The Communication & Culture Podcast Nadege MInois

In this episode, I receive Magali Vives, a codevelopment (Codev) specialist.


Truly « addict » to cultural diversity, Magali calls herself a citizen of the world before anything else. Her mission is to contribute to improving the quality of interactions amongst individuals ; she is convinced that this is the key to a better world. Here is why, on a daily basis, she supports leaders and organizations worldwide and actively contributes to spreading the method of codevelopment.

She initiated a codevelopment world map and recorded a podcast with Claude Champagne, both in order to promote codevelopment beyond French-speaking countries.



So, what is codevelopment?



Codev is a structured communication approach to use when you want to find a solution to a problem, get ideas about something you are stuck with and so on. It is mostly use for professional topics but can also be used for personal questions.



A codev session is divided in 6 steps:

1. A subject is chosen by the participants and the person whose subject have been chosen (the client) explains the situation in more details

2. Clarifying questions. In this step, the other participants (the consultants) ask only clarifying questions, to ensure they have understood the situation correctly

3. Contract. The client confirms what he/she/they expect from the group

4. The consuktants then share ideas, suggestions in the form of for instance "If I were you, I would do, try...", without any judgement.

5. The client then defines what 2 to 4 suggestions she/he/they will follow and implement, without justifying their choice

6. The session finishes by all sharing their feedback on the session.



Listen for more details. Are you ready to use codev?



You can reach Magali via her

Website: https://www.pourquoipasmindset.com/

Or email: magali@pourquoipasmindset.com

Welcome to this latest episode of the Communication & Culture podcast. In this episode, I thought I wanted to begin at the beginning with communication and I use my background as a biologist to delve deeply into communication in general and how it developed.

When we think of communication, we mostly think about human communication. Because this is what most of us are interested in. 

A lot of us are amazed at how apparently complex our communication is, how clever, intelligent or whatever adjective you want to come up with, we are. I might offend some of you here, but this is narrow sighted. Because all living organisms communicate. 

So, when did it all began? Well, it probably began as soon as life began. To stay alive, the first organisms needed to be able to sense messages from their environment, food, potential danger, temperature and so on. This was the first type of communication to evolve because many reactions and processes in a cell need receptors and thus the blueprint was there for evolution to stumble on chemo and olfactory receptors. Visual communication was probably not very far behind. 

Chemocommunication is still with us, coming from our most ancient ancestors. 

Then, as organisms got bigger, evolution had more opportunities to come up with different ways of communicating and making sense of the world. This is how all the different ways of communicating arose.

Species come and go and while they are around, they do so because the ways of communication they have fulfil the kind of messages they need to send. And of course, every species make full use of what evolution has given them. It just happens that a random mutation has made our larynx move further up into our throat and allowed us to make more sounds than many of our ancestors.

It has nothing to do with being superior to other species. We are just one of the results of the always ongoing process of evolution. The more we look at it, the more we will learn and understand about how other species communicate and discover how intricate it is.

Welcome to this episode of the Communication & Culture podcast. I receive a special guest: 

Liz Kislik is a management consultant and executive coach, and a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and Forbes. Her TEDx “Why There’s So Much Conflict at Work and What You Can Do to Fix It” has received almost half a million views. She specializes in developing high performing leaders and workforces, and for 30 years has helped family-run businesses, national nonprofits, and Fortune 500 companies like American Express, Girl Scouts, Staples, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and Highlights for Children solve their thorniest problems. 

Liz’s work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal’s Morning Download, the Washington Post, Business Insider, and Bloomberg Businessweek. Her articles have been included in Harvard Business Press books Guide to Motivating People, Dealing with Difficult People, and Guide to Power and Impact, as well as in Entrepreneur, the European Financial Review, and the Forward.   She is a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches initiative, which brings together the world’s top coaches and thinkers; has taught at Hofstra University and New York University; and is a frequent podcast guest. She received her BA from Yale University and earned an MBA in Management from NYU. 

