In this episode, Karl Ostroski, a father, IT consultant, (and bacon gardener?) talks with us about the importance of Cultural Intelligence. Knowing how to effectively communicate with people of different cultural backgrounds is paramount in all relationships, from personal to professional. What may come across as a normal interaction for some, can have drastically different outcomes and reactions just based on what the individual may value. We also discuss the importance of giving oneself grace when inevitable mistakes are made, as well as dad jokes. Many dad jokes.
Matt Stauffer:
Well, hey, and welcome to Things Worth Learning. I'm your host, Matt Stauffer. And this is a show where a curious computer programmer, that's me, interviews fascinating people about their passions. My guest today is Karl Ostroski, a husband, father, gardener, yogi and consultant. And when I first asked him this list, for some reason he probably said baker, and I thought I heard bacon gardener and I got really excited about that idea. So I'm just going to project that onto you, we got bacon gardener as well. So Karl, other than your bacon gardening, could you tell the audience a little bit about yourself whether it's your personal or professional life?
Karl Ostroski:
Yeah, sure. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. On the professional side, I'm an IT consultant. It's the term we use in my company is called a solution owner. So if you know IT is kind of a mix of a product owner, a scrum master, a project manager, and five other things that you do in consulting and delivering IT programs, so that's something I really enjoy doing. On the personal side, I live in the great city of Chicago-
Matt Stauffer:
Whoop whoop!
Karl Ostroski:
Yeah, 20% of the world's freshwater supply is in the Great Lakes, in an era of climate change that's good for me. Our water has no salt and no sharks. So just want to put that out there for those who are listening outside the Midwest.
Matt Stauffer:
I think there's such a thing as a freshwater shark though but I bet you they're not in the Great Lakes. Now I have to Google that, freshwater shark. It's the type of thing that I feel like... I don't know if you listen to podcasts with your kids, but my kids listen to Wow in the World all the time. And I betcha I've learned about it. Yes, they exist. I wonder if they're in the Great Lakes.
Karl Ostroski:
That's a good question. Even if they are, I'm not worried about them.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, sure. The pitch still exists. I'm just curious.
Karl Ostroski:
Yeah, so I'm married 16 years this month. I have two young kids who are both eight years old, so twins household. And they enjoy... What do they enjoy right now? They enjoy Roblox, and Minecraft, and swim lessons, and bike riding. They can both bike without their training wheels right now, which is a big thing for us. Yeah, it's exciting, sane times in our house.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. So that the first question we ask is going directly to you. So sorry to put the pressure on you, but let's do it. Do you have any sort of life mantra phrase or idea you try to live your life by?
Karl Ostroski:
Yeah, so Andy Jassy from Amazon Web Services, well now I guess Amazon, I think he was the first to share the expression at least that I know of, there's no compression algorithm for experience.
Matt Stauffer:
Ooh.
Karl Ostroski:
And that is something I share at least once a week. So when they ask me, what's your mantra? It's probably got to be that because I say it at least once a week. And in the project management space it's probably, akin to today is the dumbest day of the rest of your project.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that.
Karl Ostroski:
So it's like you're always learning. Failure is a good teacher. So yeah, no compression algorithm for experience.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that.
Karl Ostroski:
Yeah, I was going to say, for those who don't know what a compression algorithm is, if you remember zipping a file that's what it's doing. Making it smaller so you can attach it to your email back in the day.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. So there's no way to get that experience faster than just by actually living it basically.
Karl Ostroski:
Yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. There's a phrase we use at Tighten all the time when talking to clients in the initial engagement is, we'll never know less about your project than we do today. So it's like the converse or whatever of the one that you're saying. And I love that because we have these ideas in project management and consultancy and stuff like that. We'll do all this upfront planning and that means we'll then know how to kind of move forward. It's like, well no, we know when you're doing all the planning is the moment when you're literally the most ignorant, like you're saying the dumbest about this project that you'll ever be. So I love that. We can nerd about that for an entire podcast, but I know we won't do that. Speaking of what we're actually talking about, the podcast is about one topic that you're passionate about. And like so many of my guests, you have like 17 different things we could talk about, all of which I would love a whole podcast about. But you picked one for today. What are we talking about today?
Karl Ostroski:
So I'd like to talk about cultural intelligence or CQ.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay. So cultural intelligence... I'm going to be very transparent, usually on this podcast I pretend to be ignorant of the topic so that I can be a good interviewer. But cultural intelligence, I'm almost exclusively ignorant about. You and I both had connections to organization that talked about cultural intelligence sometimes. And I've also a shared friend's of ours, Phil Bowling Dyer often talks about cultural intelligence. So I get the words dripping into my brain here and there, but I actually don't know what it means other than what I can infer. I can make all sorts of inferences about it, but I'm actually going to be your perfect kind of ignorant kind of interviewer here. Okay, so start from scratch. If you are telling me the ignorant person, what cultural intelligence is beyond what I can just infer from the idea that's about intelligence about cultures, what does it even mean as a concept?
