The Talent Forge: Shaping the Future of Training and Development with Jay Johnson

Bridging Cultures: How Understanding Differences Improves Business Outcomes with Sanjyot Dunung

• Jay Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 42

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Cultural intelligence has become the hidden competitive advantage in today's global business landscape. When your teams can navigate the subtle nuances of cross-cultural communication, everything from customer satisfaction to operational efficiency improves dramatically.

Sanjyot Dunung brings her fascinating journey from banker to cultural anthropology expert to this episode, sharing how her unique background—born in India but raised in Chicago—provided the perfect foundation for helping organizations bridge cultural divides. 

What sets this conversation apart is the emphasis on measurable business impact. Cultural training isn't presented as a nice-to-have diversity initiative but as a strategic imperative with clear ROI. 

Whether you're managing global teams, serving international customers, or simply working in our increasingly diverse workforce, this episode provides practical frameworks for bridging cultural divides. Visit https://www.atmaglobal.com/ to connect with Sanjyot and explore how cultural intelligence can transform your organization's effectiveness.

Meet the Host
Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents. For inquiries, contact jay@behavioralelements.com or connect below!

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjohnsonccg/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jayjohnsonccg/
Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com

Jay Johnson:

Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where we are shaping the future of training and development. Today I have a special guest, a fellow social scientist, which I am very excited to get into deep conversations with. Welcome to the show,Sanjyot

Sanjyot Dunung:

Thank you, jay. It's a pleasure to be here and thank you for having me, and I look forward to chatting with you and your listeners today.

Jay Johnson:

And I did it right after I said I wasn't going to do it. Sanjyot, let me make sure I pronounce that right.

Sanjyot Dunung:

I always say that I have a tricky name. I answer to anything that starts with an S, as long as it's legitimate. Different cultures, different connotations, we'll get into that.

Jay Johnson:

Kind of funny. So my legal name is Jeremy, which I don't even know that the audience would know this. I was called Jake my entire life and when I got to college I told my mentor that my name was Jake and he heard J and I've been called J ever since. So I understand anything with a J and I'm probably going to respond to it.

Sanjyot Dunung:

So that makes it easier for both of us.

Jay Johnson:

No, thank you for that Grace. So, Sanjyot, here's my question for you how did you wind up in this talent development space?

Sanjyot Dunung:

And we've heard all kinds of interesting stories here. I was a banker by training after getting my MBA and at that time there was a lot of things going on. People were taking a look at doing business in Asia and going overseas, and my master's was from Thunderbird out in Arizona and it's really more of an international management. So I was already very well-versed or at least I thought I was, on how to do business with different cultures, and we'll talk a little bit about what that means, because I think sometimes people have a misnomer. But back to my story a little bit. And I decided to set up my own business. I was actually taking over. I bought somebody else's business, I bought their client it was a large Fortune 50 company company, in essence and they were doing expat training. They were basically doing all their expats, who were moving overseas, were going through cultural trainings.

Jay Johnson:

I was super well-versed on that concept, both having studied it and also embodying it, having been a product of two different cultures. I was born in India, although raised in Chicago, and certainly very much a product of two different cultures. I was born in India, although raised in Chicago and certainly very much a product of the US, so I understood how to bridge those cultures. We started as an expat training company, but that slowly morphed as people started looking to us for developing content about different countries, cultures and business practice, and that's where we are today. We've become a company that develops learning solutions and content helping folks understand how to do business, how to interact and communicate with folks from different cultures more effectively, whether it's in the workforce, whether it's working with stakeholders, customers, team members and sometimes other folks in the government sector. And we also do a lot of supplemental training material or learning material for higher education, particularly business and the social sciences. So a little circuitous of a path, like many, but delighted that we've landed here, and I think the time is now for what we do.

