Help with Discussion Thread Replies: Communicating an Unchanging Gospel Message

Chapter 1

CULTURE MATTERS: WHY YOU NEED CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE

Leadership today is a multicultural challenge. Few of us need to be convinced of that. We’re competing in a global marketplace, managing a diverse workforce, and trying to keep up with rapidly shifting trends. But many approaches to this leadership challenge either seem way too simplistic (e.g., “Smile, avoid these three taboos, and you’ll be fine”) or way too extreme (e.g., “Don’t go anywhere until you’re a cross-cultural guru”). Cultural intelligence (CQ) offers a better way. The four capabilities presented in this book can help you navigate any intercultural situation.

What are the biggest hindrances to reaching your goals personally and professionally? How do you effectively lead a culturally diverse team? What kinds of cultural situations bring you the greatest level of fatigue? How do you give instructions for an assignment to a Norwegian team member versus one from China? What kind of training should you design for an implementation team coming from multiple cultural backgrounds? How do you get feedback from a colleague who comes from a culture that values saving face above direct, straightforward feedback? And how can you possibly keep up with all the different cultural scenarios that surface in our rapidly globalizing world? These are the kinds of questions that will be answered by developing your cultural intelligence.

All my life I’ve been fascinated by cultures. From as far back as when I was a Canadian American kid growing up in New York, I was intrigued by the differences my family would encounter on our trips across the border to visit our relatives in Canada. The multicolored money, the different ways of saying things, and the varied cuisine we found after passing through customs drew me in. I’ve learned far more about leadership, global issues, and my faith from cross-cultural experiences and work than from any graduate course I’ve ever taken or taught. I’ve made people laugh when I’ve stumbled through a different language or inadvertently eaten something the “wrong” way. I’ve winced upon later discovering I offended a group of ethnically different colleagues because I spent too much time complimenting them. I’m a better leader, teacher, father, friend, and citizen because of the intercultural friendships I’ve forged through my work. And through the fascinating domain of cultural intelligence, I’ve discovered an enriched way to understand and prepare for my work across borders.

Cultural intelligence is the capability to function effectively across national, ethnic, and organizational cultures. It can be learned by most anyone. Cultural intelligence offers leaders an overall repertoire and perspective that can be applied to myriad cultural situations. It’s an approach that includes four different capabilities, enabling us to meet the fast-paced demands of leadership in the global age. This book describes how to gain the competitive edge and finesse that comes from using these four capabilities to lead with cultural intelligence. Think about a cross-cultural project or situation facing you. Take a minute and walk through the four capabilities of CQ right now:

1. CQ Drive: What’s your motivation for engaging with the cultural dimensions of this project?

2. CQ Knowledge: What cultural differences will most influence this project?

3. CQ Strategy: How will you plan in light of the cultural differences?

4. CQ Action: How do you need to adapt your behavior to function effectively on this project?

If you don’t have a clue how to answer some of these questions, I’ll get to all that. But before more fully describing cultural intelligence and how to develop it, we need to spend a few minutes understanding its relevance to leadership.

From West Michigan to West Africa

It’s the day before I fly to Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. Liberia, a small country on the coast of West Africa, isn’t a place I ever planned to visit. But given that the university where I was working had formed a partnership there, it became a regular destination for me. I’ve spent far more time working in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, much more familiar destinations to me than West Africa, which still feels very foreign. Yet the flattened world of globalization makes even the most foreign places seem oddly familiar in some strange way. Wireless access in the hotel where I stay, Diet Coke, and the use of U.S. dollars remove some of the faraway feeling of a place like Monrovia. Even so, I still have to make a lot of adaptations to do my job in a place like Liberia.

It’s amazing how life and work in our rapidly globalizing world brings us an unprecedented number of encounters with people, places, and issues from around the world. I guess the world is flat—isn’t it? Journalist Thomas Friedman popularized the term flat world to suggest that the competitive playing fields between industrialized and emerging markets are leveling.

The day before I leave for West Africa is spent tying up loose ends prior to my weeklong absence. I respond to emails from colleagues in Dubai, Shanghai, Frankfurt, and Johannesburg and I talk on the phone with clients in Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong. My wife and I grab a quick lunch at our favorite Indian restaurant, and we talk with the Sudanese refugee who bags the groceries we pick up on the way home. Before my kids return from their Cinco de Mayo celebration at school, I call my credit card company and I reach a customer service representative in Delhi. Even in the small city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I live, intercultural encounters abound.

