Ep. 046: Dean Foster

Dean has written many articles as well as the book, Bargaining Across Borders, published by McGraw-Hill and voted as one of the top ten business books of the year in 1994 by the American Library Association. Dean’s other books include The Global Etiquette Guide to Europe , The Global Etiquette Guide to Asia, The Global Etiquette Guide to Africa & The Middle East and The Global Etiquette Guide to Latin America. Dean was a Contributing Editor with National Geographic, writing the monthly “CultureWise” column, appearing in National Geographic Traveler Magazine. Dean is on the faculty of American University, Intercultural Management Institute, Washington, DC, and he received his Master’s degree in Sociology from the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, NYC.  Most recently, he is the co-host of the syndicated podcast, “Oops, Your Culture’s Showing!” (www.blubrry.com/oopscultureshow/)

Transcript

SUSAN: So, Dean, I'm so glad to have you back on The Peacebuilding Podcast. 

DEAN: It's great to be here. 

SUSAN: It’s such a weird time. Of course, we're right in the middle of this global pandemic, which is so bizarre and horrific, but has given many of us some time to do things like, it was easy to schedule with you, and easy to schedule with me. 

DEAN: No one is traveling around, we're not on planes now. 

SUSAN: No, no, and maybe the skies are thanking us because everything is you know, getting a little clearer and all that.  So I was thinking about you and thinking about our history -- we started both through Ellen Raider, you were working with Ellen Raider, our dear colleague, and then I met you that way and we were teaching intercultural negotiation. And you and I did a lot of programs for AT&T International Services or don’t remember it’s exact name.

DEAN: At the time, I think I recall it as AT&T International Services, but who knows what they were referring to themselves as now. But they too, were just starting out in this whole idea of, we need to develop some skills around culture, we need to understand what's happening out there. Now that we're working in a global world, and they really were one of the first that I can recall that even had this perspective on what was happening, but we're going back what 30 years or so. 

SUSAN: I hate to say it, probably something about that. But yeah, and certainly Ellen was one of the first people to really talk about culture as part of the negotiation process. I remember when I was at Harvard, and I talked to some folks at MIT and Harvard and I said, I'm going to do intercultural negotiation. And they said to me at the time, no such thing.  And, and now, I mean, they're my colleagues, and I appreciate what they do and everything, but I notice now how many times they will put out things on culture in negotiation, you know. . 

DEAN: Right, I think you know, what was happening at the time was that they were trying to establish some criteria and some language around how we talk about negotiations and trying to create a more objective way of looking at it more as a science, which needed to be done. But I think at the time, you know, it required that they have to put culture to the side, we can't incorporate that just yet. And, and maybe at the time, they didn't see the need for it because they had to establish the scientific way of looking at the process of negotiating. But I think, ultimately, you know, you do have to bring culture into the process. Because once you've created those objective facts about the negotiation process, then you also have to take the objective facts about culture and put that into the mix. And then gender too . . . 

SUSAN: So you know, just a little bit about more about you and me. So we did a number of programs, we did a number of things together and then you veered off and really focused on culture big, negotiation, smaller. . . and I focused on negotiation big, culture smaller. Then you worked with Berlitz ,and I don't remember how that went down. But I did a couple a number programs for you where I was doing cultural -- What did you call them? cultural briefings for people who are traveling around the world like Number those for you. 

DEAN: That's right. That's right. Berlitz, you know, was the language company and their clients were taking language because they were doing business in other countries. And so we realized that there was an opportunity there, they also needed information about culture. And so we aligned with them, and in fact, developed their cross-cultural training business worldwide for them. And then that's how we were working through Berlitz for many, many years. And then we went on in to do this kind of work independently. We're helping organizations when they relocate families from one country to another, wherever cultural information and skills needed to be applied. That's where we stepped in and helped. 

SUSAN: And I continued, I never talked about negotiation without incorporating culture, because negotiation is a cultural bound concept, as we'll talk more about. So I continue to do programs for NASA and their space partners and programs for the UN worldwide and, of course, working with a lot of very, very diverse populations. But as you know, I am writing a book on women in negotiation. And in the course of doing it, I was writing the chapter on culture. And it occurred to me that I don't think I had ever specifically asked myself the question, if you look at the cultural variables, like the Hofstede variables, the Trompenaars variables or whatever, or your variables, if you took any one culture, national culture I'm talking about, and you look at a variable, how would it differ by gender, by the people, the males and females in that culture. So I called you and said, hey, Dean, would you be willing to have a conversation about this? Because I think this is kind of interesting. And you of course, were game and, I appreciate it. It sort of amazed me in a way that it was the first time that I specifically had asked myself this question um, you know, how does gender really play out in the cultural dimension? I mean, of course, gender itself is a culture of a kind and I thought, well, let me just say first, it gets me into saying this general thing about culture and negotiation and how they interface in my mind and see if you agree. If  the negotiation is more collaborative than competitive, my experience is that Identity group differences of which culture is a part, are not likely to polarize. They may become interesting, a source of misunderstanding certainly, but you're not going to get into identity group polarization anywhere near the same way you will, if you have a competitive adversarial negotiation process, and then what will happen is the phenomenon that I call very elegantly, group-o-centrism. And you will see depending on what the context is, the group will break down by identity group differences. It could be gender, it could be national culture, it could be race, it could be whatever is relevant to that particular context.

