Cultural Competency Across Neurotypes | The Neurodiverging Podcast

What is cultural intelligence, and how does it intersect with inclusivity? That’s what we’re talking about with today’s guest, Loren Rosaldo-Maldonado. Loren’s the Chief People Officer at Cultura Inc., an ADHDer, and a Cultural Intelligence consultant with a passion for helping people and institutions navigate the complexities of the human condition.

In today’s interview, we’re covering:

• what cultural intelligence is
• how cultural intelligence is used in the workplace
• how cultural intelligence intersects with neurodiversity and inclusivity

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Guest Bio:

Loren Rosario-Maldonado is an internationally recognized author, HR Executive, and Cultural Intelligence (CQ) consultant with a passion for helping people and institutions navigate the complexities of the human condition. She is currently the Chief People Scientist at Cultura, Inc. and is releasing a new book in the fall, titled Becoming the Change: The Power of Cultural Intelligence, to provide readers with a distinct and thought-provoking perspective on how embracing cultural diversity can unlock personal growth and foster a deeper understanding of oneself and the world.

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Transcript of Cultural Competency Across Neurotypes

Transcription by nakia h. Thank you!

DANIELLE: Hello, my friends and welcome back to the Neurodiverging Podcast. My name is Danielle Sullivan and I am your host. Thanks so much for tuning in today! Today we are talking to a wonderful guest expert, Loren Rosario-Maldonado, who is an internationally recognized author, HR executive, and cultural intelligence consultant. I am really excited to share what I learned from her about cultural intelligence with you.

Before we dig into that, I just want to thank my Patrons over at patreon.com/neurodiverging. Because of the Patrons, we are able to produce this podcast almost every week, and I am so grateful. If you would like to join our community where we have a bunch of really cool perks as well as just the podcast, you can join us over at patreon.com/neurodiverging. Thank all of you over there so much for supporting this effort, it’s really appreciated.

Today, I’m talking to Loren Rosario-Maldonado, who is, as I said, an author, an HR executive, and a cultural intelligence consultant with a passion for helping people and institutions navigate the complexities of the human condition. Loren is also a late-identified ADHDer, she is currently the Chief People Scientist at Cultura, Inc., and she’s releasing a book very, very soon called, “Becoming the Change: The Power of Cultural Intelligence.” The book provides readers with a distinct and thought-provoking perspective on how embracing cultural diversity can unlock personal growth and foster a deeper understanding of one’s self and the world.

Today, Loren and I are talking all about the intersections of neurodiversity inclusivity in the workplace and cultural intelligence in the workplace. In many ways, neurodiversity mimics cultural diversity — though they are not the same — and so there’s all sorts of intersections between the two topics that Loren and I were able to tease apart a little bit. I hope you’ll really enjoy the interview, I had a great time, Loren is a fantastic guest, and I hope you learn something from it. Enjoy!

So welcome to the podcast, Loren, I’m so happy you’re here! To start us off, would you be willing to just tell folks a little bit about who you are, where you are in your life right now, and what your passion projects are?

LOREN: Hi, Danielle, thank you again for having me here today. I am Loren Rosario-Maldonado, and I am a leadership development consultant, who after spending over 25 years in corporate America, launched my global consulting business earlier this year focusing around leadership development for individuals rooted on cultural intelligence and cultural humility research. My latest passion project is I have been working on a book for the last two years, and it finally launches — or publishes I should say — this fall, late November to early December. So, this work is a culmination of both my corporate America experience, my journey towards becoming culturally intelligent, and highlighting people across the globe who have done that as well.

DANIELLE: That’s so exciting, congratulations on your book! That’s such a huge project, I’m sure it feels great to be almost at the finish line with that (laughs).

LOREN: Yes! Yes, yes. I’m excited. I think writing, rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting again, it seems to fit these days.

