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“Yes, and…” Improv skills for intercultural communication
Improvisational theater, or improv, is a form of live theater in which the plot of a scene is unscripted and made up in the moment. You may be familiar with the format from populair tv shows such as Whose Line Is It Anyway. With its emphasis on spontaneity and adaptability, improv can teach us a great deal about navigating day-to-day interactions, and specifically intercultural encounters. In this article, I list some key lessons that I learned in my own improv…
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Enneagram stances: how to develop your repressed center of intelligence
In its simplest form, the Enneagram teaches that humans have three centers of intelligence: doing, thinking and feeling. Most of us don’t use all of them to the same extent. We are very skilled in using one of our intelligences and (unconsciously) underuse another. One key of becoming a well-rounded human being is to integrate and balance the three centers of intelligence. A first step is to explore which center you repress. The answer might surprise you, but holds some…
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Western thought is Western, not universal
After I graduated from high school, I chose to study Philosophy. I wanted to know the heights of human understanding. I wanted to pick history’s greatest brains, all the way from the ancient Greeks through the Middle Ages, Enlightenment and modern times. And from Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas and from Rousseau to Nietzsche, it appeared that the most brilliant thinkers of all time had all been born in Europe. When I became president of the study association of the Philosophy…
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Natural and adapted personality styles
Have you ever been answering questions in a personality type test and thought: ‘well, that depends on the situation’? Do you sometimes feel like different persons at work and at home? Well, most of us do. One way to look at this is by becoming aware of the distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘adapted’ personality styles. Natural personality style Your natural personality style is your ‘default’ way of doing things: how you are without putting effort in it. It is how…
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The most beautiful Sufi quotes for each Enneagram type
Sufism, the mystical worldview of Islam, is a source of wisdom. I collected quotes for each Enneagram type that can guide us on our individual paths of growth and spirituality. Whatever your religious orientation is, Sufism can teach us insights that are mind-boggling and heart-stirring. All we need is an open mind and an open heart. One Sufi scholar, Hazrat Inayat Khan, described Sufism as “not a religion nor a philosophy, it is neither deism nor atheism, nor is it…
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Interculturalists, how can we use the study of personality?
As intercultural trainers, we often make sure to provide the disclaimer that culture is not an explanation for everything: each individual is different. And then we move on to talk about culture, because that is our expertise. In a parallel universe, there exists another multi-million-dollar industry: of personality typology assessments and trainings. These help organisations and their employees understand how preferences differ and how teams can work better together. Sounds familiar? The point of departure of both intercultural and personality…
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What is me? Two perspectives from East and West
If I have to define who I am – not me in particular but as an individual – I might say that I am the aggregate of my experiences. At any given moment, a human life is a conscious experience plus a recollection of previous experiences stripped off their spatial and temporal aspects: memories, knowledge, skills… They make up who I am. I am my life. Or so I thought before moving to India. There is a short anecdote about…
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Why don’t you reach your SMART goals? Think SMARTIES
SMART goals overlook one important fact: that they have to be executed not by machines but human beings. And humans sometimes lack motivation.
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Why learning about culture and personality should go hand in hand
The tagline of this website is ‘a website about culture and personality’. I believe that learning about culture and personality should go together. Here are three reasons why I think they are inseparable. 1. Separately they paint an incomplete picture Intercultural communication trainings can sometimes appear deterministic: if you know a person’s culture, you know how to negotiate a business deal with them. But of course, any group or culture is made up of a multitude of different people with…
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Core values of all Enneagram types (and how to use them to type someone)
Each Enneagram type has certain values and themes that they particularly care about. These can present themselves as causes they are preoccupied with, as more invisible guidelines for their behavior, or simply as subjects they spend a lot of time thinking about, consciously or unconsciously. Below is a list with the core values of all Enneagram types. Below that, we’ll have a look at how you can use these to type yourself or someone else. Type 1 core values Type…
