Category Archives: Authors A-H

Authors listed by last name A-H

Authors A-H, USA Culture

Hey, speak English! (part 2) – by Terry Howard

Empathy can go a long way towards understanding how sensitive language diversity can be. For me it was years ago when I spoke to an audience of 190 German executives in Dusseldorf – in English, of course, but had nothing to say during dinner when everyone spoke German except me – or when I sat around the table in Amsterdam with 25 folks who adroitly moved from one language to another. Woefully deficient – not excluded – the proverbial “bump on the log,” is how I felt in those uncomfortable situations.

Hold my experience (and think through yours) as we turn now to today’s column.

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Authors A-H, Race & Ethnicity, Social Issues

The Perils of Paybacks! – by Terry Howard

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There I was pecking away on my keyboard. Part Two of “Hey, Speak English,” was coming along nicely when last week, “the racial week that was,” kicked the legs out from beneath my comfort zone. In a dreadful span of 72 hours, seven lives were senselessly snuffed out in Baton Rouge, Minneapolis and Dallas. Of course, many more lives ended that week, but thanks to the combustible mix of race, firearms and mobile devices, these are the ones that owned the headlines.

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Authors A-H, Culture

Speak English! (part 1) – by Terry Howard

Out of exasperation, some will bellow the words, “Speak English!” Others? Well, my hunch is that most will roll their eyes and think but, wisely, not utter those words. And if you add to the angst the difficulty it can be when someone switches to another language, one you don’t know, the tension only escalates.

But wait, wait, wait!

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Authors A-H, Commerce

How Cultural Intelligence Affects Your Bottom Line – by Kyle Hegarty

An American company quietly shuts down their APAC office in Singapore. They conclude that the business model “doesn’t work in Asia.” The local team wouldn’t innovate and respond to local market needs. The American Managing Director thought having a ‘flat hierarchy’ was the answer. He was wrong. His company writes off a few million dollars.

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Authors A-H, Gender

Hey fellas, let’s listen up & communicate! – by Terry Howard

One of the many benefits I enjoy from writing this column is that I get to communicate from up here on my, shall we say, “perch.” From up here, I get to rant and rave, sprinkle dashes of uncomfortableness into conventional wisdom, tweak comfort zones, take folks dangerously close to the end, leave them suspended Wile E. Coyote-like midair, then lasso them in before they plunge over the cliff into the “diversity dangers” that lurk below.From here, I get to do some vigorous backpedaling, or source attribution when I need to pass the buck if things get a tad too hot or have the potential to backfire on me.

Case in point; watch me right now as I hand off the thorny issue of sweeping stereotypes to Dr. Claire Brown, facilitator of a seminar titled “Conquering communications collisions between men and women.” In fact, it was Brown whom I “blame” for the attention-getting title of my column, “When women chit chat, men go nuts!” (By the way, the Aug. 2012 issue of “The Wall Street Journal” ran an article pointing out that although some may dismiss chit chatting as an unnecessary and annoying waste of time, the practice is essential social grease.)

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Authors A-H, Race & Ethnicity

The light-skinned ‘negro’ label – by Terry Howard

Words are powerful. And the emotional reactions to certain words can be especially so. Case in point are the likely reactions to the words in the title above, light-skinned, negro. My hunch is that reactions probably ranged from shock, mild surprise to “what’s the big deal,” depending to a large extent on who you are and your experiences along the color line. Which takes us to Senate majority leader Harry Reid. Although the furor simmered down not long after, Reid found himself at the center of a firestorm years back for suggesting that then-presidential candidate Barack Obama had a political advantage over other African-American candidates because he was “light-skinned” and had “no negro” dialect, unless he wanted to have one. Remember that incident folks?

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Authors A-H, Social Issues

Examining Rank and Privilege – by Rosalie Chamberlain

Discussion of rank and privilege is not an everyday topic. In fact, it is often avoided and stirs up a multitude of feelings and emotions. It is too often a taboo topic and avoided. We need to discuss this important issue. In one of my speaking engagements on rank and privilege, just before going into the room, I overheard someone say they would not go to that particular discussion because they anticipated it would be too heated. It was not, and it does not have to be.

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Authors A-H, Gender, Social Issues

Don’t interrupt me, for crying out loud! – by Terry Howard

(To Hillary) “Excuse me, I’m talking!” ” I’m not finished; don’t interrupt me!” – Bernie Sanders, Democratic Debate

I glared in awe at the TV screen during the recent Republican and Democrat presidential debates while trying my best to keep tabs on the number of times the debaters interrupted each other. With Republican one, I simply lost account. Insults clearly spearheaded every interruption as the four men duked it out with each other on a variety of issues, including one candidate’s “hand size.”

Research has it that men tend to interrupt women more than women interrupt men. That was my reference point a week later when a woman and a man, Hillary and Bernie, took the debate stage. I was curious as to how the interruption dynamic would manifest itself across gender lines. Not sure if there’s a gender message here – is it? – but Sanders seemed to be the most irritated by being interrupted.

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Authors A-H, Social Issues

Dealing with Death and Grief in a Diverse World – by Terry Howard

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A week into 2016 and it  was David Bowie. Then it was Natalie Cole. And it seems that every year a number of news sources will publish a list consisting of “those we lost last year.” Now like so many others, I got an uneasy reminder of the reality of death in 2015 with the loss of my brother and, before that, vicariously through related stories of others.

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Around the world, Authors A-H, Social Issues

Diversity, Dialogue, and Mindsight – by Greg Nees

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Have you ever entered a conversation with the best of intentions, only to end up in an argument? I suspect we have all had this experience and I’d like to suggest that one reason this happens so often is because of mind distance. When we try to communicate with people whose experiences and world views are very different from our own, we often run into invisible walls. It’s like trying to describe colors to a friend who has been blind from birth. No matter how much we try to explain what the world looks, sounds, and feels like to us, if the other person’s experiences have been significantly different, they will have trouble listening and understanding. In my work as an interculturalist, I encounter such mind distance on a regular basis.

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