Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Roots to Routes, where we explore how the journey and experiences of the family that came before us, and the life choices that they made can have a huge role to play on how we were raised, where we’ve ended up, and the culture and values that we now choose to live our own lives by. This episode in many ways could not have been more perfect for the show and for two major reasons. Firstly, my guest today, Liu Liu, who was born in China, is a prime example of how tracing back the lives led by both sets of his grandparents paints a clear picture on the influence that it’s had on his relationships, who he went on to marry, and why he ended up in the UK. Secondly, it’s the work he’s focused on now that brings out some of the most valuable points that I look to bring about in this podcast.

How do we understand the evolution of our culture? And how can we benefit by understanding how it differs to other peoples as the world becomes increasingly more globalized? On coming to the UK, Liu Liu started life in the post room and worked his way up to the boardroom with his influence extending in over 50 countries. And in this episode, you can expect to learn how to optimize your chance of success when marrying outside of your own culture, dealing with gender dynamics in a cross cultural relationship, what the 3 types of mixed culture relationships are, why some immigrants may come with an attitude problem, 2 tips for when you move abroad and feel like you’re having to start again, how to become a good leader of a multicultural team, and much more. Remember, if you do find this useful, entertaining, or inspiring, then you can do the simple favor of hitting the follow button if you haven’t done so already.

It means bigger guests, better quality, and it helps make the world a more culturally connected and collaborative place to live in. Thank you. I hope you enjoy the episode. Hello, Liu Liu. Welcome.

Hi. Thank you very much, Anand, for having me here in your program. If people aren’t aware of who you are, you’re an intercultural coach and consultant. That’s right. Yes.

So I’m really what I’m doing is helping people, managers, and companies to be able to manage their multicultural teams work better, more effectively and efficiently. Because there’s a illusion nowadays under the disguise where everybody speaks English, and then people assume we all speak the same language. But that is not the case because we all, like you and me, come from different cultural and heritage and background. And, how we interpret one thing is entirely different. That will affect the team performance.

For me, I really believe that this is so key in the world that we live in, especially given, you know, the way that the world is going. Things are becoming more global, both in terms of businesses expanding, but also in terms of the, you know, the maneuverability of people, both geographically to physically move, but just in terms of how people are now interacting with, others in the rest of the world. So for me, there’s loads of history to why intercultural understanding, collaboration, and communication is so important. And it’s, you know, I just think it’s such a moment of serendipity that we managed to get in touch following my episode with Sonia. And this is exactly what I’m looking to build out.

It’s the learnings that I wanna take from previous episodes. And the fact that you are doing this you know, I always think that there’s a time and a place that things happen. And, sometimes I wondered, what do I really want people to get from the podcast? Or what am I really bringing the value in? And this is exactly what I think it is, you know, from the understanding of different people.

In your case, one thing I like to explain it as is the series of dominoes that when one falls, everything else falls after that. But before that first one has been flicked, it doesn’t become easy to understand further down the line where it began. Now I know there’s only so far back that we

can go in our history, but in your sense for you, what can you recall, or what do you know of in your history, whether it’s in your life or in previous generations, where that first domino must have fallen that’s ultimately got you to the position you’re in today? Yes. I think, you are quite right.

We often think that these things happened, like, now, but it started way before. In my case, there are 2 generations I can trace back to. It’s one of my parents and my grandparents, from both sides. So if I may start from the father’s side, the grandparents. So they are China.

I’m from China, by the way. So China is a big country. So the father’s side is from the north of the country. So my grandparents of my father’s side, they are from north. I think they are my granddad was very well educated, through the university back in the 19 twenties.

That was something quite rare, to be very educated at the university level. Those universities are increasingly run by the Americans, American missionaries to be precise. So there are 8 siblings of the grandfather’s side, 2 boys and 6 sisters. And then to fast forward the story a little bit, So the war broke out in the forties or the that’s a second world war. So the China was fighting the Japanese, and then the Japanese quickly overrun half of China.

So the father’s family have to come run away from the invasion. So that’s where they are that’s where that’s why they were coming down from the north to the south of the country. My mother’s side, interestingly, were from the south of the country, But that’s also not, entirely kind of isolated. So my grandmother of my mother’s side has also have 4 siblings, 2 sisters, 2 brothers. So one of the brothers were actually working for the French railway company.

So if you know about the, Chinese recent history, the French actually is part of the into China, so called Indochina. So is consists of today’s Cambodia, Vietnam, and part of Yunnan in China. So they build the, the first, international railway, if you like, if not the first railway in China is from Hanoi to Kunming, my birth my home city. So my grand great, my grand uncle, who I’ve never met, worked with the French on that railway but died at a young age of heart attack. So some both sides of family has some kind of a international connection we like.

So and since we were growing up, we kept hearing stories from both of them. And my mom’s mom, my grandmother, she’s also a if you call that the new age, woman at the time back in the 19 twenties because she joined the, again, medical school, also run by the Germans and French. And she was when I grow up, she was telling us that the instructors were from Germany. All the prescriptions, like, in the world and everything were written actually in German or French. So, yeah, it is it’s like being international.

