Greetings and Happy Midweek!
As I sit here today and support family and friends (from a distance mostly by texting) through Hurricane Ian (it is smashing into Florida this very hour, in areas where I used to live and many family members & friends still live), I thought we could explore contingency drills in the context of cross-cultural work. This fits nicely into the PROcess component of Global SKILLs PROACTive strategies, since creating and implementing all kinds of drills is very much a part of all aspects of global communications and community building.*
“Drills” might make you think of language learning and the common grammatical use of this technique, or perhaps skills mastery training for a particular job. Let’s expand that horizon to include designing and working through drills which help people prepare for ‘real life’ challenges - perhaps civil unrest, natural disasters, or maybe ‘just’ daily roadblocks (figurative or literal) they might face.
Hearing all the ways my loved ones have prepared themselves in the days before this storm arrived (‘the hurricane prep drill’), I thought of years of contingency training and drills I have experienced living overseas.
Endless checklists for organizing supplies, going through scenarios, preparing Plans A, B, C, etc.
Whether particular skills mastery is our target, or actual life-saving responses - drills are one tool we can and must implement across all domains of cross-cultural work. They’ll look very different in different contexts, but they will always help us move forward - toward whatever goals have been set.
How about you ~ what is a drill you have used recently that helped you cross-culturally?
Share about that with a friend or note it here.
And check out the Global SKILLs LINKs below for more on drills & skills.
Thanks for being part of this Connect community.
Until next week,
Betsy
Global SKILLs LINKs
~ Contingency Planning is one framework in which drills can be developed: https://asana.com/resources/contingency-plan
~ one source for mastery = ‘drills toward skills’: https://www.learnlight.com/en/cultural-awareness-training/
And for a touch of humor…
~ one very unique drill: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/26/thailand-zookeeper-dresses-as-ostrich-in-novel-approach-to-training-drill
Notes:
* Through my business Global SKILLs and several partner subsidiaries I offer unique cross-cultural consulting and training including:
3 Dimensional Dynamics Model: (which we explored this week)
1st dimension = HOME ; 2nd dimension = HOST ; 3rd dimension = HARBOR)
PROACTive Learning Strategies: PRO = PROfile, PROcess (which we explored this week), PROgram
ACT = Application, Collaboration and Transformation
~ contact me for more information on this model and these strategies and how you might use them in your current programming
2022 ~ Celebrating 40+ years of working in
intercultural communications and global community building
“It takes a community to build a community”
Please Note: this is copyrighted content.
Please do not reproduce or share without my permission (betsy.barbour@gmail.com)