GCC Anniversary | 10 Years of Transformation | Your biggest “aha moment" by Pablo Cornejo

When in Thailand...

pablocornejoAFS — 2025-02-24 22:26:57 UTC

This picture, taken in Thailand in 2018, truly speaks to my cultural experience in the country. I was there for a major work event, tasked with facilitating business interactions, yet I felt like I was constantly missing something. Was it the lack of business cards? Was it my Latin communication style? I couldn't put my finger on it and the stress began to build . A year later, during the GCC component of my Qualified Facilitator training, the lightbulb finally went on. I realized I had experienced a classic cultural/critical incident. Going through the training helped me reformulate the incident and consider the actual question: How could I, as an international colleague, better have prepared for the subtle, yet crucial, aspects of business etiquette in a culture so different from my own?

Learning in every conversation...

2025-02-28 06:13:46 UTC

By the time I took the GCC, I had already visited different countries and interacted with people from different cultural backgrounds. I always had that first really difficult (and sometimes pretty long) step of figuring out how to properly interact with people while suspending my judgment. Going through the GCC and learning about the DIVE model along with the Cultural Value Dimensions helped me greatly in taking a step back. I became more observant and had a better idea of what signs and characteristics I'm looking for to understand what cultural values the other person is living through. This way I could more easily interact with them in the respect of our mutual differences. x)

Aha moment - facilitating others

mollystern — 2025-03-10 18:51:39 UTC

I'll never forget when I facilitating a cohort of faculty at a university and we were chatting about communication styles- high context and low context and one of the participant lit up and shared bravely, "This module and this conversation made me finally understand my husband better. We are from very different sides of the communication spectrum and I have been judging his communication wrongly instead of different." Of course the intention of this group going through the modules was more geared for professional development, but that's where I became aware of just how transformational this type of learning could be if you're open to it - it could transform the way you live, work, love, interact with everyone and I think that's so beautiful.