It’s nothing new to me when I grow up, so it’s kind of a drip fit. It becomes kind of a norm, isn’t it? And I imagine that’s a situation that was quite unique for that time period, especially given, you know, we’re talking about China where now you see them as such a having such an increasing global presence. Back then the, you know, there was a history where they were on the rise, but compared to do you know the people around them, you know, you mentioned your grandma and what she was involved in. I imagine this was quite a unique situation of having that much exposure to cultures that and I’m you know, we’re gonna get into a lot of this, but there’s a book called The Culture Map by Erin Meyer, fascinating book.

And it talks about how cultures, can have such an influence on communication styles, feedback styles. And in a lot of cases, places like Germany and France are quite extreme opposites to the Chinese culture and the and the sense of community, etcetera. So that exposure to such a different culture, you know, what what did that make them quite unique for their time? Yeah. I would think I would think so because, like you say, the mother’s side, they were had exposure with the German and the French.

And then the father’s side, he started with American. So that gave them quite an influence in their way of, like, outlook on life, and then how they relate to people. So, yeah, in many ways, I can I can see now they’re looking back, and they were quite so called open minded because, like you say, back in the thirties, forties, China was still relatively a close country per se for the everyday people and foreigners or westerners, Europeans, be like it’s are those who are you look at them from distance? But in my family’s case, they had the first hand interaction with them. Yeah.

It reminds me of when I first started this podcast, and I was gathering stories from my own family background. And I think it was only then when I started to firsthand hear about their childhood and the experiences that they went through, similar to what you’re sharing now. And one of the things was because they moved into East Africa where they were already in a place that was different to being from originally from India, but the businesses that they were involved in, they were interacting with the Europeans that were based there. And they were normally, you know, the, you know, members of, of parliament or something to do with a governmental organization or maybe they were a teacher, something, in the social space. These are the kind of Europeans that found themselves present in East Africa.

And the fact that both my grandparents and my parents’ generation had that exposure where they were part of a grocery shop selling to them, it opened them up to knowing how to interact with them. And, you know, back to this communication style, there’s a very different approach and something you’re probably very familiar with is the high context and low context, communication styles. Right? That’s right. That’s right.

These would be examples where, especially coming from Western Europe, the Europe is quite mixed, but compared to coming from places like India, China, Japan, where there is a deep, rich history, and a lot of the communication is implied in between what is said. You know, the Japanese have a term for it which translates as reading the air. I’m not sure if you know the what it is in Japanese. Yeah. There is a similar kind of expression in the Chinese.

It’s called reading the color of the face. Okay. Yeah. It’s similar. Yeah.

It’s all about unsaid. I think within that, what I got a really strong appreciation for was having that inbuilt in my history. It became a lot easier for me, or I had such a bigger appreciation for that intercultural differences in awareness. So when people say things like, oh, you, you know, you find it really easy to speak to anyone, or you seem really comfortable in any environment that you’re in. I think a lot of that is deep rooted in how we are raised and what we see, you know, our parents or guardians do in terms of, do they have a broad circle of different people that they speak to from different backgrounds?

Do you see or do you believe that in, you know, the stories you shared of the experiences that your previous generations had, that it’s had an impact on how you’ve approached people from different backgrounds? Absolutely. I think, for me, that generation, the previous the grandparents’ generation, what they created is some kind of different culture. When it comes to culture, we talk about cultural norms. Yeah.

So but the norm is actually quite subjective and it’s formed. So it could be related to the cultural norm of one race, one people group, and also one family. So their exposure with the Europeans actually made them to form a different types of cultural norm, in comparison to your say your, no ordinary Chinese. I think that’s one thing I now, notice. So it means they see that interacting with people who are not with the same race and country is okay.

It’s normal. There’s nothing to be scared of. Or, if you see there’s this thing called the at the equal level as well. So it’s not that you have to look up, to them or look down on them, but you can look at the equal level. So I think that’s a different kind of cultural norm.

That’s a fascinating point, and I wanna come back to that shortly. But, you know, just on the point of how you were raised with those kind of values, what influence did that have on, say, your schooling years? Did you see yourself in in any way different to those around you? Yeah. That’s a very good question because very often now, I think back.

I really I think it’s almost like all this influence or drip feed from my grandparents, but also, more importantly, because my parents’ generation, they lived through the close period of China, the from the fifties sixties and to seventies. But they somehow, they carried that cultural norm of it’s okay to interact with foreigners. And also they carried a dream because, like, from my from my father’s side, the 8 siblings of my grandfather, 6 of them actually went to the States with Americans after 1949, the new government formed. So they carried the dream. So, actually, your world is much bigger than just in China, and it’s okay.

So almost to the extremes today, you need to go abroad to explore. The world is much bigger out there. So that has really influenced my thinking. And I didn’t know how, but, obviously, in the young age. And then I knew that my life trajectory will be different.

Because when I went back to China for the kind of school reunion many years ago, and several of them actually told me I didn’t remember. Said, oh, when you were in school, you always said you want to go abroad. You also said you want to go abroad. But I didn’t realize, actually, there was influence there. So that kind of the seed of the dream obviously, affected me.

Yeah. It’s really interesting hearing this side of your story because for people who aren’t aware so I spent 2 years working in China back for from 2017 to 2019, and that was my first real exposure to living in a completely different culture. Of course, you know, I’d traveled quite a bit. I’d visited family in India and Africa, but this is my first exposure to a completely new environment, both personally and professionally. And one thing that I have read and it really resonated with me is this idea of how the Chinese people, culturally and it, you know, stems back to Confucius times.