Karl Ostroski:
Yeah, so backing it up a bit, most people are familiar with IQ or your intellectual quotient. That's where the Q comes from. And I think more and more people are understanding EQ or emotional intelligence or emotional quotient. Oftentimes people refer to cultural intelligence or your CQ, cultural quotient as EQ at scale. So as humans, we all have different emotions but the ways we navigate and express those and how we navigate communication is different culturally. So your cultural intelligence is your kind of ability to adapt into situations where maybe the communication or the value systems are different than yours, to be successful relationally, in business, in organizations and governments, you name it.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. So one of the things that you shared with me before we were even friends, you were speaking at an event that I was attending, I don't even know... Hold on, let me try and figure out the date, 2008, 2009, so not quite 15 years ago. And I don't know whether you had specifically named this, but it was a part of the place where I was introduced to the idea of those charts where you'd say some cultures are more direct, some cultures are more indirect. And every time I hear of cultural intelligence in CQ, that's kind of the first place my brain starts from. Is that actually the right place? And if so, can you talk a little bit about that idea for folks who aren't familiar with it?
Karl Ostroski:
Sure. And for folks who want to learn more, culturalQ.com is the website for the Cultural Intelligence Center, probably it's been put in show notes. So I actually have a certification from them. They have a lot of research that's based on prior research as well, but they look at 10 different cultural values that are kind of common globally on different spectrums, where people tend to align to different cultural groups. Those aren't the only 10 different values that exist. And then they actually have this framework of CQ, which is regardless of your values what are the areas you can grow in so that you can overcome those differences. So when we're looking at those cultural values, you mentioned one which is very common which is direct, indirect. So I'll give a story. I worked on a project as kind of like a scrum master or project manager, so to speak if you're unfamiliar with the term.
And management at this client said, hey, we want to get these bugs fixed. You're kind of working in that part of the software, can you get them done? And I asked the team, I said, hey, can we get that done? And they said, oh yeah, we'll look into it. So a couple of days later in a regular meeting, a standup meeting, I said, hey, what's going on with that? And the lead architect, lead developer said, oh yeah, we're looking into that. And a couple of days after that I asked again, they said, oh yeah, we're looking at that. I'm like these are smart people. There's no way it's taking over a week to look into this. So I happened to see the architect in the hallway and I said, hey, by the way... This is pre- COVID, so we're actually in person, by the way, whatever happened with this?
And she said, oh yeah, there's no way in the world this is going to happen. Here are the three reasons why. And I thought, oh, what? How could I have not gotten this update several years prior? Well, I read a book and another plug kind of "Speaking of India", so a lot of my colleagues were South Asian, some from India, some from other places. And in that part of the world, indirect communication is more valuable. So you wouldn't want to ruin or disrupt the harmony of relationship by telling someone in authority, especially publicly that you can't do something even if it's true. So they might even say, yes, we can do that. And then they're going to indirectly talk about how they're delaying their wedding, and their kids are sick, and kind of all these five other things that are happening. And you're supposed to get that okay, their yes is not really a yes, they're just trying to help you save face.
And I was pretty clueless at the time. And so it's like, what is going on? So I learned, oh, there are certain things I can't ask in a daily standup meeting depending on the cultural values at play because I'm not going to get the answer I'm wanting. Or I'm going to have to read between the lines in the answer that they give to get the answer I'm looking for, because I come from a very direct culture. And a lot of people refer to this as style, which is true. I like the idea that it's a value, I'm such a direct communicator, I would feel disrespected or I think it's a moral wrong to communicate in a different way. So I've had to grow to be like, okay, that's not wrong it's different. Yeah, there's different value systems and reasons and histories behind that, so how can I lean in and work a little differently?
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. I had an experience where I was in college and I was spending a lot of my time around black and Latin folks who had a much more... And it wasn't just direct, it was a lot of other things, but I was... And several of these kind of things, direct versus indirect and other ones, I was feeling like I was very indirect compared to them. And there was a few other things. And then I read a few books from East Asian folks about their life living around a whole bunch of white people. And it was the same power dynamic difference where I was spending a lot of time around people who were much more direct than me. And these folks writing these books were spending a lot of time around people who were much more direct than them. And that was one of the first moments where I had where was like, oh, I not only can understand how it might feel for them.
But because I'm not in an extreme, I'm actually in a place where there are people more and less direct than me or more and less whatever else than me, I can now empathize having experience being on both sides. It was really helpful for me. What was your introduction to these ideas like? How did you enter into this space and what did it feel like for you?
Karl Ostroski:
Gosh, I think if you can't tell by looking at me or hearing the tone of my voice, I'm biracial, half white, half Caucasian. I grew up in the Midwest, in the United States of America. So I think learning a language. So I studied Spanish starting at a really young age, which is not just for the language but also understanding the culture and those nuances. So I had opportunities to travel, live overseas here and there. I also in a prior role was delivering software in Latin America and Europe in part because I speak Spanish and was learning Portuguese, was doing that work. And so noticing some of these issues that came up. And then I'm also married cross-culturally and live in, y'know, I used to be T-O-W-G where I live in my neighborhood, the only white guy. So just when you're surrounded by that you have opportunities and sometimes it's fun.
