Jennie Brooks, host of the Unstoppable Together podcast, talks to Baris Yakin, an organizational psychologist and a member of Booz Allen's DEI Team. Baris shares his personal story of growing up in an expat community in Turkey before coming back to the U.S. for college and a career. He discusses how the feeling of being in limbo between cultures shaped the way he understands belonging and shares what each of us might learn from his experiences.
Jennie Brooks (00:01):
Welcome to Booz Allen Hamilton's Unstoppable Together podcast, a series of stories that unite us and empower each of us to change the world. I'm Jennie Brooks with Booz Allen Hamilton, and I'm passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion. Please join me in conversation with a diverse group of thought leaders to explore what makes them and all of us unstoppable. Hello everyone. And welcome to the Unstoppable Together Podcast. I'm Jennie Brooks and I'm joined today by Baris Yakin, an organizational psychologist and member of Booz Allen's leadership and executive services team. Baris, welcome to the podcast.
Baris Yakin (00:42):
Thank you, Jennie.
Jennie Brooks (00:44):
We’re hear to talk about your experience of being a third-culture kid. First of all, what is the term third-culture kid mean? And how did you come about identifying as one?
Baris Yakin (00:57):
So third-culture kid is somebody whose formative often in youth experiences expose them to a mix of cultures and it's called third culture because you don't live predominantly in a host culture and you don't live predominantly in your parents' culture. You have your own mix of cultures. And when we say host culture, we're often referring to overseas experiences, experiences that are not in your home country. So military families are familiar with this concept, generally diplomats and ex-pats and how I came to identify with being a third culture kid. So, I always tell people when I tell my story, I say, how much time do you have? So, here's the nutshell version of it is that I was born in the us to Turkish parents. And at the age of seven, because of my dad's job with an American company, we moved to Turkey, moving to Turkey.
Baris Yakin (01:55):
It was a bit of a coincidence that my parents are Turkish and we moved to Turkey, but I became essentially an ex-pat at that age. And I attended an American school in Turkey and the school was tiny. It was 200 plus people from kindergarten through 12th grade and less than 50% of the students were American. The rest of them were from all over the world because in Turkey, we moved to Ankara, which is the capital. And so there's very few English speaking schools in Ankara. So most of the diplomat's kids from, you know, all the different ambassadors, all the different diplomats who were stationed in the capital of Turkey, they ended up going to my school. So my friends were 50% American and 50% almost everywhere else. You could imagine in the world pretty much from every continent. What this created for us was a little bit of a bubble where we were taken out of our host cultures and we weren't living the same lives as our parents were.
Baris Yakin (02:59):
So we were living in our own world. We're living our own thing. What that led to is that we started kind of forming our own unique culture, where you're everything. And you're not one thing at the same time, it's a little bit like a bubble. And it's a little bit like a wonderful social experiment because you really get to experience people, independence of all the ways you would experience them in a home culture where it's very homogenous. Or if it's mixed, it's maybe two or three different groups. We had 30 different nationalities. So when you live in this bubble, it was actually quite wonderful because you get this feeling of unity, you're in something together, it's a shared experience. And that is really helpful in expanding your worldview. And it's really helpful in really developing a sense of people are people. And we don't often get that perspective. And I was very lucky to be in this bubble, and it's not something that you really can easily recreate. So I was just fortunate to be in that situation. That's how I identify as a third culture kid.
Jennie Brooks (04:04):
You are moving to a whole new country and being immersed in this setting. What was the experience like as a seven-year-old?
Baris Yakin (04:14):
So as a 7 year old, it was an adventure. You didn't really have a sense of nations too much or identity. It was really an adventure. It was a little bit scary at first it was a, um, unknown environment to me, but it was mostly exciting.
Jennie Brooks (04:31):
So you've got distinct groups, right? You've got the host, you've got an outside. And then you have this third group emerging. What's the process of finding like where you belong in that setting? What was your experience?
Baris Yakin (04:45):
It's such a good question and such a hard question to answer, because it happened through the process of bonding with other people. And we created our own world. We were foreigners in a country that went to school each day, had lunch each day together in the same classes and the same hallway. Our school was basically a hallway. It was a very long hallway and we had lockers next to each other and we ate each other's food. We learned curse words from other nationalities, and those were the tools of bonding. So not really one moment you can point to and say, this is how it came together, but we created our own culture over years. Oftentimes, you know, you leave school, you talk on the phone, go to each other's houses, you do things outside together, and you slowly start forming your own culture.