One would think travel across the flattened world would be easier than it is. Getting from Grand Rapids to Monrovia takes some very deliberate planning and it wreaks havoc on the body. The travel and work have to be planned around the three days a week when Brussels Air, the only Western airline that flies into Monrovia, goes there. But still, the fact that I can have breakfast with my family one morning and go for a run along the Atlantic Coast in West Africa less than twenty-four hours later is pretty amazing. So maybe the world is becoming flat.

On the flight from Brussels to Monrovia, I sit next to Tim, a twenty-two-year-old Liberian guy currently living in Atlanta. We chat briefly. He describes his enthusiasm about going “home” to Liberia for his first visit since his parents helped plan his escape to the States during the civil war ten years ago.

As we land, I see the U.N. planes parked across the tarmac. Eight hours earlier I was walking the streets of Brussels and grabbing an early morning waffle. And now I am making my way toward passport control in Monrovia. Maybe travel across multiple time zones isn’t so bad after all.

Eventually I end up at baggage claim next to Tim, my new acquaintance. A porter who looks so old he could pass for a hundred is there to help Tim with his luggage. The porter asks Tim, “How long are you staying here, man?” Tim responds, “Only two weeks. I wish it was longer.” The porter bursts out with a piercing laugh. “Why, my man? You’re from America!” Tim responds, “I know, but life is hard there. I wish I could stay here longer. Life is better here.” The porter laughs even harder, slaps Tim on the back, and says, “You’re talking crazy, man. Look at you. You have an American passport! You don’t know what a hard life is. I’ve been working the last thirty-seven hours straight and they haven’t paid me for six weeks. But I can’t give up this job. Most people don’t have jobs. But look at you. You’ve been eating well. You look so fat and healthy. And you live in the USA!” Tim just shakes his head and says, “You don’t know. You have no idea, no idea. It’s hard. Never mind. Just get my bag.” I see the fatigue penetrating Tim’s broad shoulders.

I can understand why the porter found it absolutely laughable that a twenty-two-year-old bloke who can afford a two-week vacation across the ocean could consider life “hard,” yet I imagine there are some significant hardships for Tim as a young Liberian guy living in Atlanta. The statistics are stacked against him. How many people lock their car doors when he walks by? What extra hoops did he have to go through to get hired at the fitness center where he works? And Tim told me the enormous expectations put upon him by his family and friends who stayed in Liberia. After all, they didn’t get to escape the war, so the least he can do is send regular amounts of money to support them. Observing these kinds of interactions as we travel provides insights into how to negotiate and fulfill our strategic outcomes.

As I walk out of the Monrovia airport, a brightly smiling woman adorned in glowing orange from head to toe sells me a SIM card for my phone for USD $5. I hand her 5 U.S. dollars. I send a text message to my family to let them know I arrived safely. While walking, texting, and looking for my driver, I nearly trip over a woman relieving herself, I see kids selling drinking water, and I pass men my age who by Liberian standards are statistically in their final years. Using my smartphone to send a text message home makes the foreign seem familiar. But watching my kids’ peers sell water makes the same place seem foreign.

After a decent night of sleep, I go for a morning run along the muddy streets by my hotel. I keep passing children carrying buckets of water on their heads from the nearby well. Breakfast at the hotel where I stay occurs at a large dining room table where guests are served two runny eggs, a hot dog, one piece of plain white bread, and a cup of instant coffee. On this particular morning, the breakfast table includes U.N. consultants from India and Sweden, an economist from the United States, some North American business professionals, and a British physician.

I begin talking with the U.S. businesswoman seated next to me. She works for a U.S. company that sells baby food. She tells me this is her fifth trip to Monrovia in the last two years. After her first trip, she convinced her company there was a growing market for baby food in Liberia, particularly among the many Liberians who were coming back after living abroad during the fifteen-year war. While overseas, these Liberians had seen the nutritional benefits and convenience of baby food and they were sure they could convince their fellow Liberians to buy it as well. The company shipped several containers of baby food. They selected the kinds of food to send based upon market research of the Liberian diet; but the company used the same packaging used in the United States: a label with a picture of a baby on it. The company launched its product with many promotions including free samples for parents to try with their kids, but very few people picked up the samples, and even fewer purchased the baby food, despite it being introduced at a very low price. Sales of the baby food flopped until the company suddenly realized that African grocery distributors usually place pictures of the contents on their labels. Therefore, marketing a jar with a baby on the front didn’t sell. Oops!

