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Our guest on the episode today is Bianca McCart, and she has an amazing story of how she learned so much about social, and cultural differences in both family and professional environments after finding a surprise family! What she shared in this episode can help you to better understand the cross-cultural differences in your own life, preparing you with the utmost powerful tool, compassion, and empathy. Listen to this incredible story with Bianca and your incredible host Carol Hamilton, please like and leave us a review on what was brought up for you in this heartwarming episode.  

Main Ideas

The Shocking and Amazing story of Bianca’s Surprise family 

• How integrating into a new culture and family really teaches you about yourself
• How Bianca integrated with a whole new family in Costa Rica
• Learning the cultural differences and feeling through the awkwardness and how you can too

What you can learn from Bianca’s professional journey

• How to increase your empathy for people whose professional language is not their first native language and how knowing this will crease your productivity
• Listening more attentively, engaging active listening strategies.
• How to observe the dance big companies try to implement, but often fail at when it comes to cultural diversity, and how you can improve them in your work environment

We are actually tons of offensive stances we take without even knowing how to be more cognizant of this so you can communicate much more fluidly, powerfully, and with compassion. 

• There are ways we are actually offending people that a majority of people don’t even notice

KEY Thoughts

00” — “You can't really assume what other people know or understand based on their appearance or their accent or things that are external to you until you investigate and interrogate what it is that they're trying to communicate or what they really don't understand. You can't kind of lecture a person into having the same outlook or point of view as you do. Welcome to evolving diversity, a place where engaging conversations are the goal. An awkward question is encouraged. I'm Carol Hamilton, your host for this journey. Find a comfy spot, grab a cup of something and let's dive in. Imagine waking up tomorrow. Finding out that you have roots in a completely different culture that you didn't know about.

2’17” I opened up Google translate and I put these, uh, put what he had put into the translator and it came back a little bit garbled, but essentially it said this picture that I've sent you is a picture of me and our father. And he really hopes to meet you someday. 

05’49” I would say that the biggest thing is that people are very affectionate and having a family connection means that you know, just instantly you're part of the family. There's no distance between you and another person just because you haven't gotten to know each other.

20’21” — “I had a colleague, um, from Mexico who also had a bit of a stutter and he was the greatest person to work with. And I felt like when we had big meetings on the phone, people would talk over him, constantly interrupt him, and it just seemed really unfair. They were, it seemed like they devalued his contributions and his intelligence because of the way that he spoke.”

21’44” —  “..hospitality is a huge part of Hispanic culture and, you know, they, they will go out of their way to make sure that anyone who's visiting has A good experience and feels welcome, even if it means that they, you know, are out with you every night, giving you tours, taking you to restaurants, showing you new food, um, you'll never lack for the company in. A Latino country. Um, and they definitely do not have that experience at all there. Uh, when they come here, at least at my company, it's we have to remind people, you know, so-and-so's here visiting for three months.

25’18” —  “And I think that's been one of the biggest realizations for me is just having the ability to change that mindset from being time focused and efficiency-focused to being people-focused.