Where diversity thrives and leaders come alive.
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Please take 1 minute to fill in these three Multiple choice questions for your chance to win 50% of the next CPD course. Even if you can’t make the next course, but is in real estate, we would love your opinion. (You can transfer the voucher to a future date)
Real Estate. Would it not be cool if you can get an insight into how other people do business, read their body language and understand how they negotiate?
I bet at some stage you faced a difficult client, testing your boundaries. You may have even had to deal with drug-affected tenants or absurd expectations from owners/tenants or even buyers. Some of you report dealing with aggressive or abusive owners and tenants.
Would it not be great if you had a magic wand to read people’s mind and see into their soul before they even opened their mouths! Would it not be great for your mental health if you could wave your magic wand and deal with your own emotions and the emotions of others to lessen the impact on everyone’s stress levels. You can! There is a magic wand!
Not only can we help you acquire these skills, but you can earn 7 CPD points whilst having fun! There is heaps of evidence to show us that if we increase our emotional intelligence (EQ) we will increase our self-awareness, manage emotions better, develop better relationships and ultimately have better mental health, due to increased rapport with those around you. Cultural intelligence (CQ) takes it to an even deeper level. You may know exactly how to ‘read’ those people similar to you, but what if they come from somewhere else, a different cultural background? In Perth 48% of the population is from somewhere else than Australia. We have for example seen significant increases in Chinese property investment over the last few years.
Different cultures negotiate differently and they have different ideas of what makes a house important to live in. What would knowing some of these differences mean for your relationships with clients? Come and join us for this fun workshop, including a light lunch and drinks in Perth city.
Good Friday in Cefalu, Sicily is the day of the very sombre Solenne Processione. (2017)
Easter is upon us! Enjoy the beautiful 4-day long weekend coming your way. Irrespective of whether you are religious or not, long weekends are a great time to catch up with family and friends and de-stress from your busy pace. I’d like to challenge you to explore one different way of doing something this weekend. Even if you just brush your teeth with a different hand or expand your knowledge by learning from someone else’s tradition.
Eggs are an ancient symbol of new life, and have been associated with pagan festivals to celebrate spring for millennia. In the northern hemisphere, the spring equinox falls in March, and symbolises the end of winter. The Persian New Year, Nowruz, is also celebrated in early spring and uses coloured and decorated eggs as a symbol of fertility. The oldest surviving decorated egg dates back to the fourth century AD!
The other common symbol for Easter is the rabbit. The Easter Bunny comes from the German tradition of the Osterhase, literally the Easter hare. While the exact origin of this tradition is unknown, it is likely that eggs and rabbits became tied together due to their abundance in spring.
Three years ago, I was in the Baci chocolate factory in Italy with my family. The tour guide mentioned that they do not have the Easter Bunny in Italy as my then five-year-old was puzzled by all the eggs in the factory as opposed to bunnies laying them. She quickly read my face, and he was reassured that they in fact have a magic chicken that lays chocolate eggs.
I spent Easter last year in the gorgeous town of Cefalu, Sicily. On Good Friday we attended the Solenne Processione, Solemn Procession, which winds through the city with sacred images of Jesus and Mary. I found this celebration to be very sombre and even scary.
In Brazil, Rio Carnival is a massive festival held in the week before Lent every year. Originally a Greek spring festival to celebrate Dionysus, the god of wine, Rio Carnival is considered the biggest party in the world, with over a million tourists attending the festival in 2015, spending US$782 million!
Speaking of Greek gods, did you know that the cross on a hot cross bun originally symbolised the horns of a bull? The bull is a symbol of Zeus and cakes were baked as an offering to him. Many myths and traditions have been associated with hot cross buns, including that if you hang one in your kitchen on Good Friday, it will stay fresh all year, and that doing so will protect your kitchen from bad spirits and kitchen fires.
There are so many different traditions associated with Easter, from flying homemade kites in Bermuda, to reading crime and mystery novels in Norway, dressing up as a witch in Finland, eating chocolate bilbies in Australia, and cooking a giant omelette in the south of France. I recall dancing around a bonfire one Easter in Germany, sharing a bottle of schnapps…
I wish you a wonderful break in whichever way you celebrate, and hope that you will take some of this time to consider that there are so many different ways to celebrate. You can apply this thinking to work situations; the way in which you approach something is likely different to that of your co-workers. Consider that what your family and culture has done for centuries may be absolutely foreign to someone else, and they may have an entirely different perspective. You don’t need to change your views, but being able to see an issue that needs solving from different angles and perspectives will enable you to be more creative in your solutions.