Jay Johnson:

I love this, delighted that we've landed here and I think the time is now for what we do. I love this and you are speaking to my heart and for some of the audience that may not have heard before. I literally got my start in training because, working in a university, we had international students coming in who, on paper, were just absolutely exceptional and they were struggling and I was asked by the faculty to say, hey, you did this whole behavior thing, can you go look at this? And I did a couple of interviews, sat in a classroom, watched and realized there was a massive cultural divide between the expectations of the classrooms for a lot of people who are coming in from Iran, turkey, from other places where they were expected to, you know, just kind of sit, take notes, don't ask questions, don't you know? Don't bring attention to yourself. And the American faculty, who were like these students are disengaged. So I created a training program to onboard the new students and a training board program to onboard the faculty for a better cultural understanding, launched my business called Worldline Communications and then completely changed gears for what we're doing now.

Jay Johnson:

But that's how I got my start and I'm really, really excited to dig into this because it is. You know, the world is globalizing. We're getting smaller. There's a lot more international business, you know, save some of the things that could be occurring right now in the political or social, uh, specter, wherever you want to look. So I want to. I want to ask more of a personal question, if you don't mind. How does it feel, as you start to help people bridge some of that cultural divide, when you, when you're providing those opportunities for people to see each other, to value each other, to maybe better understand each other? What does that feel like for you, sanjot?

Sanjyot Dunung:

So I have to say I do some of the trainings still, which is my love. Nothing that I enjoy more than being in front of a classroom and working with students, whatever age they are, and I love that aha moment when you've connected dots for them and they sort of say, wow, I see things in a little differently, or I get it. And a word about how we come to this framework and how we talk about this. So we talk about social sciences and sometimes that's kind of a nebulous concept. What we really do is we take cultural anthropology and we integrate it with business practices. So we use the practices for those listeners who are super curious Hofstede is one of the leading thinkers and identified a number of dimensions and we take those and happy to get into more detail on those Hall who talked about intercultural communications and then we integrate it with tangible ways that it's impacting somebody. So, for example, if it's in the business arena, we take a look to see what exactly are you doing? Where are your pain points? Maybe you have customer service gaps. You identified a pain point with your students that the university was having. We take a look at stakeholders. Maybe teams are trying to become more efficient and communications and barriers to communications that people don't always identify with or understand are impacting how efficient a process is, cost savings and a number of different factors how efficient the process is, cost savings and a number of different factors. So when we tie it to exactly what people are doing in their day-to-day job, it becomes more relevant right away and that's when people have the aha moment. They realize that, yes, there is a different way that people see things.

Sanjyot Dunung:

A lot about culture. Really, what is culture? It's just simply a set of attitudes, values and behaviors of a group of people, and it could be a culture defined by geography, which is what we often talk about, but it could be an organizational culture. Right, every company has its own culture. Could be an industry Lawyers have their own culture, doctors have their own culture, talent development folks have their own culture, hr has its own culture and we try to integrate that functionality with the national cultures and talk a little bit about that. So when people start to think about all the different things that have impacted how they see the world, that's when they have the aha moment, because there is this assumption human beings, we do it around the world, it's not just Americans. We assume that people do the things they do for the same reasons that we do right. We think people are hardwired in the same way and so we expect them to behave, think and act for the same reasons. And so when we do X, we expect a similar version of X back, and when we get Y, we're a little perplexed. We don't really quite know why did they say this?

Sanjyot Dunung:

You highlighted that with the students that you were talking to, kids who come from a hierarchical culture. We call that a high power, distance culture, using Hofstede, where hierarchy is very important respect for elders, respect for seniority. They would never challenge a professor in the classroom or in a meeting, for example, right or a training. In contrast, americans, we love our egalitarian values. It's enshrined in our constitution individual liberties, freedom. We're all equal. We call each other by our first names. We rarely use titles and we're happy to challenge anybody anywhere, anytime. It's just part of who we are. So that's where I'm sure that you experienced at your university a little bit of that cultural divide and bridging it.

Jay Johnson:

Well, and yeah, absolutely, and I love that framework and how you laid that out, because it's really interesting. Once we have a particular lens and we see somebody in a set of behaviors and we have our own cultural lens that we were doing, the faculty there had their own lens and expectations that come from that lens of you have to be engaged, you have to ask questions, you have to participate in order to learn, etc. And they could really only see from that lens they didn't understand. So when the behaviors didn't line up with that, they assumed the students were lazy, they assumed the students were disengaged, they didn't care, they weren't taking it seriously, that they just paid their way to get to the university so they could do other things. And that was so far from the truth. And you know, on the inverse side of that, when I was interviewing with the students, it was really interesting because they were like well, we just don't understand what what they're doing is. They're trying to. You know, are they trying to trick us? Are they trying to get us to do something? Are they trying to? And it was just, it was really from that particular lens.