My first landlord in Chicago didn't speak any English. And he was over in our apartment fixing something before he left he said, "Hey, is there anything else that needs to be fixed?" And I said, "Yeah." And this is in Spanish. I said, "There's so many frogs in the bathroom." And he looked at me like, "What?" And I said, "Yeah, there's so many frogs in the bathroom." And he's figuring this white guy's getting the wrong word in Spanish. So he looks at my wife, Sandra, her first language is Spanish. And so he looks at her and he's like, "Frogs." She's like, "Oh yeah, they're everywhere." So he goes in the bathroom what he didn't realize, my sister-in-law... Frogs is like a thing between my wife and I. So my sister-in-law for our wedding, he got us a frog shower and a frog soap dispenser, frog towel, a frog garbage can everything.
So sometimes you can have some fun. But in the professional...um another example, I was working overseas and we were trying to get something done. We had a deadline and I said, "Hey, is everything looking good?" We had our user acceptance testing where everyone kind of checked the box. Yep, I can do all the things I could do before. Here's this new software. And we try to go live, and we're like, oh, we have to roll back. And we have a meeting with the powers that be, and they had 40 missed requirements and most of them were regulatory. And this is a medical waste company, so we're a regulatory industry. We thrive on making sure we do the right thing. And so what I realized is that another value for instance is power distance. So they were not going to tell me that they hadn't achieved it, especially when their boss was in the room, my boss was in the room, et cetera.
So here they're saying, yes, everything's fine. And it is not fine that, it is not fine at all. And so we had to say, okay, what are the requirements? What is our new testing plan? And it forced the issue and I realized, okay, yes, they could have said yes, these 40 things are missing. But they weren't able to because of those some other cultural nuances going around. So I needed to lean in and ask different questions, ask things a different way, make some assumptions about what they're not saying, et cetera, to get to the answer that my boss, who's also half white, half Caucasian like me is trying to answer.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, that's super helpful. And one of the things I really appreciate is that a lot of times people talk about these cultural dynamics and cross cultural competency. It's pitched purely as an interpersonal relational thing. And you have given so many examples from a business perspective. And of course you're working in international business, so a lot of people say, well, my small company's only people from my little small town or something like that. But people who are not like me exist in every area around me, even if it's in the little narrow niche or whatever. So I love the idea of this kind of making us more capable in our interpersonal relationships, but also in... I don't know what you'd call them, but like landlord relationships. It's a business relationship in your personal life and you've got business relationships in your business life. So do you feel like as you're making the pitch that people should work on becoming more cross culturally competent, it's something that people have to be persuaded of? Or do you feel like most people these days are aware that this is a need in the first place?
Karl Ostroski:
To use my phrase, there's no compression algorithm for experience. So usually I'd say the folks that are interested in this generally are self selecting. And it's usually because there's been some kind of disruption either in their personal professional life, whether it's I'm working with folks in a different country and the first time. Or I'm now dating somebody, married to somebody who cross-culturally different from me. And I just want to put it out there, I say this when I do some of the training that we do and working elsewhere, you might come from a cultural background but you don't align to those cultural values. And that's okay. There's no need for an ethnic identity crisis. We are a composite of multiple different influences and factors. But also people who don't have high cultural intelligence might assume the cultural values of whatever ethnic cultural group you come from onto you, even though you're different.
So being aware of those things is still important even if you don't align to them. So I think there is that disruption and there is that kind of pain point where you realize, wait a minute, my normal tools of sales or project management or healthcare or whatever it is, aren't working right.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah.
Karl Ostroski:
And so it matters. I anecdotally know the story of a hospital that was building a new waiting area kind of for their ER triage room. And they had assumed, oh, there's going to be one person and whoever's bringing them to the hospital. And they're like yeah, do you realize that based on the three dominant cultural groups, mostly recent immigrant cultural groups, you should expect six to one. So are you building for the neighborhood that you're in? They're like, oh no, we're not.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, that's really helpful. And so this touches on so many different areas and they're not just areas that come down to, well, you should be more... I hate to be really judgemental here, but I think a lot of people who reject these ideas often, there's often the whole you're in America learn American kind of vibe. And of course, that's the most extreme kind of negative perspective that people have. But often when I've been in spaces where I'm trying to encourage people to kind of learn cross-cultural values... For example, I was working with a pastor and I was like, hey, you have this largely non-white church, how can we be doing this? He's like, yeah, but that group you're talking about they're only 10% so they'll just learn our songs. They're only this or that other. And I know that's something that you and your family have personal experience with.
If you were to make the pitch to someone who's open-minded but has not come to that practical experience, they have not had that pain point but they're open to listen to Karl Ostroski, man on the radio making a pitch to them. Is there an easy way to make a pitch for the value of investing in cross-cultural intelligence?
