that female lecturers are often rated more poorly, particularly in STEM subjects, than male counterparts. And in part, it's whose voice are we expected to hear?

Sarah: And we were chatting a little bit about this before we came on air, and I was saying that sometimes We expect other people to express themselves in a way that we can hear as opposed to us doing the work.

Do you think that listening and hearing are sort of culturally mitigated? Do different cultural backgrounds listen different? Or what gets in the way of us not being able to hear each other across cultural differences, do you think?

Lucy: Again, I think there's lots of things, so we learn to value and expect, the expectation of how people respond, we're taught at school in the UK, you know, put your hand up, answer the question, you know, all that, it's all about doing and communication.

But often I think we also learn, for example, we talk about some of what cultural values and the preferences. So we talk about, we were talking earlier about, are we relational or task based and what counts as a good use of time. So in that way, the culture shapes us. And I think gender plays a role there as well, as well as different elements of a culture, within cultures, subcultures, but that often results in a preference for we versus I in the spoken word. And for example, I've heard quite a few people talk about getting interview feedback where they've spoken to the we, rather than I, and then I've judged down for it within our UK context.

And being in training rooms, we've been discussing this. With people saying, yeah, I got feedback and that, that was why I wasn't selected. Or hearing people say, well, just tell people to talk about their individual contribution. But if you're saying that on repeat and someone thinks they're telling you that, but their preference is for the word we, then you are not hearing their cultural nuance.

You're imposing what you're expecting to hear. So there are places, I'm aware like Harvard did some training around this, so that it could hear cultural preference in the language and so interview differently, you know, and I think it's really important, I look back with a degree of shame when I was interviewing at the British Council, because absolutely people spoke to we, and at that time it was more often female voices. We heard that as somebody not able to articulate their contribution, as opposed to how we could listen to how that person made a contribution.

Sarah: Fascinating. How do you feel that a cultural intelligence approach might help us improve that, our listening skills?

Lucy: One of the things I would like to see in the cultural intelligence approach is more of a focus on listening.

So it's something I always bring into my workshops because I think it's so important, but it's not explicitly mentioned within the cultural intelligence approach and communication approach. So there's something about me that's adding that. And I think it's so central to each of the elements that we can't relate with other people and work it well with them if we do have less listening.

So one of the things I often think about is the Stephen Covey quote in his Seven Habits of Successful People. He's got the quote that says, we often listen with the intent of replying, not the intent of understanding. And I am aware. That's me. I'm aware of when I was looking at work, shifting it from the leadership programme you mentioned that ran across different Arab countries.

It had been running with the British Council in sub Saharan African countries. A bit of feedback from African participants was that British people don't really listen. They just jump in to solve. And when I read that, I thought, Oh, that's me. And that's the Stephen Covey quote as well. It's like, you tell me your problem and let me jump in.

I've got three suggestions for you, Sarah. And so being aware of that. And I hear that a lot in leadership groups as well. They just want to solve things. So there's no, bit about listening to the end. And as a coach, one of the things you really learn is to listen to the end and then to ask further questions, opening up questions rather than going into solve scenarios.

So without a doubt, I think there's that bit about you can learn to listen differently and particularly around noticing what's going on in your own head. And what judgements or what are you jumping to or what are you wanting to say and bringing attention into your, that that's happening enables you to actually come out of that and refocus on listening to what's going on.

Sarah: That self reflection is so important, isn't it? And also I was trying to listen very hard. I was listening to you there. I was thinking about also how do we listen for what's not said, so the things that might be taboo, or the things, the places where we want to ask questions, or the things people might not be comfortable to speak about because of their cultural preferences or values.

Lucy: Absolutely, and I think listen to what's not said is important. very difficult for people who are more familiar with working in a very direct context where people tell you things and if they don't tell you it's not important. And so, you know, that's the expectation. And so that bit about listening to what's not said and even having that as a thing.

What is the thought in your head? What is not being said here? What am I not hearing? Is a useful part to take away with you? And what else is happening? So much of listening. We're listening not just to the words. Or to the absence of words. Also, what is the, how is the person, you know, how are they, what are they looking at?

How are they coming across? Is there confidence? Is there sadness? Is there joy? You know, all these different things. So actually there's a bit of looking often as well as listening, which is harder for your listeners today, of course, because they are just listening. Yeah.

Sarah: Or possibly multitasking, in which case stop it and listen to Lucy.

But I think, um, these are such useful points and I'm thinking about. The, the practical, because one of the things you said to me earlier was sometimes you just need to take a breath and go right, you know, refocus the listening as it were, tune in a little bit more closely to what's happening in the conversation, the dialogue around you.

The pausing seems to be important as well, potentially.

Lucy: The pausing, the recognizing what's going on in your own head, because often that's what we react to rather than the person that we're listening. Two, the knowing in advance what you're going into a conversation for, you know, that bit about what are we bringing with us?

And I think that element of thinking, who have you listened to in your life? You know, who were you taught to listen to? What context? Are you a listener rather than a contributor in? And thinking through some of that, so that we build up that awareness of when I'm more likely to be listening, or when I'm less likely to be listening, you know, and I think that, or how do I judge things?

Because there's a body of work around you know, for example, there's a lovely book by Pragya Agarwal called Hysterical, The Myth of Gendered Emotions. And you know, if men speak about emotions, it's like they're granted, great, oh look how in touch they are. Whereas women talk about emotions, it's like, yeah, they're being overly emotional, so we judge more harshly.

So there's lots of elements, there's just so many layers.

Sarah: Yeah.

Lucy: It's complex and yet we see it as this very easy, passive thing. We hear it from politicians all the time, you know, we'll do more listening as though that's a really easy thing to do. Yeah. Actually, there's layers of complexity within it and I think it's useful not to get hung up on that, but to remind yourself of it.

Sarah: Yeah. It's brilliant. And I'm also thinking about how organizations listen to people within them. And I think a lot of what you've been saying probably feeds into how That's thought about in a sort of a leadership way or the communications team or whoever owns listening in the organization, which should be everybody actually.

But there's probably things to think about there as well. We could talk about this for days. We could get into power dynamics. We could get into bias. There's so many places we could go, but I'm going to restrain myself on the time. We'll be happy back for a second episode. I've asked everybody who I'm speaking to in this series to recommend a book or a podcast or a video or some other resource that people might find useful if they want to develop their own cultural intelligence or just learn more about this subject. What are you bringing us?

Lucy: I am going to say my favourite book on, um, cultural intelligence was Dr David Levermore's Driven by Difference.

What she has told me is not his favourite book of the ones he's done, but it's, it's, I, what I liked about it, what I took away. With just the different elements that contribute to us being able to develop our CQ and areas which are useful for thinking about listening, for example, what enables us to feel trust.

And there's elements about that that are very much shaped by our cultures as well. So I felt there were practical things I could take away and. incorporate into my training because of course that's the space that I'm in.

Sarah: Yeah and I can highly recommend training with Lucy. It's enlightening and challenging in the best ways and you will definitely get value and things to take away and think about as I obviously did.

Lucy, thank you. Anything else that you would like to share before we say goodbye?

Lucy: Oh, that's such a big, unfair question, Sarah.

Sarah: Relatively speaking.

Lucy: What I'm just going to say is, if you're even thinking about your listening, you're doing more than many and good on you. Just keep willing yourself on, be kind to yourself, be kind to others.

Sarah: I love that.

Thank you very much, Lucy. It's been a delight.

Lucy: Thank you.