Candor: What is the elephant in the room? What is something that we are avoiding to talk about that could help us move forward? What is the best place to discuss about this?
Cultural awareness: In today’s globalized workforce, let’s remember that different peoples from different parts of the world behave and see the world in different ways. What can be innocent or innocuous for you, can be a big deal for someone else from another culture. Now, it is impossible to know everything cultural from every country, so what to do? Let’s state that exactly: “Hello all, I did the effort to find out about cultural differences, however, I can’t possibly know all the cultural twists that there could be between, please, is there something that it is not appropriate to discuss here, today?” But, but, Freddy, candor…? Yes, yes. We will keep the candor, but we can preface it with: “Hello all, I did the effort to find out about cultural differences. We will discuss topics that we may be avoiding to talk about that could help us move forward. And, I’d like to do this in the best culturally appropriate way. Do you prefer we discuss this here or do you prefer a smaller group or even 1:1 sessions?”
Respect: Yes, let’s use radical candor, and let’s do it with a human element. Raising volume, dismissive tones, or even insults are not needed.