DEAN: Right. You know, I think what you're talking about here is the default position that people take, and the default position that they take is often defined by their identity group. So if you're, if people are needing to feel like they have to go to a safe place, if it's not, if the negotiation isn't going the way that they're perceiving it to go, they're going to default to their safe place, which is their group identity, or maybe the way their, their gender role has defined them, or their race, or their generation, or whatever that default is. And, you know, I think this is where people sometimes get a little bit confused around culture. It's that none of this stuff is prescriptive. None of it has to happen. You know, we do have free will. And, and

SUSAN: You  mean, just because you're from culture A, you're not going to necessarily behave like A is that what you saying? 

DEAN: Think you will default to culture A when the pressure to default gets serious. In other words, when you feel threatened when you feel like you're not getting your needs met, but you don't have to, you can, you can make a choice. You can make a choice to think more intelligently about the situation about use other tools about you can make a choice that what's happening is your reaction, and you're defaulting to a place that's comfortable for you. But it doesn't have to be, it may not be the most productive place to go. So the good news, I think, is that we all have choices here. The way we make those choices, though, is through enlightenment. The only way we're going to know that we don't have to default to a comfort zone. In fact, it may be safer and more productive and more positive to understand where the other person is coming from, and actually meet them halfway there, if not fully, because you may get more of your needs met doing that, then by defaulting to what you think you, you, it's going to get you what you want. So we always have choices. And I think that's the good news about culture. And that's the good news about, about any of the group identities that we're a part of. 

SUSAN: What you're saying it's such a good point, but it does presuppose self-awareness, like you know, are saying the fish is the last one to know it's swimming in water you have to know what your cultural fallback or your identity group fallback is. You have to even be aware of that in yourself if you're actually going to transcend it. 

DEAN: Absolutely. Absolutely. That is the first step. You know, in my first book, Bargaining Across Borders, where we're talking about culture and we're talking about negotiations, I, you know, I say, look, the first thing you have to do is recognize that there are these cultural differences that are at the table with you. And then, like re-trace it rediscover in yourself, what it might be about this other culture that is creating this behavior that's challenging you in some way. And, and I think, at the deepest level, not only do you re-trace but you find in yourself those experiences that maybe give you some insight into why that person is behaving the way that they're behaving? Because I don't think any of these behaviors that challenge us are that foreign to us. 

SUSAN: Yeah, I would say we are all I mean from working with people all over the world. And I bet you agree with me I think we are way more alike than we are different. And these things called culture, which I call group personality in a way, they they're like weighted differently based on where you come from in the world. It's not like it's a totally strange concept. It's just weighted differently. Like for me, I come from the United States, I come from an Anglo-Saxon culture. I got heavily acculturated to individualism, whereas other people in like in parts of Asia were much more acculturated to a collectivist, or group oriented way of life and precise, not that I don't understand that I do. And that's not like they don't understand individualism they do. It's just weighted differently. 

DEAN: It's weighted differently. And I think as us Americans, which is the case for both you and me, we actually have a unique advantage in this, in that, you know, we don't have to go very far back in our own personal experiences or even further back then maybe yesterday when we went well, we didn't do that yesterday. But the point is, as U.S. Americans, we're always interacting with people from somewhere else, every us Americans, you know, either in their own generation or one generation away from being from somewhere else. So we know these experiences, and all of these experiences are human. And they're part of us. We just have been trained to think that there are these positions that we can default to, that define us much more clearly than any of these subtle nuances. But those subtle nuances are still part of us. And so when you see someone behaving in ways that are challenging you, you've got go back into yourself and say, what is it that may be driving that person that I can recognize? And then then you then you create this empathy moment with them. And you kind of re-frame what's going on. So that you're not well, first of all, you're not defaulting to a defense position. And you're open to listening to where this person is coming from. And I think at that moment, you can then start the discovery of underlying needs, and how does and how to solve those needs. 