Karl Ostroski:
Yeah, I think if you can relate it to something personal or that they can relate to and understand to see the value of it. I remember a pastor talking to somebody on an airplane just chumming it up and he was kind of like, yeah, I don't want the spiritual life. That's just not for me. I have what I have. I'm a business owner, I have finances, I have a great family. And the pastor said, "Well, a guy you sounds like you'd always want more. Don't you want more?" And he's like, Okay, I'll listen. So looking for what is that more that folks would want. I eat a paleo diet... A topic for another time, but it's like the opposite of a vegan. I can't have any grains, legumes, beans, dairy, soy, so many things I can't eat. And there was one time I was with my wife, we were visiting some folks in California before some family get together on the holidays.
And I didn't know most of these people, their colleagues and friends of hers. And I went to someone's house early in the morning and she's like, oh, by the way, would you like any of the paleo food I made for you? And I feel that experience still even just telling you, because no one has ever said that to me before. Hey, we made everything compliant to your dietary needs. I felt so welcomed, such hospitality, such like, oh my gosh, I could let my hair down or up if that's the way it naturally goes. I'm bald so you can't tell. The irony is my grandfather discovered Logan. That's a topic for another time. But yeah, fascinating stuff.
Matt Stauffer:
Wow, okay.
Karl Ostroski:
Yeah, so I felt so welcomed. So someone can understand making a meal or setting a table for them with stuff that they enjoy, their favorite foods, whatever it is. What did she want to be able to do that for somebody else?
Matt Stauffer:
I love that.
Karl Ostroski:
We've seen in organizations because some colleagues and I, Alice Leong a little shout out to her, she and I do a lot of CQ training together. She's awesome. For instance, if you're an organization and you're wanting to be inclusive of others. And you say, hey, we have this goal, we have this intention, we need to look not just as you said the interracial stuff, but what are the processes? Not even just the explicit like hey, here's how we're going to be inclusive. What are the processes? So for instance, my boss asked me years ago like, hey, are you interested in management? And I told her what I tell everybody, I have a management job at home with two eight year olds. I don't even want to work. So in this season of life, no thanks. But she asked me directly and her assumption was he's going to respond directly.
But if you come from a culture that's more indirect, that's more low power distance, that's maybe emotionally non expressive, you may be like, oh yeah, that's interesting. It's interesting you bring that up. And so you might not think, oh, this person's engaged. They've never thought about this before. So we're just, okay, they're going to think about it, maybe I'll get them in the next round. And really they're like, yes, I want to be the general manager of this practice, whatever it is. But they would find it disrespectful or rude to tell you that directly because it's like saying, yes, I'm good enough to have your job, no problem. And this happened, so my wife and I were working in two different organizations. And my CIO, Patrick Cott, great guy, said, "Hey, what do you want to be when you grow up here, what's your career path?"
I'm like, "Oh, I want your job someday." He's like, "Okay, how do we get you there?" That was his first thought. And my wife had a similar conversation in her organization and said, "Hey, I want this role." And they're like, "Oh my gosh, how arrogant." And exact same conversations, exact same intention on the inside but how it's communicated and how it's received differs based on those culture values. So there's things we're missing and there's potentially people who are great in leadership, who are missing just because the way we invite them or don't invite them because they're waiting on an invitation is impacting them.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, we have that at a small level. One thing you mentioned is we intentionally change the way we do figuring out someone's salary to from what used to be which is like there's a baseline salary and we expect them to be able to negotiate. So we kind of give a range in which they're able to negotiate and now everybody gets the same amount no matter what, because we recognize that, for example, somebody's ability and comfort level with fighting for a salary and saying that number you said is wrong, has very significant cultural components to it. And we just named a couple here, you talked about promotion, I talked about salary, which are both very important things in somebody's kind of lifetime. And there's so many other aspects, pieces of our interaction with our work, our career and stuff like that, that are all kind of touching those things.
So I think it really makes sense from someone who wants to lead, someone who wants to help run their company well or whatever else, to be able to understand that there's people who are potentially working for them and who are working for them and it's helpful to know these things. One of the things that I have had a lot of conversations about recently that I wanted to see if you can give any quick pieces of advice on are, I know a lot of people who are business owners around my size. So we have 30 people and I know a lot of people who are more like the 10 to 20 to 30 range who are trying to de-homogenize their company. The first thing they were trying to do is just get a sustainable company and then they look around they go, wow, everybody looks like me.And so they're just beginning that process and a lot of them say, well, I've heard apprenticeship programs make this work or I found this one person or whatever. And they find some context in which they can bring their first person who is different. It's the first woman, it's the first person of color, it's the first non-binary person, it's the first non-American, whatever else. It ends up being the first person who's different. And if you have ever been that person, you have a lot of thoughts about what that experience is like. But if you are in the majority you just think, oh great, look at this opportunity we're providing them. Can you talk a little bit about the person who's trying to make that next step about either things they should think about, or reasons why they should be following this particular accreditation or whatever.
What should that person be doing to honor and make a healthy space for somebody to actually succeed when they're inviting them in? And what I mean is the majority person in leadership, what could that person do or learn or consider to make that introduction easier for the person being introduced?