Jay Johnson:

So I do have a question and I think this is going to be relevant to coaches, trainers, hr people. The world is so beautiful, diverse and complex. It would be, and you already identified. There's culture at every turn. There's geographic culture, religious culture. I was a hockey player. We have our own hockey culture, I will tell you. It literally crosses all different intersections. So how can I, as a trainer or a coach, or an HR practitioner, how could I be prepared for all of this beautiful complexity, complexity? What are some of the thought processes there? You know, as somebody who's really kind of tackled this at a global level, how do I manage that level of information?

Sanjyot Dunung:

So part of it is building it into your framework. So oftentimes and we have a session that we call cultural tools. That's part of our program. Doesn't matter what country and what that is, it's sort of a session, if you will, that takes people through this analysis, this sort of understanding what the methodology is. I talked a little bit about Hofstede and Hall. So we integrate that framework so people have a real, tangible methodology, rather than making some assumptions.

Sanjyot Dunung:

Oftentimes people will say to me are you going to just traffic in stereotypes? Is that what this is? And the answer is no. Stereotypes can certainly inform how we understand a culture, national culture or any other kind, but they're incomplete, right? So really what we're doing is we're using this methodology so that we can compare and contrast, and no one culture is better than another culture. It's just different.

Sanjyot Dunung:

And this is a little bit where we're different on the cross-cultural anthropology than multiculturalism. I always try to make sure to highlight this with trainers so that they understand where's the difference. I liken it a bit to this. Multiculturalism is really about getting everybody to agree to the same playbook of how we think, behave and interact Distinctly different very valuable, especially when you're trying to create a cohesive culture inside of an organization, for example. That can be important to identify what the corporate culture will be and how people should operate within it. But that's different than cultural anthropology, which is rooted in the word anthropology, which is observational. It's not right or wrong, it's not judgmental, it's observational. So it's meeting people where they're at, rather than trying to get everybody to change their behaviors.

Sanjyot Dunung:

I often say it's like comfort food. You and I and everybody listening, we all have our comfort food. It's something that we've learned from the moment we're born. It's influenced by our families where we grew up. It makes us feel warm, it makes us feel safe. But every comfort food is different. But no comfort food is better or worse, it's just different. So that's the lens that I encourage your trainers and everybody who's listening to start to try and get your attendees or your learners to really embrace and understand, because then it sort of clears away any sort of pop culture cobwebs, if you will, gets everybody on the same framework and then they can start to understand.

Sanjyot Dunung:

Oftentimes we then integrate this framework, we talk about the different methodologies and then we ask people use this to understand yourself first. Right, how do you see? So I'll give you a couple of examples real quickly. I mentioned hierarchy right. So in the Hofstede model it's called power distance, low power distance. What that means are cultures that accept a big power distance. A big power distance between people it might be because of age, it might be seniority, it might be by title in a company, any number of factors and conversely, low power distance cultures are cultures where everybody's expected to be the same. So understanding, are you a high power distance or a low power distance culture? In truth, most people are kind of halfway in between. It's just comparatively. No culture is all high power distance or low. But you mentioned Turkey and Iran, for example. Very high power distance cultures. They come to a low power distance culture. That's one place of the framework.

Jay Johnson:

So that's super fascinating. I actually want to dig into this, but I got to tell you. Having known that you're from Chicago and talking about comfort food, I think you've now inspired me to have a pizza tonight, because that is totally my comfort food.

Sanjyot Dunung:

Deep dish has to be deep dish.

Jay Johnson:

Absolutely. So. All right, I love this concept of the high powered and I do want to go back. See, I knew this was just going to be such a fascinating conversation. I love it. I do want to go back to stereotypes at one moment, but with the high powered and was it low powered or low centered? High power distance, low power distance, high power distance, low power distance, high power distance, low power distance so immediately my brain started to kick into places that I've worked.

