For many of us the things that influence the way we think and see the world are invisible to us. Just like the proverbial goldfish not seeing the water it is swimming in.
So how do we see what was previously unseen?
Do you remember the first time you went overseas and how bizarre it felt when people looked and behaved differently to those folks at home?
Or maybe you had started a new job and the way things got planned or meetings were convened made you feel like you were from another planet?
These experiences help us to identify what we perceive as ‘normal’ behaviour in our usual world.
I heard a wonderful story about socialisation when I was interviewing people for our book Creativity Cycling: Help your team solve complex problems with creative tools. My interviewee told a story about when he was an exchange student with an English family. He was French. He expressed his surprise at seeing how English people always have their hands under the table before a meal started. This was a small thing but bizarre for him and so different to his own cultural orientation. It wasn’t until he was confronted by a different type of behaviour that he could see his own more clearly. His English friends were equally confronted by a strange cultural experience when they came to stay at his house where they were equally overwhelmed by the amount of kissing going on.
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