A Story from Molly Stern, Global Up Manager at AFS Intercultural Programs
It is so rewarding to facilitate the Global Up dialogue sessions and witness how participants grow in their understanding of themselves, others, and the workplaces they navigate. Through AFS’ partnership with Mountbatten, I’ve had the opportunity to support young professionals from around the world as they reflect on their home culture, communication styles, and their personal identity during their internship experiences in New York City.
When the Mountbatten team first contacted our team, they wanted to learn more about the Global Up program and how it could support their participants who are placed as interns at global businesses in New York City.
After we discussed the Global Up program’s capabilities and how it drives global competence development, they were curious to learn more about the live facilitated dialogue sessions. As a small but mighty team, they opted to have AFS run the facilitated live dialogues that occur through the Global Up programs. There are two main pathways for implementing Global Up: our partners can either get trained as a Qualified Facilitator and run the dialogue sessions or select AFS to fulfill the facilitation role. Explore more about our packages.
For the past few years, I’ve been fortunate to work closely with the Mountbatten team, fulfilling the facilitator role as the Global Up Manager at AFS Intercultural Programs, and I wanted to share several reflections from the experience.
Mountbatten is a very special program provider that places young professionals with prestigious international internships at leading global companies in New York City and London. The participants can come from all over the world; however, many call the UK, Ireland, and Scotland home. As the facilitator, I have had the pleasure of getting to know the participants through these live connection moments throughout their internship experiences as we reflect together on the modules from the Global Up at Work program.
It has been rewarding to witness the professionalism and thoughtful reflection these participants bring to the live sessions. The latest group I worked with did a deep dive into unpacking workplace norms – noting the differences between the US, the UK, Ireland and other cultures with whom they identify. We unpacked the workplace norms further, with me prompting the group- Do you think the norms you’re encountering in NYC apply to the US as a whole or only certain regions? How does that compare to your home context? Do you notice workplace norms shifting between regions: rural or urban? How?
As an intercultural facilitator, I find when we unpack their conclusions they’ve made about the “US” we can usually peel that onion (cultural metaphor) back a bit- to understand the unique snapshot they’re seeing and especially when we apply the D.I.V.E. or Person, Culture, Situation models that the Global Up modules cover.
Throughout these live sessions, I have been inspired by their ability to continually expand and evolve their perspectives on their “home culture” through peer reflection and understanding intersectionality. When participants shared that they had in fact been navigating what home culture means to them as their families immigrated or as marriages crossed nationalities- other participants started to reveal the additional layers to their cultural identities as well. Many participants have reflected on how being in NYC has benefited them at times, because of the identities they hold – finding more diversity, finding it easier to be in community with certain groups. Others noted that in their home context, what religion one subscribed to was an important identity market and they were surprised to find during their time in NYC, no one ever asked them about this aspect of their identity.
A high point for me as a facilitator are the moments these brave interns bring a question, misunderstanding they observed or conflict they experienced as an example into the session to unpack it through applying intercultural theories and tools to help make sense of what may be occurring in these scenarios. Often, they are joined by others who empathize they also experienced something similar or what they were surprised by at work as well.
Though we may generate more questions than answers through these discussions on these workplace situations- at AFS, we are always aiming to expand perspectives, develop further capacity for empathy and understanding, and foster curiosity about ourselves and one another in the workplaces so they can bring these skills with them wherever they end up next.