inbs 356

BEST PRACTICE

Knowing what makes

groups tick is as important

as understanding individuals.

Successful managers learn

to cope with different

national, corporate, and

vocational cultures.

Cultural Intelligence by P. Christopher Earley and Elaine Mosakowski

You SEE THEM at international air-ports like Heathrow: posters ad- vertising the global bank HSBC that show a grasshopper and the message "USA-Pest China-Pet Northern Thai- land-Appetizer."

Taxonomists pinned down the scien- tific definition of the family Acrididae more than two centuries ago. But cul- ture is so powerful it can affect how even a lowly insect is perceived. So it should come as no surprise that the human actions, gestures, and speech patterns a person encounters in a for- eign business setting are subject to an even wider range of interpretations, in- cluding ones tfiat can make misunder- standings likely and cooperation im- possible. But occasionally an outsider has a seemingly natural ability to inter- pret someone's unfamiliar and ambig- uous gestures in just the way that per- son's compatriots and colleagues would.

even to mirror them. We cafi tfiat cul- tural intelligence or CQ. In a world wfiere crossing boundaries is routine, CQ becomes a vitally important apti- tude and skill, and not just for interna- tional bankers and borrowers.

Companies, too, have cultures, often very distinctive; anyone who joins a new company spends the first few weeks de- ciphering its cultural code. Within any large company there are sparring suf> cultures as well: Tfie sales force can't talk to the engineers, and the PR people lose patience witfi the fawyers. Depart- ments, divisions, professions, geograph- ical regions-each fias a constellation of manners, meanings, histories, and val- ues that will confuse the interloper and cause him or her to stumble. tJnIess, that is, he or sfie fias a high CQ.

Cultural intelligence is related to emotional intelligence, but it picks up wfiere emotional intelligence leaves off.

OCTOBER 2004 139

BEST P R A C T I C E • Cultural Intelligence

A person with high emotional intelli- gence grasps what makes us human and at the same time what makes eacfi of us different from one anotfier. A person witfi fiigh cultural intelligence can some- fiow tease out of a person's or group's behavior those features that would be true of all people and all groups, those peculiar to this person or this group, and those tfiat are neither universal nor idio- syncratic. The vast realm that lies be- tween those two poles is culture.

An American expatriate manager we know had his cultural intelligence tested while serving on a design team that in- cluded two German engineers. As other team members floated their ideas, the engineers condemned them repeatedly as stunted or immature or worse. The manager concluded tfiat Germans in general are rude and aggressive.

A modicum of culturaf intelligence would have helped the American realize he was mistakenly equating the merit of an idea with the merit of the person presenting it and that the Germans were able to make a sharp distinction

reaction to the engineers' conduct, and proposed a new style of discussion that preserved candor but spared feelings, if indeed anyone's feelings had been hurt. But without being able to tell how much of the engineers' behavior was idiosyn- cratic and how mucfi was culturally de- termined, he or she would not have known how to influence their actions or how easy it would be to do that.

One critical element that cultural in- telligence and emotional intelligence do share is, in psychologist Daniel Gole- man's words, "a propensity to suspend judgment - t o think before acting." For someone richly endowed witfi CQ, the suspension might take hours or days, while someone with low CQ might have to take weeks or months. In either case, it involves using your senses to register all the ways that tfie personalities in- teracting in front of you are different from those in your home culture yet similar to one anotfier. Only wfien con- duct you have actually observed begins to settle into patterns can you safely begin to anticipate how these people

Culturalintelligence: an outsider's seemingly natural ability to interpret someone's unfamiliar and ambiguous gestures the way that person's compatriots would.

between the two. A manager with even subtler powers of discernment might have tried to determine how much of the two Germans' behavior was ar- guably German and how much was explained by tfie fact that they were engineers.

An expatriate manager who was merely emotionally intelligent would probably have empathized with the team members whose ideas were being criti- cized, modulated his or her spontaneous

P. Christopher Earley is a professor and the chair of the department of organi- zational behavior at London Business School. Elaine Mosakowski is a professor of management at the University of Col- orado at Boulder.

will react in the next situation. Tfie in- ferences you draw in tfiis manner will be free of tfie fiazards of stereotyping.

The people wfio are socially the most successful among their peers often have tfie greatest difficulty making sense of, and then being accepted by, cultural strangers. Those who fully embody the habits and norms of their native culture may be the most alien when they enter a culture not their own. Sometimes, peo- ple who are somewfiat detacfied from tfieir own culture can more easily adopt tfie mores and even tfie body language of an unfamiliar fiost They're used to being observers and making a conscious effort to fit in.

