3 simple ways to create connection across cultural difference
Join me tomorrow for our next GROUP HELP Lab at noon ET. Zoom link inside.
A year into the pandemic, I was co-facilitating a high-stakes Zoom call for a global organization going through a rough period. People were joining from more than a dozen countries. There were conversations people had been avoiding, and real tension within the group.
Before the pandemic, my conflict resolution work would have never occurred on Zoom. It would have been considered almost offensive or careless. These were the kinds of conversations where people needed to sit together, feel each other, and be in the same physical room, even – especially – when all they wanted to do was rush for the door. But like so many things, the pandemic upended that assumption. And, almost overnight, we facilitators had to suddenly figure out how to help people hold heat, fight well, and stay in the Zoom.
In the middle of one of these tense, high-stakes virtual all-hands meetings, as I was facilitating, I realized out of the corner of my eye that my laptop was about to die.
I had traveled to my colleague’s office to run the meeting together from two laptops in two different rooms. I reached into my backpack for my charger, plugged it in, and nothing. The magnet wouldn’t attach. I peered into the slot where the charger was supposed to go and saw crumbs. I had stuck my laptop (without a case!) into my backpack – the same backpack I had taken for a weekend hike with my kids (and their cereal crumbs). To my horror, I realized that my children’s cereal crumbs had gotten lodged in the charging port.
I ran out into the shared space and called to my co-facilitator, “Do you have a handheld vacuum?” I had no choice but to pause the meeting and tell the staff what was going on. “I’m so sorry. My battery is about to die. It turns out my laptop has my children’s cereal crumbs stuck inside it. I’m going to try to fix this and be back in a few minutes.”
I didn’t want to leave them in a vacuum. I wracked my brain for a relevant magical question: “While I’m gone, drop into the chat, if something from your bag got stuck in your laptop, what would your crumb be?”
And then my screen went black.
We managed to vacuum out the port. I plugged back in and re-entered the Zoom. To my great relief, the chat was full of answers: Doritos, Za’atar, Cheetos, Samosa crumbs, black licorice, seaweed snacks, pistachio shells, Tajín, plantain chip crumbs, and ChinChin crumbs. A cascade of specific, cultural, oddly intimate answers had lit up the Zoom chat.
Though I was clearly a hot mess, in telling the truth, I had made a semi-sanitized space more real. I told them what was going on and invited them in. And, I was lucky to have landed on a question that helped them connect across difference and distance through specificity. In the middle of a high-stakes conversation across difference, people had just offered small, human glimpses into their worlds. They all had crumbs in their backpacks. But your Cheetos might be my Za’atar.
We went back to the “main” conversation, but the crumbs moment had shifted something. They remembered they were real people in real places. (Including your humble, disorganized facilitator.) And, they were full of juicy, specific complexity.
Connection across difference doesn’t mean erasing what makes us distinct. It’s about finding conversational doorknobs that invite curiosity and specificity. That’s why I’m thrilled for this week’s GROUP HELP Lab: How to Create Connection Across Cultural Difference.
Join me tomorrow, Wednesday, April 15, at 12 pm ET on Zoom, where we’ll break down what to do when you’re gathering people across difference, without flattening people’s identities. We’ll look at real examples, and I’ll share three simple shifts I use in my own work on how to help people show up as more than just a category.
These labs are for GROUP LIFERS. If you’re a Group Life member, you can find the Zoom link below. At 12 pm Eastern, click to join. You’ll enter the waiting room, and we’ll let you in as soon as we’re live.
And if you’re not yet a paid subscriber, become a GROUP LIFER today. For the cost of a sandwich a month, you’ll get access to all past sessions and join us for future labs. It’s pretty great.
Can’t wait to see you there,
Priya