Here is an audio copy of a debriefing session I was teaching to a group in Saskatchewan. The audio quality is a little shaky, but the message does come through … if you are working with a short term mission team this should be helpful for you.
check out others at the podcast page.
It takes about a minute, and it is quite funny. Take a moment and …Watch the Video. This is not an eye exam, but it will test your perceptions … after you watch it, come back here and read my thoughts.
I just added a new link on the main page called ‘twelve sessions‘ … these are the key sessions I train my teams with. Never exhaustive, yet I feel that these 12 give a great basic outline.
Many international hosts have informed me they appreciate this as a baseline for an effective and trained team.
Over the last couple days, I once again found myself teaching at Vangaurd in Edmonton. I had a great time looking at development and internattional issues relating to Partnership. I gave a Readers Digest version of the following article, but I thought I would reproduce it here in its entirety. I am not sure about reprint info, so if I hear anything, I will take it down …
A Single Lucid Moment: Robert Soderstrom
As the plane buzzed back over the mountains, it was now just us and the villagers of Maimafu. My wife, Kerry, and I were assigned to this village of 800 people in the Eastern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea. It looked as if we were in for a true Indiana Jones adventure!
The mountains were dramatic and thick with rain forest. No roads had ever scarred them. We had loaded a four-seater plane with cargo (we would fly out every three months to resupply) and flew for 30 bumpy minutes southwest to the mountain ridges. From the plane, the village looked very much like a shoe-box panorama from a grade-school science project.
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I just got back from a weekend in Ottawa. I helped a friend put on a Short Term Mission (STM) clinic for 40 people, facilitated a missions committee as they worked through their issues surrounding the start-up of short term initiatives, spoke about micro-finance issues to a couple of hundred people, had supper with an old childhood friend, and then spent today in a conference with a dozen and a half leaders in international work. It was a fun weekend.
While I was speaking to the missions committee, I found myself challenging them to engage with the partners they presently have in place. A partner they had just read a report of to a crowd that exhibited evident excitement and interest. They were thinking of international engagement, but as is often the case when people are deciding to take a trip overseas, they make the decision based on fear of danger, ease of the travel arrangements, or a low financial cost. At first blush, these reasons do make perfect sense, after-all – shouldn’t we ease into engagement?
My thoughts were this. It is far easier to raise an extra $1000 per participant, than it is to raise interest in a new inititiative. I think it is important that we engage where we are engaged. This sounds so self-evident that it might be almost foolish, and yet for some reason it is all to easy to think of a STM trip as a ends in itself … this should not be the case. The most effective STM experiences always take place within the context of relationship … extended and continuing … for this is Short term mission, wiht a long term focus.
I just taught a session in Saskatoon where an old friend, Rob Shepherd graciously hosted me. At one of his sessions, Rob talked about the Five Stages of Cross cultural stress (the U- Curve Hypothesis). The point i liked was the 4 possible responses to regression and hostility … namely fight, flight, filter and flex … i have definitely seen a variety of these responses in international travellors …
Stage 1. Expectation and Optimism
Stage 2. Acceptance and Fascination
Stage 3. Frustration and Rejection
Stage 4. Regression and Hostility
Four possible responses:
1. Fight – for change
2. Flight – escape, go home
3. Filter – see only the bad of the present culture
4. Flex – work thought it.
Stage 5. Adjustments, Acculturation and Assimilation.
This short Survey can reveal some of our assumptions about culture. Feel free to use it in cross-cultural training and team preparation.
Cultural survey
To be answered by foreigners, or recent immigrant Canadians who respond from the bias of their home culture. Please answer these questions from the perspective of your home culture, not Canadian culture. If the question does not make sense from your cultural perspective, note the fact and give the reasons why not?
1. What are the factors that make the clothes you wear appropriate or inappropriate?
2. Why do you eat with your fork in your strong hand? Why do you eat with a fork at all? What is appropriate “finger food� Why?
3. Who should you sit with? Who not?
4. When do you smile? Why? When is a smile appropriate?
5. What does it mean when someone belches?
6. What does it mean when you laugh in public?
7. What does it mean when you are not asked to sit down?
8. What does it mean when the agreed time to meet arrives and there is no one there but you?
9. What significance would you attach to a situation when you find yourself constantly backing up when talking to someone face-to-face?
10. Why do people stop talking in a crowded elevator?
11. What is your Nationality or cultural background?
i was wandering the web in search of some material on team building and came across a great series of teaching on the difference between a team and a group …
we often call a group a team … this is what makes a team …
Mission
Commitment
Ground Rules
An Effective Process
Do then Review your Actions
I found this article interesting
Everyone who has adapted to another culture has gone through culture shock. Those who claim they did not may not have recognized the signs, or perhaps they never really adjusted to the other culture. Tourists seldom experience culture shock because they are short-term sojourners who never actually enter another culture. Many diplomats do not experience culture shock because of their isolation within the diplomatic community and their insulation from the local society.
I recently read M. Scott Pecks book Glimpses of the Devil where he shares his experience as a psychologist, dealing with two cases where he works with demonically possessed people. Controversial (and spooky) as the subject matter may be, I love his style. His thoughts are a no-nonsense, fully intelligent as well as faith-based approach to the realities of evil. I found the book helpful in realising the realities of evil. I recommend it.
Now, for the tangent, at the end of the book he references his personality type, as Myers-Briggs would describe it. I had not taken the test for almost a decade or so, and I thought it would be fun to check out just who I am again. I always think it a great idea to let a test determine my personality and future choices.
You may have recognised from my words that I do not hold these things as holy writ, but I do enjoy the snapshot aspect of glancing at my personality in a mirror for a moment. I feel that these tests when used properly can be helpful, but should not determine your life. They merely reflect your present, providing clarity for the next steps into your future.
Click More to find out where you can take the test yourself