Although some aspects of cultural in- telligence are innate, anyone reasonably

alert, motivated, and poised can attain an acceptable level of cultural intelli- gence, as we have learned from survey- ing 2,000 managers in 60 countries and training many otfiers. Given the num- ber of cross-fiinctional assignments, job transfers, new employers, and distant postings most corporate managers are likely to experience in the course of a career, low CQ can turn out to be an in- herent disadvantage.

The Three Sources of Cultural Intelligence Can it really be that some managers are socially intelligent in their own settings but ineffective in culturally novel ones? The experience of Peter, a sales man- ager at a California medical devices group acquired by Eli Lilly Pharmaceu- ticals, is not unusual. At the devices company, the atmosphere had been mercenary and competitive; the best- performing employees could make as much in performance bonuses as in sal- ary. Senior managers hounded unpro- ductive salespeople to pertbrm better.

At Lilly's Indianapolis headquarters, to which Peter was transferred, the sales staff received bonuses tfiat accounted for only a small percentage of total com- pensation. Furthermore, criticism was restrained and confrontation kept to a minimum. To motivate people, Lilly management encouraged tfiem. Peter commented, "Back in L.A., I knew how to fiandle myself and how to manage my sales team. I'd push them and con- front them if they weren't performing, and they'd respond. If you look at my evaluations, you'll see that I was very successful and people respected me. Here in Indianapolis, they don't like my style, and they seem to avoid the chal- lenges that I put to them. 1 just can't seem to get things done as well here as I did in California."

Peter's problem was threefold. First, he didn't comprehend how mucfi the landscape had changed. Second, he was unable to make his behavior consis- tent with that of everyone around him. And tfiird, when he recognized that the arrangement wasn't working, he be- came disheartened.

140 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

C u l t u r a l Intelligence • B E S T P R A C T I C E

Peter's tfiree difficulties correspond to the tfiree components of cultural in- telligence: the cognitive; the physical; and the emotional/motivational. Cul- tural intelligence resides in the body and tfie heart, as weif as the head. Although most managers are not equally strong in all three areas, each faculty is seriously hampered without tfie other two.

Head. Rote learning about the be- liefs, customs, and taboos of foreign cul- tures, the approach corporate training programs tend to favor, will never pre- pare a person for every situation that arises, nor will it prevent terrible gaffes. However, inquiring about the meaning of some custom will often prove un- availing because natives may be reticent about explaining themselves to strangers, or they may have little practice looking at their own culture analytically.

Instead, a newcomer needs to devise what we call learning strategies. Al- tfiougfi most people find it difficult to discover a point of entry into alien cul- tures, whose very coherence can make tfiem seem like separate, parallel worlds, an individual with high cognitive CQ notices clues to a culture's shared under- standings. Tfiese can appear in any form and any context but somehow indicate a line of interpretation worth pursuing.

An Irisfi manager at an international advertising firm was working with a new client, a German construction and engineering company. Devin's experi- ence with executives in the German re- tail clothing industry was that they were reasonably fiexible about deadlines and receptive to highly imaginative propos- als for an advertising campaign. He had also worked with executives of a British construction and engineering company, whom he found to be strict about dead- lines and intent on a media campaign that stressed the firm's tecfinical exper- tise and the cost savings it offered.

Devin was unsure fiow to proceed. Should he assume that the German con- struction company would take after the German clothing retailer or, instead, tfie British construction company? He re- solved to observe tfie new client's rep- resentative closely and draw general con- clusions about the firm and its culture

from his behavior, just as he had done in the other two cases. Unfortunately, the client sent a new representative to every meeting. Many came from different business units and had grown up in dif- ferent countries. Instead of equating the first representative's behavior with the client's corporate culture, Devin looked for consistencies in the various individ- uals' traits. Eventually he determined that they were all punctual, deadline- oriented, and tolerant of unconven- tional advertising messages. From that, he was able to infer much about the character of their employer.

