How a small town in Wisconsin changed my view of the world.
It was many years ago when I boarded my first ever flight from Zurich to New York City. I was 16-years-old, and it was my first time outside Europe and away from my family. I was nervous. My parents supported my decision to embark on a year-long AFS study abroad program to learn what the world had to offer outside of my small Austrian village. After a long flight, I arrived with thousands of students from places I had never heard of, speaking languages I never knew existed. I spent the next year living in a small town in Wisconsin experiencing a completely different way of life.
The highlight of my experience was expanding my cultural fluency through the new friends I made. Sharing a room with Roberto from Brazil, discussing Apartheid with Francois from South Africa, and going to Prom with lovely Nena from Ecuador expanded my thinking and perspective. I realized we had more in common than what divided us. Through these interactions, I became capable of putting myself in someone else's shoes, being more self-aware, and appreciating the differences.
Fast forward to today, I still consider my study abroad one of the best experiences that has prepared me for a global career. We live in a world where most of us interact with a diverse range of people on a daily basis. Cultural fluency and global capability are essential skills to succeed not only in business, but also in our personal lives.
For years BP has looked for better ways to provide cross-culture immersion opportunities to our future leaders. In 2015, we discovered One Young World, a UK-based charity focused on solving global issues by bringing young people together from different cultures to create innovative solutions. That year our Chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, attended their annual summit in Bangkok as a counselor and speaker. In 2016, BP sent a small delegation to the annual summit in Ottowa as an experiment to see if this could be a good way to broaden our young leaders. After seeing the cultural learning and passion our delegates brought back from Ottawa, we knew One Young World was a great way to build global capability which led us to send a bigger delegation last year to Bogota.
I am proud that BP is again inviting a group of employees to participate in the 2018 summit in The Hague.
Although not all applicants will have the opportunity to attend, there are still many ways young leaders can improve their global capability. I’d like to share just three tips:
- Learn a foreign language. This will help you understand new cultures and open up doors of opportunity in the future.
- Challenge your assumptions. Too often the world thinks in black and white, good or bad, or like and dislike. This binary thinking can create cultural barriers and limit one’s ability to learn from other perspectives.
- Travel. Be curious about different cultures and visit new places. There is so much to learn by going abroad and expanding your mindset.
These are just a few ideas, but there are many more ways to gain more cultural awareness. This September AFS is hosting a global capability conference in Budapest which is another good way of connecting with people from all over the world. You can learn more at the link here: afs.org/conference.
The world continues to be more and more connected. Intercultural understanding and global capability are no longer “nice-to-haves,” but are necessities for leaders working in a global context.
I would love to hear about your biggest cultural "aha" moment!