Karl Ostroski:
Yeah, I think the first is to ask the intention of why you're doing it. Focus on the why. A mentor of mine, Rev. Dr. Brenda Salter Mcneil, I should give her appropriate titles. She's asked the question of is diversity nice or is it necessary? And if you're doing it just to be like, oh yeah, that sounds like we should probably do it or I don't want to appear racist because everyone looks like me. Like let's bring some people from another country or send something in to take a look. Well, that's probably along the lines of tokenism. And you're not setting folks up to succeed, you're setting up to fail. I think most ethnic minorities I guess, and anybody who's used to not being the main person in whatever kind of culture or context it is, it can often feel very lonely.
So I think hiring one of said group is probably not going to go over the best. It'd be better to hire many of said group. And along those lines, making sure they know the why. You're able to communicate to them why it's important, why diversity, inclusion and equity and whatever is important as an organization. It's important that everyone else in the organization knows that. And I think if there is no intentionality around their onboarding, there's likely going to be cultural shifts that need to happen. Not only for them because again they're adapting to a new organization. Any place you go to you want to have adaptability, but the organization itself might need to adapt to be welcoming and inclusive of those other folks. Putting out that paleo food or whatever the equivalent is in your context is going to go a long way.
Matt Stauffer:
So how do I get started? How do I... And I'm not talking about me, but as the majority, let's say we're in the US and I got a white man who owns a company of 30 people and who is not necessarily in a place of saying, now we're going to diversify. So we can have a really well worded version of why, but we just happen to be bringing in our first person of color, our first LGBTQ person, whatever. And you tell me I should leave out the paleo food for them, but we're virtual and you know what I mean? And God forbid I go leave out the food that I'm going to assume someone is cultured. What are the actual first steps? And maybe it's just go get some kind of education, maybe it's go ask them.
But what is the practical first steps for someone who has zero exposure, zero understanding, zero awareness, but at least good intentions of trying to allow the onboarding experience to be better. You mentioned hiring more than one and then, which on the one hand might be good but on the other hand they might be like, well, I didn't even hire this person on purpose. I'm just really excited that they're here. Do I now have to go try and hunt down someone from their same ethnicity or whatever, religious minority or whatever else? What is their next step there?
Karl Ostroski:
Yeah, so I think to continue the why, there's actually research by two different organizations that homogeneous teams actually outperform diverse teams, unless you have that high cultural intelligence. So-
Matt Stauffer:
There you go.
Karl Ostroski:
If you have a homogeneous team, it's not bad, you might actually be performing well. But if you don't invest in that cultural intelligence you're going to be missing some stuff. So shout out again to the Cultural Intelligence Center. They have training. You can take assessments, you can get a 360 assessment, you can get certified if you really wanted to. But find someone from them or contact me or my colleague Alice Leong, we'll help you assess your organization because you can find what are those dominant cultural values that exist in my organization. Regardless of ethnicity or generation or whatever it is, where do we tend to lean at some of these big gotchas so that we know, okay, this is an area where we're really far over here. We're probably not going to come into the middle.
But how can we lean that way and then how do we coach the other people who are coming in? My wife is a woman of color and whenever she talks to people about race and ethnicity, culture inclusion and stuff, she always wants to know what do they read first? Because you can pick her brain for coffee and that's good, she's got a lot of wisdom to say, but she wants to know you're willing to make the investment. And reading books is hard, whether it's on audio or actually sitting down and reading a book. It takes time, it takes investment, it takes reflection. So find authors of color or authors from whatever kind of space that you're missing to say, what is your experience working in this situation? What would it be like to come here? And that's going to help you get some frameworks or kind of setting the stage a little bit more.
I'd also recommend a coach. Again, there's no compression algorithm for experience. So you will probably have some great successes especially with the great intentionality right away. But things will happen over time. People they'll assimilate a little bit and then when they feel like, hey, I'm part of the team. I'm going to come out and be my authentic self and you're going to find, wait a minute, this is different than what I expected. So having someone who's going to be there to be like, what is going on in my organization and how do I do this ethically and with grace and appreciation and gratitude, but also figuring out how do we fix this?
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, that's super helpful. I really think that there was a really helpful set of things for someone who's in that business under perspective. And I know I'm pushing hard on that one, but I feel like that's the most common space I get people asking this question. But let's back out from that a little bit. I pushed you really hard down that road. So let's step back a little bit and say if you want... Because you know asked about the audience of the podcast and we've got people from all different walks of life. And not all of them are even in tech, not all of them are even running businesses. So if there was one nugget of information you wanted people to walk away with or one change you'd want them to consider making or anything like that, what is the most broadly considerable teaching, training, education, shift of perspective, whatever, that it would be best for the entire audience of this podcast to walk away with from your knowledge about cultural intelligence?
Karl Ostroski:
Yeah, I actually want to draw on something I learned as a foster parent because there's something they ask for. When people go through trauma there's different behaviors that outside of trauma would seem totally out of place. But when there's trauma involved, there's a reason they happen. And so I was taught to ask what's the need behind the behavior? So you're observing something, obviously it's there, you're seeing it, there's a behavior, what's the need behind it? Because you might assume the intention behind it, but asking what's the need puts us into a place of helping to perhaps provide that need and maybe changing ourselves to meet that need. And this kind goes along the lines of lean principles, which again is a business term, but asking the five why's. There is a story about a couple that gets married, husband's making a ham and the partner says, "Hey, why did you cut the ends off the ham?"