The Christmas and New Year period has been and gone, but does this mean that all the giving should stop? Doing good makes people feel good! It makes us happy, so why savour these feelings strictly for December? The answer is, we shouldn’t. The do-good, feel-good philosophy I speak of has been seen all over the globe for centuries, but it tends to look different depending on the culture and even the age bracket.
The commonly quoted US Pew Study reported that millennials (individuals born after 1980) prioritise helping those in need over a sizeable paycheck. We already know that millennials are seen by some as less loyal, as they are less likely to stick with an employer than Baby Boomers for example. Several reports indicate that this is primarily due to millennials placing higher importance on values such as health and social consciousness than any other generation. To put it simply, why would millennials continue working for a company if its behaviour doesn’t coincide with their moral compass? They are far more likely to go out in search of an employer that makes a conscious effort to use sustainable materials, to recycle, to give back to the community or even better, the third world.
How does all this link? Why is it essential to the way that you do business? You don’t have to search far to hear about corporate scandals, about how companies are experiencing significant backlash by a failure to uphold their corporate social responsibility. The world we live in is ever-changing, and our future generations hold precisely that in their hands – our future. It is about time businesses adjusted to the needs and values of those who will continue their legacies. Not merely to avoid controversy, but to be part of a new paradigm called conscious capitalism. If more businesses became in touch with the principles associated with conscious capitalism, they would begin to understand that how we spend our time and money are shaping not only our world but also the world our children are growing up.
I am a member of Conscious Capitalism and also the chair of the United Nations Association Western Australia Human Rights Committee. I also act as a mentor to UWA students in their final year of studies, providing support on what they can expect post-study. If you are interested in acting as a mentee, you can apply here.
My involvement in these organisations gives me insight into the demands of future generations, of differing cultures and consumers. I do this in my spare time on top of running a business, being a mother, a wife, a friend and so many other things, because I truly believe this will make the world a better place.
All this information leads me to a few questions I’d like to ask you.
What is the culture of your business? How do you give back? Do millennials or any other generation feel proud to be part of your team? Does your business make them happy?
Consumer attitudes about social change are shifting. This can be seen locally, with the future implementation a plastic bag use ban for businesses in WA. On a global scale, people are becoming more aware of the corporate social responsibility and sustainable practices. Big businesses are increasingly using it as brand differentiation, so why should this stop at the conglomerates? Businesses of all sizes should be maximising their potential and ensuring the future of their companies by following these principles.
Rare Birds, with the support of Beyond Bank Australia, are hosting an upcoming panel discussion surrounding these topics, titled “Giving as a Strategy”. The panel includes myself and four other successful business people, Tom Kooey, Skye Gilligan, Lacey Fillpich and Alicia Curtis. This special business event will take place on Thursday 15th February from 5:30 – 7:30 PM at FLUX on 191 St Georges Terrace in Perth, WA and will be MC’d by the fabulous Sue Pember, Rare Birds Global Ambassador.
See the attached PDF for more information and feel free to forward this on to your networks – Rare Birds Panel Discussion Audience Invitation
As a final note, I would love to hear about the existing ‘giving culture’ at your organisation or how I can assist in supporting your drive for positive cultural change.
I look forward to your replies!
Sure IQ is important, but there are several tests that proof after a certain level of IQ (average) it is rather EQ that leads to the promotion or the sale or simply being liked and respected. Let’s dial it back a bit and define EQ – Simply put it is your ability to manage and control our own emotions and the ability to read and respond to the emotions of others.
There are five dimensions of EQ. The first three are intrapersonal skills – more inwards (about you):
And then the last two are interpersonal – more outwards focussed.
The great news is that no matter what level your EQ is at you can certainly improve it. It is not at a set level for life. Imagine for a moment all the benifits of growing your EQ…
And the list goes on.