SUSAN: Yeah, I just want to come back to that idea of climate because, you know, and I have to get a little political here and look at some of what happened with the Trump administration. I think he has succeeded in creating a much more adversarial climate in the country, which you saw then, like, a increase in anti-semitism and an increase in racial and gender kinds of violent types of situations. And I want to come back to my point that, you know, the climate, the negotiations strategy that you're using, whether it's if it's if it's win-lose, you're gonna see cultural differences, heighten and polarize. If it's Win-Win, it's not as likely. So Dean, I want to I want to jump into the gender part of this because time flies by so fast on these things and I wanted to make a couple of general comments. One is that in my understand, I mean from it, most societies on Earth are still patriarchal. And that means --a rule of the Father, you know, in family systems, and then that plays out in organizational systems and in most societies on Earth, women are still less valued than men? Certainly, there are exceptions to that

DEAN: And less empowered 

SUSAN: and less empowered. And so far, it sounds like you're in a you agree with what I'm saying that that seems true to you from what you know…  

DEAN: absolutely, absolutely like, I think we're still in this. Look, we're only what, 50,000 years away from our biological origins, right? That's not it? I think so something like that. And, and we've only, we've only been in this adventure of creating civilizations for 6000 years, which is not a lot. And, you know, I think the anthropologists and paleo-anthropologists have defined for us pretty clearly how fundamentally we have spent thousands and thousands, 10s of thousands of years in this mode of basically hunters and nurturers and the roles were pretty well defined, that it was the men who went out and hunted and it was the women who nurtured and, and stayed in the, in the cave so to speak. And, you know, it's not I think with only 6000 years of civilization and maybe only 1% of that time in any enlightened way, It's hard to counterbalance against the, the legacy of patriarchy that came out of the hunter and the cave and the nurturer in, , in the pre-civilized human experience. But today, that's all history, and we have opportunities today, and we have choices today and we have enlightenment. And we have ways of thinking about our relationships with each other and how we want to structure civilization and society, But this is a very, very new adventure that we're on, you know, from. 

SUSAN: One of the things I just want to throw in here is that Riane Eisler who wrote The Chalice and the Blade has been a guest on the show actually twice and Bill Ury, I'm still trying to get him on the show, one of these days I’ll succeed, but they both, and other people too, actually Rabia Roberts who has also been on the show, our societies, our human history has been more collaborative than competitive, we have a much longer period of time in terms of our livelihood, pre-agriculture of being much more cooperative, and where gender relations were really balanced. And so patriarchy. You're right. It's much more of a 5000, 6000 I don't know exactly how many thousands of years old the institution is, but certainly men and women lived in partnership for much longer periods and they have lived in the way that we have under patriarchy. And so while, we can't go backwards, it's interesting to know that the age of the goddess was during those periods of time, and the first anyway I don't want to get into territory that I'm not very good at talking about, other people are much better at talking about it but I did want to say about negotiation and patriarchy that the very concept of negotiation is, as I said, I think I said it earlier is culture-bound. And certainly I'm aware that in many cultures, women just can't negotiate period, like I had a client, a young woman from China, that I was with in Seoul and she was saying I, ‘I love this material, but I can't negotiate at home. I just do what I'm told. And actually, all the money I earned from my job, it goes to my brother.’

DEAN: Well, I think we may be living at a more patriarchal moment than we have had in most of our civilization. Because I think there's a relationship between advanced capitalism and patriarchy, then we can explore that and be great to get some economists perspectives on that, too. You know, I think way back in our origins, the roles of men and women were much more ecologically balanced, and it was an ecology of roles, so that it was much more egalitarian. If it hadn't been, it wouldn't have worked, but it worked for 10s of thousands of years. I think only when civilization started to develop, did we then have to organize in some way and ascribe authority. And I think economics also had a great impact on who got what kind of authority in the creation of those civilizations. So I think it was civilizations that advanced patriarchy, and put the ecology of the genders out of balance. 

SUSAN: Your comment is about that maybe advanced capitalism supports a more patriarchal moment I just read a really interesting article in The Atlantic. This guy, this reporter, had interviewed 100 boys, young men, they were around, they're 18 years old. They were college young guys, young guys. And the point of his article was how much that the definition of masculinity to him seems to be contracting, that when asked and of course, these were U.S. kids. That when asked what traits society values most in boys only, only two percent of the male survey respondents said honesty and morality that there was a lot of pressure on them to be ‘bros’, to be aggressive, to be actually disrespectful even though I think they don't have to be disrespectful to women in many regards. And the article also seemed to talk about how women and feminism have given women a bit more freedom to be a lot of different things and men and then I will get into because you know, this is The Peacebuilding Podcast and I am paying a lot of attention, As I think, you know, I've made a point that getting gender right on the planet is that the greatest peace building initiative that we could undertake, and I think there is a strong correlation between toxic masculinity and war, and the over-use of military  solutions I mean, like right now, in the middle of this pandemic, it's just so ridiculous because you see how much in the US we have completely gutted our government and put so much money into militarization that we have no money for a public health system. We have no money to combat climate change. We've been spending it all on these really, really fancy bombers and video games. And I mean, just like it's like, 

DEAN: you know, the virus is really called it all out, hasn't it? I mean, you've got trillions and trillions going to the Pentagon, and we can even get masks and band aids.

