Cultural Intelligence in Corporate Spaces
Shiva Roofeh, a self-described organizational justice practitioner, curious rebel, secret punk, perpetual smiler, culture creator, and learning and learning design specialist, shares her unique insights and experiences in confronting prejudice in leadership and uncovering your unconscious biases to ultimately make you a better and more just leader in corporate spaces
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Shiva has worked at all levels of organizations from director to individual contributor in small startups as well as established businesses. If that wasn't enough, Shiva has quite an interesting backstory. She's been a refugee, an immigrant, and a migrant, and she's lived and worked in six countries across Asia, Europe, and North America.
Shiva says that her lived experience is as valuable as her work experience. She leverages both to create mile deep change and relationships with and for her clients. She's worked with Fortune 500 companies helping leaders be and do better by understanding their systemic collective and individual power so they can use it in service of the greater good.
In this blog post, we’re covering the following:
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1) Cultural Differences in the Workplace
We asked Shiva what prompted her to start her leadership culture focused career.
“It was just pure coincidence. Which drives me nuts, because no matter how much you try to plan your life, shit just happens.” - Shiva Roofeh
In Shiva’s case, it was an article she read that changed everything for her. In general, it was around cultural differences and how that came into play when two different airline companies (one North American and one South Korean) merged which led to a lot of plane crashes.
“When they were listening to the black box recordings of the plane crashes, they started to notice there was a difference in not the words being said, but what was being understood between the pilots and co-pilots.” - Shiva Roofeh
As Shiva was reading this article, she realized just how much sense that made.
“It made so much sense to me, I realized, because of my background of being both Iranian and then also being raised in the United States. I can understand multiple cultures.” - Shiva Roofeh
From that one article, Shiva decided to learn more about cultural intelligence. At the time, there wasn’t a huge appetite for that kind of content where Shiva lives in Spain. So she made the pivot to leadership development.
“I started to realize a lot of the foundations are similar. So it's a lot around understanding your paradigms. What are the deep-seated beliefs that structure your understanding of the world that then lead to your behaviors that then lead to policies, processes, practices, and the cultures that we create?” - Shiva Roofeh
Shiva happened to read that article at a time when she actually had the power in an organization to do something about it.
2) Valuing Lived Experience in Corporate Spaces
Shiva is a firm believer that lived experience is just as valuable as work experience. She shares some advice for how individuals navigating corporate spaces can lean into that lived experience to show up and claim the impact that they can make.
Shiva emphasizes speaking into your lived experience rather than shying away from it.
“Every time I'm pitching to a client, [...] I noticed that my global minority siblings are just presenting their educational backgrounds. The MBA that they have, the school that they went to, all the companies they worked at.” - Shiva Roofeh
Shiva doesn’t talk about any of that.
“I'm going to tell you about my life because that is the thing that informs my work the most.” - Shiva Roofeh
Shiva talks about being born in the middle of a war, being born to a Muslim mother and a Jewish father, being a refugee at the age of four, and moving to New York City. She never mentions the school that she went to or the organizations that she works with.
“As the global majority, our minds have been colonized in a sense to think that we are less than, and so we don't allow ourselves the space and time to really value the lived experiences that we’ve had.” - Shiva Roofeh
Something that has helped Shiva to do this is practicing what that story is, especially as it is changing and shifting as her understanding of her story has changed and shifted.
Many people will freeze when asked the question, tell me about yourself.
“It should be the easiest thing to answer in the sense that we are the only person who knows our story. We are the only person who knows the full depth and nuance of our own story. So it's taking that time and space and giving yourself credit that your lived experience is valuable.” - Shiva Roofeh
3) Turning Passion into a Career
Shiva trusted herself enough to embrace her passion and turn it into the next chapter of her life.
She wasn’t financially safe enough to just quit her job and solely pursue her passion immediately. Rather, she looked at the resources she had immediately available to her and it helped that she was in a position of power in her organization.
Shiva was the one responsible for designing the programs that would be pitched and sold to clients so she used that position as a sort of internship for her passion. What was unique in this situation was that she pitched herself as the trainer.
“I used to unfortunately be in that mindset of just giving everything for the company and not taking anything for myself. And that's something I had to learn to change as well. This is a give-and-take. This is a financial transaction. Part of it is I am giving you my work and labor in exchange for money to be able to survive and live. But at the same time, you're getting a lot more than what I'm getting. So what else can I make sure I get from this transaction?” - Shiva Roofeh
It was only after about two years, after Shiva had finished that project, that she felt she was able to leave the workplace and take that rich learning experience with her.
In the meantime, while the project was ongoing, Shiva was meeting other people in the cultural intelligence space, going to conferences, pitching to speak at conferences, and trying to make a name for herself in the sphere.
4) White Passing Privilege
Shiva explains that this transition may have been easier for her to do because of her proximity to whiteness.
“I'm very white passing. I've got green eyes. I've got much lighter skin. In Europe in general, I'm not seen as something exotic.” - Shiva Roofeh
Shiva explains that when she first came to Europe from the USA, she came with the concept of not being white.