Jay Johnson:

I've worked with a couple of big companies in the past where the idea of a skip level meeting could have been a hell worthy trespass. Like you do not go anywhere above your manager. If you've seen talking to somebody above your manager, your manager was going to come and be like Sanjyot, what were you doing? You were having a conversation, and I mean it would have been immediate. And I've seen that organization, over the course of literally been working with them for almost 20 years in different capacities, that at some point in time they wanted this open culture and they were going to have it. So you know some of the senior leaders or executives were out in the open, they could be talked to.

Jay Johnson:

There was a lot of resistance, a lot of pushback. Then it became a little bit normal to have a couple of skip levels or maybe some town halls or some open forums where you could have conversations, and I've seen this pendulum kind of swing back and forth and it's almost like it was an extreme over here. Then it swung this way to the extreme, swings back, and you had mentioned the middle. Is that your experience or is that something that's unique? How do you see that when an organization sort of recognized that high power, low power distance and says, okay, well, maybe we need to rethink this. What are some of your thoughts on that? Yeah, so I always bring up high power, low power distance and says, okay, well, maybe we need to rethink this. What are some of your thoughts on that?

Sanjyot Dunung:

Yeah. So I always bring up high power, low power, because it often happens with organizations that have offices around the world, headquarters is always at the top of the food chain, if you will right. So they see themselves as being the place where the power emanates from, if you will. But they always want local country offices and different functional offices to start taking on more ownership and really sort of drive their data, their results, their ownership of their ROI, and one of the challenges is it depends on where that office is. So, for example, if we're looking from the vantage point of the US, we might takea look at some northern European countries, like Sweden, for example, where people do expect to skip right. They don't think there's anything wrong with going straight to the person with whom you have a question. It doesn't matter if that person is two levels above your manager. It's about the efficiency of the interaction. So, from a Swede's point of view, for example, they don't understand why we're so worried about that hierarchy. In contrast, you might go to Japan and your Japanese office and people will never feel comfortable skipping, because there is a process, it is deeply ingrained in the society and it will take time.

Sanjyot Dunung:

Culture does not change overnight. It's not revolutionary. You don't wake up tomorrow morning and it's a different culture. It's evolutionary. It takes time. It can take decades, as you've said. So.

Sanjyot Dunung:

Oftentimes where companies have that friction is if they've had employees or offices around the world that have experienced multiple CEOs through multiple management, right. So there's sort of trust factor. How do we know that this new cultural habit that you're asking us to embrace will be there when the next person comes, and will we have risked our jobs? That's what people really worry about, right? So it's infusing trust alongside cultural change. What we often say is the best way to do it is to tie it to a business objective. Are you trying to create efficiencies? Are you trying to reduce the number of errors or having to redo things or miscommunications? Some companies actually have surveys in-country of employee satisfaction. If you're in the EU, that's often a part of your HR requirements. So that's a way to see are you able to actually make some of these changes in a way that people are embracing them and finding that they connect to their jobs? There's another characteristic that I also think is super important and happy to talk about that too.

Jay Johnson:

Go ahead. Yeah, let's hear it.

Sanjyot Dunung:

Yeah, so it's called high-context, low-context communications. I'm cherry-picking a little bit for those who are listening with us, who know the Hofstede Hall models and some of the other world value surveys and things like that. But these cherry picking are with reason. It's because we have identified over years and years of working with corporations as the big issues Eye context. Low context simply means communications. How do people frame their communications?

Sanjyot Dunung:

So often at the US we're we're a low-context communicator. We use our words to say exactly what we mean. Think about the things that we use. Right, don't beat around the bush. Say what you mean. We use our phrases. Our whole cultural reference point is about clear and direct. We value that. That's a positive for us.