They almost have this this different approach to what I would say is in person and out person. And that basically means anyone that they already have a relationship with, whether it’s personally or professionally or in any context versus those that they don’t. And, you know, in I think in Confucius’ teachings, it teaches a lot about how to go about your relationship with people that you know, less about people that you don’t. And often that culture can be perceived as quite, dismissive to, you know, new people, to foreigners, to travelers, to strangers. Whereas, you know, I’ve experienced once I formed a relationship with people in China, no matter what seniority, the amount that they accept you in, almost as family into your home, is like nothing that I’ve ever seen.

And, really, that shows the genuinity of how once they know you and they hold this this tie with you, that genuine side comes out. Whereas if they don’t have that, it’s not that they don’t judge you. It’s nothing personal. It’s nothing against you. It’s just we don’t have that relationship, so there isn’t that bond that needs building on.

Did you see a lot of that in in your time spent there? And, you know, again, given that the sort of upbringing that you saw, in that way, was there a contrast to maybe how your perspectives were in perceiving, you know, foreigners, which I think is right, which means, you know, the people from the outside. That’s right. Yeah. And maybe those, you know, the people that you knew in school or beyond.

How it happens is almost like you, your brain direct to action. And then I think my father is quite a good this had this quite big vision. So he actually sent me to the, translator school after my I graduated from high school. So and from there because I was doing quite well in my class, and

one of my teachers, recommending me to a job in the university, a language center. That’s where I started my full exposure to the foreigners, if you like, because that is a language center receiving foreign students come to learn Chinese.

So I was not teaching, but I was on the management side. So at its peak time, we receive students from over 100 countries a year. So that is really, like you say, the full exposure to relate to the fullness. But I think it’s a learning process even though I had those, like, hearsay about previous generation, but it is still a learning process for me during that time how I ought to relate to, like, your inner self, outer self, how I relate to the foreigners. So and I, yeah, I started to notice difference because you they are not necessarily interested in it’s the difference between, like you say, the so called relationship based culture and the task oriented culture.

So for the task oriented culture, they can’t talk about issues with you, but they are not necessarily interested to build anything, relationship deeper than that. I think there is a kind of learning process. At times, I got disappointed. I said, oh, that’s what we got on so well working on this. But then after that, they said, well, that’s fine.

That’s it. The task finished. We are just, acquaintance. But and then, moving to England, even still today, I still struggle the terms people use. And the colleagues, people I work with, the friends, I think, like you have experienced in China, the line is quite blurred because people at work interact a lot socially.

And then eventually, they form some kind of quite tight relationship. And not for everybody, but, generally, yeah, the people you work with, it’s also part of your social group. While in the UK, it’s not the case. People are quite clear to say, yeah, you’re the people I work with, but you’re not my favorite friends. Doesn’t matter how close you get to at workplace.

That’s a strange notion to me still. Yeah. I remember it reminds me of an example of and, you know, I caught myself doing it as well, the exact thing you were saying that we had a, our team, which was in an international business function, so there were many international colleagues. And there was a Chinese girl who had joined, and she built, you know, a good relationship with everyone. And then someone in our team, he who’d been there for a while, and he was very well liked within our team.

We got along with him well, like you were saying. But then he lost his job. And, you know, we were obviously sad, but it was one of those things that was part of what happens in the working world. Right? And the Chinese girl who had also built a good relationship with him and the rest of the team, she seemed quite almost hurt or just, you know, perplexed at the idea.

She was asking, what are we gonna do for him when he leaves? And, you know, what are we gonna get for him as a gift? And it would make sense for us to keep in touch. And the fact that, you know, none of that happened, we didn’t really keep in touch with him. It’s not that we completely dissociate associated, but he went from being a friend, you know, in the workplace, but still a friend, to almost, oh, well, life goes on.

And she explained how she found that very strange that, you know, you form this relationship with someone. Sure. It’s out at work, and you still have your outside friends and family. But now that he’s gone, it’s almost like he didn’t exist to us. And she said that’s not as common where she came from, where once that relationship is formed at work, it is it’s a relationship regardless of whether it’s in or out of the office.

I left China for 23 years now, so I’m actually still texting one of my work colleagues from the university talking about some business opportunity. But yeah. So in China, how the social unit really facilitate the forming relationship, it’s very tight. It’s like school, classmates, university

classmates. Every year, the school classmates, not for everybody, but that kind of relationship and also your relationship with the teachers, is quite tight.

And then, like you say, a workplace. So when you are introduced, in China, say, oh, this is my classmate. So the further back, the more prestige. It’s like this is my primary school or kindergarten body. Then it almost, like, opened a green door a green lights, to those opportunities because there’s that implies a trust and trustworthy, to the 3rd party you’re introduced to.

So, yeah, like you say, it is, it’s quite long lasting. And it makes a lot of sense. Right? If I have a strong trust in you and you bring along a new person and you said you’ve known them for, you know, decades, for example, that to me should signify that I can automatically build some kind of trust to this person. But then you’re right.

That takes a bit more of a, a relationship oriented mindset, especially when it comes to colleagues. So you mentioned that you did, you know, leave China and come to the UK. When at what point did that occur? So that is going back to my job working in this language center. Then when I was working there, you know, in in your youth, I have no shame about talking about it.