And he's like, "Oh, that's the way my dad always did it." So the partner asked the father-in-law, "Hey, when you make a ham, do you cut the ends off?" And he's like, "Yeah." Partner says "Why?" Was like, "Well, that's the way my dad did it." So his newly married partner goes to the grandfather in-law at a holiday or something like that and says, "Hey, when you make a ham do you cut the ends off a ham?" And he says, "Oh yeah, almost always." And the partner says, "Well, why do you do that?" And the grandfather in-law says, "Well, my favorite pan's really small." And so you ask those whys... Sorry, I need a minute to for Matt to catch it.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. No, you're good. I just love it so much.
Karl Ostroski:
So asking those whys like, huh, they didn't really answer my question or they answered the question the affirmative, but their actions don't seem to mess up. Are they being passive aggressive? That's an assumption on that. And it could be being passive aggressive, but they could also have some cultural values that are at play that are impacting the dynamics. For instance, my wife and I were very egalitarian in our relationship. We share responsibilities. Well, we co-parent, we do all those things. But she grew up with a family where her father would say, do we not have any forks if there were no forks on the table? And cultural expectation was for her mother to go and get those forks. So when we first got married, she wouldn't start eating until she saw I had my first bite because then I knew I was ready and that her job was done.
And so very egalitarian, she public speaks, she sings in front of people, she's an author, she's public, she's amazing. But there's certain dynamics where that didn't come into play. I'm like, wait a minute, didn't I marry this amazing direct communicating, powerful woman. There's dynamics at play and some of those are deep and we've been married 16 years, they're still coming out.
Matt Stauffer:
That's wild. I love it.
Karl Ostroski:
There's still stuff in our relationship and that's probably more pronounced because we're married cross-culturally. But anybody, depending on your family of origin, or region of the world, generation or whatever, there's different values at play and so asking the why or asking for the need I think is a way to start that conversation.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. I grew up in a more homogenous kind of community and then moved away and to very diverse communities and had a lot of learning. And so it's been very interesting. And I don't live in Michigan with my family anymore, so it's been very fun when I go back to visit my family to watch them have had parallel tracks along kind of doing this type of experience. And my father worked in an international business very similar to what you do. And I would hear him not having had the type of education and amazing experiences that I was able to have. Being dumped into these cross-cultural contexts where people are talking about it actively. And I would hear him figuring out on his own like, oh yeah, well, I was dealing with this one guy who's from this one place and I understand that he values this more.
And so I was able to intuit from that, that maybe he values this more. And second time I said, hey, would it be better if I did this? And I just did it. And I had freaking goosebumps because I remember how meaningful it was for me watching him learn these things. And I'm saying this because at this point he was probably in his 50s or 60s... Just like you said, you were 16 years in a marriage and we're still figuring this out. It's so encouraging that it's not one of those like I took a class, I went to the culturalQ.com, I figured it out and then I got it right after that. It's like, no, we're figuring this stuff out lifetime as we go.
Karl Ostroski:
Yes. And I do training in cultural intelligence and I make mistakes with my colleague who does training in cultural intelligence with me, who has a different cultural value. And I tend to move fast. I tend to assume trust. There's a lot of things that are just innately about me which are great tools in certain settings, but they need to be toned down or modified or adjusted or thrown all together in different context. And it takes a while to build a new track in your brain to go a different way.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, I wanted to step back to one of the things that you said earlier where I was asking what does it look like for an individual person to kind of gain this type of experience? And one of the things you mentioned was your wife talks about what do they read? And one of the things that I've often said to people is just go look at who you follow on Twitter. Go look at who you follow and other consuming, because one of the things that's been wild to me is just the ways that the music I listen to, the books I read, the people I follow on Twitter, how much it informs my general way of understanding how those people approach the world which then influences how I approach the world. And one of the things we've discovered as we run Tighten together is Dan and I have different sets of influences.
We're both middle class white guys from the Midwest, but we have different cultural influences even today. And the ways that I have been shaped, not just me... People think like, oh, our team is better because we have people with different backgrounds. Well, Dan and I have the same background, but we're still continuing to consume and interact with people from different spaces. So we each bring learnings that we learned in our counter-cultural experiences there to our space that makes us functioning in running the company better. So I think it's really cool that yeah, okay, go learn all that stuff because it's going to help you interact with those folks better. But it also changes how you do the things you're doing. And one of the things I was curious about for you is, as you think about it, obviously one of the things is you can find diverse voices in whatever niche you care about. But are there any broader resources you could say, this is a book everybody should read. This is a show everybody should watch or is it all more contextualized?
Karl Ostroski:
Yeah, some of the books I've read which I think just help in general, one is Duane Elmer's "Cross-Cultural Communication" or "Cross-Cultural Conflict." I can't remember the title. This is where I'd have to-
Matt Stauffer:
We'll link in the show notes.
Karl Ostroski:
You'll link in the show notes. "Digital, Diverse & Divided" is a new book that came out by David Livermore. Who's actually with the Cultural Intelligence Center, which is looking at the polarity that we experience and kind of how do we overcome some of those things. I think in any community that you're connected to find leaders or authors or people from that particular community to learn from because it's talking about... A friend of mine started an organization called Loving Asian America, and he's got products just talking about being Asian-American is awesome, you should love it. But it's different if you're Pakistani, versus Indian, versus Chinese, versus Japanese, versus Korean. And it depends on what generation based on where you live. Did you immigrate? Did your parents immigrate? Did your grandparents immigrate?
There's all these different nuances of how that plays out. So starting with one community will give you some grounding to compare against your own. And then from there it's like, oh, well how does this differ from this community, this community.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. That's so helpful. I want to talk to this for another three hours, but I know we need to start wrapping up. So before I get to my last question that I ask everybody, is there any more aspects of the cultural intelligence topic that we didn't get to today you want to make sure we cover?
Karl Ostroski:
Yeah, I think just you have to be willing to fail. One of the aspects, whatever your values are how do you grow CQ. One of the quadrants is CQ Drive. How do you increase your drive? And that could be intrinsically, I just love everything different and I'm always looking out for it. I'm just interested. Yeah, it could be extrinsic interest. So yeah, maybe I wouldn't normally do this but hey, I realized I'm trying to sell to a population that doesn't match my cultural values. How do I learn about this culture to sell to them if you're in business? The third is kind of sub quadrant, is self-efficacy, like your ability to kind of put yourself out there. And so you will fail in this, you will offend in this. So learning how to say I'm sorry in one of the culturally appropriate ways, there's multiple ways to say I'm sorry. Or to receive I'm sorry, that's one I had to learn because I'm such a direct communicator I want you to say, I'm sorry Karl, I did this wrong.
Here's how I'm looking to make trust with you. And that doesn't happen in certain contexts. And so I think just being willing to fail, you will make mistakes. And some people won't forgive you because they've had so much trauma in their experiences. They're just like, one plus one is two, deuces I'm out of here. And that's okay. That doesn't mean you're an awful person. You need to go bury yourself in the ground and come back reincarnated as a tree that causes more joy in the world or something. We all got stuff we're coming from, our opportunity is to learn from our failures, to grow and move forward.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, I love that. And I really appreciate you sharing that because I don't know if I've ever been as miserable, I'm going to go jump off a cliff because I just completely screwed this up than when I have completely failed at an attempt to do the right thing in a cross-cultural context where I knew I was out of my depth. And literally very specific examples popped in my head where after having done something wrong at it... And this particular one it was at a conference in a primarily black space, I was one of the only white people there. I was asked to do something and I did it in a way that I thought was what I'd been asked to. But missed an aspect of the cultural context that even though they asked me to do it, I shouldn't have done it and I should have overridden it.
I just didn't know that. And I was like, all right, I'm just never going to leave my house ever again in my life. And I just went and buried myself into my bed at the conference center for a little while. And granted eventually I was both given so much grace and had to apologize. But I don't know if I've ever felt as awful as I did in that moment of just like, I did everything wrong. I screwed everything up. And so I wish that I heard had you just say what you just said to me, because I feel like the grace I would've given myself had I heard somebody saying that would've been so much higher. So I really appreciate you sharing that.
Karl Ostroski:
Thanks man. I'm glad.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay, last question for you. What insight or support did you either receive or did you need when you were younger that you hope more people will give to others today?
Karl Ostroski:
I think that I learned from my therapy or spiritual direction whatever you do, what comes to mind when you ask all these questions. So I'm asked this question, this thing keeps coming up. I remember I was really into origami as a kid. I just thought it was cool and it lasted six months. So I do not still do this today.
Matt Stauffer:
As kids are want to do.
Karl Ostroski:
Sure, but I was never that into sports. My dad was like, Come on, throw the ball around with me. Let's play basketballs too. And my other two brothers were like yeah, let's go do it. And I'm like, come on, I want to do origami. My dad never did origami with me, so that's something that stuck out. And I wasn't traumatized by it or anything. I went out with my dad the other day and we're fine. But just leaning into what your kids want to do... There's a saying that I know from my faith context, raise up a child in the way they should go. And I heard it from a pastor in Texas say yeah, it doesn't say the way you want them to go.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh my God.
Karl Ostroski:
It says, train them up in the way they should go. And given their personality, their wiring, their gifting, how can you invest in them in the way they should go? So I don't think I was ever meant to be an origami master. But I think if there's one thing I wish it's like, oh, if he would've sat down with me and done this even just once, they're like, oh, he'd be validating kind of what I'm interested into. So I think yeah, that's something. And being a foster parent because you have someone who has totally physiologically different wiring than you do. How can you lean into what they want to do differently so that they feel validated and encouraged?