Sanjyot Dunung:

Another culture may be more high context and the most extreme high context, for example, you might see in Japan and Korea, where the message is embedded in the body language, in the context of the situation, not necessarily the words. So anybody who's ever done business with those cultures might know that, for example, you'll see a little tilt of the head, a little guttural moment, a little bit of I don't know. That's code for no. So what happens is that, as an American, you're expecting clarity of communication. You ask a team member will this project be done by a certain date? Will we meet our timeframes?

Sanjyot Dunung:

And you may miss the communications that are subtle, that are embedded in body language, which you might not see in an email, for example on no, we're not really comfortable with the deadline, but I don't know how to tell you that's really what's happening right, versus some cultures which will say yes all the time, when yes simply means I heard your question, it doesn't mean yes as in the affirmative. So how people communicate is also very different. And making sure you look at more than the words, making sure you look at the context and the meaning and, as you're training for those who are trainers, making sure you're looking at the attendees in your group to make sure you're not missing something, because those attendees may come with their own cultural reference point. So not assuming the person who raises their hand or the person who says yes is completely in agreement, or with clarity.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, and I remember reading a case study about a group of Americans who, essentially, were negotiating with a group, a business out of Japan, and there was head nods and things like that, and the Americans had walked away celebrating, thinking that they were getting everything that they wanted, when all of a sudden, the next day there was a rejection letter for what they were looking to do and they were like, well, we thought we were on the same page and they were like, no, we understood what you were saying, we just didn't agree with any of it, and it was, you know, it was just like kind of hard line miscommunication aspect. So I love that you bring that up Now, one of the things that you had said earlier, and I want to lean back into it just a moment. You had talked about stereotypes and I think that whenever you get into different aspects of culture, there is a number of stereotypes out there, and the difficulty with stereotypes is they have a range of being 0% true to nearly 100% true. And the reality is, what is this stereotype? It's essentially I have noticed a pattern of behavior. Now that pattern could really represent 2% of the behavior. It could represent 100% of the behavior. It's always going to shift, it's always going to reflect, it's always going to be changing. Some of it's contextual, some of it's environmental. It's always going to be changing. Some of it's contextual, some of it's environmental, some of it's situational.

Jay Johnson:

So, you know, in my space of behavioral intelligence, what I look at is okay, how can we recognize the patterns of behavior without crossing that line to say, okay, just because we saw it six times doesn't mean that we're going to see it the seventh Doesn't mean that it's? You know, we have to be able to analyze in context. How do you navigate that? Because there are so many different. There's positive stereotypes, there's negative stereotypes, there's stereotypes that people are like I really don't know where this one came from. There's others that people go yep, that's exactly how we do things. So, in the world of stereotypes, how do we navigate such a complicated challenge?

Sanjyot Dunung:

Well, what we typically do is we recognize that they exist in people's minds right, we've all grown up with them, we feel them all around us in the workplace, in our normal lives, but what we try to do is put them into a separate box and then work with the methodology, because I think people find the methodology a little bit more comfortable. Just as you said, there can be data points. Somebody may do something five times. Will they definitively do it? The sixth Unclear, right? So if you start to use a methodology, you can then start to separate between individual personality, for example, and what might be culturally influenced, whether it's an organizational culture or whether it's a national culture, and, again, because we often tie it into analytics and data. So let me give you an example.

Sanjyot Dunung:

We do a lot of work with customer service and customer experience. One of the things that a lot of our companies find is that their global customers will rank them differently on their customer satisfaction scores versus US customers. So they try to understand why. Because obviously you want to increase your customer support, customer satisfaction One of the key scores that most people use and a lot of people who are with large companies are familiar with that NPS, which is the net promoter score and basically, nps is simply a customer who's happy with you is more likely to be loyal and will stay with you even if you increase your price. So think, for example, starbucks. Starbucks has a very high NPS. Doesn't matter where you go in the world, you are familiar with the Starbucks surroundings. You're going to get the same product, the same service within reason, and so there's a high brand value. So a lot of companies want high NPSs with their customers because that allows them to charge more.

Sanjyot Dunung:

Where's the gap? The gap is in customer-facing team members, who may not necessarily understand how to meet the customer. So if you are, we do a lot in the travel space. So if you are a gate agent or a flight attendant or any of those other customer-facing roles, you may not be experienced and understand how the culture may impact your interaction. You might rely, for example, on a stereotype or what somebody else has told you.