Hearing the businesswoman’s story, the white-haired British doctor sitting across from us chimes in with a story of his own. He tells us how he shipped several crates of medicine from London six months ago but it still hasn’t arrived in Liberia. He had called and emailed the Monrovian shipyard from London every couple of days for the last few months and was continually told the shipment hadn’t arrived yet. Once he reached Monrovia, he went to the dock almost daily to inquire whether his shipment had arrived. Each time he was told, “Come back tomorrow. It will definitely be on the next ship.” But it never was. He is beginning to think he’ll never see the medical supplies, and the value of his brief sojourn in Liberia is becoming seriously undermined by not having them. He muses that it now seems a waste of time for him to have come.

I go on to share a couple of my own cultural mishaps and we talk about how easy it is to laugh at these things in retrospect, but at the time, the frustration and financial cost involved is anything but a laughing matter. Our breakfast conversation is a reminder of the many challenges that come with leading cross-culturally. And in a few minutes, I am about to discover that reality again myself.

One of the key objectives for my trip to Liberia is to decide whether we should include a Liberian school, Madison College (pseudonym), in the multi-tiered partnership we were developing throughout the country. Our primary organizational contact in Liberia is Moses, a catalytic Liberian who is leading an effort to rebuild the Liberian educational system after the war. Moses is the eldest of his father’s eighty-five children and the son of his father’s first wife. That makes him the highest-ranking member of his family now that his father is dead. Moses is short and stocky, and he carries himself like a tribal chief. He consistently cautioned our team against working with Madison College. He was concerned about the integrity and ethics of the president of Madison, Dr. Jones. This morning, Moses and I are visiting another key leader in Monrovia, Dr. Harris. Dr. Harris has done a lot of work with Dr. Jones and Madison College. Dr. Harris is a tall, stately looking man who remains behind his desk while we talk, sitting rigid and straight in a navy blue suit.

Drawing upon my value for direct communication, soon after we get through the perfunctory introductions, Dr. Harris mentions that he sometimes teaches at Madison. I take that as my cue. Notice our dialogue:

Dave: How do you like teaching at Madison, Dr. Harris? Is it a good school?

Dr. Harris: Oh, it’s a great joy for me to teach there. The students are so eager to learn.…

Dave: And how about Dr. Jones? What’s he like as a leader?

Notice that while being direct, I am trying to ask open-ended questions, an approach that usually works well for me at home.

Dr. Harris: Madison is a very good school. Dr. Jones has been there for a long time, since before the war.

I can see my open-ended questions aren’t getting me very far. My time with Dr. Harris is limited. I need his honest assessment of Dr. Jones, so I decide to go for it:

Dave: I’m sorry if what I’m about to ask is a bit uncomfortable, Dr. Harris. But I’ve heard some concerns about Dr. Jones and his leadership. I’m not looking for unnecessary details. But we’re considering a partnership with Dr. Jones and Madison College. This partnership would result in a high level of investment from our university. Might you be able to offer me any perspective on these criticisms I keep hearing?

Dr. Harris: It would be very good for the students if you partner with Madison College. Our schools have nothing here. The war destroyed everything. It would be very, very good. Please come.

I’m not entirely clueless. I can see what is going on, but I don’t have time for what feels like game playing to me. I come at it again.

Dave: Yes, that’s why I’m here. But I wonder what you can tell me about Dr. Jones specifically. Would you feel good about endorsing him to us as a significant partner?

Dr. Harris: It’s really quite amazing the school survived the war. I mean, of course they had to shut down for a while. The rebel soldiers overtook all of Monrovia. But they were one of the first places to reopen. They have very good people there.

Dave: And you feel good about the way Dr. Jones is leading there?

Dr. Harris: Dr. Jones has done many good things. We’ve been friends for many years. Actually, we were classmates together in primary school. It would be very good for you to help Madison. I can introduce him to you if you like.