We discuss the communication around conflict and its relationship with a company’s culture. 

Liz talks about the diversity of conflict and highlights its similarities too. A big intake for me is the subjectivity of conflict. 

Liz gives us examples how the culture of a company can increase unintentionally the level of conflict and that you need to take active steps to change the aspects of the culture creating conflict. 

We are usually unconscious of other people’s perspectives, and this can trigger conflict. A lack of awareness of our assumptions. 

Liz gives us advice on how to handle conflict. We feel conflict in our body. The first thing is to calm our body. Then, we open to others and we also look at structural aspects of the company that can perpetuate conflict. 

To continue the discussion with Liz, you can reach her on the following social media: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizkislik Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lizkislik Twitter: https://twitter.com/lizkislik

Welcome to this latest episode of the podcast, now called the Communication & Culture podcast. A change of title, a change of direction but the same philosophy. 

How did it come about? Since the end of last summer, I had the opportunity to take a step back from what I was doing, to pause, question and reflect. 

The final outcome of this process is a change of direction for my business and hence this podcast.

It is how we communicate with others that dictates our interactions and relationships with them. How we communicate is influenced by and is the result of our culture, our upbringing, our values, our biases, our assumptions, our personalities, our education and many more. It is how all of these are externally exhibited. It is how you show respect, empathy, compassion, care, love but also disrespect, contempt, dislike, even hate to others. 

This is why I have decided to change direction to help people understand what communication really is and how to communicate better. 

In this context, to me, it is about how to adapt our communication to our various audiences to get our message across, each time.

So, are you ready to embark on this new path with me and my guests on this podcast? So, then, until the next episode.

In this episode, I receive Robin Sacks, a confidence coach. For many years now, Robin has been helping leaders to develop their confidence.



And yes, it is something that Robin stressed so well: confidence can be developed and learned. You are not born confident, or not.



In this episode, Robin discusses how ther is a fine balancing act between stress and confidence and how when one goes up, the other goes doen automatically.



Far from being theoretical, Robin gives us simple actions who can take to decrease stress and increase confidence. Isn't it what we all want?



What I was particularly interested in was to delve, using Robin's expertise and knowledge, into the relationship between confidence and inclusive. It is not as simple as you might think.



So, listen to the full episode to make you get all Robin's nuggets.



If you want to continue the discussion with Robin, you can catch up with her:


on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robinsacks/


or on her website: https://www.robinjsacks.com/

Culture fit, culture add, culture what? Welcome to this episode of the Culture & Inclusion podcast. What is this all about? You may have heard about these terms of culture fit and culture add when it comes to hiring new people. How you should, or shouldn’t hire for culture fit or culture add and so on.

I want to give you my take on this subject. Hiring for culture fit, for culture add, none of those, something else? I’ll give you my points of view, and I insist on the plural, and then you can decide what you want to hire for.

Let’s take culture fit. Culture fit is seen as hiring more of the same. This happens when for instance you rely on your network when hiring, because most people in your network are just like you! It happened when you think you need to hire people coming from certain schools or universities or having a certain degree. These people will be more similar because they have experienced the same culture.

Now, this is not the best if you are a homogeneous group because you will keep on getting people from that same homogeneous background. It is not the best either if your culture for instance is totally results driven, however the results are achieved. You keep on hiring results driven people who will see their quarterly targets as more important than their people, their team.

Now, in contrast, let’s say that your workplace is diverse, inclusive, innovative and anything positive you can associate to a culture. Then, you would want more of that, wouldn’t you? In that case, culture fit doesn’t seem so bad.

Shall we turn to culture add now? As it suggests, hiring new people is about adding to the existing culture. This is a great approach when you have identified a gap in your organisation. It is the way to go when you decide you need people with different experiences than what you already have, people from different backgrounds that who you already have, when you want to bring different ideas and expertise to your organisation.

However, if you are already not sure what your culture is actually, if you have let in people whom you’d rather not have in the organisation, then adding to an already suboptimal situation will not help.