So you’re interested in growth, obviously. But going back to that open mind and open mind attitude, so my search for wife is not actually restricted to the Chinese goals. So then my wife, actually, she was studying in a center. She’s from England. But also, they she’s there for the longer term, but they also sent some short term teams coming to, study.

So, through the work relationship, like, has organized it with us. So backwards, forwards, so we just kind of formed the relationship. And then we eventually yeah. We got married after dating for a couple years. We got married, and then we, yeah, moved to lived in Thailand for a year and then came to the UK.

So the interestingly, I want to mention this point here is the choice to move into Thailand when we first got married is we made a deliberate decision because we knew that for cross cultural marriage, to work or to start well, you want to form your identity as married couple in the 3rd culture. Because if you start with, if you start in any of the, culture, your the home culture, say, China or England, the automatically, it forces the other person to sort of comply or adjust. While you live in a third culture, you both need to work together, to adjust to another culture. So that actually helps the bonding as a newly married couple. So we did that.

Yeah. And then we came to the UK. So that’s a that’s a story. Yeah. It’s an approach that I’ve never really considered before.

And I’m trying to think about situations where even in my own family, there’s a lot of cross cultural overlap. And I can see the benefit, especially when it comes to, like you say, you know, then moving to the UK. So you’re then raising kids that are growing up with multiple identities and culture. But you’re right. When you start that exploration together, then you’re learning it at it from the foundation up as a as a couple.

The approach to when you married or started to first date your now wife, the response from your own family and community, what was that like? There is a, there’s a gender dynamics going on when you are dating a foreigner, if you like. So the gender dynamic is quite, it’s a biased one. So if, say, a European particularly dating a Chinese woman. So the general undertone, if people are saying this, she’s a gold digger.

So and then also perceives that European man is rich, but not both are not necessarily that two. But then if you switch around, say, a Chinese man dating a white European woman, We had that smaller ones. We go on straight. So because, yeah, my wife didn’t speak. She’s learned Chinese,

but didn’t speak that much.

So I was translating. We go shopping, and then there’s shop owners who say, oh, are you her translator? I said, no. Actually, we are dating. And all of a sudden, I got this halo around my head.

It’s like, oh, well done, boy. You did us did our country proud. So I think that kind of gender dynamic is still happening today. But in terms of more my family, it’s okay. Almost like for them, it’s something they were not objecting to.

So because of this previous generation exposure with foreignness we like. They were okay. So I think, at that time, the only thing my dad had problem with is because his dad and all his aunt went to America. And he has my dad has had a very strong bond with Americans, and he always wanted me to marry an American wife, So to marry a British woman, it’s a little bit, an unknown side to him, but I think he’s okay at the end. Hey guys, just a quick message on something really exciting that I’ve been working on.

If you’ve listened to a few of the previous episodes then you will know what I’m talking about already, But I promise I’ll make it worth it for those of you who haven’t. So I’ve got a team who are working on building a platform called lifetimes. This is a place where you can see your family tree, but also each connection has their own personal profile. The idea here is that they will capture the most important memories, experiences and life lessons that they want to preserve and pass on to the future generations. The app will allow you to record conversations of yourself or of anyone else in your family.

Tag other people and the time of the event that they’re speaking about, and this will auto populate it on your very own life timeline. As the app builds out, there’s gonna be more and more features. But for now, all I’m asking is if you’d like to know more and to be alerted when the app is released, by the way you will get free access to this for the next 12 months, then you can go to lifetimesapp.com. That’s lifetimesapp.com where you can leave just your email address and you’ll find out as soon as it’s released. The link will be in the description wherever you’re listening to this episode.

If you wanna find out more you can email me or DM me on Instagram and I will tell you anything you wanna know. That’s it for me. Now back to the episode. How much do you think that when it comes to the route that people take in their relationships, be it friends or be it more, a romantic relationship, is influenced by, well, firstly, that family history, but also the family dynamic of how much sort of precedence that a person gives to what their family think. So that is very true.

In a traditional Chinese family, the your marriage, it has to be although they say, oh, you can go and find your love, That’s okay. But they still have to go through the approval process by both side of parents. But the thing is, at times, the parents’ opinion can have quite a stronghold, on the decision. In many cases, the parents decide who you can can’t marry. And, yeah, there are a lot of unparent stories.

So but in my case, it on the one hand, they are okay, because they are having this open minded attitude towards foreigner. But on the other hand, at the practical level, it’s unknown to them. They don’t know how to relate to my then girlfriend, of course, and there’s no interaction with the family because of a language barrier. So they couldn’t somehow, use that parental power, if you like, to affect our relationship. So then that gives us the freedom, more freedom to make decision.

So because otherwise, you would have more of a issue to navigate all those parental guidance. You know what I mean? The parental guidance. But there’s also another label. Another level is at the individual level is about your personal decision and choice.

Because I think if you look online now, there are a lot more, cross cultural marriage with a Chinese man and a woman. You can still hear that, actually, if the husband decide to follow that kind of parental guidance and rules, that can put quite a bit pressure on the foreign wife. Vice but on the vice versa, if the lady is from China the wife is from China, the husband is from the outside, because the gender dynamic, then you have less of an issue. It’s brought something up which makes me really interested in this whole, inter cultural relationship dynamic piece, which actually is not a route that I thought we would go down on this conversation, but it I think it all ties in so well. So in the, you know, the context of the workplace, there’s it’s very hard to, say, break out or distinguish the east and the west and generalize because there’s so many nuances in terms of the history of even, you know, if you look at the Roman history versus the Viking history, it means there’s such a huge difference between the approach of Scandinavian countries versus, you know, Latin countries.