DANIELLE: Yeah, yeah. (stammers) It is — Well, for me anyway, a frustrating process but one that really requires us to hone in on exactly what we mean, in exactly the way we want to say it, and I always find it a clarifying process, so (laughs).

LOREN: I like that! Reframing it as a clarifying process, because — I mean, you’ll relate, you get inspiration from anything.

DANIELLE: Mhm!

LOREN: (speech drowned out) From iguanas to the air, to the palm trees or sand, it’s incredible. So sometimes I have to kind of stop myself and say, “Okay, this is the most viable product today. Let’s stop.” (laughs)

DANIELLE: (laughs) Yeah. And I think many of us with certain types of brains especially, but all kinds of people have so much creativity, and I find myself wanting to put energy into 20 projects at once. I hear the same from clients, and it’s always about figuring out — And for each person, I guess your process of discernment about what you’re going to choose to put your energy in is different. For me, it’s always about which one of these things is going to serve folks best in this moment or serve me best occasionally. But then I work with folks who are evaluating their lives differently and understanding things differently, and everybody has to come to their own understanding of, “How do I evaluate,” (laughs), right, “this project over this one, over this one, over this one?” And often I end up not doing the clarification process of rewriting and rewriting and rewriting because it feels hard to want to put energy there when there’s all these other things. So, (laughs) yeah, it’s a big process.

LOREN: I can totally relate. I only have one child but if you have children I can equate it to having multiple children, right? The first one you follow the book to the tee. You’re monitoring every breath that the child takes for everything, but by the second child, you know, you’re thinking, “Okay, okay this is fine. Okay, eh, make some concessions.” Well, I’m in the first child neuroses where I — This book is like having my child and the clarification process is that much more painful because I’m thinking, “Well, what about this?” and, “What happens if this person reads it?” and, “I want to reach this one,” (imitates going on and on) and just many, many rabbit holes.

DANIELLE: Yes! Yes. You want to serve everybody all the time (laughs) and it’s not a reasonable expectation to put on yourself or anyone, yeah (laughs). Well, speaking about your book, and I’m very excited to get my hands on it, can you tell folks — We haven’t discussed cultural intelligence on this podcast before, really at all I think, maybe a little bit sideways occasionally. Do you have a go-to definition or set of definitions that kind of we can use for this conversation just to orient folks in what cultural intelligence is and why it’s important, especially in the workplace?

LOREN: That’s a brilliant question, and to put it simply it’s a framework that helps you understand differences. And it provides you with the skills that you need around doing that, and that’s as simple as I can put it, right? It has four different dimensions that intersect to help you do that. And what I like most about it is the understanding differences part, because we talked about this a little bit before, in the workplace you don’t understand a lot of these differences and sometimes there is some language around that but not necessarily intuitive enough to where everyone can partake. So, what I like about (stammers) cultural intelligence is that it provides a neutral language to do that.

DANIELLE: Wonderful, thank you. So, how would you say that cultural intelligence as a framework fits in or doesn’t with, sort of, neurodiversity framework? As this idea that we maybe have a broad range of different kinds of brains there’s a cultural piece of our societies, our languages, our politeness norms, all this stuff that comes in in how we communicate and understand each other, and then there’s also this sort of neurological layer, right? Does it fit on top, does it interthread with it? How would you (trails off). Or what would you — (laughs)

LOREN: I think the latter! It definitely interthreads, I love that. I’m going to use that if that’s okay.

DANIELLE: Oh, please! (laughs) I’m glad it’s helpful.

LOREN: It does apply because part of the myth that is ascribed, whether implicitly or explicitly, to culture is that it has to do with ethnicity and race. And I’m sure you know this and the audience knows as well, diversity has 12 dimensions, right? And each one of those dimensions is, in and of itself a culture. A culture represents the way that we do things around here, our beliefs, and our values. An operations department does not have the same beliefs as finance or HR, right? Or definitely not marketing. They have different beliefs, they have different ways in how they approach their work, in how they do their work, and so those are subcultures within an organizational culture. So that’s one of the myths that I like to demystify, is it’s not necessarily just about your ethnicity, your race, your national origin, it’s about all parts of you, right? How they intersect to create a multidimensional person.