As we walk away from the meeting, I turn quickly to Moses to assure him: “Moses, I don’t want you to think I don’t trust the validity of your concerns about Dr. Jones. It was just important for me to try to get his input. But that doesn’t mean I’m discounting your reservations.”

Fortunately, Moses has learned to talk to a bottom-line North American like me in a way that I get it. He replies:

Don’t you get it, Dave?! Don’t you see?! Of course he wasn’t going to tell you his concerns about Dr. Jones. You should never have asked him that, especially not with me there. He would never speak disparagingly about him in front of another Liberian brother to a complete stranger from the States. They grew up together! What did you expect him to say?

I shoot back:

The truth! That’s what. He doesn’t need to give me gory details. But if he is aware of these improprieties Dr. Jones keeps being accused of, I expect him to at least encourage me to explore my concerns further. If someone asked me about a childhood friend I knew was embezzling money, I’d tell the truth!

Moses explains that Dr. Harris might have delved into this with me a bit if we had been alone. He says, “But it would be shameful to him and me both if Dr. Harris had criticized his childhood friend in front of me to you! And he’s teaching there. Talking about this would bring shame to him. You never should have asked him that—not with me there! Never!”

I wasn’t totally blind to the cultural and interpersonal dynamics involved here. But I was at an impasse in getting some key information I needed to move forward. Usually I can make my way through these kinds of conflicts when interacting with individuals from cultural contexts similar to mine. But the interpersonal skills and persuasive strategies I use intuitively at home weren’t working for me here. This is where cultural intelligence comes in. It helps us effectively adapt our leadership strategies when working with individuals from different cultural backgrounds while still accomplishing what we need to get done. Later, I’ll come back to this story to show you how cultural intelligence eventually helped me resolve this dilemma.

Culture and Leadership

Perhaps the world is not so flat after all, especially when you consider that Liberia is closer to the norm for many places in the world than the exception. Like Liberia, most of the world is collectivist, hierarchical, and values saving face above being direct—all ideas we’ll address more fully in Chapter 5. More of us move in and out of these stark cultural contrasts almost as frequently as we move from one web page to another. The ease with which we encounter so many cultural differences in a twenty-four-hour period can lead us to underestimate the chasm of difference between one culture and the next—whether it’s Grand Rapids and Monrovia, France and Germany, or Starbucks and Shell. Friedman’s idea of a flattening world is very appropriate when applied to the growing competition and opportunities in emerging economies. But we ought to resist applying the notion of a “flat world” to suggesting we can do “business as usual” wherever we go.

CULTURE MATTERS FOR LEADERS

Ninety percent of leading executives from sixty-eight countries identified cross-cultural leadership as the top management challenge for the next century. Most contemporary leaders encounter dozens of different cultures daily. It’s impossible to master all the norms and values of each culture, but effective leadership does require some adaptation in approach and strategy. The most pressing issues executives identify for why cultural intelligence is needed are:

• Diverse markets

• Multicultural workforce

• Attract and retain top talent

• Profitability and cost savings

In fact, 90 percent of leading executives from sixty-eight countries identified cross-cultural leadership as the top management challenge for the next century. It used to be that worldwide travel and cross-cultural interactions were largely reserved for state leaders and high-level executives from massive multinational corporations such as IBM and Mitsubishi. Today, most every leader engages in myriad multicultural interactions. For some, that means traveling through passport control to the fascinating worlds of new foods and languages. For others, culturally diverse encounters are as close as their email in-box, the person on the other side of the cubicle, or the 6 a.m. conference call with a globally dispersed team.

An intuitive sense of leadership and expertise in one’s field continue to be valuable leadership assets, but they’re no longer adequate to truly leverage the global potential that exists. Hospital administrators are overseeing health care professionals who are treating patients from numerous cultural backgrounds. Military officers are giving orders to eighteen-year-olds that if not carried out well will show up as international incidents on BBC and CNN. And business executives are facing growing pressure to recruit and lead talent who can effectively sell and produce services and products that appeal to customers in emerging markets.