But in in one thing where I see a lot of cross or commonality where of east versus west or, you know, Asia versus, a lot a lots of parts of Europe and America is the approach to, hierarchy in in the workplace sense, but then, you know, you can even tie it back to family. So, you know, I come from a family background where there is so much respect for anyone who is older. So even if I look at my dad who has 8 different siblings, the oldest sibling of that generation is almost, you know, revered for what her role is as the motherly figure now that my grandma has passed away. And I, I saw that as very common when I visited Japan and when I spent time in China. In the workplace, you see that as well.

There’s a, when I worked there, there’s a huge level of, reverence for the boss in terms of them setting the direction. Or even if you want to give feedback on something, you normally go through your hierarchy. So you approach your manager who then approaches level at the top. If you go to somewhere like Germany or like the UK, places where they live more by the egalitarian approach, so it’s flat hierarchy. Everyone is free to say there’s no obvious distinction between someone who’s of a high grade.

Have you seen when it comes to that family dynamic or, you know, firstly, in the relationship that you have, but the understanding of between her family and your family, where do you notice that difference? And is there a need to be able to be aware of that so that you can navigate it properly? In my personal case, actually, there isn’t such issue with the hierarchy because, well, somehow, we managed to live quite an independent life, meaning, as a married couple at the unit. So, yeah, we interact well with both side family. But in terms of the decision making, we might ask for, like, sending voters to discuss, but we don’t feel there is a pressure from both sides to expect us to follow their decision.

Because I often say in Chinese culture or India, the word said, oh, we’ll just give you advice. But, actually, in many sense, that’s not advice. That’s an order. So if you don’t follow that advice, you are viewed as quite disobedient. But, yeah, in my case, that’s not such an issue because we like, we set a tone from the beginning, that this is yeah.

We are at an equal level. There are times, before that the Chinese side of family, were expecting me to so called to take the lead in certain things in decision making, but I explained to them, we make decision jointly. So it’s a combination. So it’s also an educational process. When you have a cross cultural marriage, it’s an educational process to both families as well.

What advice would you give to someone who may be facing that, you know, almost culture shock when they get into a marriage where they come from a cultural approach, whether it’s the hierarchy versus the egalitarian approach, where they enter into a family dynamic that is almost at the other extreme? Interestingly, you’re asking this. I actually wrote a, blog article about cross cultural marriage. In that article, I refer to 3 types of marriages, the so called multicultural, cross

culture, and intercultural marriage. So let me explain.

The so called multicultural marriage is like you have 2, people come together to get married, but they are respecting each other’s cultures and differences. But then there’s no interaction. They almost like that they are together by love, but they live practically a quite a separate life. So none of them want to make the move to change, to adjust. The second is called so called cross cultural relationship.

It’s that when you talk about cross culture, it normally implies there’s one dominant culture, The other one conforms or adjusts. So then the third the ideal one I would suggest is intercultural. Meaning, you are coming from a different place. You’re bringing into the relationship your different heritage tradition. But at the same time, you interact, you learn from each other, and you are cocreating something new.

So let me give you an example in in in my household, our food. So we cook a whole range of food. So we cook Chinese. My wife now know how to stir fry. It’s better than I do.

So we cook Chinese. We cook Indian together. Yeah. We cook German food because yeah. But my wife is actually half German as well.

But that attitude, the intercultural means we are open to, bringing new aspect, new cultures even we are not our own, and then cocreate something. So this would be the advice I’d give to people. I said, don’t expect one to conform or judge to the other. But, yeah, bring in the richness of both view sides and then co create something new. Yeah.

Absolutely love that. And, you know, this this understanding of, you know, intercultural awareness, but also, I would say, intercultural integration is, you know, something that really fascinates me about the work that you’re doing. But it’s not always what you did. Right? It’s quite a long journey.

I was working in university. When I first arrived in the UK. My first job, I was very fortunate because I had the hospitality training. So I applied for a job in a pub in Horsham, the town I’m living in still, called the King’s Head. So as you know, the King’s Head is as British as you can get.

I’m sure I’ve been to a king’s head somewhere. Absolutely. But that is really throw me into the deep end of cultural learning. So I remember, coming out from the first shift, I work on the bar, and, then the restaurant. I was telling Alison, I was like, how can English people have that many type of alcoholic drinks and the combination?

It just mind boggling. I worked in the pub for 3 months, and then I then went to work in this in, its organization, this international relief and development organization. Interestingly, I applied for a kind of administrative level job, but then, they think my English was not so good at the time. Fair enough. And then they called me back to say, do you want a job in the post room?

So, yeah, that’s how I started. I worked in the post room, and then I worked my way up to now. I lead a global team of, yeah, working in 50 countries. You know, there’s something about this story which I can really reflect on in a lot of the stories I’ve heard where people have moved country, which is they form a certain basis for themselves in the country that they grew up in. And then they decide whether it was by a personal choice.