Sanjyot Dunung:

What we do is we kind of clear away that. We talk about what the actual role of a person is, what their interaction is, and then we tie the cultural habits to that. So there's a real framework and what that enables them to do is improve their service. So it might be how people ask for help. It might be how people expect service, whether you're in a hotel, for example, or in an airline, but these are ways that attendees learners can actually start to operationalize the learning. So it makes it more relevant and they're more likely to put these stereotypes to the side because now they have a new framework right. What we try to do is use the cultural methodology that we have to replace any of the misconceptions that they may already have.

Jay Johnson:

I love that. So let's play with this concept just a little bit, because I think this is important, because here's where I can see this really impacting. We've said there's culture everywhere, and I would be willing to bet that if I asked the audience hey, give me some stereotypes that would come from, say, a sales culture, the sales team. Right, they're going to think a number of different things. They're going to think direct, maybe aggressive, pushy, all of those stereotypes. And I've known salespeople that fit the stereotypes and I've known salespeople that could sell you something and you didn't even know. You just got sold just on the way they do it. So we recognize that, yeah, they can be true, but they can also be not very true. I'm walking in as a trainer into this sales training and I've got all this group of salespeople, I've got these stereotypes in my head. What's a better way for me to operate? For? How would I navigate that situation? As a trainer, as a coach or even as an HR person meeting with a group of sales? How do I do that?

Sanjyot Dunung:

So the way we do it and I can sort of speak from our methodology and I think it can be applied by everybody who's listening is we first focus on who are you selling to and what are you selling, because that defines what the sales process would be. Right that's where we were just talking a little bit about the CX experience is first identify who your customer is. What are their expectations? Oftentimes, again, we're so attached to our product or our methodology that we're selling from our end versus thinking about what the person wishes to receive. And the more you can think about who you're selling to, what you're selling and what's the right sales strategy or I wouldn't say right, let's say optimal sales strategy you start with backwards, then how do you work into that, and so each salesperson can then start to understand okay, this is how people in this market, for example, they're more indirect, right Low context, and they I'm sorry high context. They want to sort of be more subtle about the sale. They don't want to have a hard sale. How do I craft my sales and marketing message? How do I reach them in a way that meets what their expectations are, so that I can give them the information that they need to be able to evaluate the opportunity and then close the sale. That's what you're really trying to do.

Sanjyot Dunung:

So, in a way, a lot of times salespeople already go through this right, they're already thinking about who's my customer, what do I need to do to sell them, what are their interests, their habits?

Sanjyot Dunung:

They go through all of this analysis, layer into that now another cultural reference point, one thing that people don't always realize. Let's say you're in North America. People will make assumptions based on where they think somebody's ethnicity is or where their country of origin is. The second, you start to live outside of your home country, you start to have more cultural influences. Think about it right, even as an American. If, even as an American, if you go as an American and you live in France, you're going to be a little bit American and a little bit French, right, you're going to start to weave in those attitudes and values, no different if people are coming. So if you're selling to somebody who may have recently come from a different country or who has origins from you, want to make sure that you've got that subtlety of using that cultural framework. But I think for trainers of salespeople, help them understand how to be more effective in their job, not necessarily making assumptions about what the sales folks should be doing.

Jay Johnson:

Oh, I love that and it's, and all the Baltics too.

Jay Johnson:

And I will say that when I came back from sort of if I were to just kind of group that year, that had a huge impact on how I saw the world, my behaviors, everything from recycling to how often I'm using my car to how often I'm thinking about sort of this like larger level community You're right, it does and knowing your audience and you know what is their, I guess global exposure is probably a really powerful marker for them to be able to think about.

Jay Johnson:

But I want to kind of underline something, what I'm hearing and help me if I've got this, where I'm seeing this. And when we're thinking about culture, we really need to stop thinking about per se our lens. And it sounds to me as though your methodology, your framework, your approach is to get whoever the audience is whether that's customer, client, salespeople, trainers, whomever customer service people to stop and actually consider the power distance as well as the context you know high context, low context and probably, I'm sure, a number of other markers but really you're getting them to essentially deep dive into an audience focused approach which is, I think, very consistent with training, as you said. Am I accurate on that? Is that the mindset shift that we need to go through?