Those of you who have been following me for some time, have often heard me speak on Cultural Intelligence (CQ). Developing your EQ and of course CQ will no doubt greatly influence your success. High EQ/CQ teams will also strongly outperform their counterparts. I’ll continute to push out a few tips adn tricks for you to improve yours via this forum, but if you’d like to excellerrate the process, feel free to get in touch and see how we can work with your team or join one of our public sessions.
Exciting Upcoming workshops over the next month for the Real Estate Industry – Human Behaviour Series
Do you still need to earn CPD points and are sick and tired of the normal boring old stuff, this is the course for you! Come and earn 7 CPD points.
Cultural Intelligence and Emotional intelligence for Real Estate will not only be valuable for building stronger relations with your global clients, but it will also be of great value to your day to day relations with everyone you interact with.
My name is Tanya Finnie and I’m a cultural strategist based here in Perth. I’ve lived in many other countries prior to proudly calling Perth home. I work as a global professional speaker and consultant in the area of cultural competence.
Come and enrich your situational awareness, increase your EQ and CQ and get better insights into human behaviour to ultimately increase your closure rate and build stronger relations .
Upcoming workshops
For more detailed outcomes on each of the independent workshops click here. Morning and afternoon tea provided.Delicious lunch can be purchased at the venue for very reasonable rates. ($10-$20 depending on order.) Feel free to get in touch if you have any queries or would like us to quote you on an in house workshop. (minumum of 5 people)
As some of you know I recently spent a month eating and drinking my way through Europe, whilst making some European connections, speaking at events and mostly soaking in different cultures. Here is my trip on fast forward with some important cultural business lessons.
1. You make your own sunshine
As we drove from Mt Etna through the middle of Sicily, to Cefalu (after being on the road for 3 weeks), I realised quickly that some entertainment was required before my 7 year old in the back could say “are we there yet’, I switched on some music. We all sang happily along to ‘I make my own Sunshine’ You cannot choose or control the weather around you, but you can certainly control how you dress and how you behave. You control your own mood, so remember to reset it.
The theatre in Pollina (Sicily) ,where I’d love to perform one day -with my son, George.
2. Embrace vulnerability (often experienced when around different cultures)
I soon got reminded about the lack of curtains in Holland when I walked out of my bathroom to get dressed and looked up to see the beautiful skylight above me, that looked straight down from all the apartments above us in the inner city. The truth is nobody was gawking down at me (or at least not that I saw), but I felt a moment of vulnerability. Be free, step out of your comfort zone. Guess where I got dressed for the remainder of our stay in Amsterdam!
3. Step back and look at the whole picture
It was breathtaking to see over 7 million bulbs and 800 varieties of tulips at Keukenhof.. Even with so many, each was still unique, but stood together to make the best display. Don’t get bored with your everyday mundane tasks. They add up to make an impressive difference in the end goal. Reframe the little things that form part of a whole.
4. Take time to build relationships
In order to stay on top of work and personal life, we normally have a live in aupair. As you can possibly imagine, I like to mix things up and get au-pairs from different countries to expose my son to as many different cultures as I possibly can. I found our next bro-pair in Lille, France and arranged to meet with him and his entire family in Brugges. We took some time to meet his mom, dad and girlfriend and his mom introduced us to the best French cake I’ve ever tasted – Mille feulle. I could see it meant a lot to her to have met us. It must be hard to send your child to the other side of the world to go do an internship with a family you’ve never met. Take time out to build relations. This carries more weight in some cultures that others, but will secure you some goodwill.
Being transported by a local, in a small town where we could not park our car.
5. Give yourself permission to take a break
We spent 5 nights in Brussels, but by now walked about 10km’s a day and tried out a variety of food out of our normal comfort zone. I could feel I was getting tired and my body was crying out for a rest. I hear you ask, did you not say this was a holiday? I push myself like many leaders do and often feel disappointed if I have not squeezed an extra few things into my day. I often stretch well beyond other people’s ‘normal’ to get there, so taking time out is not something that comes naturally to me. I paused and recognised this was a holiday and took a day off. I spent most of it in bed with a book recharging. Frankly I felt so recharged, that I spent the next day tapping away on my laptop and achieved 3 days’ worth of work in one. There is heaps of research that show us, taking a break, increases productivity.
A gorgeous Sushi and Cocktail Bar in Cefalu, run by a Japanese chef and prepared with ingredients fresh from the ocean.