So whether it was a push or pull factor. Push factors I see is something where they had to move because of whether it’s attention, you know, in extreme cases of war, but something has pushed them to move out. The pull factors are obviously what I like to link to having this entrepreneur my entrepreneurial mindset that they’ve decided something is drawing me to a new place, whether

it’s to set up a new business or to set up a better life for their family. But, you know, in a large number of these stories, there is a case of accepting a level of life or a, a certain level that you’ve got to where you’ve almost had to step back down the ladder a bit to then be able to climb further up. I totally agree.

Because, when you move to a new country, very often, many trained people like myself, you it’s a journey and the mindset issue. I really want to emphasize this mindset. You need to recognize whatever, you have done back in your country, almost like being press the reset button. Everything starts from scratch. But the question for anybody who’s listening or watching is that, are you willing to do 2 things?

1, is to not give up your dream. A second is to start from the basics. So even today, I’m thinking I want to write a book about my journey. The title is called from the post room to the boardroom. Nice.

Because now I sit in a boardroom 3 organizing international organizations. So it said the mindset. Yeah. Are you willing not to give up your dream, like you said, even if you start from low. And second is, to have the learning and adaptive mindset not to complain and compare.

When you come to work, living in a new country, things are different. But don’t compare them as which one is better. So because you say which one is better, that for sure will lead you down to the very negative road. Because you are now you will end up in a situation that you’re not able to go back. You’re always dreaming, thinking that, oh, my homeland is so much better than here.

But then that close your mind to learn and to appreciate the good side of your new home. Then you will end up stuck in this place that you cannot progress. So you need to have an open attitude, a learning a learning mindset, and then also work out the practical steps. So where do you start? There’s this term, I’m wondering if you’ve heard of it, called well, it’s the happiness conundrum.

And the context it’s used in, is so the way I have first heard about it is it talks about how over time as, you know, things get better, and by that, I mean, there’s new efficiencies of technology, the medical establishment improves, quality of life gets better, on the whole, people’s life situation, as time goes on is objectively improving. But the expectation also goes up as much or if not, even more than those efficiencies and advancements have happened. And the knock on effect is those expectations probably got more because everyone around you is also experiencing those improvement benefits. And the issue that we have and there’s a philosopher called Montesquieu who came up with this quote, which is that if you only wish to be happy, then this can be quite easily accomplished. But we wish to be happier than other people, and it can be difficult because we always perceive people as happier than they are.

Right? So as time goes on, the fact that everyone around you, you see them having that improved quality of life because that multiplies. Really, even though our life is getting better, our happiness is actually going down because if we we’ve anchored it on, the sense of those people around us. Relating that back to the context that you’re talking about, you know, when you anchor a certain happiness on what was on the other side of that decision that you, in this case, did take or or didn’t take for other cases, that that expectation, creates that conundrum. But the question I wanna ask is when you were based in China versus Thailand versus here, did you did you see that unfold in real life scenarios, how people were ultimately living this happiness conundrum that even maybe if you move to somewhere that was more developed or an improved quality of life, it didn’t necessarily translate in terms of happiness.

Absolutely. Actually, one image I often use is that it’s like people swimming. So each of so called country or culture, it’s like a like a little island. So, say, if you move from one place to another so

you basically, you swim from a to b or b to c. So the picture is for people who don’t want to give up what they had.

So then while they’re swimming towards the next destination, they keep looking back. And then they don’t want to land in this new destination because there’s a fear, there’s a suspicion, there’s a bias. And then they somehow caught in the middle, so they can’t go back. They don’t want to land in this new culture, fully immersed, fully integrate. So they eventually get exhausted, weighed down by life.

And very often, there is for immigrants, there is an attitude issue as well, thinking, oh, they just discriminate towards us. There might be some truth in that, but I want to challenge people to say, what is your limiting belief? And are you are you happy, to settle where you are? So yeah. So and then you can’t turn around you talk about the push and pull.

So one almost like once you have that kind of mindset that, oh, people are treating me unfairly, then that starts to guide your behavior, then becomes a circle. So almost like you, if you somebody, say, your friend said, oh, he or she wants to buy a red car, you start talking in a group. Right? And after leaving that conversation, you go on straight. All of a sudden, everywhere you see red car.

Well, you don’t see that before. So because once you have that idea and mindset, you started to look for evidence to support that. That becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah. It’s really fascinating.

And there’s a thing called stereotype threat, which is one of the things that, especially coming from my background. So my backstory is I was born in London, so I had all the privileges of growing up in, you know, in a, like you say, a multicultural place, not necessarily intercultural, but multicultural place. So I was exposed to these different backgrounds. But me being of Indian heritage, I went through school being able to be around diverse people, but also to blend in without ever feeling outed or segregated. But then, you know, as I’ve explored this area more exactly to what you’re saying, there’s a lot of, psychological influence that being grouped under a specific, you know, whether it’s ethnicity, even gender, certain belief system that you hold, and being told that can have a drastic impact on the way that you perform in certain things.

So one example being, you know, there was there were studies done where, people were told before going students were told before going into a math test that, you know, this is a test to verify that, you know, East Asian people are good at mathematics. And when that kind of precedence was set, they actually performed better than the other group who were given the same test but not told that and, you know, by just quite a statistical margin. Similar things have been seen in, you know, when they’re told that, oh, guys do better than girls at x. It tends to be that when girls are told that, they tend to perform worse. And, you know, relating that exactly to what you’re saying, this this idea of once you have either been grouped or group yourself within a category, you perceive the reaction or outcomes that you get from other people in that way.

