Previously posted this in the G+ community for the Developing Cultural Intelligence for Leadership FutureLearn course on 28 November 2015.
I don't know why I did not think about this earlier. While watching Series 3 Episode 2 of The Bridge earlier this week (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06fkl0x), I started thinking about what it would be like managing or working with or for Saga Norén (Sofia Helin), a Swedish detective in this crime drama series set in Sweden and Denmark. I had thought about this in previous series but now I have the added perspective of cultural intelligence.
To whet your appetite ...
"The show has avoided giving Saga a diagnosis.
The actress, Sofia Helin, describes her character as having "another way of being intelligent".
Her EQ [emotional intelligence] is very low and her IQ is very very high."
According to scriptwriter Hans Rosenfeldt, while the media and the audience may have decided she has Asperger's, "we've actually never diagnosed her in the show"."
(from "Deconstructing Saga: Inside the mind of the TV detective", BBC web page: http://goo.gl/hf0h6l)
"When she first signed up to play Saga Norén, Helin assumed she was going to be unpopular. The Swedish detective is abrupt, detached, unintentionally rude. She works through the night, finds it impossible to share a flat with her boyfriend, and yet has few boundaries when it comes to cross-examining other people, including her Danish sidekick Martin Rohde. ("Are you still having sex?" she asks after he starts seeing his estranged wife. "Are you good at sex?") "I thought no one would like her, that she would be so annoying," Helin admits. But when Swedish fans started to approach her in the street, she realised she might have got it wrong. "The thing I'm most surprised about is that people say, 'You know, I recognise myself in her.'" She mimes an exaggerated pulling away. "What?""
(from The Guardian article "Scandi crush: The Bridge's Sofia Helin", http://goo.gl/jRxa7K)
Series Background
(1) Behind the scenes of series 1 of The Bridge (I hadn't seen this before but even more interesting now that we are studying cultural intelligence):
(2) Behind the scenes of series 2 (including cultural differences between Sweden and Denmark):
(3) Behind the scenes of series 3 (including how Saga is more centre stage this series now she is without Martin):
(4) Interviews with the new pairing of Saga and Henrik in series 3:
4
The audience has never been told explicitly what condition or "issue" Saga may or may not have. Some people might say that she lacks social graces and has no manners! However, as you watch Saga in action you begin to see how she interacts with people and this is fascinating. Saga has a rock solid core with robotic-like responses to situations but with minimal if any flex.
I thought during series 2 it might be great to work with someone like Saga where you would probably know exactly how she would respond in a given situation - blunt, direct, often "inappropriately" (whatever that means!) - and yet you would be highly confident that she was on top of her game as a police detective. Plus, there is no indication thus far that she is ever "moody"!
It got me thinking that there are other dimensions to people's personalities that we need to suss out as we work with colleagues inside and outside our organisations as we apply what we are learning about cultural intelligence.
The fun part about this now in series 3 is that her new police partner (Henrik) looks like he may have some "issues" too!
So, what do you think?
Other resources
(5) "Bron / Broen (The Bridge)", The Autism Anthropologist blog post (28 October 2013): https://goo.gl/Q2yHNM
(6) "Asperger’s: Fiction and Fact", Pluss blog post (19 May 2012): http://goo.gl/qhiBkU
... and so on to the guys from The Big Bang Theory .... ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment