Episode 102:
Handshakes and the Shared Meaning of Culture: How Cultural Behaviors Develop
What You Will Learn:
- Why 75% of people surveyed responded that, due to the global pandemic, they no longer feel comfortable shaking hands in a job interview
- Sara describes a pre-pandemic training exercise she and her team would employ to demonstrate the discomfort people sometimes experience when getting close to others
- Why shared meaning around our cultural behaviors informs how comfortable or uncomfortable we feel doing those behaviors
- How the “handshake” ritual came to be historically, why many of us don’t know this origin, and what this tells us about how we view and question other cultures’ behaviors
- Why it takes a significant disruption to change the shared meaning we associate with certain long-held cultural behaviors
- Why understanding the shared meaning behind behaviors is the key to understanding and changing our organizational culture
- Why our actions are created by our conscious thoughts, which themselves stem from our unconscious filters
- Why it is crucial to define the behaviors that you want to see or change and then work on the shared meaning that informs those behaviors
About Sara Taylor
Sara Taylor earned a master’s degree in Diversity and Organizational Development from the University of Minnesota. She served as a leadership and diversity specialist at the University of Minnesota for five years and as director of diversity and inclusion for Ramsey County, Minnesota for three years.
Sara is the founder and president of deepSEE Consulting and has worked with companies as large as Coca-Cola, General Mills, 3M Company, AARP, and numerous others. She has a new book, “Filter Shift: How Effective People See the World,” that explores how our unconscious is actually making choices and decisions for us, all without our knowing — and how to change that.
How to Connect with Sara Taylor:
- Website: www.deepseeconsulting.com
- Twitter: @deepseesara