So if, you know, if I thought of myself as a minority and then my boss gave me some, in his eyes or her eyes, constructive criticism, I might not take it as just pure constructive criticism, and I might see it as actually attacking my identity. Do you see that we are evolving away from that kind of we as society or people from these backgrounds evolving away from that, or do you think it’s getting worse? So what we’re touching here is the issue about self belief as well as the, bias or unconscious bias. So the three things need to be really, clear. So the self belief is about what self talk you are telling yourself.

Who are you? Who do you want to be? So that will guide your direction. So if when I’m telling me that when I was working against the post room, what I’m telling me is I vividly remember one day

I was pushing the post shortly? I said, if anything, one day when I leave this organization, I will never leave from the post room because I’m meant for more.

I know I can I know I can do more, than this current job? So that’s the self belief. Yeah. One of the first things is the self talk. What are you telling yourself?

Who are you, and who do you want to be? In terms of bias, so it’s sometimes, it’s like you say the self imposed bias. You think people are biased against you. They might not be the might not be true. But then there’s also the certain is that they are bias against the people like you and me with different colored skin, a different cultural background that still unfortunately, it still exists.

That’s a fact. So but how you behave almost like can really break that kind of bias as well. So how you conduct yourself, how you behave yourself can break that bias because yeah. Because when people see that how who you are and how you behave and conduct is entirely different from their stereotypical perception, then that helps. So every little helps.

And in terms of bias, unfortunately, it still exists. I think it’s we all are biased one way or another. So the thing is to really learn how to catch ourselves, in those uncomfortable moment. And, yeah, it’s starting from ourselves to learn not to say almost, like, what you don’t want whatever you don’t want to be treated, don’t do it to others as well. I think this is, you know, a long term exercise for people to be able to navigate these unconscious biases.

But, you know, if I’m if I’m thinking of my understanding of unconscious biases, it seems that within what the word is, it’s unconscious. So I’m not purposely or consciously making the effort to enact that. I it’s just, you know, unconsciously, I am being biased. I could see that as, well, if it’s unconscious, then there’s not really much I can do about it. What is, you know, in in very short, because, you know, I know this would be a, probably a long term transformation, but what can people do to shift away from this supposed unconscious action or attitude that they’re taking, in something linked to, well, you know, in other words of bias discrimination?

So, I was actually giving a training to one of the journalists the other day. We touched on this subject, unconscious bias. It’s whenever you or me have this automatic opinion about certain things or certain people or an event, As soon as we have this kind of quite generalized or even sometimes extreme opinion, that’s a moment of us being unconsciously biased. So that’s a moment we need to catch ourselves to say, oh my goodness. How on earth do I have that thought?

So that is my unconscious bias. But now example is if you take the flight, right, and when the, announcement comes through from the cockpit of the flight? If it’s a lady pilot, how would you respond? I’m thinking it would be surprising. Exactly.

So that’s those are the kind of moment that we catch ourselves. We have a unconscious bias. Why is it so normal to hear a man’s voice as a pilot but not a woman? Yeah. So it happens quite more often than we realize.

Yeah. We just need to, yeah, capture that, particularly, towards people groups. Even at workplace, the other day, we had a group team meeting. And one of the quite senior, they’re having they are singing karaoke. I said, well, I’m not really I don’t want to sing.

And then she came up. She’s Indian heritage, by the way. She said, of course, every Chinese knows how to sing karaoke. So, yeah, they are they are lighthearted, benign ones, but, more their others are more malicious. So, yeah, we just need to be careful.

Yeah. I think it’s a really good point there because, it’s easy to become very defensive when

someone tells you that you are carrying an unconscious bias. Right? And, yeah, I think it really is that understanding that we will never eradicate unconscious all of our unconscious biases. They some of them exist because of, you know, histories of it’s in our DNA.

It’s tribal protectionism as well. Right? That’s right. But there’s also a brain, a brain, brain science issue in there because in our brain is made to, to delete and summarize the huge amount of information we have. It’s protection mechanism.

But it’s during that summarizing process our brain has that that bias is formed. Because then the bias comes from our upbringing, culture, and everything, whatever goes into our head. That’s yeah. That help informs that, summarizing process. I remember reading somewhere about it’s one reason that we like statistics, in terms of a summarized, percentage.

Right? So, you know, in 56% of respondents say, blah blah blah. Because if we were to try and dissect every individual response, it’s, you know, it’s too much for our brain, especially with the amount of things going on. So, you know, as humans, we like being able to get a summary reflection of, a full set of, you know, responses or data. Absolutely.

Absolutely. I want to, finish off by touching on this the idea of leadership and the role that it plays in inter culture and especially through your own journey and experiences. So, you know, like you say, you started at the post room and you’ve worked your way to the boardroom. That would assume that you’ve gone through positions of having leaders above you to the point where you are now in leadership positions. Where do you think the importance of this, intercultural awareness piece ties in with the leaders above you and how you perceive them, as well as being a leader yourself.

So in a nutshell, how you can manage the intercultural at workplace is about changing lanes. So what I meant by that, it’s like different culture. They are like, you read the book, the cultural map, and there are some general cultural groupings in there, like hot climate culture relationship based versus, task oriented. The thing is you need to be aware what kind of culture or what kind of culture that that people you’re dealing with have. So learn to it’s like driving, I always say.