Executives report that leading without cultural intelligence results in increased time to get the job done, heightened travel time and costs, growing frustration and confusion, poor job performance, decreased revenues, poor working relationships at home and abroad, and lost opportunities. But leading with cultural intelligence opens up a number of promising opportunities, including the following:

Diverse Markets

The days of identifying a single target customer are long gone for most organizations. Most organizations and leaders are serving customers whose tastes, behaviors, and assumptions are not only different but often in conflict with one another. Putting a picture of pureed carrots on the front of baby food might reduce sales in a U.S. market, but doing so in Liberia suddenly made the same product more marketable. Describing yourself as a “tried-and-true Midwest company” or a “three-generation, Chinese-owned business” might gain trust with one customer and scare off the next one.

The proportion of revenue coming from overseas markets is expected to jump by an average of 30 to 50 percent over the next three to five years. Coca-Cola sells more of its product in Japan than it sells in the United States. By 2003, 56 percent of U.S. franchise operators were in markets outside the United States, and for companies like Dunkin’ Donuts and KFC, their international presence is far more lucrative. The demand from emerging markets is seen as the most critical factor facing global businesses. The spending power of China and India is increasing at an enormous rate. The Economist’s CEO Briefing reported, “The number of households earning more than USD $5,000 annually will more than double over the next five years in China, and will triple in India.” More than 1 billion people are expected to join the emerging middle class over the next ten years.

In 2012, the Economist Intelligence Unit surveyed CEOs from hundreds of multinational corporations around the world. It found that for the first time during an economic recession the majority of CEOs surveyed were planning to expand internationally, rather than retreat, because they believed their greatest opportunities for growth were outside their domestic borders. Seventy percent of Facebook’s users are outside North America and its executives expect that percentage to continue to grow. In the last decade, 20 percent of GE’s growth came from emerging markets, and it expects that growth to reach 60 percent in the next decade. Amway, headquartered in the small city where I live, derives 90 percent of its revenues from international markets. So even though thousands of Amway’s workforce never leave Michigan on the company’s tab, they’re interacting with colleagues, customers, and issues across the world on a daily basis. The number of Chinese companies expanding globally has reached unprecedented levels and all indicators are that growth will continue. Lenovo, the Chinese personal computer giant, is acquiring companies all over the globe—from Brazil’s CCE to Germany’s Medion, and a joint venture with Japan’s NEC. South African companies have a long history of worldwide mining enterprises, but the last decade has seen a surge in other South African industries expanding across borders, including telecoms, retailers, and breweries such as MTN, Woolworths, and SABMiller, respectively.

Leaders from China, South Africa, Germany, the United States, Japan, and dozens of other countries recognize that some of their greatest opportunities lie in new cultural markets. There’s really no such thing as a uniform global culture to which we market. Today’s organization and its leaders must be both local and global, or “glocal,” in understanding and serving customers.

Multicultural Workforce

The task of managing a diversified and dispersed workforce at home and internationally is another major demand facing today’s global leaders. Fostering good communication and building trust have always been two seminal issues in leadership, but learning how to do so among a culturally diverse team is a whole new challenge. Human resources policies, motivational strategies, and performance reviews need to be adapted for various cultural groups represented among your team. In addition, tapping into a global workforce often means outsourcing service to India and manufacturing to China, or it just as well might mean an Indian company outsourcing to the Philippines. Knowing how to measure the costs, benefits, and appropriate expectations involved with these kinds of opportunities is fraught with complexity.

The Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) study is the most comprehensive global leadership study done to date. The GLOBE researchers examined leaders and followers across sixty-two countries to determine the leadership differences and universals across these diverse cultures. They found that “clarity” is a universal characteristic that followers everywhere want from their leaders. And “unethical behavior” is something followers do not want from their leaders, regardless of the follower’s culture. But how one defines “clarity” and “unethical behavior” varies widely from one place to the next. Some leaders believe it’s more unethical to embezzle funds and other leaders believe it’s more unethical to disparage a friend to a foreigner. The longest list of findings from the GLOBE study was the stark differences in what followers from one culture want from their leaders versus what followers from another culture want. For example, a participative leadership style in which managers involve others in decision making was viewed as an essential way of working among the German leaders and organizations surveyed. However, this same style was viewed as a weakness among the firms and leaders surveyed in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis believed authoritative leadership demonstrated clarity and strength.