SUSAN: I know. It's crazy. It's crazy. So, okay, so you sent me in preparation for this your list of what you think of as the main national or international cultural variables, the ways that cultures seem to differ. And, and I thought it might be interesting just for you to read that list, if you would, and then we and then you and I can pick out of that list, some things that look interesting to us to talk about in terms of how they differ based on culture and gender.

DEAN: Yeah, you know, great point. Let's take a look at this list. What I tried to do was outline in summary, what a lot of research has done over the years in terms of a triangle to identify these broad what we call cultural dimensions around which all people everywhere around the world will demonstrate some difference and measurable difference so that you can say, at the end of the day, oh, this culture is very individualist, while this culture is more collectivist, and you can define what that means, in a very clear way. And it doesn't mean that every individual in any of these cultures are always going to behave a certain way. No, not at all. It's a spectrum. But that if you line up the culture, if you get the average or the mean for all these different cultures, and you line them up, you can see that some are more one way than another. And the reason for that is a combination of lots of things like history and religion and typography and climate, but that there are these very measurable scientifically determinable differences and based on social research on how people react to life and it defines their culture. So one of them jumps right out is this idea of individualism and collectivism. The idea that in just to use the extremes to make the definitions clear that there's the individualist cultures are those where people are rewarded, and they valued for making individual decisions for coming up with individual ideas for doing things on their own. And then you've got these collectivist cultures where it's just the opposite. In fact, individuals cannot take the initiative, the first thing they have to think about all the time, what's front of mind for them, is how is it that whatever I'm thinking or doing is going to play out in regards to others, and therefore, my whole behavior is going to be different. I'm not gonna I'm not going to be self initiating until I'm absolutely sure that others are going to agree with me before I even take a baby step. So the implications of these differences are vast because it affects how we negotiate how we do business, how we relate with each other and male and female, the list goes on and on. But the reason for these differences and all these different areas can be tied to this very fundamental difference in cultural orientation. And that's just one of them. Right?

SUSAN: Yeah. Give me some more, are you game to give me some more. 

DEAN: Sure. Um, I think maybe it's a big one. So yeah, you know, different researchers have identified different ones. Some say there are eight of them. Some say there are four of them. I think there are 12 of them. 

SUSAN: Actually, Dean if I could just back out for a second and say that in terms of doing conflict resolution or conflict in culture, I ended up with sort of a really short form of saying if you if you look around the world loosely, there are cultures that are more aggressive, there are cultures that are more avoidant, and there are cultures that are more just assertive, in the middle. And that that's one. That's one very loose, big model. Right? You're getting more refined. So

DEAN: I think another area that really stands out for me when I work with different cultures is this area of comfort with uncertainty and comfort with risk. Risk is probably a tricky word, but certainly uncertainty. So there are a lot of cultures that put a lot of effort into making sure that before they do anything, they have all the information. They make sure that everybody who's affected is going to line up behind them.  They have to research the entire encyclopedia before they take a baby step. And the other side of that are these risk comfortable cultures where we make big steps with just enough information. And we don't do a lot of planning because we feel like we can do whatever needs to be done in the moment that it needs to be done. And this causes, when these two cultures come together, it causes it can cause friction, misunderstanding, you get people behaving, where, where all they're doing is looking for lots of detail and data and logic and information before they do anything. And then you'd have these other cultures where individuals are standing up making all these decisions and trying to implement them immediately, With just enough information, sometimes just a hunch, So you get you get different business styles, you get different negotiation styles, you get the difference in, again, how men and women are going to relate with each other. So those are just two cultural examples out of you know, 10 or 12. And I want to but before, before, look at another one. I just want to make this other comment, and that takes me back to my earlier point is that no matter what culture you come from, that's going to be your default. Right? So I come from a very individualist culture in the US, I'm probably going to default to that at some point, because that's a big part of me. But I don't have to default to that. That's my point. We always have choices. And because these other ways of behaving, are part of our human experience, there's a collectivist part of me somewhere. I just, you know, I it doesn't get called out very much however. And, and I got to know that when I'm negotiating with collectivists, I need to get in touch with that part of me so that I can connect with them and understand them better and not misunderstand them. In terms of where they're coming from. 

DEAN: Another big variable that comes to mind is how we approach time and how we organize ourselves around this human concept of time. Right? Because it's, it's totally artificial. It's a cultural concept. Do we believe that time defines ourselves and everything we do? Are we beholden to this artificial concept, so that we have to do things quickly? According to calendars, and agendas and deadlines, or is time something that we recognize, but it doesn't define what we do in the moment, 

SUSAN: I always like it when people talk about farming and how that impacts people's concepts of time, like in monochronic cultures, they're more time sensitive, you have to plan for winter. So like you have to pay attention to time whereas in polychronic cultures, there is no winter so you don't have to worry about it so much, you know, like that. 