Jennie Brooks (05:49):
Are there moments of isolation in the experience perhaps even earlier on, as you sort of were stepping into the community? And if so, what are the lessons that you leveraged to get through that experience?
Baris Yakin (06:04):
So this is interesting because I'm going to offer a little bit of a different take on it. The isolation actually didn't happen in Turkey. The isolation happened when I returned to the U S from Turkey, because when you're young and you're going through school and you're in this unique situation, it was wonderful. It was very warm and welcoming. And we were all kind of in the same boat together. And we created our own third culture. And when you come back to your home country, that's where the isolation came in, where I couldn't really relate to anybody and nobody could relate to me. And by being adaptable, I was able to, cause, you know, when you, when you experienced somebody from cultures, you quickly learn to adapt to other cultures. You learn to be open to other people and other cultures. And I could often try to adapt to people when I returned to the U S but I didn't sense that they were adapting to me.
Baris Yakin (06:58):
My name was different to them. I never got cultural references because I was out of the country for a long time. It was a very homogenous environment that I came back into. And that was not my comfort zone. So for a very long time, I did not feel a part of anything. And this is common with third culture kids is that when they go back to their home country, not all of them, but most of them experience a form of isolation and a little bit of a gap period where they don't know what to do. And so in undergraduate, I started doing research on happiness and foreign raised individuals in psychology. We often say, all research is me-search and this follows that line of thinking. And I was trying to understand how to combat isolation and what do people do and how do others adapt?
Baris Yakin (07:48):
And I learned that it's very common that once you leave your unique bubble, you crave things that remind you of where you came from. So for me, it was radio shows or TV shows from Turkey or newspapers from Turkey or food from Turkey. That would make me feel at home. If anybody's listening to this, some things that we'll lose because my parents were Turkish. It's not the case. We had friends from Sweden, from Israel, from China, everybody who was there, who we kept in touch with, wanted Turkish food, wanted those things that reminded them of circuit. Eventually everybody has kind of found their way amongst our friend group. We keep in touch, but it's that initial period of isolation that comes afterwards, that's usually challenging.
Jennie Brooks (08:33):
What would you offer to folks listening who are either feeling on the outside, feeling excluded or isolated for some reason or another, or for those want to understand what they can do to support folks who may feel excluded or isolated? I think the key
Baris Yakin (08:56):
Is having shared experiences. Nothing can replace bonding over shared experiences, whether it's culture, whether it's food, whether it's working together, being in a hobby group together, whatever the, it may be. I was lucky enough to get a glimpse into this because of being a third culture kid. And it's hard to replicate the experience that I went through for most people, because it's a rare thing. But the benefit that I have of having been in this kind of unusual bubble, like environment growing up is that I see the potential of shared experiences and how that can help us see through and overcome differences that on the surface seem like they keep us really apart. Think back to our lunchroom at the school that I went to, there were flags on the ceiling of all the people who were attending, and we would have lunch together every day.
Baris Yakin (09:53):
And sometimes you'd sample somebody else's food and you liked some of it. You wouldn't like some of it, but that was a bonding tool. And you got to talk about people's culture, people's different values. So my recommendation for anybody, either, if you're feeling isolated, or if you see somebody who you think is isolated, is to make yourself commit to having a shared experience with them. If you're hiring somebody, you can hire somebody who, all things being equal, maybe is not like you make a point to hire somebody. Who's not like you make a point to staff, somebody in a project who is not like you make a point to give somebody an opportunity who you think doesn't normally get it. And more times than not, you'll find that once you find yourself in a situation shoulder to shoulder, in an experience and the trenches of whatever you're doing, a lot of the things that you thought were going to keep you apart, or you didn't feel quite comfortable with, with them on the surface before melt away. Once you actually get to know the person inside.
Jennie Brooks (11:01):
I agree if there is something that we might not know about Turkey, something that you took away from your living there, what do you think it would be?