Sanjyot Dunung:

It is. It's a 360 mindset, right. Oftentimes we want to make sure that, as trainers, we don't get up and start telling people how to act. We want to encourage them to think about how to take a methodology and integrate it into what they're doing from the work world so that they're more effective. The more they can operationalize it, the more that it's relevant to them that, the better they're going to be able to use it. So it's really a 360 approach. And one other thing that I would say is a visual, because sometimes it helps. People always still sort of stick in there. They're not quite sure they understand the concept of culture. We liken it when you're talking to people in different environments around the world, national cultures. Think of culture as sort of an iceberg, right? 10% of the iceberg is above the water. You can see it. So we tend to focus on those 10%. It might be visible behaviors, it might be visible differences in how people look.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, like that right. Yeah, okay, physical yeah.

Sanjyot Dunung:

But 90% is below the surface. It's how people think and why they think. And you talked a little bit about spending time in Scandinavia and you saw there's a whole different wiring of how people think about their environment and the climate. Personal responsibility One of my favorite concepts in Sweden, I have to say, because I have a sweet tooth is the concept of candy Saturdays, right, the idea that you have so much discipline that you only eat something, and as children. But that kind of discipline permeates their whole life, right, and they don't think of it. It's just second nature for them. But to those who are not used to that kind of discipline it may seem very different. So that's where you really need to understand that below the surface mindset, how it impacts communications, attitudes in the workplace, processes, efficiencies, you know deadlines, customer experience, everything. It's just about every part of the company.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, well, and Sanjot, it's so interesting you said that because there was things like okay, so one of the things I did when I was in Scandinavia was went winter swimming. Now I've lived in Michigan full of lakes.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, and this is 2019. So this is I'm not saying pre the neuroscience and all of the you know biological science that says, hey, this has some health benefits. This is like I'm not even aware of that at this point in time. I just thought it was a sadistic thing that they like to do and I was like, wow, these are tough people.

Jay Johnson:

But I immediately it was one of those things where I did it the first time. I really enjoyed it. I felt great, my body felt great, and immediately I came back and I'm like I want to do this the rest of my friends and colleagues I mean, it was a very, very few and far between that I could convince to do an ice plunge with me or to jump into a lake with me or anything else. And now I'm starting to see everywhere, everywhere there's ice plunges, nordic spas and saunas and things like that. So I want to parlay this into a question At what point in time do we start seeing the influence of whether it's us as the trainer influencing our audience or the audience's cultural aspects influencing us? Where does that sort of push pull? How does that occur? And, realistically, like what timeframe do we start to see these cultures sort of merging together or really kind of getting a better understanding of each other.

Sanjyot Dunung:

Well, I mean, if you think just holistically, I think we're morphing more integrated every single day, right? Media helps that. People can travel easily, like you did, and experience different cultures. So whenever that starts to happen, we start to understand different points of view, different attitudes, different behaviors and we internalize them. Once upon a time we thought about food, but now food is ubiquitous too. Right, we have fusion and everything. So that's at the macro level.

Sanjyot Dunung:

I think that when you start to bring it down to the personal level, when it's in the classroom, for example, or when it's within a team, I think that that's the give and take, right. Or when it's within a team, I think that that's the give and take right. I think good instructors, good educators or trainers and we go by different names in the classroom, which is why I always flip back and forth but you really want to make sure that your training and your learning content meets the needs of those who are attending. So you will often find yourself. Educators will do that right.

Sanjyot Dunung:

They will shapeshift their content, make sure that they package it in a way that can be understood and absorbed and celebrated by those who are trying to learn this material, to be able to operationalize it and, to an extent, as you start doing that as an educator or as a trainer, you're also learning a little bit about your audience, right? You're learning a little bit about what their needs are. In an essence, you're meeting them halfway, if you will, but I always call it a bridge, right? I think, as trainers, as cultural you know those of us who are on the cultural side we're just building bridges. We're building bridges between knowledge and action, and it doesn't matter what the subject is. In our case, we like to say we're building bridges between countries and groups of people, different cultures, but any subject matter. You're really just building a bridge of knowledge, and how you build that bridge and how you sustain it is really dependent on both the learner and the trainer in that setting.