DEAN: That's it. If the mangos always fruiting, then you don't have to plan about how you're going to survive the winter. The winter is this future concept that is not front of mind when you live in the tropics. So this idea of planning for the future of doing things according to a schedule and a deadline, of organizing yourself around that as opposed to maybe I organized myself around the people who were in front of me. Maybe I just organize myself around what needs to be done. And if that means that we have to start and stop at a certain time, we just we don't bother with that we just continue. So how we organize ourselves around this idea of time I think is really critical. And it's going to affect how we do business, how we negotiate. And I think it also affects how men and women relate with each other. If, as we've established, in a patriarchal world, women have to fight for the authority to make decisions, then how we organize ourselves around time is going to be a decision that maybe gender specific. It may be a decision that men make as opposed to women make, certainly more often than not in a patriarchal society.

SUSAN: And then any other big variables that you want to highlight. . . 

DEAN: I think the idea of rule rules and processes as opposed to a doing things according to situations. There are cultures that focus on creating a rule, process, system as the benchmark, or a justification for doing whatever they do, making whatever decision needs to be made. And then there are these cultures that say, well, we understand the value of rules and processes and systems. But the reason I do anything is based on the immediate situation that's in front of me. 

SUSAN: Well, and this is the difference between legal systems around the world probably less so now today, but certainly the US legal system is each case and controversy is dealt with in that creates the law versus more European systems, for instance, that create the rules and you just apply the rules. So they're, they're exactly that, that point of how things are different, you know, based on culture, 

DEAN: Right, and it's going to affect not only the legal system, it’s going to affect how people perceive business, how projects get managed or not. Do we follow the rules? Or do we deal with the immediate challenge of the situation? Is it contextual? And, and I think it also affects gender roles, right? how men and women relate with each other.  Which takes us I think, to maybe one more category that I think is a really big one, which is how do we communicate? And again, all of the influences that create our culture creates these this dichotomy where we see certain cultures in the world communicating in very explicit direct ways, where the assumption is that everyone understands what I'm trying to say. Because we all use the same language the same meaning we ascribe the same meaning to the words and the style that we communicate. So everything is everything's very explicit and clear. And then there are these cultures that are, no we're not we're not going to be explicit about things. In fact, if we need to be more concerned about building and maintaining harmonious relationships, we're going to be very careful about what we say. And the idea is that if you share the same understanding of the world as I do, then I don't need to say very clearly or explicitly everything that you kind of understand what I mean without me actually having to say it. And here too, this is going to affect how we work with each other, how we communicate, how we negotiate. And I think it also affects the roles of gender, if women and men are going to be ascribed these very different roles in the patriarchal systems

SUSAN: So that is great. And let me see -- individualism, uncertainty, time, rules and processes, communication. And so let's say I wanted to back up and just, I was thinking how to do this. I thought maybe I just will talk about myself a little bit because I certainly know the culture that, and we're talking again, national cultural dimensions, although, you know, that's complicated too because there's subcultures in every country, particularly in the United States, but 

DEAN: and national borders are often artificially created

SUSAN:  Yeah, yeah, right. But I come from a very individualistic culture, the United States, and of course, that culture. I think about like, how that varies by gender. And the question is absolutely, I mean, I am an individualist I wouldn't be working for myself if I didn't, I wouldn't be living in the woods if I wasn't an individualist. You know, some people think I'm like, I can't believe how you live Susan. You know, I go off hiking by myself. But I think about how I am in relation to the men of my cultural tribe, and I'm definitely more collectivist, I'm more focused on the group, I am less you know I think about even the US military, the army of one, you know how much they highlight the individualism, a it's kind of a masculine thing it's kind of a bro kind of thing you know be the rugged be the rugged individualist and, I don't think gender, I don't think women really ascribe to that in my culture we don't ascribe to being the rugged individualist, Even though we are being more we have, we're doing gutsy your things then, like I see a lot for instance, just looking and looking at the wilderness and people launching into the wilderness. My, my son, I have a son and a daughter and my son, you know this has something to do with patriarchy because my son has been a wilderness guide all over the West. And he was able to do that partially because he's a male. I mean, I and I think and he's white. He's a white, male, strong, dude. And I think that had he been of color like a friend of mine whose son is uh, you know, she's of color. She's black. She's African-American. We often talk about like, there's no way that he could have gone off and been the rugged individualist in the woods, you know? Because he’d probably get killed. I mean, I don't know, he could really get hurt. So, we maybe will, you know, I'm not going to worry too much about being scientific here. I'm going to just talk about being experiential, but certainly, I am, I relate to being an individualist, but I am way less individualistic than I think the dominant cultural norm of my Anglo-Saxon tribe because of my gender. 

