The Essence of Multilogue, Nudges, and Queries: Enabling Un-Alienated Collaboration Spaces

The Multilogue is an approach to developing transcultural competence as we collaborate and live together in diversity. Moving beyond cultural differences, and through cultural commonalities, the Delphi project investigates what transcultural competence means in cultural complexity. At the intersections of cultural complexity, we have a choice: grow from the infusion of multiple perspectives or languish comfortably in our echo chambers. This essay weaves together some seminal concepts in the intercultural field with selected insights on culture, identity, and diversity. The tapestry of ideas provides the foundation for a cosmopolitan perspective, the Multilogue. My intention in developing the Multilogue approach is to enable co-creation of un-alienated lifespaces and workplaces. How the Multilogue was conceived and some tools to construct, grow and sustain our communities of practice are offered to the reader to experiment with. Multiloguing is like communal gardening. We, the gardeners, consciously work together to create a fertile and flourishing environment. The essence is dynamic, situational, and performative. Multiloguing is bound to the current situation, i.e., relevant to a unique group at a certain moment. The context influences how we collaborate: who is present, where and when we meet, what we are trying to do together, and why this is important to us. Fleeting and impermanent, multiloguing is performative. This means we can only develop our transcultural competence while bouncing ideas off each other, preparing the soil of innovation together and depending on each other for input, insights, and expertise. Transcultural competence is not a vaccination against ethnocentrism or fixed mindsets; we need to guard against sinking into toxicity, such as groupthink, power plays or false harmony. Nudges and queries can remind us to regularly examine the quality of our interactions. These Multilogue tools of inquiry impact how we take care of the atmosphere in our collaboration spaces, which in turn influence how richly and inclusively we can co-create.