What becomes possible when you live "in-between culture"? 

I've had the privilege of living, studying and working in the US, Germany, Bolivia, China, Brazil, South Africa, India, the UK, Zimbabwe, and traveled to more than 50 countries. And I've been deeply shaped by the cultures I've encountered. And every time I travel, I lose myself a little bit. And by losing myself, I find myself more thoroughly. 

Different cultures have different sets of unspoken rules. These invisible rules shape our behavior and define the limits of what's possible. The risk is that we become entrenched, stale, stuck in ways that limit us unnecessarily.

When we travel to new places, visit new organizations or engage with new groups, we leave one set of rules and begin to engage with another, whether we realize it or not. But there's a liminal space in between these two states, where we've left one set of rules, but not yet taken on another. In this space our old expectations and habits are obsolete but new ones haven't taken shape yet.

Here we have an opportunity to find a new way in the world. It can be deeply unnerving to go through this process. To see that our view of the world and of ourselves is constructed. It requires vulnerability to meet the world or the people we encounter on their own terms. Rather than trying to control how we "think" we should be, or how we think things "should go", we can allow ourselves to sit in the unknown. Counter-intuitively this allows us more agency to shape outcomes than when we try to force things. By meeting others and the world with a state of deep curiosity, we not only learn new ways of doing things, but discover who we are capable of being when unspoken limitations don't have their grip on us. We can "forget ourselves" and allow a powerful new freedom of expression to emerge.

What I love about this process is that it's not something you "do." It's not about having a some clean, pre-baked idea of who or what you want to be and then "reinventing yourself". It's rather a process of discovery of what's possible when you stop trying to control, and enter into a state of living relationship with yourself and the world. What happens when you allow you or your teams' culture to be created fresh? What happens you become "culturally agile"? 

I have coaching seats available for leaders and individuals. Feel free to get in touch to set up a call to explore what it might look like to work together.