“Even though I grew up in New York City, which is very diverse, I was still never allowed to be USAian.” - Shiva Roofeh
Over time she realized that her body was much more relaxed. She realized that it was because she looks Spanish.
“The difference in treatment is drastic.” - Shiva Roofeh
Shiva noticed a difference in treatment by police, immigration officers, and everyday people.
“It changes regionally, and there's also global narratives, but in this context, I am white, and that gives me tremendous power. And people don't know that I'm not white until I tell them.” - Shiva Roofeh
For people who are not white passing, and are obviously othered, Shiva has some advice to share because in some contexts that's still very much relevant in her life.
“Power always plays a part in this” - Shiva Roofeh
Some things that have worked for Shiva are:
Owning her story
Learning to have a strong voice
Pushing back with kindness
One last thing Shiva shares is finding the people in organizations that have more power than you who are open to understanding the difference in power that you have because of your identities.
“It kind of sucks because it feels like you’ve got to play part of the game because it's cozying up to power, but it's cozying up to power with the intention of helping to funnel that power into something positive for the rest of us.” - Shiva Roofeh
5) Recognizing Unconscious Biases
As a leader, you have to recognize your own unconscious biases so that you can start noticing the inequalities on your team and become a better leader.
“What's helped me is approaching things from genuine curiosity, which is hard to do. And when you feel those moments of being triggered by something, allow your defenses to go down and ease into that trigger with curiosity.” - Shiva Roofeh
Shiva explains that during her time as a leader, someone shared with her the Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture by Kenneth Jones and
Tema Okun. As she was reading through the different characteristics she was extremely triggered because she saw herself in all of those characteristics.
Shiva had a choice, she knew she could reject these biases and say they’re not true. Or, she could try again, take it little by little, and spend the time and space over months and years to dive into these biases she held.
“I chose to get curious about it. [...] It took me about a year to go through a grieving process. And I think this is something that’s lifelong work. And if a leader truly wants to be able to help their team be as equitable as possible [...] it does start with yourself.” - Shiva Roofeh
Shiva explains that there’s a lot of anger, frustration, and loss that will come with the process, and it may hold people back.
“There's something inside of us that knows it's hard work. So what that hard work looked like for me was, once I got curious, once I started to read through it, it was looking back at my entire life and seeing the ways that I was perpetuating supremacy culture, inequity, and unfairness without realizing and coming to terms with all the unintentional harm that I had done. - Shiva Roofeh
Shiva calls it an ego death.
“My sense of myself was dying. We think that death is just a physical thing. It's not. So many things in our life die. And I needed to give the time and space to mourn that death.” - Shiva Roofeh
After a year of mourning, Shiva started to actively think about the ways that she was running her business.
“What do I need to do differently? And there's no guidebook for this. There's no checklist for this. There's nothing that tells you this is how to be a fair leader.” - Shiva Roofeh
6) Equality, Equity, and Justice
There is a difference between equality and equity. We need to focus more on equity, but we also need to get to the root of the problem…and that is true justice.
Shiva explains this so well
Equality is the idea that you are giving people the same resources and expecting them to reach the same outcome, but you can’t because people have different starting points.
Equity is giving people the different resources they need to be able to reach the same outcomes.
“Equity is just a way to survive a system that is not equal. What we really should be getting towards is justice where we're fixing that system.” - Shiva Roofeh
So many companies, teams, and leaders stop at equality because it's easy. It's checkboxes, performance reviews, talent roadmaps, trainings, etc. Very few leaders take the time and effort to make things just.
To hear the full conversation, scroll all the way up and tune into episode 64.
About The Hosts: Olivia And Archita
OLIVIA
Olivia Grant Cream is the host and producer of the Embracing Only podcast. Nothing makes her happier than providing a platform to women who are changing the world.
Olivia is a proud US Veteran and HR Leader who is passionate about changing the face of corporate America by helping underrepresented people reclaim their power and live the life of their dreams.
She is an advocate for transitioning military members seeking second careers in the corporate landscape.
Olivia is a proud Jamaican and enjoys mentoring, coaching, classic cars, and nature. way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
→ You can work with Olivia here: www.oliviacream.com
→ Book her as a keynote speaker or moderator for your next ERG or company event.
ARCHITA
Archita Sivakumar Fritz is the Host and Producer of the Embracing Only podcast. Archita is an international executive, who has lived and worked in India, the U.S., Canada, and Germany.
She is the founder, principal of Ready Set Bold a workplace transformation firm that supports F500 to startups on their product, people and process transformation journey.
She is a fierce advocate for canceling the culture around the silence of bullying and harassment in the workplace through her work with Speak Out Revolution. She lives in Dusseldorf, Germany with her husband where they are raising their three third-culture kids.
→ If you want to work with Archita you can reach out to her here: www.readysetbold.com.
→ Book her as a speaker, moderator, or coach for your next company event or workshop.