DANIELLE: Yeah. And what about within one say, department, so say you mentioned marketing, that’s the one I’m most familiar with — when you have different, kind of, mini cultures within a department, how does that affect communication, how does that affect — Or, I guess, another way to ask would be what are some basic sort of go-to strategies for folks who are hitting cultural roadblocks when we do all have the same values and the same goals, theoretically. That question make sense (laughs)?

LOREN: It does, it’s basically —

DANIELLE: Okay.

LOREN: You all know the what, but you may have a different how. Right?

DANIELLE: Yeah.

LOREN: So you know what you what to accomplish but you all accomplish it differently, and neurodivergence is no different from that. So using your example about a marketing department, who has different people that prefer different ways to do their work, first understanding that what. Everyone is clear on that what. And then create a space for dialogue about the how, right? Understand that your how doesn’t have to be my how, and that we can both live in our how while still co-exist so that we can get to the what if that makes sense.

DANIELLE: Yeah, absolutely.

LOREN: Having a lot of dialogue, not monologue, but dialogue around that topic helps create understanding. So that once you have that understanding, that creates the knowledge that you need to strategize differently. And once you come together and you strategize on how you’re going to approach getting to the what, then it’s going to create more synergy, right? The team is going to be more motivated because all of a sudden they understand, oh, okay, you like to approach it that way. I’m going to approach it this way, and then we’ll connect at different intersections to make sure that we’re aligned to get to the what.

DANIELLE: Thank you very much. One question I have, a lot of the clients that I work with are in positions at work where they feel very motivated about their jobs, they like what they do, they feel like they have a good handle on their bullet point, what they’re supposed to be accomplishing in their job, but they maybe need to do something a little differently. Sometimes this is neurodivergence, sometimes it’s personal preference. Maybe they need to get up and take walks occasionally, or have a screen reader available, or wear headphones in the office or some kind of basic accommodations.

A lot of clients report difficulties getting management or higher-ups to understand that the employee is trying very hard to do their work as agreed on for the greater value of the company or the department and instead, they’re seen as sort of troublemakers or people who just want to do it different, you know? And I wonder if you’ve bumped into ways to, or if you have ideas for, how can individual employees within an organization who are bumping into these challenges but are very self-motivated and want to maintain their jobs and like their jobs — Are there ways to argue management around to recognizing that there needs to be different hows as you said, right? That we’re all on the same what, we’re all on the same values but that our hows can and should be different?

LOREN: Yeah, absolutely. Everyone has a voice, whether there’s a space for it or not everyone has a voice, and actually summoning the courage to use that voice is the first step. I remember I interviewed someone for my book who happened to be neurodivergent and he had a boss who approached work completely differently, didn’t understand his need for structure.

The supervisor was very informal in her approach, called for impromptu meetings and things like that, and that would drive this person’s day just mad because he needed the structure in order to get to the what, right? That was his how. But he summoned the courage to talk to her about it and explain why he needed that structure and why interfering with it would then interfere with his ability to get to the what. And once he did that she took a step back and educated herself more on what it meant to provide structure for him, because she asked, “Well, what does structure look like for you?” And so it became a dialogue. And they agreed to work towards creating that structure within her informal style so that neither side had to change their how, they just coexisted within.

And so it is a great success story and there may not be as many success stories like that, but it’s an example of the importance of having a dialogue. Understanding what you need in order to succeed in your role, and then creating a dialogue with management, with executives around what that entails and why it’s important. I think that’s the key here, is to help management and leaders understand why that’s important. Not what the science says or what the research says behind that particular diagnoses, but what you, the person, needs in order to make the how work for you so that you can get to the what.