It’s like driving on the immediate quickly identify whether you’re driving on the left side or the right side. Mhmm. And then switch accordingly. If you don’t switch, all you end up is crashing. So, you gave earlier on, you gave the example of hierarchy at workplace.

So I know that in in my workplace, I had people complain to me, said, why that the English people, they don’t inform me. These are the country directors. They say, why are they not telling me what they are doing in my country? And then the English side will complain to me to say, why are they so hierarchical that I just need to get some information from this person, like task to task. What do I have to tell the, the boss?

So it’s about, yeah, both sides need to know that they are driving on a different side. And then to, yeah, I have done quite a few. I have to help them to see, to mediate, to help them to see actually, yeah, none of a site, meant to harm or attack each other. It’s just, you know, they see things differently. So then they need to learn to switch lanes.

You mentioned something about the view of the leaders that you have as you navigate through your own life and career and how that can have an influence on your own way of managing and leading. How much influence would you say there are those two differences where it’s your lived experiences of the leaders or managers if that you’ve had versus the things that you’ve been exposed to earlier in your childhood and through those early years where maybe that cultural piece and understanding has more of a, influence in the way you perceive these things. What would you say is the effect between those 2? I would say the, the earlier childhood ones kind of

give you a overall foundation. But then that foundation also kind of framework to guide you when you go forward.

When you meet different leaders, you use that framework to measure the leaders who’s your boss. Measuring means one measurement for me is quite important. It’s about the open mindedness towards different culture and the different concept and ideas because we are talking about more nowadays about the, diversity at workplace. The core of it, it’s about different ideas. So whether the different ideas come from the same culture or different culture, I think for me, the openness towards different ideas, is quite a measurement.

But then when it comes to me, it’s that I need to I had to, force myself at times to come out of the uncomfortable places when people have different ideas, opinions from me. So then I have to check to say, am I being the leader I said I won’t want to be? So I need to check myself to say, yes. They might be doing things differently, but that’s okay. So it’s a two way learning.

Have you heard of this term called the babble effect? It tell me. I’m trying to think if I heard it from Adam Grant. But the babble effect, it’s this phenomenon that’s used to describe how people who talk more in groups tend to be perceived as more of a leadership status or more as leaders regardless of the underlying content. That’s why it’s called Babble because, you know, it’s he who shouts loudest or she who shouts loudest gets more of that precedence even if the underlying content of what they’re saying isn’t necessarily one to the quality that a leader should be giving.

So, you know, the babble effect is quantity is winning over quality. And so I think, you know, that hierarchy influence in, in terms of seniority and experience and, you know, kind of what you’re saying of understanding what kind of leader you want to be. I think there’s also a big part in your or do you do you believe you have the sense of having a big part of making sure that people who either because of their personality, their character traits, or their culture, or for whatever reason, they’re not as outspoken as some of the other people in the room as such. You know, do you feel you have a responsibility to navigate that balance? And, you know, if you think leaders should, how do they go about navigating this balance of basically avoiding the babble effect?

There are two levels of babble effect. 1 is people operating the same language. So, like, your personality differences, some are more louder than the others. Then you need to as a facilitator or chair, a good chair of a meeting, you need to make sure everybody is spoken. But if people who actually really struggle to speak in group, one small thing you can do is to go to those individuals at a one to one basis to get their ideas either before or after.

So then you can bring it to the forefront, either in their name, if they are comfortable to do so, or as they it’s been said, it’s been suggested so that their ideas are still being put forward. They’re always being heard. The other level is about different languages ability because, I have people working a lady from Peru, she’s Spanish speaking, but in the team meeting, we use English. Now you can tell she speaks slowly English. But then I need to see that how to allow her, to more time.

Another thing is, again, to remember that when I saw her operating in her home language, Spanish, she’s entirely different person. I know how capable she can be So remember that, don’t judge people. There’s a quote I read recently that said, don’t judge people who speak broken English. It means is they speak a second language. Yeah.

So to remember that about the capability doesn’t equal the language ability. That’s a really good point when especially not even just people who speak English, but people who are born in, you know, native English speaking countries. It becomes very easy to assume that people who don’t have that same level of fluency, don’t necessarily carry the same level of knowledge about what they’re speaking about. But you’re right. It’s because, well, that is the second language that they’re trying to do it in.

Thank you. Thank you, Lydia, so much for that. That was a like I said, we even took the detours on that path of, you know, the impact of the childhood that you had and the relationship that you got into and the lessons from there. So I appreciate you sharing those bits and giving so many gems of knowledge. Thank you.

Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure to do this talk with you. Yeah. I hope this will help to benefit people who are at a different stages of the journey. And just before we finish, I always ask every guest to leave this answer to this one question, which is that if you could leave one message on a piece of paper for the future generation, whether that’s your own future generation or, you know, the future as a whole, that you would write and that they would open it up once you’re gone and read it and live by it, what would you want that message to say?

I would actually choose for this program, let’s just say, because we are kind of finishing on the leadership issue. I would say, actually, there is a misperception when we talk about leaders. People automatically think leaders are me versus other people. But to be a leader the verse the sentence I would say is to be a leader, you first need to know how to lead yourself. Wow.

Yeah. If you can’t lead yourself well, then you can’t lead others. Thank you so much.