Episode 43
Dr Tanya Finnie - From Shadows to Safari: A Journey Through Diversity
In this episode, Trisha Carter, an organizational psychologist and expert in cultural intelligence, speaks with Tanya Finnie, Founder of Redhead Communications. They discuss key aspects of cultural intelligence, Tanya's multicultural experiences, and how these have shaped her professional journey. Tanya shares insights on the importance of bridging cultural divides, her experiences growing up in apartheid-era South Africa, and the challenges and rewards of immigrating to Australia. Tanya also highlights her current work in cultural diversity, including her upcoming book and the Diversity and Inclusion Summit she has founded, soon to be held in Melbourne. Listeners are encouraged to be curious, challenge their perspectives, and strive to eliminate the 'isms' in society.
Connect with Tanya on LinkedIn and via her website and learn about the Melbourne Diversity and Inclusion Summit here
Transcript
I would like to acknowledge the Dharawal people, the Aboriginal people of Australia, whose country I live and work on. I would like to pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and thank them for sharing their cultural knowledge and awareness with us.
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[00:01:00] Trisha: Those of you who've listened to some of the earlier episodes will know that cultural intelligence, the ability to be effective in situations of diversity, sometimes referred to as CQ, is made up of four areas. Motivational, CQ drive. Cognitive, CQ knowledge. metacognitive, CQ strategy, and behavioral, CQ action.
[:[00:01:48] Tanya: It was in 2021, I
[:[00:01:53] Tanya: It could have been. I, I, I went the other day and looked at some photos when you mentioned it and I was like, Oh, I think it was 2021, but it could have been earlier. It doesn't seem.
[:[00:02:15] Tanya: No, you're right. 2021 is when I was, at the London CQ event. So it must've been a couple, several years before then actually. You're quite right.
[:[00:02:25] Tanya: That's right.
[:[00:02:50] Trisha: Which I love. Tanya has qualifications in business, in learning, in DEI, in CQ. She's been through a lot of different experiences. We're really looking forward to having her with us today. Welcome Tanya.
[:[00:03:11] Trisha: Thank you Tanya. We've got a lot to discuss. There's a lot of wisdom that comes from the depth of experience that you've had in your life so far. But first, our standard questions. What is a culture, other than the culture you grew up in, that you have learnt to love and appreciate?
[:[00:03:34] Trisha: I know.
[:[00:03:53] Tanya: but I, maybe from my German side of my culture, which also comes a little bit DNA in my heritage. If you invite me to a party that starts at seven o'clock, I will sit in my car two minutes before seven and ring the bell at exactly seven o'clock. Which is very different from the African timing that I grew up with, but I, I quite like that timing diligence that came from Germany.
[:[00:05:11] Trisha: Yeah. That's delicious.
[:[00:05:31] Trisha: And that is an adjustment that I'm sure you're skilled at making.
[:[00:05:39] Trisha: Yes. Well, you obviously adjusted from the thinking about time from one style to, to fit in with the German style. So you've already demonstrated that you're capable of doing that.
[:[00:05:52] Trisha: What about, can you tell me a time when you have experienced, you know, what we're calling the shift when you suddenly became aware of a new perspective?
[:[00:06:27] Tanya: And whenever I travel alone, that leaves me with a bit of a predicament, but I found a way to solve it. And I would literally go into a restaurant, order my food. And scan the room for somebody else that's eating alone. And I will then go up to them and say, Hey, I see you eating alone. I'm eating alone.
[:[00:07:05] Tanya: And everybody thinks it's hilarious. And I think it was a real shift for me to go, Oh, okay. Well, apparently that's not apparently normal. That's not what most people do. So it turned out that it was a bit of an unusual thing to do. I've also worked in a previous life as a tour guide throughout Africa. And I, I have so many experiences there where I was on a bus with tourists from other perspectives and some of the questions that they would ask or, or things that seemed normal for me where, where they would, they would have a complete different, different perspective.
[:[00:07:57] Tanya: And, and those were experiences that when I traveled, I often see that and was often exposed to that. But of course, that's also very different. And, and when you, when you change medical systems across countries, it leaves you with different perspectives. and I think it's that old age story of, you know, drawing a nine between you and me in the room and asking you if it's a, if it's a nine or a six, you're most likely gonna say it's a six from your perspective.
[:[00:08:28] Trisha: it's sometimes a surprise to people, when they recognise that. So not everybody I've found is able to do that. which is partly why I began this whole podcast. whereas you've just listed off numerous situations that you can recall where you've had those moments and you've thought yeah okay and so you've you've been able to hold the two different perspectives in your head and see them as both normal and listeners I'm doing the inverted commas, with my fingers here.