DEAN: Absolutely and how less individualistic might the entire culture be? If women were more empowered, 

SUSAN: yes, I think that's right. Because I think women, you know, I and maybe this gets into, well, whatever I you know, I think sisterhood is a big word now these days among a lot of women. You know, when I'm talking to young women in South Sudan when I'm talking to, I interviewed a woman in Pakistan, a young woman in Pakistan, I think the reality for women across the planet looking at patriarchal structures, is we are very aware that sisterhood is our BATNA, BATNA is a negotiation idea, you know, that you that you can't walk away, you know, it's your, it's your walk-away position. And for women, if we don't have, if we don't have a sisterhood, if we don't have women that have our backs, it's kind of like, I call I call a lot of women that, you know, there's, it's sort of our union, you know, and there's a lot of women that are breaking ranks and going into finding their rich husbands to take care of them. And I mean, I'm whatever, I call them scabs. But you know, it's more of a collectivist idea that and I don't want to put any more pressure on women than we already have on us,  but we need to support each other out there. And it hasn't always been the case that we've had because we have been sort of second class citizens that have been scrambling for to, you know, to rise and, and so they'll, you know, we don't also need to have to worry about other women but we kind of do we kind of do have to worry about that idea of sisterhood because I think we're all going to rise together or we're not going to rise. 

DEAN: Exactly and, and you were talking about your experiences. And of course as an ally. I'll talk about my experience, and that is you just said it and the virus is calling this out. I think for everyone to see that we're all gonna rise or fall unless we do everything together here. And I think that women have been kept disempowered by the patriarchal structures because they present this threat to those with the individualist authority, and that was fundamentally male, and then white male and then white European of a certain generation, a certain generational connection. And that's much too threatening to the entire structure. But this whole structure got to change if we're going to move forward here because we can only move forward together. And now from your perspective, you know, there may be some women who get rewarded because of their individualism and I think the structure is designed to reward a certain number of people to keep things looking like we're moving in the right direction. But the truth is until the whole sisterhood is empowered, none of us and I mean not only the women but also the other 50%, 48% that's male, none of us are going to be able to survive and move forward in the world. Because we need to be doing this together. And so we got to spread this empowerment around because this stuff that the individualist have to learn from the collectiveness if we are all going to survive. 

SUSAN: Yeah, it's a really, really nicely said -- it's something that really excites me about empowering women through collaborative negotiation skills is that I think that women and men, but certainly women, really, because I think we have in our bones, an idea about collaboration, which is close to collectivisim. It's not the same as what you're talking about with collectivist, but it's related. And I think we have the ability to be the collaborative leadership force that I think the planet really needs right now as we're seeing from this pandemic. The other reason I think that that women's empowerment is sometimes threatening to patriarchal structures is that patriarchy is, you know, is closely linked to advanced capitalism. And I think women are a lot, we provided a lot of free labor, whether it be by being a good corporate wife, like I was, I was raised to be and didn't become. And it's similar. It's similar to people of color too. And you're right that some people get through or allowed through the structure, but only a certain number, because really, both women and people of color or people that are not the dominant cultural norm, they do provide a lot of free services or cheaper services. You know, no matter no matter what level of society you're talking about, it's often we are cheaper. 

DEAN: Yeah, that's called that and that's part of a disempowerment. Right. That's part of the way the system is designed. And so then has to be abolished. That has to be changed and I think that you know, you can take any culture and you can slice and dice it. Like we're looking at cultures that are either more individualidy or collectivism, you can say okay in this collectivist culture, where are the women and where are the men? And in a patriarchal system, the men are going to represent this norm more than the women because the women are disempowered, right? So,whatever predisposition the women might have, is diminished. Because the patriarchal system doesn't want to call on it. You can look at another's, then you can look at the women in that system or, or the men in that system or you can slice and dice it and say, does this change if we only look at people under 30? Or is it different if we look at people over 60 and I think you're going to see differences. Yes, you will. Definitely Sure. 

SUSAN: I think Millennials are changing things, but maybe not always as fast as they think. But they're, they're definitely changing things. 

DEAN: I'm sure it's not as fast as they think. 

SUSAN: Right, right. So the another one hierarchy, right? You were talking on certainty, and that that actually is connected to what I was just saying about risk. Like I remember having a son and a daughter, I think, and maybe I'm being just stereotyping based on not enough data at all. But I did watch how like, for instance, my son in his body was way more comfortable with taking risks, physically, whereas my daughter was more conservative. Now that that sounds like a stereotype. I mean, like it may be too much of a generalization to me, but I think, but I think women are in our bodies as our embodied experience. We are more cautious. We've been taught to be more cautious. We've been told often and in terms of how we're supposed to be in our bodies, certainly women around the planet, you know, many women have to cover, they're not allowed to, you know, which has good and bad parts to it. But just as an embodied experience, we can be more closed in I just interviewed two dancers for the podcast and one of them was talking about how there's, physiological responses that women haven't learned, we've learned how to close ourselves in and protect ourselves. But we haven't necessarily learned how to put our arms out to protect ourselves, or to kick if we have to do that, you know, a lot of those things. I think about myself, my brother was just so he was he beat me up so much as a little kid, but I would never have kicked him, ever. And I you know, I think about that, I think, Wow, life would have been different if I'd felt empowered to kick him.