DANIELLE: Thank you. The framing’s really helpful. I think that I do have clients who have engaged in a dialogue with higher-ups and had a lot of success. I also have clients who, for whatever reason, are not in a safe space to disclose or — And so you can ask, right, for some basic things without disclosing a diagnosis in many cases, but some companies won’t even listen to you without those diagnoses which is very frustrating. And I’ve seen a lot of clients, they either succeed in opening a dialogue and management is responsive and something — They’re able to continue forward in creating a plan of accommodations or opening up the hows to the whole department.

I also see clients who — and I feel very frustrated on their behalf, who are so motivated to succeed and feel like their job is contributing to a greater good in some way, but then end up having to separate themselves away from their work and their excitement in their work because management isn’t open to a dialogue, right? That the client is just shut down instead, and so I love the idea of if it has to be on us, if the system isn’t going to change by itself and has to be on us to have the burden to go and change it, that there’s a framing of bringing it up as a, “We both want this, I need to do it this way to get to this point,” right? And, “Can you let me do this,” or, “Can we talk about how I can accomplish both of our goal in my own way?” So that’s really helpful.

LOREN: Yeah, this is what I like about the cultural intelligence framework, because everyone has this neutral language that kind of separates the emotion from the dialogue, right? I myself have experienced it. When I was diagnosed I was an adult andI was an executive, I was completely afraid to talk about it for the longest time because I first needed to process myself. And I struggled for the longest time with things like managing my time and managing the slew of things that come your way on a day-to-day basis. But once I summoned the courage to talk to my team about it, we became allies in that they then understood why I behaved in certain ways or why I approached my work in certain, seemingly odd, ways. Is because of what made me the person.

And so once they understood that then we had a dialogue about, “Okay,” — Kind of check-ins, right? If I approach to do this this way, I have to understand that they don’t approach it that way, and so that deflects a little bit in their direction, and so it became this choreographed dance as opposed to this kind of —

DANIELLE: (laughter overlaps with Loren’s speech)

LOREN: …we’re all stepping on each other’s toes, right? But to your point, both sides have to create understanding. Management has operated this way for the longest time and hasn’t really been disrupted up ‘til this point, but here’s this person that sees it differently. Not because they don’t want to achieve, that’s not the mission here, but because they are different, and so that changes the narrative to create a deeper conversation about how to get to the what.

DANIELLE: When you go into work as a consultant, when you go into a preexisting corporate structure and are trying to assess what maybe training they need or what support they need to become more culturally intelligent, I guess what do you look for to assess if they’re even open to it? If there is space in the organization to make change and to listen to their people (laughs softly) and their people’s needs?

LOREN: It depends on the nature of the project because I know now that no two companies are alike. It’s like DNA. There are no two DNAs that are identical, not even with identical twins, so part of the discovery questions that I include have to do with change management and understanding whether the organization is ready for the change that they want, so there are some questions that I use as kind of an X-ray to understand whether they are ready for the change that they seek. And you can tell, you can tell if they are committed to the change, to the project, to the evolution that they would like to see.

The other is I understand that diversity is often used as a blanket for a lot of things. A lot. So my responsibility is to help the client understand what it is that they want and whether they are ready for it. So once I have a clear understanding of that then I can formulate an action plan that works for that specific client or organization.

DANIELLE: Thank you, that’s really helpful. Because I can see individuals adapting that sort of approach to handling their own management, or just trying to research in the job search how do I — I get a lot of people asking how do I ask questions when I’m in an interview of if I’m on their website or I’m in the already in the job and have been for many years but need to talk to management, and I think it’s all about that framing like you were saying earlier about figuring out the where are they and where can we maybe nudge in a direction that is relatively safe for the individual but might encourage change in a higher up.