[:[00:09:19] Trisha: So, so let's think about that as well. But first of all, I'd love to take you back to growing up in South Africa. As a young person in a turbulent time, the whole country was shifting and people around you would have been responding to those shifts. And this wasn't something simple, like it looks like a nine to me, or it looks like a six to me.
[:[00:09:45] Tanya: Yeah, so I grew up in, in South Africa in the, 70s and 80s, uh, which were apartheid years, of course, so we had restaurants for black people and white people and, I may just pause for a moment and explain that, when Nelson Mandela became president, in one of his very first speeches, he divided South Africa and said, we're going to talk about people here as, uh, Black, white, Indian and colored and no disrespect is meant by using using the language of black people and and and white people.
[:[00:10:35] Tanya: And if I say they were all white, we did not have somebody that was Italian or, any different than my, I guess, conservative and religious Afrikaans upbringing. . and then I left school and moved to Germany where I, uh, spent some time as an au pair for a while. and I saw a very different world there.
[:[00:11:16] Tanya: They cooked for us, they cleaned for us. And unlike many other staff or many other families, our lady's son, Michael, was living with us at some stage. And Michael was seven when I was probably about 15. And I remember coming home from school one day with a friend and Michael and I were sitting down for lunch.
[:[00:11:53] Tanya: And, and, and I think it was also where that. That it was born a sense of, I want to fix that in the world and create a place where we can all sit around the same table.
[:[00:12:16] Tanya: Certainly have. Yes. I think the, common, I mean, it, it was very common and, and still are in some households today to, to have your plates and your cups for your staff separate from your own, they had separate toilets, where I remember, the woman who practically raised me at some stage using our toilet and I know there were others that would have been mortified by that at the time.
[:[00:12:48] Trisha: So in terms of your career and life choices that. thinking, that desire to, to make a difference. How did that impact then, you know, what you chose to study, what you chose to work in?
[:[00:13:22] Tanya: But I gave up my apartment at some stage because I was on the road all the time. And in my free times, I would stay in places like Soweto, which is the biggest Black township just outside of Johannesburg with, with millions of, of only Black people who lived there. And at the time, white people barely ever entered there to go and learn more about families.
[:[00:14:06] Tanya: But I think that was very much driven from the way that I grew up and my first career in tourism management. And. Of course later I discovered cultural intelligence, which, which led me to do a PhD in cultural leadership ultimately, because I am so passionate about cultures and, and ultimately how people get along and, and relate to one another.
[:[00:14:38] Tanya: Look, it was hard. It was, it was very hard. It was We chose Perth in Australia after we did our, what we called our LSD trip by look, see and decide.
[:[00:14:49] Tanya: And, um, and we chose it for its similarity to South Africa, but of course on face value, what looks similar when you arrive could be very different.
[:[00:15:22] Tanya: And everybody was very perplexed at my weird, cultural decision there, I guess. But they were honestly days where I think my husband and I sat crying on the couch at some stage and, and, and, and we were like, wow, how, how are we going to make this work? Because after all the new stuff wore off, discovering Tim Tams and exploring places, we realized that we had no doctor, we had no pharmacy, we had no butcher, you know, all of the things that was familiar to us, but we also really hung on to the reasons why we left and, we knew that we couldn't go back at the time, and, and that led us to, to really make it work in the end.
[:[00:16:31] Tanya: And I remember when we got, got married that people, stopped talking to us because it was such a bizarre thing for, for us to get together. And I remember when I came here struggling with that identity, desperately wanting to be Australian and obviously not quite sounding Australian and, and practicing the Australian colloquialisms and the Australian accent, which as you can probably hear, I haven't quite nailed yet.
[:[00:17:12] Trisha: I think that's a wonderful summary of what we go through. And having come from New Zealand to Australia, I would identify with a lot of those experiences as well. And I think I also haven't got the accent perfectly and probably never will, because from time to time I get picked out quite quickly.
[:[00:17:44] Tanya: You know, sometimes I think that we're not that dissimilar. I think one of the big differences was in South Africa, they stuck a label on racism and they called it apartheid, which, which Australia hasn't done. But if you think of Australian history, Australia has always had a binary system. And what I mean with a binary system is we've had the, the white Australian policy.