6. Take responsibility
This far I had the languages covered. Dutch – tick, Flemish – tick, German – tick. My Italian on the other hand is barely existing apart from a few crucial holiday phrases as Vino Rosso por favore, grazie mille; and pizza, pasta and Campari Spritz, whilst animatedly gesturing. Most of the time all went well, but as we like to stay away from mainstream touristy places, we sometimes got stuck with the menu and ended up with something completely different than anticpated. There are a variety of ways one could react to this. We quickly decided that some you win and some you learn from. It was a great opportunity to try something you would normally not. Take responsibility for your decisions. We could have easily blamed the waiters or sat there and complained about the food. Don’t tell yourself BED (Blame, Excuses and Denial) stories. Take responsibility, you may just learn something.
7. Take a breath before you react
At the airport on the way back, my son came bouncing towards me eating a lollypop. He enthusiastically shared: “Look mom, a nice man bought me a lollypop.” I quickly moved forward to karate slap the lolly away from him and get more details, when I saw my husband walking towards me smiling as he saw my reaction. I replayed the possible scenarios in my head trying to imagine the real story, but it was only until my husband shared that he did not have the right foreign change left and a lovely father of two behind him offered to pay for it. How easy it is to leap to conclusions, remember to pause and get all the facts.
PS the event in Cologne went well, but I can certainly confirm that you change the way you think and act, the moment you switch to a different language.
Special
I’d like to offer anyone with an existing quote a 20% discount on the services quoted if you book prior to end July 2017.
Mastermind Group
Apologies for the silence on this end, but I had a few medical emergencies in the last few months preventing me from moving ahead with this. I’m excited to say the next group will start in August. I’ll be sending some more information to those who already expressed an interest. If you haven’t yet and would like to join a very global group of people, please feel free to apply via the form on the website, there are still limited spots.
It is a community of professionals in the area of cultural intelligence/cultural training who meet once a month online share a community of practice. If this sounds like you and you are interested in new tips and tricks and getting that push forward, click here.
I just returned from a month in the USA, where I attended and spoke at the CQ (Cultural Intelligence) Summit. The summit theme was inspired by David Livermore’s new book – Driven by Difference – How we can we fuel innovation through diversity.
There was also an interesting focus on domestic diversity at the summit. Often when we hear diversity, we immediately think of ethnic diversity, but diverse teams could also include diversity through gender, age, profession, disability and a variety of other categories, that are crucial to relationship building. As part of my extended trip I spent some time in an Amish community learning more about their lifestyle; with bikies in their leather jackets, covered in tattoos, talking about life on the road; reconnected with ‘old’ friends from the heart of Texas (who I met in 1999), who in turn introduced me to a well known folk singer – Bill Ward, made amazing new friends and business contacts and crossed the country from New York to the Northern midwest in Michigan, down to the Gulf of Mexico in the south. It was a wonderful cultural mixed bag of experiences.
One of the newest tools released will measure cultural dimensions, a topic I often speak on. For those not that familiar with the background of CQ, you may be interested to know that 55 000 people in 98 countries were surveyed originally, leading to the four capabilities we assess today. These in turn predict: Cross Cultural Adaptability, Judgement and decision making, negotiation Skills, Strategic Leadership and how you would expand into new cultural markets.
I would love to hear how you think people differ in your organisation.
I’m very excited about my new partnership with the Cultural Intelligence Center (CIC). Our new Mastermind groups will be launching this month.
I also had the opportunity to write an article for the amazing Tasha Broomhall’s magazine, Blooming Minds based in Perth, Australia. This magazine is focused on mental health in the workplace and filled with great articles, often with a cultural focus – as culture is so important to maintain healthy relationships. I suggest you subscribe if you don’t already receive this gem in your inbox.
Looking forward to sharing what is current in making a difference through cultural understanding.
February 2016
Stories are an important way to get your message across, possibly one of the most important skills to communicate successfully. A good story teller always use their senses. How well do you manage honing in your senses, in order to improve your communication style? Did you know you could improve all of your senses with a bit of practice? Did you know that of all your senses, hearing is the one you can most improve?
I love observing different people when I travel. Did you know by observing the behaviour of others, you can create stronger relations, improve your listening and ultimately read people’s mind? [Read more…]