LOREN: Of course, because we have — I’ll give you an example. Many, many times I’ll get a request or a proposal for unconscious bias training, okay? Let’s talk about this. What does unconscious bias really mean to you? What about unconscious bias is important to the organization and its mission? How is this related? And once we go down that road of discovery, it turns out to be something else that they need, right? So, to your point, a lot of times they start with a certain perspective, and then they end up with another because these terms are used as blanket terms for everything. And so our job right? Is to nail down that specific need so that we can help be an ally.

DANIELLE: What are some, maybe, soft skills that folks can train on or learn more about that encourage more cultural competence within a corporation?

LOREN: Sure! There’s a lot of programs out there that help develop cultural competence. One of them — I’m a little biased, but I am going to say it, the Cultura Intelligence Institute is one of my favorites. Not because I am, A, certified, and B, I’m doing a fellowship there, but because up until now it has been one of the most comprehensive when learning cultural competence in our own backyard. A lot of the cultural competence training and development you see out there is oriented toward the global organization, right? Working with different cultures outside of the United States.

Hofstede is one that is very, very good. Actually, he was a pioneer in bringing cultural competence work to the United States, particularly for multinationals who had a presence in many other countries outside of the US. There is a The Culture Map from Erin Meyers who also has an assessment that you take and you can learn how to develop your cultural competence in different domains.

There’s also another one called myGiide — and I apologize because I don’t remember the name of the organization, but it is another assessment that you take and it helps you keep track of your progress along the way. And I would say first off start knowing yourself. Your history, your heritage, where you came from, where your thoughts, your beliefs, your values came from, and how they came to form you, the person. Once you understand that I would say that’s a prerequisite, right?

DANIELLE: (whispering) Yeah.

LOREN: To becoming culturally competent because our values came from somewhere, we learned it from somewhere, we believe what we believe because we learned it from somewhere, and understanding that creates expansion to understand more and to understand differences.

DANIELLE: Thank you. Listeners, I’m going to put some links to some of the things Loren just mentioned below if you want to check them out, we’ll have to Google and find them. We work a lot on values in coaching. I think that — And I’ve talked about this before on the podcast, I think that a lot of folks, especially late-identified adults come in and are sort of resetting almost? Their entire self-identity (laughs) after getting the information around how their brain is working. And maybe reevaluating where they fit in their worlds and a lot of times we end up working on exactly what you just said, basically. What are the most important values that you use to make decisions or ideate on your own life? And then which of these values are things that you truly, honestly, in your heart (laughs) authentically believe, and which of these are things that you picked up from parents, society, church, the TV, like wherever else that you feel like you should be engaging on, but you don’t actually authentically believe?

And just doing that initial step of splitting out what’s true to you and what’s a should, just to shorthand it. What you think you should be doing that maybe you don’t actually care about that much? On my own I can say — and for other clients I’ve seen it do a lot of the initial work of becoming curious about figuring out, oh, everyone has these sets of values and what are my values at work? What are my values with my family? It can be really mind-blowing, I think, when you’re in the space of not knowing who you are, or where you are, what you’re doing (laughs) sometimes after a diagnosis, so it’s really interesting and kind of exciting to me to hear the follow-through of that between that self-identity piece, self-understanding yourself — self-understanding yourself — self-understanding of your culture, and then carrying that into well how do I communicate best and approach with curiosity all these other kinds of people, with all these other kinds of thinking patterns and all these other kinds of backgrounds and understandings in the world, so that’s really exciting to me (laughs softly).

LOREN: Of course. And you said it perfectly, right? It starts with yourself, you have to go in first before you go out. So the in part is understanding that history, understanding where these values come from, so then you can sit there and take perspective, and then go out and seek perspective. Talk to others about it, talk to others who are different, and then understand those differences and once you do that then you can coexist within those differences, right? Not to sacrifice or change your own values, but to understand, because once you understand then you can have a dialogue around that.