Matt Stauffer:
I say this all the time but this podcast is therapy for me, man. I don't even do it on purpose, but every single time I bring in these incredible people that say a thing. And I'm like, well, I'm going to talk about that in therapy next week. Thanks, Karl. That's so good.
Karl Ostroski:
Well, Matt, what other time do you sit down and talk about your feelings outside of podcasts and therapy, I guess?
Matt Stauffer:
Fair enough. Yeah. Well, the main other time is one on ones with my employees, which I often say this one on one was like therapy, please send me a bill afterwards. So you're right, we don't get the chance to do this often.
Karl Ostroski:
In fact, Matt, for me it takes a while. I was meeting with my spiritual director and she's like, "Karl, how are you doing?" And I went on for 20 minutes and she's like, "hey Karl, you didn't use any feelings words."
Matt Stauffer:
That's me every time. Oh my God, my therapist is going to listen to this podcast and be like, okay, I know why you two are friends. She has a little feelings wheel that she makes me print out so I can point to where I am in the feelings wheel. She's like, you told me all these heady academic things and didn't tell me about your freaking feelings.
Karl Ostroski:
Matt, there are three feelings: happy, sad, and angry. That's about all I got it. It takes the digger to dig up the rocks and the dirt to be like, oh yeah, there's a unique feeling right here that happened.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, no, but I am very grateful to have people and spaces where we can actually be open about this stuff. So thank you so much for sharing that. And I love that you were willing to share that origami thing because like you said, it's what popped to your mind. You don't want your dad to feel bad. You didn't think that everybody should go do origami, but you're just like you know what? There's a reason this popped to my head and we're going to run with it. And it was very meaningful. So thank you.
Karl Ostroski:
You're welcome.
Matt Stauffer:
So if people think you are amazing, which I'm sure they do, what does it look like for them to either support you or to follow you? And I also want to add specifically onto that if they hear that guy teaches cultural intelligence, that's who I want to teach me, additionally, in terms of the first rest of this question, how are they going to reach out to you for that?
Karl Ostroski:
Sure. So Karl with a K, Ostroski, you have to look at the notes for spelling. I used to be Polish, they have polish remover in the health and beauty aisle at the grocery store. So you stick your fingers in it-
Matt Stauffer:
Dork.
Karl Ostroski:
...and your ethnicity free. Yeah. So Karl Ostroski, I'm on LinkedIn and Twitter probably most actively. So yeah, you can find me on there, pay me and just say, hey, I'm interested in this. How do I go about doing this? Happy to talk to you more, your organization or just you personally, whatever, let's make it work. And if you want to support me, so I'm trying to figure out how can I contribute to the world of business and kind of the public sphere. So I do a thing called FeedbackFridays where I just encourage people to give each other feedback on a Friday. And then I tag a bunch of my friends on LinkedIn and be like, okay, today I'm tagging you go give somebody a feedback. So if it's Friday, give someone a feedback, that'll support me.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. I realized that even though I sent you a thing where it says, how do you pronounce your name phonetically and you wrote it out, Ostroski, I've been saying Astroski, like A, my entire knowing you for over a decade. So I'm sorry about that. I'm going to get it right. Thank you for gently correcting.
Karl Ostroski:
And I will say that's how I pronounce it, but the family legend is that when all the Ostroskis arrived from Poland, whatever immigration status they came to, all the kids went to different grades in school. And so the teacher wrote their name how they thought it sounded. So mine doesn't have a W, other Ostroskis have the W. Some have a Y at the end, some have an I at the end. So some of it might be like an origin, we intentionally spell it differently in this region of Poland because again, I used to be Polish. But it could just be as they assimilated, that's what stuck. And that's what was on the legal document and they're like yeah, close enough. You know us.
Matt Stauffer:
Got it. But it would've been Ow originally at least in some areas in Poland, which would've given the O a little bit more-
Karl Ostroski:
No, O-S-T-R-O-W-S-K-I. So Ostrowski, Ostroski, Astrowski, Owstrowski, Ostrowski...
Matt Stauffer:
They're all part of it.
Karl Ostroski:
Yeah, it's in there.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay. So this podcast episode is going to be called Dad Jokes with Karl Ostroski because you are laying them on thick and I love it and I appreciate you.
Karl Ostroski:
Did you hear the list of the top 10 things great about Switzerland?
Matt Stauffer:
No.
Karl Ostroski:
I didn't see the list, I know their flag is a big plus. At this point I'm just having fun with the editors. Don't spell the word part backwards because it's a trap.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh my God. You can have fun with the editors, everyone else is going to hear this too. So I just need you to know that. Dad jokes, he's holding up a 50 Cards of Dad Jokes for those of you who aren't watching on YouTube. That is amazing.
Karl Ostroski:
I love them.
Matt Stauffer:
I love it. Karl, you're incredible. And I'm very grateful for having you as a friend and also for you having been here. Thank you so much for sharing with us today.
Karl Ostroski:
Thanks for having me. I hope there's some love spread out to your community that I wouldn't reach otherwise.
Matt Stauffer:
Absolutely. And for the rest of y'all, until next time, be good to each other.