Cultural Sensitivity_Final
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>> Is cultural sensitivity
something you're concerned about in your coaching practice
or is your outlook more that it doesn't matter
because you see beyond all differences
and treat all your clients the same as humans.
If you operate primarily out of a perspective of sameness,
you're falling short as a culturally sensitive coach.
Yes, we are all human,
and we definitely should treat all of our clients
with the same respect.
But if we go about this in a way
that ignores their differences, this becomes problematic.
Being colorblind and treating everyone the same
is actually limiting if it minimizes
or ignores people's experiences of their race,
ethnicity, sexual orientation,
socio-economic status, and so on.
If we really want to understand
why our clients do the things that they do,
we need to help them explore
these important aspects of themselves.
We're all creatures of our environment,
so to effectively coach clients from diverse backgrounds,
it's essential to have awareness, tolerance,
and an appreciation for other cultures and orientations
different from your own.
Otherwise, you won't really be invested
in your client stories or stepping into their worlds.
Being culturally sensitive doesn't mean
that we have to learn about every culture out there
or to be an expert on diversity,
and it doesn't mean that we should obtain
information about different cultures
just so that we can use it to label or characterize people.
It can be a little confusing at first,
but there's a huge difference between
cultural sensitivity and stereotyping.
What we want to do is tune into cultural customs or norms,
general values that typically guide a given culture,
not perpetuate stereotypes,
which are oversimplified ideas
about people of certain backgrounds.
This is the difference between noting that it's customary
in some traditional Asian cultures
to place a high value on academic performance
and exploring if this might have influenced the development
of your client's rigid perfectionism
versus assuming that an Asian client is good at math
and using this notion as your reasoning to encourage him
to go for a degree in accounting.
Simply put, cultural sensitivity
involves openly exploring the values, beliefs,
and experiences of a person
as a result of the unique interplay
of social and cultural factors
they've been dealt in their life.
By inquiring about and embracing your client's diversity
and prompting them to think about
how it shaped and affected their experiences
in terms of opportunity, and oppression,
approach and avoidance,
and in terms of self concept and social identity,
you're going to start reaching your clients
in a much deeper level.
I'll explain why.
Different cultures have different values,
attitudes, and beliefs
that become embedded into the world views
and perspectives of their people over time.
As coaches, we need to remember
that values are a cultural construct
so that we honor our client's values
rather than pushing our own.
Here's what I mean.
Coaching emerge largely from western thought.
The values of coaching such as personal growth,
independence, success, and empowerment
may seem like universal principles
but are largely culture bound.
We need to be mindful of this.
It's easy to assume, for example,
that everyone wants to be successful.
Yet, there are cultures that value cooperation over success
and place a higher priority
on the collective good of the group
over that of the individual.
So when we coach under these automatic assumptions,
such as success is highly valued,
we are already coming to the table
pushing the values of our own culture.
This not only makes it harder for us to connect
and deepen our rapport with our clients,
it gets in the way of empathy,
and it keeps our blinders up,
making it harder to identify the root causes of the blocks
that are keeping our clients stuck.
Just as we mistake our perspectives for facts,
so do they, and it may not be obvious to them on any level
that they're acting out of a learned cultural pattern
that's been embedded into the fabric of their being.
And while this all may seem subtle on the surface,
it starts you off on an uneven playing field,
and you run the risk of sending a message to your clients
that in order to do well, they need to play by your rules.
Remember, we should always be letting them lead.
So to do that, we need to get clear on what their values are
as soon as possible.
So it's up to us to convey our genuine curiosity
to explore each of our client's routes
as part of the initial
and ongoing process of building rapport
so that we can truly understand
how their social and cultural upbringing has shaped them
in profound ways,
and so that we can tailor our approach in a way
that will be most beneficial and impactful for them.
This will pay off in two major ways,
strengthening the coaching relationship,
and increasing your client's self-awareness.
Your client will definitely notice and appreciate
if you're really taking the time
to get to know them on multiple levels.
They'll appreciate when you ask questions
instead of avoiding things or making assumptions.
Remember, it's easier to offend your clients
by making assumptions and tiptoeing around their differences
than by showing genuine curiosity
and asking them questions about themselves.
This is also super helpful because you learn about
your client's social and cultural background.
You'll start to really gain an appreciation
for how they think
and why they see the world the way that they do.
This will allow you to develop
a more accurate and genuine sense of empathy.
So now you're not only relating
on a deeper level and feeling connected,
but you're asking better questions
and really reflecting your client's material.
When you really get
what it's like to be in your client's shoes
and you're aware of the types of cultural influences
that might be at play in their life,
you can tailor your experiences by really focusing in
on the areas that they might be feeling stuck in
that you may have never thought about
outside of your own cultural lens.
Now you're awareness is deep into their self-awareness.
Here's an example.
Let's say you have a client Shay who is frustrated
because she finds herself stressing in at night
and she doesn't understand why.
She says she likes her job, her relationship is great,
and she has several close friends that she can rely on,
what's going on.
Because you're a culturally sensitive coach,
you'll look at Shay as a whole
and take the time to really explore her identity.
She's mentioned she's Hindu,
and so you're not afraid to ask
what was it like growing up in a Hindu family.
How does your religion play a role in your life today?
This sparks a conversation whereby you come to find out
that while Shay doesn't currently observe
the Hindu traditions as an adult,
her family is very traditional.
This creates pressure in her life
in which she's torn between the life she wants
and the life her family wants for her.
Specifically, they disapprove of her being in a relationship
with a man who's not Hindu,
and now that the relationship is serious,
she has all kinds of feelings about
how to choose between her family and her fiancé.
You ask Shay,
how was this affecting you on a day-to-day basis?
And it clicks for her that there is likely a connection
between the stress and her late night snacking.
All of this time she's been focusing on
changing her eating habits
when her snacking was really a symptom
of the disconnect between her cultural and personal values
she's been struggling with.
So when you tap into a client social and cultural makeup
and inquire about these different areas in their lives,
you'll uncover new heading gems to work on together
that may not have been so obvious
on the surface to you or to your client
because maybe from their world view,
this is just how life is.
To recap, if we really want to understand
and connect with our clients,
we need to take a genuine interest in their differences,
even if that means crossing into the uncomfortable territory
of talking about things like race, ethnicity, and poverty.
Getting our clients to open up about
all of their experiences and struggles
can help shed light
on where they're limiting beliefs come from,
and it helps us as coaches to see what their values are,
so we can look at things from their shoes
instead of from ours.
From here, we will find powerful and meaningful insights.