In BaFa' BaFa'participants come to understand the powerful effects that culture plays in every person's life. It may be used to help participants prepare for living and working in another culture or to learn how to work with people from other departments, disciplines, genders, races, and ages.
What makes BaFa' BaFa' so powerful?
Here are a few of the ways BaFa' BaFa' has been used in the hundreds of thousands times it has been run around the world:
- Build awareness of how cultural differences can profoundly impact people in an organization.
- Motivate participants to rethink their behavior and attitude toward others.
- Allow participants to examine their own bias and focus on how they perceive differences.
- Examine how stereotypes are developed, barriers created, and misunderstandings magnified.
- Identify diversity issues within the organization that must be addressed.
BaFa' BaFa' initiates immediate, personal change. This simulation makes participants personally aware of the issues around culture differences. Participants feel the alienation and confusion that comes from being different. BaFa' BaFa' shakes participants out of thinking in stereotypes of anyone who is different. They learn the value of all faces in the workplace in a safe, stimulating environment.
What happens in BaFa' BaFa'?
After an initial briefing two cultures are created. The Alpha culture is a relationship oriented, high context, strong ingroup outgroup culture. The Beta culture is a highly competitive trading culture. After the participants learn the rules of their culture and begin living it, observers and visitors are exchanged. The resulting stereotyping, misperception and misunderstanding becomes the grist for the debriefing.
How have organizations used BaFa' BaFa'?
Organizations use BaFa' BaFa' to reinforce the positive aspects of cultural diversity, to build sensitivity towards cultural differences within the work place, to introduce organizational culture to new employees, to help employees adjust during change, discuss conflict management, or to encourage discussion between groups that have never worked together before.
When used as a diversity tool, is the emphasis on compliance, "the shoulds", or the bottom line?
The whole point of the BaFa' BaFa' experience is to help participants understand that having a diverse work force contributes to the bottom line of the organization in very direct ways. Here is how it works: BaFa' BaFa' is based on the assumption that cultural differences develop because different peoples have invented different ways of solving common problems. This assumption seems fairly obvious when considering the differences in something as basic as our languages.
Other differences are not so obvious. The distance we stand from another person when speaking, proprietary attitudes about personal space, relationships with superiors and subordinates, the way men treat women, and whether one views rules as absolute or relative: all reflect ways that various cultures have solved problems.
In many diversity programs we have identified differences-then tried to get people to tolerate those differences. Emphasizing differences, even when we try to teach tolerance of those differences, often causes hostility, creates greater distance and greater misunderstandings.
Presenting our cultural differences as a reflection of the way we solve similar problems promotes a sense of our common humanity. We then begin to realize that we are all in this together, and that we all have to face similar challenges. Instead of looking upon cultural differences as things to be tolerated, we can relate to each other as cultural problem solvers. Understanding this basic notion allows us to view cultural differences as a rich reservoir of solutions to real world concerns. Solutions that will directly improve the bottom-line.
This is the basic approach of BaFa' BaFa' , in that we create a problem for everyone in the simulation. We require them to live and interact in another culture. Then, we ask them how they felt in that culture. The answer is always the same: they felt lost, confused, invisible, etc. Then we ask how they responded to those feelings; in other words, how did they solve the problem? Some withdrew, others got angry, and some wanted revenge, while others totally discounted the other's cultural values.
At this time, we point out that if we focus on the solutions to the problems, i.e., withdrawal, anger, revenge, and cultural discounting; our differences appear greater. However, when we discuss the common problems that we faced, i.e., how to feel welcome, competent, and valued when interacting with another culture, we then draw closer together.
The next step is to identify the solutions that people have developed in their own culture and evaluate them against the corporation's values.
The final step is to identify ways of reinforcing those cultural practices that support the corporation's values.