Jay Johnson:

That really lands for me, and I really like the idea of the bridge between knowledge and action, because there are points in times that that bridge can be non-existent or very, very, very, very long, where we know what we need to do, or we know and understand what we should do, but whether or not we actually choose to behave or do something with it, that's a completely different story. So this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. I know that there's a lot more to go into If you were to say okay, you know, take one thing and say trainers say okay, you know, take one thing and say trainers, coaches, hr people, if you do one thing, that's going to improve your talent development, your talent force, your learning development, whatever that might be. What is the number one thing that you think somebody could get started on today taking a little bit of knowledge and moving it into action. What is that one thing, sanjo?

Sanjyot Dunung:

So I think the most important thing for any trainer is to actually understand how the learners are going to operationalize it and build the training towards that. So we build that towards the KPIs key performance indicators. How will you measure that you've learned this information? Not just a multiple choice quiz at the end of an e-learning, for example, but really at the end of six months, at the end of 12 months. What do you hope to do?

Sanjyot Dunung:

So oftentimes and many trainers do this right you do a needs assessment. That needs assessment shouldn't be just what do the learners think they want to learn. It should really be focused on what's your pain point in your job or in your team or in your organization, and how will you measure that it's been fixed. That's what you're training to right. That's what you need to weave the training to, and then you can structure the entire training in ways that actually say this will help us improve how we're going to communicate more effectively. In our case, the learning lesson might be about how do people miscommunicate high context, low context communications, understanding that methodology but the tangible action is it will help you improve communications so that there's efficiency, there's less emails, there's less back and forth between a team or there's less frustration. Those are all measurable. So my advice to trainers is always focus on the business practices that you wish to help a team change and then measure towards that.

Jay Johnson:

Powerful, and you've heard that here before team and you've heard it in a completely different context. Heard that here before team and you've heard it in a completely different context. But yes, that measurement, because otherwise your training is a luxury, it's a hobby, it's a pastime, it's not a business objective and your funding will get cut. I'm watching it happen literally all over to trainers, to coaches, to individual internal learning development departments. They're not understanding why 60 people just got let go. It's because they're not demonstrating. Hey, the things that we've done for the last three years have had these KPIs, these business objectives, and this is the return on investment. So, Sanjyot, thank you so much for bringing that up. I do agree with you. That is 100%. The most important thing that we can do as an individual or even a learning development team is to show how did this actually yield results?

Sanjyot Dunung:

So I love that.

Jay Johnson:

I love that. Sanjyot, if our audience wanted to get in touch with you, if they wanted to learn more about APMA Global, how would they do so?

Sanjyot Dunung:

Just come to our website, apmaglobalcom. You can contact us. There's a contact us form and it'll get to me or get to one of our team members and we'd love to hear from you. You know, whether you have a question or whether you want to talk about some trainings or methodologies or things like that, feel free to please reach out.

Jay Johnson:

Amazing. This has been a wonderful conversation. I knew it would be, and I just want to say thank you for bringing all of your experience and insight into this world of culture, into this space. So, as I mentioned, it was something that kind of got me into, you know, got me into training. It's something that I'm very passionate about with travel and learning about these different things, and I have definitely learned a lot from you today. So I want to say thank you, Sanjyot.

Sanjyot Dunung:

Well, thank you, and thank you for having me, and I look forward to hearing about your adventures and where you're going to be headed to next and your next group of countries, and I don't know if I'll do the polar crunch, but I'm pretty ambitious to do a number of other things, so I look forward to that.

Jay Johnson:

Very nice, give it a try. Let me know how it goes. I will do so, all right. Well, you take care, and thank you again for being here and thank you, audience, for tuning into this episode of the Talent Forge, where we are shaping the future of training and development.

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Jay Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements

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