5.1.4 Cultural Matching In Action

Cultural matching does not necessarily mean that people speak the same language or listen to similar music, or even have the same sporting or artistic interests, though all the above could obviously be of some importance.

I believe that it is more to do with matching what people accessing the service want with what is provided by the service.

That is, to have mutual concerns.

Take, as an example, a person who is accessing the service for the first time, and has worked up the courage to knock on the door of a helping agency.

And it does take courage – believe you me!

I believe that if the person’s initial request is matched by a concern about that request, and only a concern about the request itself, we are moving in the right direction with respect to cultural matching.

In electronic circuits there is a device called a discriminator – there is no need to give a technical description, you can look it up here if you want.

Its function is that a strong signal will be heard over the general noise of the circuitry and the layman will only come across it when tuning a radio. This is how we can hear the voice of a radio presenter and not a mush of random noise.

Those who are familiar with Gestalt Therapy will see the similarities between this and what is called the figure (that is – the thing that stands out in our consciousness – what we are focused on) and the ground (that is, what is in the background of our consciousness – what we are only dimly aware of).

If we don’t have a clear figure that can be discriminated from the clutter of all the unwanted material we will be as frustrated as the person listening to the radio with a constant mush (called white noise) in the background, as if it is slightly off tune – not so common now in the digital age – admittedly.

In order to match our response to the need or concern expressed on first meeting, we need to be able to discriminate between what is the need and/or concern and what is not really that relevant or immediate.

This requires a good bit of experience – but is gleaned primarily by listening.  I believe that if something isn’t immediately clear (there is no figure or dominant issue) it is often better to listen for a little longer rather than jump in and ask for clarification too soon. 

Remember – the relationship is paramount and the questions (which are, of course, necessary to tune in to what is being requested) can come later.

If we take time to listen, and our initial response to the request is done in a culture of genuineness, urgency, hope, inclusiveness, tolerance, and warmth, we are well on our way to gaining a person’s trust.

If, however, there is a culture of hierarchy, bureaucracy, fear, aloofness, intellectualism, (the neat explanation that I referred to in this post) or suspicion in the organisation, we are moving in the opposite direction.

If we are in distress, and we have grown up in a family in our Focus Group, the wide range of skills that the majority of people in mainstream society build up over many years to overcome, or get around bureaucracy can sometimes not be available to us, so an opportunity for a good start to a relationship is missed.

Matching, of course, means that we are encouraging the expression of uncensored views.  If we are committed to two-way knowledge flow and we welcome people as shapers of our vision we need to take the good with the bad, the old with the new, the things we don’t like with the things we like, just like families do.

Not being sure, and/or being curious, or checking things out is a very good start on the cultural matching road.

It is enabled by education, training and/or staff supervision.  Almost all organisations in the helping professions have a training dimension and I include supervision here.

The type of training and supervision undertaken largely determines the culture of an organisation and whether or not it matches the needs.  I believe that all training should be congruent with needs in a very real way.

The initiation and then (the hard bit) the sustaining of cultural matching is an ongoing challenge.

Designing in, and sustaining a culturally sympathetic (matching) response in an organisation set up to help people in deep distress is very challenging.

A necessary starting point is to build a sense of belonging, i.e. a sense of community, almost a sense of family, in the organisation.  This means that acceptance and inclusiveness are paramount. 

Belief in people, and an understanding of the process by which people grow and develop is also necessary.  Awareness of the root foundations, and excitement are important.  Creativity and openness, combined with the willingness to be non-judgmental will enhance the process.

Patience is necessary, as is an ability to live with uncertainty, and/or being able to spot the invisible order that runs underneath the chaos.  A willingness to see, and learn from, the positives rather than allow the negatives (of which there will be many) influence practice, is vital.  Having a trusting environment is also necessary.

In terms of healing/therapy/growth, the dominant modality here is Person Centred, described in the Chapter on Modalities in Section Three.  And, as mentioned in a previous post, affording high esteem to what might be called traditionally female traits that abound in families such as intuition, gut instinct, perception and plain old common-sense will enhance our journey towards acceptance and inclusiveness.

Accommodating a tolerable amount of chaos and uncertainty in an organisation (as I recommended in a previous Chapter) sounds great in theory, but sustaining it in a practical way day by day will never be easy.

I would propose that the best way to sustain it is to genuinely accept, model, and mirror the reality of growth at every level of the organisation.  This may require significant change which would need to be introduced and sustained with skillful and sound leadership over a considerable length of time.

Bureaucracy gets in the way of cultural matching, as does power imbalance. Conservatism (i.e. wanting things to stay the same) is probably the biggest inhibitor to the accommodation of chaos, as conservatism is driven more by fear of the unknown and/or the establishment having an interest in things staying the same, than anything else.

I would say that at the emotional level the biggest obstacle is fear and the many subtle ways it manifests itself in organisations.

In my experience all the above traits are relatively easy to maintain until an organisation is under pressure, then they tend to be forgotten about and quickly replaced by logic, reason, and rationality.

Perhaps that is because logic and reason always have higher esteem in a court of law, and when we are under pressure we all have one eye on the law because we want to avoid getting ourselves or our organisations into trouble!