What the youth can teach us about cultural intelligence

Just before Christmas, I had the opportunity to organise a couple of 2-hour workshops on cultural awareness with 10-11 year-old students from Redbridge International School in Lisbon. And what an experience this was.

Why it was special

• Exchanging with a bunch of multicultural and international kids, there was a lot of knowledge in this space and open-mindedness.

• While the crowd was in their early teens, they literally took the lead. My role was more that of a moderator than a teacher as such.

• I'm a firm believer that in order to achieve greater impact, all of us passionate about cultural diversity and other forms of diversity must find ways to engage with younger generations. Not only are they the future (let's not forget this is a long-term effort), but they also have a lot less biais than adults. Their minds are still forming, absorbing, learning. They are more open to different perspectives and therefore behaviour change is accelerated and facilitated.

What I learned

• Children who are given a chance to discover and learn have greater ability to reset their minds than adults. If only these types of programmes were mandatory across educational programmes.

• Empathy, sympathy and tolerance are qualities that can be taught and enhanced (especially at a younger age).

• I absolutely want to keep working with children on the side of my corporate missions. I love working with kids. Besides, they help me become better at what I do with adults/ corporate groups.

• Cultural intelligence is not just a job, it's a passion and I want it to be as contagious as possible - with all age groups from primary to secondary and higher education all the way to corporates.

What they learned

• In the workshop wrap-up, it was really interesting to see how soft learnings were greater than hard ones. A lot of what they felt they'd learnt was focused on awareness, being more tolerant of people's differences (physical and behavioural). There was also a greater sense of curiosity among the group, wanting to explore more about the different cultures that surround them, and which they hadn't taken notice of (in groups of 18 or so students, we had cultural heritage from 25 countries on average and mostly unknown from close peers).

• They learned about subcultures. The knowledge they brought into the room (much like most of their adult peers) was focused on culture at a national/ country level. It was brilliant to receive an A3 format thank you card two days later with the various sub-cultures they belong to across the two classes from the gymnasts to the surfers, swimmers, football and basketball players. That proved to me that they understand that culture goes beyond geographical borders - it is about belonging, shared values and behaviours.