Body. You will not disarm your for- eign hosts, guests, or colleagues simply by showing you understand their cul-

ture; your actions and demeanor must prove that you have already to some extent entered their world. Whether it's the way you shake hands or order a coffee, evidence of an ability to mirror the customs and gestures of the people around you will prove that you esteem tfiem well enough to want to be like them. By adopting people's habits and mannerisms, you eventually come to un- derstand in the most elemental way what it is like to be them. They, in tum, become more trusting and open. Uni- versity of Michigan professor Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks's research on cultural barriers in business found that job can- didates who adopted some of tlie man- nerisms of recruiters with cultural back-

OCTOBER 2004 141

B E S T P R A C T I C E • C u l t u r a l I n t e l l i g e n c e

grounds different from their own were more likely to be made an offer.

This won't happen if a person suffers from a deep-seated reservation about the called-for behavior or lacks the phys- ical poise to pull it off. Henri, a French manager at Aegis, a media corporation, followed the national custom of greet- ing his female clients with a hug and a kiss on both cheeks. Although Melanie, a British aerospace manager, under- stood that in France such familiarity was de rigueur in a professional setting, she couldn't suppress her discomfort when it happened to her, and she recoiled. In- ability to receive and reciprocate ges- tures that are culturally characteristic reflects a low level of cultural intelli- gence's physical component.

In another instance, a Hispanic com- munity leader in Los Angeles and an Anglo-American businessman fell into conversation at a charity event. As the former moved closer, the latter hacked away. It took nearly 30 minutes of waltz- ing around the room for the commu- nity leader to realize that "Anglos" were not comfortable standing in such close physical proximity.

Heart. Adapting to a new culture in- volves overcoming obstacles and set- backs. People can do that only if they believe in their own efficacy. If they persevered in the face of challenging situations in the past, their confidence grew. Confidence is always rooted in mastery of a particular task or set of circumstances.

A person who doesn't believe herself capable of understanding people from unfamiliar cultures will often give up after her efforts meet with hostility or incomprehension. By contrast, a person with high motivation will, upon con- fronting obstacles, setbacks, or even fail- ure, reengage with greater vigor. To stay motivated, highly efficacious people do not depend on obtaining rewards, which may be unconventional or long delayed.

Hyong Moon had experience leading racially mixed teams of designers at GM, but when he headed up a product design and development team that in- cluded representatives from the sales, production, marketing, R&D, engineer-

ing, and finance departments, things did not go smoothly. The sales manager, for example, objected to the safety en- gineer's attempt to add features such as side-impact air bags because they would boost the car's price excessively. The

Chris understood the policy as Mer- rill's attempt to reduce hierarchical dis- tinctions both within and between the companies. The intention, he thought, was to draw the two enterprises closer together. Chris also identified a liking

People who are somewhat detached from their own culture can more easily adopt the mores and even the body language of an unfamiliar host.

conflict became so intense and so pub- lic that a senior manager had to inter- vene. Although many managers would have felt chastened after that, Moon struggled even harder to gain control, which he eventually did by convincing the sales manager that the air bags could make the car more marketable. Although he had no experience with cross-functional teams, his successes with single-function teams had given him the confidence to persevere. He commented, "I'd seen these types of disagreements in other teams, and I'd been able to beip team members over- come their differences, so I knew I could do it again."

How Head, Body, and Heart Work Together At the end of 1997, U.S.-based Merrill Lynch acquired UK-based Mercury Asset Management. At the time of the merger, Mercury was a decorous, understated, hierarchical company known for doing business in the manner of an earlier generation. Merrill, by contrast, was in- formal, fast-paced, aggressive, and en- trepreneurial. Both companies had em- ployees of many nationalities. Visiting Mercury about six months after the merger announcement, we were greeted by Chris, a Mercury personnel manager dressed in khakis and a knit shirt. Sur- prised by the deviation from his usual uniform of gray or navy pinstripes, we asked him what had happened. He told us that Merrill had instituted casual Fri- days in its own offices and then ex- tended the policy on a volunteer basis to its UK sites.

for casual dress as probably an Ameri- can cultural trait.

Not all Mercury managers were re- ceptive to the change, however. Some went along with casual Fridays for a few weeks, tben gave up. Others never doffed their more formal attire, viewing the new policy as a victory of careless- ness over prudence and an attempt by Merrill to impose its identity on Mer- cury, whose professional dignity would suffer as a result. In short, the Mercury resisters did not understand the impulse behind the change (head); they could not bring themselves to alter tbeir ap- pearance (body); and they had been in the Mercury environment for so long that tbey lacked the motivation (heart) to see the experiment through. To put it even more simply, they dreaded being mistaken for Merrill executives.

