Immigrant Intercultural Development: A Perspective Taking Approach to Support Intercultural and Workplace Adjustment

This two-phased study sought to understand the challenges Canadian immigrants faced in their workplace and intercultural adjustment as technology mentors and explore intercultural development interventions to address them. Drawing on sixteen qualitative interviews with ten Canadian immigrants and two co-founders of their non-profit employer, I found that technology mentors faced communication, technology, and personal challenges and were concerned with their intercultural and workplace adjustment as well as long term work integration. Clean spinning, a non-directive coaching intervention based on clean language and emergent knowledge principles, was used to facilitate perspective taking and support their intercultural development towards addressing their adjustment challenges. I found that clean spinning supported participants in finding resource(s) to address their topic or reframe the way they understood their topic and their relationship to it. These positive outcomes suggest the need for alternative types of intercultural development that support perspective-taking and self-reflection.