S1 EP 001 | Unlocking Cultural Treasures: Embrace, Explore, and Expand

Episode #1

[00:00:00] Taty Fittipaldi: Would you let your 11 year old kid travel internationally alone to earn cultural experiences? Wait a minute, when exactly is the right time for cultural experiences? In today’s episode, we will discuss the importance of getting early cultural experiences for leadership growth, And how this is connected with experiencing things for yourself versus hearing about them or learning from books.

[00:00:31] Taty Fittipaldi: Hello, and welcome to the Leadership Nest podcast, the podcast that Nest. Stories, knowledge, and science to soar the leadership in you. I’m your host Tati Fittipaldi. As always, our podcast will be divided into three phases. A story, a lesson, and its application. This way you can have structure and information while also having some fun.

[00:00:58] Taty Fittipaldi: This program is brought to you by Coaching [00:01:00] Expatriates.

[00:01:12] Taty Fittipaldi: There was this little girl who lived in Brazil and she started learning English as a second language. Her English teacher gave her the idea to travel to England to learn English. She proposed applying to a cultural exchange program, which was a program to get cultural experiences and learn more about the language.

[00:01:33] Taty Fittipaldi: I have no idea what got the kid so excited, but the kid got home all excited and started babbling to her mom about this whole new idea. The mother, of course, dismissed the idea. After all, the kid was only 11 years old. Having a kid travel alone internationally was… It’s absolutely outrageous, plus the kid would soon forget this idea, [00:02:00] right, and focus on something else, or so she thought.

[00:02:09] Taty Fittipaldi: The kid, however, got restless. She kept trying to convince her family to let her apply to this exchange program for cultural experiences. She pestered the whole family until the moment the mom decided to talk to this crazy teacher. The teacher was very persuasive. She honeymouthed the mom by telling her the kid would make great leaps into the English language and have cultural experiences that would make her the forefront professional in any profession.

[00:02:49] Taty Fittipaldi: Telling the mom that her kid would start differentiating herself at this age, that was priceless. Well, this got her in. So in [00:03:00] January 1990, this kid, who was the youngest Brazilian kid to travel alone internationally through the Student Travel Bureau, got into the plane alone. She had a connecting flight to Portugal.

[00:03:15] Taty Fittipaldi: To everyone’s surprise, the new flight from Portugal to England had a huge booking issue, and none of the passengers were able to take the connecting plane. The little girl did not exactly know what was going on, but she followed along and did what everyone else was doing. A few older students also helped her.

[00:03:36] Taty Fittipaldi: It took them more than 24 hours to get to the new plane to England. And once the kid arrived in London, she still had to travel an hour and a half to get to the clearance house in Texas. She arrived very late at night. If you asked a kid today, she would say it was around, um, 2 a. m. But [00:04:00] she would not really be able to tell.

[00:04:02] Taty Fittipaldi: She just could remember she was frazzled. She got to this big old brick house and someone took her to an office. There, a person welcomed her with a cup of tea. Tea? Tea! She was traveling for 48 hours. She was tired. She was stinking and she was starving. She wanted to eat and bathe. And mind you, the kid was only 11.

[00:04:32] Taty Fittipaldi: She did not even like to bathe in the first place, but she was stinking so much. Disheartened, she looked inside the tea. She never drank a beverage so hot in her entire life. She was from Brazil, for God’s sake. A place where most of the year is above 40 Celsius or like 100 Fahrenheit. The person thought that the kid didn’t want the tea, so [00:05:00] they took her to the sleeping chambers instead.

[00:05:02] Taty Fittipaldi: Four other girls were already sleeping there. Because of the travel mess, the kid’s luggage got lost and she did not even have a change of clothes. All right, when you think about this story, what is leadership to you in this story? Who were the leaders in this story? And why were they leaders for you?

[00:05:28] Taty Fittipaldi: This episode is sponsored by Coaching Expatriates, a leading global executive development company that helps leaders around the world create happier and more profitable workplaces using the four success pillars in global leadership and innovative leadership learning methodology. Visit their website at www. coachingexpatriates. com.

[00:05:56] Taty Fittipaldi: Today’s lesson.[00:06:00]

[00:06:01] Taty Fittipaldi: Thinking back, the little girl had no idea that the tea would be a great welcome and invitation. What about food? What about a shower? The truth was that she never experienced bathing with 20 other people in a shared bathroom. If you wanted to bathe, There was a specific time for that, and the water in the bathtub was shared.

[00:06:25] Taty Fittipaldi: Of course, we were talking about kids between 11 and 17. Don’t you think there would be a fierce dispute to learn who’s first? Clearly, the kid who was last to arrive at the facility had the last say. Bathing together, sharing water, and tea for breakfast. What a planet was that, the little girl thought. But she had so many adventures, so many interesting learning experiences, and stories to tell, that none of these matter or fazed her.

[00:06:58] Taty Fittipaldi: This first international [00:07:00] experience alone indeed was an eye opener. This little kid grew up to have another five exchange programs besides this one, in places like Germany, the US, and of course, England. Was it for the adventures? Hmm, not exactly. Was it for the novel things she did not see in Brazil? Hmm, not sure.

[00:07:21] Taty Fittipaldi: Was it for the curiosity of learning that things were not as she expects? Oh, you bet. When you start your cultural experience journey, it starts becoming addictive. You want to learn more. Brits receive you with tea How do Japanese folks receive you? And, in the Middle East, or in Argentina, you start to want to experience and understand whenever entering an interaction with a stranger.

[00:07:51] Taty Fittipaldi: We don’t really know what to expect, however, we always form certain expectations. Experiences that break our expectations are [00:08:00] very valuable because they always teach us something in our story. I, for example, learned as a child that people in other countries might have other values and priorities. You might think the inconsiderate, not offering you food or shower.

[00:08:20] Taty Fittipaldi: In fact, however, sharing tea in that circumstance was being very welcoming. Even when hearing this story from me, it will not be the same when you experience it. Your shock and confusion will teach you something that you’ll never learn from my story. Because everyone’s cultural experience is different, feels different, and results in different learning.

[00:08:48] Taty Fittipaldi: The lesson today is, go choose some cultural experiences and go get them. Don’t just read or listen about them. You can’t really learn something.[00:09:00]

[00:09:05] Taty Fittipaldi: You don’t have to travel to another country to learn from cultural experiences. Every interaction can be an opportunity for this type of exchange. Next time, when you are confused and shocked by something that happened involving someone else. Try to answer these questions. Number one, what was their expectation in this interaction and what was mine?

[00:09:34] Taty Fittipaldi: Number two, what exactly made me so shocked? Number three, what can I learn from this experience of expectation gap in our story today, I was expecting to be received and offered food and the opportunity to shower. Instead, I was offered tea from their perspective. They had to be up until 2 a. m. in the morning just [00:10:00] to wait for me.

[00:10:01] Taty Fittipaldi: Think about this. They were taking care of 50 other very energetic kids, but had to stay up until that late to receive me, even though they were so tired. That was a boarding school. The kitchen was closed. The bathroom system was closed. Everything was closed at 2 a. m. So, they were doing their very best already to welcome me.

[00:10:27] Taty Fittipaldi: Yes, offering me tea on that freezing night. What made me so shocked back then was an adult telling me to go to sleep without showering. That was unheard of. My mom would never allow me to go that stinky to bed. Never, ever. Actually, I only learned from that experience many years later, after retelling and reflecting on this story.

[00:10:54] Taty Fittipaldi: And I learned that people have different values and priorities, which might [00:11:00] differ from ours. And sometimes, when they seem to be not accommodating you, it’s not because they don’t want to. Sometimes, the system and the environment we are in simply do not allow it. And it’s nobody’s fault. But as soon as we start being empathetic and seeing the situation from other points of view, we learn to adjust and enjoy the cultural experiences.

[00:11:28] Taty Fittipaldi: But first? We have to experience them by ourselves.

[00:11:43] Taty Fittipaldi: What’s your main takeaway from this episode? Here are mine. Number one, we have to choose some experiences and go leave them. Number two, we have to learn to be empathetic and learn other viewpoints. Number three, [00:12:00] we can only see other points of view once we learn they exist. And we do so by experiencing things by ourselves.

[00:12:09] Taty Fittipaldi: Learning from others or reading about them won’t have the same effect. They can be a great start, but they won’t have the same effect. By experiencing, we learn what we are capable of. I didn’t know I was capable of traversing the ocean and after more than 48 hours in the same stinking socks, I could politely smile when I was offered tea instead of bath.

[00:12:37] Taty Fittipaldi: By experiencing, we learn about our own values and we develop new ones and new ideas. As an 11 year old, I would always fight my bath time with my parents. But after this experience, I changed my shower, which was a toy deposit, into a real shower. [00:13:00] And showered daily ever since, without them having to tell me.

[00:13:04] Taty Fittipaldi: Having to share stinking water during bath time. time also made me give a lot more value to my privacy at home. Our experiences delineate our new values. Lastly, by experiencing stuff for yourself, you widen your understanding of people and things. We cannot relate to people if our expectations are never broken.

[00:13:28] Taty Fittipaldi: When we start to encounter different experiences, we become more open minded instead of jumping the gun. and making assumptions. This brings us to the end of the Leadership Nest episode. We hope you have enjoyed learning from the joys of experiencing things for yourself when it comes to cultural experiences.

[00:13:50] Taty Fittipaldi: Tune in to our next episode next week, when we will be chatting about the global leadership pillars, the new leadership learning methodology.[00:14:00]

[00:14:03] Taty Fittipaldi: If you have any questions you’d like us to answer in the future episode of the show, just go to speakpipe. com slash. the show notes below to leave us a brief audio message. Make sure to visit us on our website, www. leadershipnest. com, where you can subscribe to our show, anywhere podcasts are streamed, so you never miss a show.

[00:14:32] Taty Fittipaldi: While there, if you find value in our show, you can also subscribe to our global leadership weekly newsletter from CoachingExperience. Patriots, where we deliver bite sized lessons on global leadership, decision making, and cultural competence to help you learn how to think, relate, and strategize in a whole different way as a global leader.

[00:14:54] Taty Fittipaldi: If you liked the show, you might want to check our online global executive leadership program, a [00:15:00] nine week leadership development and learning. help you lead internationally while making financially conscious and impactful decisions. Tati Fitipaldi is also available for private coaching. See the website for more details at www. coachingexpatriates. com slash executive dash coaching. Thanks for joining us this week on the Leadership Nest podcast. Be sure to tune in next week for our next episode. Until the next time, keep nesting. Wherever you are in the globe, this is Tati Pittipaldi wishing you a beautiful day.