DANIELLE: Yeah. I think it’s easier to find common ground too when you have more certainty around what your ground is. I think — I’ve found that a lot of people seem to get stuck trying to — They end up trying to defend a value that isn’t really theirs, especially when it comes to the workplace, especially a bad workplace (laughs) or a dysfunctional workplace, and having a really firm idea of what’s important to me gives you a lot of information about how you’re interacting with the other people in your life, whether that’s your co-workers or your boss or your, you know, whoever it is. So that’s just been really helpful to my understanding. That’s wonderful.

LOREN: 100%.

DANIELLE: I’m sorry I’m looking at my list of questions.

LOREN: Quite alright.

DANIELLE: (laughs) What didn’t I ask you that — I want to give you time to give your blurb about your book and your website and all the things, but outside of that is there anything I didn’t ask you that I should have asked you (laughs) that you’d like to —

LOREN: I don’t think so. My mission is to really simplify the complex. This stuff can get very heady. It can get heady and heavy, actually. And my job, my mission, my purpose is to simplify it. Life is already complex enough, we don’t need to involve more complexity to it. And so finding the simplicity through this neutral language helps put emotions aside and really talk constructively about something that is so important to everyone, whether you are neurodivergent yourself, whether you are a relative of a neurodivergent individual, a neurodiverse individual, whether you work with someone or lead someone who happens to be neurodiverse —

DANIELLE: You almost certainly do (laughs).

LOREN: Everyone needs to have a neutral language for discussing this because if we don’t we can never help the person feel seen or heard. And ultimately what we do what is to feel seen and heard, is to help others feel seen and heard, we just don’t know how a lot of the time.

DANIELLE: Yeah. Thank you. And I think that validation piece feeds into so much of the — If everyone could feel more validated more of the time, I think we would get a lot more of the big problems solved (laughs) a little bit faster just because knowing that you’re understood or that people are even trying to understand you brings so much more confidence and energy into the work we do, whether that’s kind of professional space work or social justice work or any kind of human projects. So I’m so glad you said that, that’s such an important piece I think.

LOREN: Absolutely. And I don’t want to negate the complexity about it —

DANIELLE: Of course.

LOREN: That’s not at all what I aspire to do. I just — I’ve seen time and time again, and experienced it myself, how a lack of understanding can lead to so much conflict. And if you do a deep dive into each situation, time and time again it comes from a place of misunderstanding. So understanding alone, starting with yourself, like you mentioned understanding your values, and validating those values, what they mean to you in your identity hierarchy, right? Then you can understand others who have a different identity hierarchy and that’s where you can create the connection, because then you can validate that person’s emotions because yours have been validated.

DANIELLE: Thank you so much, Loren, I really appreciate your time. Can you tell folks a little bit more about where they can find you online and also your book? Where can they find that when it comes out (laughs softly)?

LOREN: Absolutely! You can find more details about the book at lorenrosario.com. It’s L-O-R-E-N, R-O-S-A-R-I-O dot com. You can find me on LinkedIn, Loren Rosario-Maldonado, it’s L-O-R-E-N, R-O-S-A-R-I-O, M-A-L-D-O-N-A-D-O. You can also find more on Cultura’s work at cultura.global. It’s W-W-W dot C-U-L-T-U-R-A dot G-L-O-B-A-L.

DANIELLE: Thank you so much! I really appreciate it!

LOREN: Thank you so much, Danielle, and I appreciate you having me today, thank you.

DANIELLE: Of course. I’m so glad (speech fades out) —

Thanks so much for joining me today on the Neurodiverging podcast! I hope you learned something, I hope you had a good time. Please check out the link to Loren’s website at Cultura and also her book down below in the show notes. You can also find show notes, transcripts and lots of other resources on neurodiverging.com, and thank you again to my Patrons for supporting our ability to do this podcast! If you’d like to join the Patreon for a couple bucks a month you can get ad-free podcast episodes, you can get access to our weekly body doubling accountability group, and our monthly parent meeting and hot seat coaching. All of that and more is at patreon.com/neurodiverging. Thank you all so much for being here today, and please remember we are all in this together.