DEAN: Well, I don't think you'd have to have advertisements on the New York City subway explaining to men how they have to sit differently, because you got to not have to take up all that free space, you know. and yeah, I mean, the physiology that's of the different genders, I think is partly culturally determined. And also it may have some connection to our biology. I, I don't know the degree there. I haven't seen the studies, I would suspect it's more culturally defined than otherwise. 

SUSAN: But anyway, I do think in terms of risk uncertainty, the other thing about uncertainty is I think women are because we've been dependent on men and we've been I mean, I think there's a scourge around the planet for women of being codependent which means that we be a we get our livelihood from being dependent on men, which I hope that we are changing and getting more empowered ourselves, But if you're dependent on a source, outside of yourself and I know this is a cultural variable that you mentioned, you're going to be more conservative than if you are dependent if your inner focused if you're focused on yourself. And yeah, I guess that was timing in your variables that you sent me that was you had internal control and external control that made me think about this issue of codependency because, and how it plays out around the world because I think women all over the planet are codependent, men are too

DEAN: really interesting. And I think you're absolutely right. If you feel empowered, that you can control what's going on around you. That's that sense of internal control. But if you feel like no, no, no, I can control things and things are determined by others. Whether it's Allah, whether it's God, whether it's the volcano, or whether it's whether it's the guy that I'm living with, so if you feel like all of what's going on around you is determined by others by these other factors and not you. Yeah. And you know, that's going to certainly affect how you fit into that culture. Now, if you happen to be in a culture where it is more external, as opposed to internal, then you're going to be more like the norm. But most patriarchal cultures are the other way around. 

SUSAN: Wait. So what's a culture that's more focused on the external?

DEAN: In cultures where there is less of a sense of being empowered by most of the people, for whatever the reason might be? It might be that the political system is such where nobody has any authority, and everyone's pretty much just disempowered unless you are of the cult of the current leadership. We see a lot of this in Africa, for example.

SUSAN: Yeah. And then I think, again, in terms of gender, it's just again, can it be that women are less so, less a more or less, even less, because certainly, certainly something that I think women share as a struggle all over the planet is connecting to our voices, connecting to our ability to speak and to take a stand for what it is that we want and believe and, and that is changing, but it's certainly something that happens all over the place. I wanted to go to communication, the high context and low context because I remember early on in my negotiation days reading some literature about how to negotiate with the Japanese. It was a business book for white Anglo Saxon, probably men. And it said if you want to learn how to negotiate with the Japanese just learn how to negotiate with your wives.  And I think what they were referring to, if I recall was that you know, a high cost high context culture is paying much more attention to not the explicit words that are being said, but who is saying it? how it's being said, the intonation I mean certainly like in China I know intonation has everything to do with communication. But um,  but going back to the you know, learn how to negotiate with your wives if you want to negotiate with the Japanese, and that women are more high context I think because we are less empowered. So we are paying a lot of attention to, what did what's that face he just made? Do I need to, you know, cool him down. Do I need to how do I need to please Him? How do I need to accommodate you know, if we are codependent and paying attention to the male on whom we are dependent. We are going to be paying attention to all the nonverbal cues and taking care to make sure that we're that we're noticing. 

DEAN: That's right, especially if you can be victimized if you're not careful. 

SUSAN: Well and that too, very much, very much so.

DEAN: so how does that affect the negotiation?

SUSAN: You know, I think it affects the negotiation. I mean, I think in terms of negotiation, women, of course, are just, we are more accommodating. And I think that goes not and I haven't seen studies around this, but I've watched a lot of people in negotiation and I think a lot of women will accommodate –and, of course, so will many Asians, you know, so when I think about the frustrations that different groups have around negotiation, I come back to my aggression, assertion avoidance, you know, I think many, many people in the East will have expressed frustration to me over the years that they actually want to be more assertive. And then many people in the West, particularly men, they get called out when they do these negotiations simulations, and they realize how their aggression wasn't so great. it's great to be strongly assertive and competitive, but then it can backfire, and so in a lot of these simulations, people will call people like that out, you know, and they'll see how they're attacking behavior is not going over very well. 

DEAN: Right. Right. 

SUSAN: So I think women as a group, when I think about how many people I've seen, you know, and the research supports this, that women are often very good at negotiating on behalf of somebody else. But when it comes to negotiating on behalf of themselves, not so hot, they don't they don't claim value,  they're much more likely to accommodate. And, and I think that comes from patriarchy, you know, from the learning that we've had around patriarchy. 

DEAN: Right, it, I totally agree with you. That's the position that they've been put in.

SUSAN: So another one that's interesting to me is this subjectivist versus objectivist. One that you mentioned. Can you remind me what -- how would you describe? 

DEAN: Yeah, I think we're looking at the cultures that emphasize rules and processes and systems that are supposed to be universal for everybody. As opposed to cultures that say no, what we do and how we do it and why we do it is all dependent on the individuals and the people that were involved with in the moment, and that rules and processes and systems are secondary. So whatever is going on in the situation is what drives our decision?