How would you behave in a similar situation? Tbe exhibit "Diagnosing Your Cultural Intelligence" allows you to as- sess the three facets of your own cul- tural intelligence and learn where your relative strengths and weaknesses lie. Attaining a high absolute score is not the objective.

Cultural Intelligence Profiles Most managers fit at least one of the fol- lowing six profiles. By answering the questions in the exhibit, you can decide which one describes you best

The provincial can be quite effective when working with people of similar background but runs into trouble when venturing farther afield. A young engi- neer at Chevrolet's truck division re- ceived positive evaluations of bis tech-

142 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

C u l t u r a l Intelligence • BEST P R A C T I C E

Diagnosing Your Cultural Intelligence

These statements reflect different facets of cultural intelligence. For each set,

add up your scores and divide by four to produce an average. Our work with

large groups of managers shows that for purposes of your own development,

it is most useful to think about your three scores in comparison to one another.

Generally, an average of less than 3 would indicate an area calling for improve-

ment, while an average of greater than 4.5 reflects a true CQ strength.

Rate the extent to which you agree with each statement, using the scale:

1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree.

Total

+

Total

+ Total

Before I interact with people from a new culture, I ask myself what I hope to achieve.

If I encounter something unexpected while working in a new culture, I use this experience to figure out new ways to approach ot/jer cultures in the future.

I plan how I'm going to relate to people from a different culture before I meet them.

When I come into a new cultural situation,! can immediately sense whether something is going well or something is wrong.

Cognitive CQ

It's easy for me to change my body language (for example, eye contactor posture) to suit people from adifferent culture.

I can alter my expression when a cultural encounter reguires it.

I modify my speech style (for example, accent or tone) to suit people from a different culture.

I easily change the way I act when a cross-cultural encounter seems to reguire it.

Physical CQ

I have confidence that I can deal well with people from adifferent culture.

I am certain that I can befriend people whose cultural backgrounds are different from mine.

I can adapt to the lifestyle of a different culture with relative ease.

I am confident that I can deal with a cultural situation that's unfamiliar.

4 = Emotional/ motivational CQ

nical abilities as well as his interper- sonal skills. Soon he was asked to lead a team at Saturn, an autonomous divi- sion of GM. He was not able to adjust to Saturn's highly participative approach to teamwork-he mistakenly assumed it would be as orderly and deferential as Chevy's. Eventually, he was sent back to Chevy's truck division.

The analyst methodically deciphers a foreign culture's rules and expectations by resorting to a variety of elaborate learning strategies. The most common form of analyst realizes pretty quickly he is in alien territory but then ascer- tains, usually in stages, the nature of the patterns at work and how he should interact with them. Deirdre, for exam- ple, works as a broadcast director for a London-based company. Her principal responsibility is negotiating contracts with broadcast media owners. In June 2002, her company decided that all units sbould adopt a single negotiating strat- egy, and it was Deirdre's job to make sure tbis happened. Instead of forcing a showdown with the managers who resisted, she held one-on-one meetings in which she probed their reasons for resisting, got them together to sbare ideas, and revised the negotiating strat- egy to incorporate approaches they had found successful. The revised strategy was more culturally flexible than the original proposal - and the managers chose to cooperate.

The natural relies entirely on his in- tuition rather than on a systematic learning style. He is rarely steered wrong by first impressions. Donald, a brand manager for Unilever, commented, "As part of my job, I need to judge people from a wide variety of cultural back- grounds and understand their needs quickly. Wben I come into a new situa- tion, I watch everyone for a few min- utes and then I get a general sense of what is going on and how I need to act. I'm not really sure how I do it, but it seems to work." When facing ambigu- ous multicultural situations that be must take control of, the natural may falter because be has never had to improvise learning strategies or cope with feelings of disorientation.

OCTOBER 2004 143

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The ambassador, like many political appointees, may not know much about the culture he has just entered, but he convincingly communicates his cer- tainty that he belongs there. Among the managers of multinational companies we have studied, the ambassador is the most common type. His confidence is

a very powerful component of his cul- tural Intelligence. Some of it may be derived from watching how other man- agers have succeeded in comparable situations. The ambassador must have the humility to know what he doesn't know - that is, to know how to avoid underestimating cultural differences,

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Helmut was a manager at a Berlin-based high-tech company who partic-

ipated in our cultural-Intelligence training program at London Business

School. Three months earlier, he had been assigned to a large manu-

facturing facility in southern Germany to supervise the completion of

a new plant and guide the local staff through the launch. Helmut came

from northern Germany and had never worked in southern Germany;

his direct reports had been raised in southern Germany and had worked

for the local business unit for an average of seven years.

