Cross-Cultural Mentoring Workshop at EMDC 2024 Thailand
My attending the Cross-Cultural Mentoring Workshop was the highlight for my leadership training this year. This is something that I have been waiting for to attend for a year. In 2023, I attended a session of Dr. Sunny Hong at EMDC Thailand. This was the first time I got a chance to hear her deep knowledge about the diaspora and refugees.
When I saw that she was teaching a whole track on mentoring, this appealed to me. Since this is her PhD topic that she is speaking from in the sessions, her examples from the Eastern context were very relatable to my Indian context. For a very long time, I knew my leadership style was different from my culture, while sitting in these sessions, I was able to put it down on paper. There are things I do not do well, as a low context person. I have always felt that I was misunderstood by the leadership of high context people. And now, for the first time I was able to become a chameleon, adapting to the social norms so that the work that was started in the field, will not stop since I did not understand something.
This course has helped me to adapt my style of leadership to each of my team’s needs, I am now not looking at being a leader with one mindset frame work, but am now a listener identifying what are the dynamics playing out in the group and then changing my style. The effort Dr. Hong has put into the workshop in showing the western mindset and then transposing this onto an eastern mindset, gave me many things to introspect upon.
Dr. Hong’s style of applying Biblical principles to every day context gave me ideas in my work with cross-cultural partners in new ways. The Co-Facilitator, Samantha’s method of doing small group discussion in different cultural frameworks, helped me to look at my marriage and parenting style as a father. This is something that I will always use in my walk with the Lord.
Please consider taking this course, if you feel that you are a “fish out of water”, a person who wants to know how to fit into a system, without changing who you are. This course gave that freedom to be me, while the society plays with other rules. I could see where I fit into the system and change things in me, so that I can work better as a leader and as a dad.
To say the least, attending this workshop helped me understand how Christ worked in His context without losing His identity.