SUSAN: What came to my mind when I thought that this is Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice from many moons ago, that amazing book about morality and gender. And she in that book, she was talking about little boys and little girls in conflict and how little boys, this is a study that she was citing, that little boys. And this was, again, US kids on the playground, that if a fight broke out on the playground, what little boys would do is that they would talk about what the rules of the game were, and they would apply them to resolve the conflict. But little girls would abandon the game to preserve the relationship. 

DEAN: Exactly, and easy to do when you're the rule maker. So patriarchy guarantees that the little boy makes the rules. 

SUSAN: That's an interesting perspective. Yeah. So maybe if the little girls had actually come up with the rules, they would come back to applying them.

DEAN: Well, I think to your point Susan we're all capable of behaving in any of these ways. It's just that we've been trained to behave, to weight one way more important than the other. If you're the one who gets the advantage for the following the rules, you gotta weight the rules. 

SUSAN: Yeah, and I think that's what's  on the minds of many women these days is  how much we see how the rules really haven't worked for us in many regards, has worked for us in some ways, but again, I'm not saying that it doesn't. It's not a great for men either, patriarchy in my opinion. It's not so great. When I say that, you know, make that point about how much I think. I actually think that so much of this comes back to domination, I’ll use Riane Eisler’s word of domination versus partnership worldview. 

DEAN: That's right. 

SUSAN: And if you have a dominator worldview, you are using force to extract resources around the world and you are then molding boys so that they can be your work. I mean and girls, but boys mostly so they can be your soldiers. 

DEAN: Exactly, we all suffer from the system. Yeah, I don't know I say that with full awareness of the fact that I think women certain I know that women certainly suffer far more than men do because the men are privileged to be able to be the rule makers in a patriarchal system. But at the end of the day, we're all faced with stuff right now, that goes far beyond, well, the reason we're talking about this is because we know that dominance and power-based decision making ultimately is not going to solve the problems that we're faced with right now.

SUSAN: Yeah, we've just become way too global and interdependent, I think if this pandemic has shown one thing, it's the interdependence of all of us. And I do want to say, if you asked me if I would rather be a boy or a girl, I would choose girl because I think that, um, and this might be whatever, it's just my experience, I think girls have been allowed to not be so shut off, walled off. I think boys. I remember doing this program with soldiers when I was in Cyprus, they were all men. And we were doing this listening exercise and I was really nervous about doing this. I was like, Oh my gosh, they're gonna think this is way too touchy feely. And I gave them this exercise to talk about some of the softer feelings about sadness or fear, things like that. They loved it. They loved being given permission to actually be able to talk about their full range of feelings because of course, of course, men and women like cultures, men and women, we are more the same, I think than we are different in our biology and everything else. I'm not saying we aren't different we are but I think sometimes the patriarchy has benefited from really accentuating the differences between men and women. And sometimes I think the  gender fluidity that's happening among millennials is kind of a peace movement. It's kind of like, you know, no, we're not going to be the uber male or the uber female. We're going to allow ourselves to be whole humans. 

DEAN: Absolutely. This is a an adventure and emancipation for both genders. 

SUSAN: So maybe we've covered enough for now and what we wanted to talk about, and what do you think? 

DEAN: Yeah, I think so. It feels right to me. 

SUSAN: And It'd be interesting to know if there was any studies about this, but I actually haven't seen any

DEAN: Right. I mean, we raised we raised a lot of really interesting ideas, some of which there I know there are studies of but others No, I don't I haven't seen it. 

SUSAN: So anyway, well, I really appreciate your time. And I hope you found this fun because I found it fun to think about and it's always fun to reconnect with you and yeah, cuz I, I think yeah I think that getting gender as I've said on this blog I feel like getting gender right and what I mean by that is really allowing humans to be fully themselves, to be fully themselves because honestly, I and I just interviewed somebody who was talking about one of the things that most profoundly affected her growing up in Spanish Harlem was that her brother was a very, very soft, gentle soul. And she lived in a pretty tough world and she had no problem being tough, but he got really, really beat up as a result of being a guy that wasn't a bro you know, so I’m just aware that for all of us humans and, of course my focus is more on women right now and building women's negotiation capacity. I do think it's time for women to really get over any codependence we might have and really step into our leadership I and I know many men are supporting us in that and doing their own work around this. But ultimately, this is about allowing humans to be fully human and have the whole range of whatever is real for them, whatever cultural dimension is real for them, whatever feeling is real for them, whatever psychological, you know, state is real for them to allow us the freedom to be who we really are. 

DEAN: Right and not to be disempowered by a system because of that. 

SUSAN: Exactly. Exactly. So thank you, Dean. I really appreciate it and stay safe. Keep washing your hands. And hopefully somehow we're gonna get to the other side of this whole crazy thing. . .