Helmut was good at developing new learning strategies, and he wasn't

bad at adapting his behavior to his surroundings. But he had low confi-

dence in his ability to cope with his new colleagues. To him, southern

Germans were essentially foreigners; he found them "loud, brash, and

cliquish."

To capitalize on his resourcefulness and build his confidence, we

placed Helmut in heterogeneous groupsof peopie, whom we encour-

aged to engage in freewheeling discussions. We also encouraged him

to express his emotions more openly, in the manner of his southern com-

patriots, and to make more direct eye contact in the course of role-play-

ing exercises.

Helmut's resourcefulness might have impelled him to take on more

ambitious tasks than he could quite handle. It was important he get his

footing first, so that some subsequent reversal would not paralyze him.

To enhance his motivational CQ, we asked him to list ten activities he

thought would be part of his daily or weekly routine when he returned

to Munich.

By the time Helmut returned to London for bis second training ses-

sion, he had proved to himself he could manage simple encounters like

getting a coffee, shopping, and having a drink with colleagues. So we

suggested he might be ready for more challenging tasks, such as provid-

ing face-to-face personnel appraisals. Even though Helmut was skilled at

analyzing people's behavior, he doubted he was equal to this next set of

hurdles. We encouraged him to view his analytic skills as giving him an

important advantage. For example, Helmut had noticed that Bavarians

were extroverted only with people familiar to them. With strangers they

could be as formal as any Prussian. Realizing this allowed him to re-

spond flexibly to either situation instead of being put off balance.

By the time he was asked to lead a quality-improvement team, he had

concluded tbat his leadership style must unfold in two stages-com-

manding at the outset, tben more personal and inclusive. On his third

visit to London, Helmut reported good relations with the quality im-

provement team, and the members corroborated his assessment.

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

Cultural Intelligence • B E S T P R A C T I C E

even though doing so will inflict a de- gree of discomfort.

The mimic has a high degree of con- trol over his actions and behavior, if not a great deal of insight into the signifi- cance of the cultural cues he picks up. Mimicry definitely puts hosts and guests at ease, facilitates communication, and builds trust. Mimicry is not, however, the same as pure imitation, which can be interpreted as mocking. Ming, a man- ager at the Shanghai regional power authority, relates, "When I deal with foreigners, I try to adopt their style of speaking and interacting, i find that simple things like keeping the right dis- tance from the other person or making eye contact or speaking English at a speed that matches the other person's puts them at ease and makes it easier to make a connection. This really makes a difference to newcomers to China be- cause they often are a bit threatened by the place."

The chameleon possesses high levels of ail three CQ components and is a very

uncommon managerial type. He or she even may be mistaken for a native of the country. More important, chame- leons don't generate any of the ripples that unassimilated foreigners inevitably do. Some are able to achieve results that natives cannot, due to their insider's skills and outsider's perspective. We found that only about 5% of the man- agers we surveyed belonged in this re- markable category.

One of them is Nigel, a British entre- preneur who has started businesses in Australia, France, and Germany. The son of diplomats, Nigel grew up all over the world. Most of his childhood, however, was spent in Saudi Arabia. After several successes of his own, some venture cap- italists asked him to represent them in dealings with the founder of a money- losing Pakistani start-up.

To the founder, his company existed chiefly to employ members of his ex- tended family and, secondarily, the citi- zens of Lahore. The VCs, naturally, had a different idea. They were tired of

losses and wanted Nigel to persuade the founder to close down the business.

Upon relocating to Lahore, Nigel re- alized that the interests of family and community were not aligned. So he called in several community leaders, who agreed to meet with managers and try to convince them that the larger community of Lahore would be hurt if potential investors came to view it as full of businesspeople unconcerned with a company's solvency. Nigel's Saudi up- bringing had made him aware of Islamic principles of personal responsibility to the wider community, while his British origins tempered what in another per- son's hands might have been the me- chanical application of those tenets. Throughout the negotiations, he dis- played an authoritative style appropri- ate to the Pakistani setting. In relatively short order, the managers and the fam- ily agreed to terminate operations.