Many of these cultural preferences for leadership style are related to the values embraced by a culture as a whole. We’ll look at these more fully throughout the book. But the challenge of leading in today’s multicultural world is that you often have team members from diverse places such as Germany and Saudi Arabia on the same team. These differences leave many teams stalled in gridlock. However, when managed with cultural intelligence, a multicultural team offers organizations several benefits. It offers built-in expertise for diverse markets, it provides an around-the-clock workforce, and when managed well, it offers some of the greatest potential for innovation. In fact, few things have more potential for promoting innovative ideas than diverse perspectives. But it’s not automatic. One study examined the influence of diversity on the extent to which team members would speak up. When CQ levels were low, homogeneous teams outperformed diverse teams in how much they would speak up and develop innovative ideas. However, when CQ levels were high, diverse teams significantly outperformed homogeneous teams in generating innovative ideas. The high-performing, diverse teams had developed a coherent strategy for aligning expectations, minimizing conflict, and maximizing the diverse perspectives, which resulted in better solutions.

You might not be able meet the preferences and demands of every personality and cultural difference represented on your team. But cultural intelligence will help you make better use of the differences on your team to build trust, reach targets, and accomplish results. We’ll look at how to do this, including developing some shared standards that transcend differences, while also seeing how cultural intelligence allows you to adjust and adapt your leadership style depending on the colleague or team member.

Attract and Retain Top

Talent Cultural intelligence is also needed by global leaders to address the challenge of recruiting, developing, and retaining top talent. Up-and-coming leaders in emerging economies have many options at their disposal, and they’re seeking firms and executives who demonstrate culturally intelligent practice. Katherine Tsang, CEO of Standard Chartered Bank China, responded to this challenge by creating what she called a superhighway for attracting and retaining young, globally minded leaders. Her mantra to her team is “Go Places!” It’s a double entendre for working with a global network of affiliates and growing a personal portfolio in global leadership. Tsang identifies the race for good talent as one of the most pressing reasons her company must become more culturally astute.

Cultural intelligence is particularly important for those individuals sent on international assignments. Of all managers given overseas assignments as expatriates, 16 to 40 percent end them early. Cultural issues are the cause of 99 percent of these early terminations, not lack of job skills. The cost of each failed expatriate assignment has been estimated anywhere from USD $250,000 to more than USD $1.25 million when expenses associated with moving, downtime, and myriad other direct and indirect costs are included.

Cultural intelligence is also becoming a growing necessity for employees who never take an extended overseas assignment. More and more employees are expected to take short trips overseas to work with colleagues and customers or to work with international clients from home. Organizations practicing cultural intelligence are more likely to recruit and retain the talent needed to meet these demands.

Profitability and Cost Savings

Bruce Brown, chief technology officer at Procter & Gamble, talks about the costly lesson the company learned in the 1990s when it was trying to push global products that could be sold everywhere, while others were paying more attention to what local consumers wanted in various markets. Unicharm, a local Japanese competitor of P&G’s, was introducing novel products that were doing much better than P&G’s global ones. Brown says, “It was a harsh lesson around the importance of delighting consumers. The consumer is the boss, not the global program or the manufacturing equipment. I learned that you can be common around the world but you also need to be unique enough to delight local consumers.”

In contrast, A. G. Laffey, CEO of P&G, insists on getting to know the tastes and interests of local consumers. In fact, Laffey says he will only travel somewhere in the P&G world if two things are arranged for him: an in-home visit with a consumer and a store-check. His recent visit to Istanbul involved sitting with a Turkish woman in her house and watching her wash dishes and clothes. He talked to her for ninety minutes and then walked the aisles of a local store. He wanted to see how P&G products were shelved as well as competitive products. The in-home visit is the most important part to him. His insistence on seeing local markets up close stems from his desire to improve his understanding of consumer needs and to send a message to all his executives: If the CEO of an $80 billion company has time to spend a couple hours in a home in Istanbul, maybe you do too.

Culturally intelligent leadership increases profits, reduces costs, and improves efficiencies when marketing and selling products in new markets. An expat with cultural intelligence will get up to speed on the new assignment much more quickly, which in turn makes better use of the costly expense of sending talent overseas. The tie to profitability shows up in other ways as well. For example, rarely a week goes by without a report in the news about how some company or public figure has blown it by making a culturally insensitive comment that shines a poor light on the reputation of the organization and its products and services. But leaders who handle these kinds of issues appropriately build trust and build the value of their organizations.