Baris Yakin (11:12):
The people they're very kind to foreigners and they're very hospitable people as part of that, they tend to have very close relations in general. They're much more in each other's lives for better or for worse. And when I moved back to us, that was something that I really missed. And I think that there's such a thing as certain high-level characteristics of different cultures, like the Mediterranean culture is generally a very warm culture. You can think of countries like Italy, Greece, Spain. Uh, these are all very similar turkeys like that as well. And social relationships tend to be very close. And I have always loved that aspect of Turkey and always looked for that my own life. I grew up in an environment where deference to people who are more senior than you is a sign of respect. And when I started out my career in an American corporate culture, it was seen as not having an opinion or not being vocal enough or lacking confidence. And that took me a good couple of years to figure out because in my mind, the rule was established that if you defer to others who are more senior than you, that's a saver Wolf thing. That's a good thing. It's a sign of respect. And that's how you build connections with people who have more power and more status than you. It took me a while to adapt and change that
Jennie Brooks (12:36):
You're drawn towards these shared common experiences, which you crave after sort of leaving that environment, the culture, the way of being the openness, all of that. So when you look back on this, I mean, it's clear that it's been a gift, but has shaped who you are and I'm struck by what you shared in terms of how do we leverage the strengths of this experience here, whether you're in a corporate setting or in a school academic setting or another, you know, forum in the community. How can we think about leveraging the experience of a third culture kid to create more of that sense of just seamless integration on a local level? Do you think
Baris Yakin (13:27):
That's an amazing question. And I think that's the key to this whole thing. Third culture kids get a window into what life can be like in terms of our interactions with each other, that we don't normally get access to on a large scale. And so for most people, the experience of a third culture kid is not relatable. And I completely understand that the promise of the experience is that if we find ways to integrate with each other more, the promises that on the other side of that, there's much more rewarding, social connections and relationships and trust and innovation that can come out of that in terms of how to do it. If we're talking about individual responsibility, if you're a manager, how you staff a project who you view as having potential, everybody has bias. There's no doubt about that. I have bias even through the experiences that I went through, I still have bias. Everybody is biased, but the trick is how can we take responsibility personally, change the way we operate in an objective way to free ourselves of subjectivity and bias as much as possible because my experience, as much as it like an experiment is proof that if you get to the other side of that, there's a lot of rewards waiting for us.
Baris Yakin (15:00):
Another way I think, Jennie, that also gets into your question is the feeling of discomfort, which is something that is actually so baked into the third culture kid experience that I didn't even mention it at the outset. It's part of the process of how you bond with somebody. Who's not like you on the surface because at the beginning, your brain is going to be telling you, Oh, this is different. This person looks different, talks, different act different, maybe has different values. And that's going to be uncomfortable if we turn back at that point, we're never going to get anywhere. And so if you recognize that a certain degree of discomfort is actually a positive thing, it's a sign of growth. It's a sign that you are testing boundaries. And that opens the potential to getting to know somebody else. That is something that we all frankly need to be more okay with. And I think we often don't, it becomes easy social media these days, where especially working from home, it's very easy to retreat, to what's comfortable and familiar. If we can actually move past discomfort by acknowledging and not by denying it or suppressing it or acting like it doesn't exist, but saying, Hey, this is part of the process. That is a great first step
Jennie Brooks (16:24):
I think your experience gives us great lessons learned and tips for how we think about opportunities, which might be yes, uncomfortable, but absolutely experiences, which will enrich our lives or our children's lives as we move forward. But at the end of every podcast, we leave some free space for our guests to share their final thoughts. What would you like to leave with those listening today?
Baris Yakin (16:55):
I think the experience of a third culture kid is definitely not relatable to most people, but there are certain takeaways. So if you are listening to this and you are currently overseas, you have a golden opportunity to get outside of your ex-pat community, to make friends with locals, to experience local culture. And you won't always get that opportunity. This is really a great chance to expand your horizons. Calendar yourself, lean into that discomfort a little bit. And for people who are in the U S listening to this, I would say that right now, we have an opportunity as a country to reevaluate how we approach people who are different from us and cultural shifts like this don't come around often. And we have individual responsibility, I believe to lean into the discomfort and come out on the other side, having grown, we do that by experimenting and trying new things, reaching out to that person on our team. We don't normally reach out to working with people we don't normally work with. And on the other side of that, my experience, as much as it is a little bit of a social laboratory is proof that once you get to the other side of your differences, you can make friends for life really great, deep connections that enrich your life as well. And that's really worth it to me. Thank you so much for this final words. They're lovely.
Baris Yakin:
Thanks for having me.
Jennie Brooks (18:40):
Thanks for listening. Visit careers dot Booz allen.com to learn how you can be unstoppable with Booz Allen. Be the future work with us, the world. Can't wait.