Many managers, of course, are a hy- brid of two or more of the types. We dis- covered in our survey of more than

B E S T P R A C T I C E • C u l t u r a l I n t e l l i g e n c e

2,000 managers that even more preva- lent than the ambassador was a hybrid of that type and the analyst. One exam- pie was afemaie African-American man- ager in Cairo named Brenda, who was insulted when a small group of young, well-meaning Egyptian males greeted her with a phrase they'd learned from rap music.

"1 turned on my heel, went right up to the group and began upbraiding them as strongly as my Arabic would allow," she said. "When I'd had my say, I stormed off to meet a friend."

"After I had walked about half a block, I registered the shocked look on their faces as they listened to my words. I then realized they must have thought they were greeting me in a friendly way. So I went back to talk to the group. They asked me why I was so angry, I explained, they apologized profusely, and we all sat down and had tea and an interesting talk about how the wrong words can easily cause trouble. During our con- versation, I brought up a number of examples of how Arabic expressions uttered in the wrong way or by the wrong person could spark an equivalent reaction in them. After spending about an hour with them, 1 had some new friends."

Brenda's narrative illustrates the com- plexities and the perils of cross-cultural interactions. The young men had pro- voked her by trying, ineptly, to ingrati- ate themselves by using a bit of current slang from her native land. Forgetting in her anger that she was the stranger, she berated them for what was an act of cultural ignorance, not malice. Cul- turally uninformed mimicry got the young men in trouble; Brenda's - and the men's-cognitive flexibility and will- ingness to reengage got them out of it.

Cultivating Your Cultural Intelligence Unlike other aspects of personality, cul- tural intelligence can be developed in psychologically healthy and profession- ally competent people. In our work with Deutsche Bank, we Introduced a pro- gram to improve managers' work rela- tionships with outsourcing partners in

India. We developed a two-and-a-half day program that first identified a par- ticipant's strengths and weaknesses and then provided a series of steps, which we outline below, to enhance their CQ.

Step 1. The individual examines his CQ strengths and weaknesses in order to establish a starting point for subsequent development efforts. Qur self-assessment instrument is one approach, but there are others, such as an assessment of a person's behavior in a simulated busi- ness encounter and 360-degree feed- back on a person's past behavior in an actual situation. Hughes Electronics, for example, staged a cocktail party to eval-

unit provide support for it? A realistic assessment of her workload and the time available for CQ enhancement is important.

Step 5. The person enters the cultural setting he needs to master. He coordi- nates his plans with others, basing them on his CQ strengths and remaining weaknesses. If his strength is mimicry, for example, he would be among the first in his training group to venture forth. If his strength is analysis, he would first want to observe events un- fold and then explain to the others why they followed the pattern they did.

Step 6. The individual reevaluates her newly developed skills and how effec-

You will not disarm your foreign hosts simply by showing you understand their culture; your actions must prove that you have entered their world.

uate an expatriate manager's grasp of South Korean social etiquette. Ideally, a manager will undergo a variety of as- sessments.

Step 2. The person selects training that focuses on her weaknesses. For ex- ample, someone lacking physical CQ might enroll in acting classes. Someone lacking cognitive CQ might work on developing his analogical and inductive reasoning-by, for example, reading sev- eral business case studies and distilling their common principles.

Step 3. The general training set out above is applied. If motivational CQ is low, a person might be given a series of simple exercises to perform, such as finding out where to buy a newspaper or greeting someone who has arrived to be interviewed. Mastering simple activities such as greetings or transactions with local shopkeepers establishes a solid base from which to move into more demanding activities, such as giving an employee a performance appraisal.

Step 4. The individual organizes her personal resources to support the ap- proach she has chosen. Are there people at her organization with the skills to conduct this training, and does her work

tive they have been in the new setting, perhaps after collecting 360-degree feedback from colleagues individually or eavesdropping on a casual focus group that was formed to discuss her progress. She may decide to undergo further training in specific areas.

In the sidebar "Confidence Training," we describe how we applied these six steps to the case of Helmut, one of five German managers we helped at their employer's behest as they coped with new assignments within and outside of Germany.

Why can some people act appropri- ately and effectively in new cultures or among people with unfamiliar back- grounds while others flounder? Our anecdotal and empirical evidence sug- gests that the answer doesn t lie in tacit knowledge or in emotional or social in- telligence. But a person with high CQ, whether cultivated or innate, can un- derstand and master such situations, persevere, and do the right thing when needed. ^

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146 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

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