[:[00:18:32] Tanya: And I really think that we can, we can learn from, South Africa that ultimately adopt, you know, it, it, during apartheid years, for example, that they sports teams couldn't even go and participate internationally because of bans on the country. And, and even though we don't have that in Australia, I think Australia can, really, learn to adapt to a more multi pronged approach, a more intersectional approach where we, where we get rid of the isms, right?
[:[00:19:27] Tanya: And, and forgave and, and did some amazing work in bringing people together. And I think if Australia can take something from that as a nation to rather see how we can collaborate and work together in spite of our differences, we can be the perfect country.
[:[00:20:06] Trisha: And then, Dr. Gary Mason was speaking about in Ireland and the role of a leader in terms of creating shifts and how important a leader is in, in the way that they lead people in the way they speak. And so I feel like, you know, We do need leaders who can speak and can demonstrate that ability to bring people together and speak about people who are different to them in a way that is with, with love and with care and with appreciation rather than separation.
[:[00:20:55] Trisha: That's certainly what Tanya is doing in Perth and across Australia. So tell us a bit about the work you're doing now, Tanya. How has it emerged and evolved?
[:[00:21:25] Trisha: Oh, congratulations.
[:[00:21:44] Tanya: it tells stories about inclusion and takes it right back to the boardroom of how you can use that as a life story because there's many stories in there that, that a lot of people may not necessarily relate to in having been a gang ranger
[:[00:22:00] Tanya: but there's lots of.
[:[00:22:13] Tanya: And, uh, then we also have the diversity and inclusion summit that we host. well, the fourth one is taking place, in November.
[:[00:22:43] Tanya: What lessons have you learned from that? What were some of the challenges where we can have The real conversations as opposed to, I think often you hear diversity and inclusion conversations around what we can do and what we should be doing rather than what we've already done and has work that others could learn from.
[:[00:23:04] Trisha: Some really significant work there. And I haven't had the pleasure yet of attending one of the conferences. And sadly, this year again, I'll be in the US during it. So I won't be, but it's going to be prioritized for next year so that we can, I can be there with you. I think I have read. many people's stories of being at the conference and speaking about their learning.
[:[00:23:53] Trisha: And so to be able to speak about not just what has worked and what we are doing well, but also what didn't work so well and how we can avoid that in the future. I think that's a great opportunity. So This is a conference where people can be real and authentic about the work that they're doing, is the feeling that I certainly have got from speaking with you and with others who've been there.
[:[00:24:33] Trisha: absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's really important to also, because I feel sometimes for the wellbeing of people working in the area, because it can be challenging. It can be thankless. It can be feeling like you're, pushing boulders up hills. So it can be an opportunity of encouragement and refreshment for people to get together and speak about how things are going in these sorts of environments, which I think is a really important wellbeing, resource as well. So Tanya, this is, this is fascinating and I'm sure a lot of people will want to connect with you and follow up. How is it best for them to do that? And also if they want to attend the conference in Melbourne, how is it best for them to find out more about it?
[:[00:25:35] Tanya: And we have the two websites. We have redhead communications.com and the diversity, and it's just diversity and inclusion. summit.com dot au. So there's a au with the, uh, diversity and Inclusion Summit, but no au with redhead Communications or at simple email at info@redheadcommunications.com if they wanna directly get in touch as well.
[:[00:26:02] Tanya: The conference is on the 15th of November, so only two weeks away and uh, around the corner.
[:[00:26:18] Tanya: The plan is, it's a tight turnaround on the two weeks, uh, we are very, very close and I'm hoping to have it there. Time will tell. I
[:[00:26:41] Tanya: I think there's probably, I think we have to pick a lane first of all. We, we, we can all only be a specialist in, in certain things. Pick your lane. And stick with your lane. I sometimes call myself a proud salmon. And I think my advice would be be a proud salmon. Swim upstream. You know, salmon, takes a journey, uh, to, to actually reproduce ultimately upstream.
[:[00:27:26] Tanya: So stick with your beliefs and share and, um, make the world a better place by seeing those different perspectives, but be a salmon.
[:[00:27:45] Tanya: Love it.
[:[00:27:54] Tanya: I think the big dream, which may sound a bit idealistic is, is to have no more isms. We shouldn't even have to speak about things like homophobia or racism. I'd love to see a world where we can delete all of that because if we, if we can see those other perspectives, we can obviously avoid, avoid wars, for example.
[:[00:28:37] Tanya: How can we help others? How can we support others? And be curious. That would be my final thing is be curious.
[:[00:28:56] Tanya: Thank you, Trisha
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