Competitive advantage, increased profits, and global expansion are central to why many of us are interested in cultural intelligence; however, most of us would readily agree we’re also interested in behaving in a more respectful, humanizing manner with the people we meet throughout our work. Cultural intelligence can help us become more benevolent in how we view those who see the world differently from us. The desire and intent to treat other people with honor and respect don’t automatically mean our behavior comes across as dignifying and kind. Most people and cultures agree that some measure of civility is appropriate, but definitions of civility are culturally bound. Various adaptations are necessary in order to ensure that others feel we are treating them with respect, honor, and dignity. This kind of adaptability requires cultural intelligence. An ability to effectively relate and work across cultures is an essential part of survival. And with cultural intelligence, global leaders not only survive but also thrive in the twenty-first-century world.

Global Leadership Myths

Culture matters. It’s more than just a “nice-to-have.” It’s a key factor in what makes or breaks today’s global leader. As a result, organizations in every sector are clamoring to find effective global leaders. Those who can lead with cultural intelligence are in demand. Yet much of what gets talked about in the global leadership space is informed by myths and anecdotes rather than empirical evidence. Even many top-rated MBA programs assure prospective students and employers that their curriculum will develop global leadership, yet there’s little done to measure and develop global capabilities in their students. And most organizations rely most on technical expertise when looking at whom to put in charge of a new, global project. I regularly encounter the following myths when reading, listening, and talking with others about global leadership:

Myth #1: Leadership Is a Sixth Sense

Conventional wisdom among many business executives is that leadership is a sixth sense: You either get it or you don’t. You have to lead from the gut. And frankly, there’s some research that backs up the surprising strength of seasoned executives using their gut more than data or detailed analysis to make good decisions. That’s because the “gut” has been subconsciously programmed through years of experience. The problem is, the subconscious programming is specific to a culture and may not be a reliable source when making split judgments and decisions in an unfamiliar culture. This explains why some individuals have been incredibly successful leading in one context only to fail miserably when attempting to lead in another. The “sixth sense” of leadership has to be retrained and developed when the cultural context changes.

Myth #2: The World Is Flat

I’ve already acknowledged my appreciation for Friedman’s compelling argument that the economic playing field has been leveled globally. A Filipino start-up firm can go head-to-head with a behemoth multinational company, and leaders in all contexts are wise to wake up to this reality. But I often hear people applying Friedman’s idea more broadly than it was intended. I’m regularly asked, “Isn’t there a global professional culture emerging where people are more alike today than different?”

When you observe people in airport lounges in Dubai, Sydney, and London, it certainly seems like we’re all more alike than different. And if you predominantly experience different cultures by visiting hotels and offices that are built for guests like you, it’s easy to miss the differences that exist. But when you get beneath the surface, you find we’re remarkably different. Leaders have their head in the sand if they think they can lead people the same way everywhere. Culture doesn’t explain everything. But it is one of the driving factors in how to effectively negotiate, build trust, foster innovation, and motivate people toward a shared objective.

Myth #3: If No One Follows, You Aren’t Leading

Surely a “leader” with no followers might not be leading. Or he or she might be attempting to lead in the wrong context. Leadership is not only about the values and style of the leader. As evidenced by the findings in the GLOBE study referenced earlier, not all followers want the same thing from their leaders. The cultural values and preferences of the followers strongly influence who can effectively lead them. Some followers want larger-than-life, charismatic leaders like Bill Clinton. Others want modest, understated, practical leaders like Angela Merkel. This is explained by an idea known as implicit leadership theory, which says that whether you lead effectively is not only based on your leadership skills; it’s also a reflection of your followers’ expectations of leaders. Because culture is one of the variables that shapes what people expect and want from a leader, a culturally intelligent leader is wise to understand this before accepting a new leadership role or assigning someone else to one.

Myth #4: Matrix Models Are Better Suited for Leading Across Borders

Many companies have moved away from headquarter-centric models of leadership to matrix models. Reporting lines go in multiple directions, teams are co-located, and decision making is more collaborative than top-down. Most of the world, however, prefers a more hierarchical style of leadership in which authority lines are explicit and followers are given clear, specific directions. There’s great potential in matrix models for international growth and expansion. But a matrix model requires an additional level of cultural intelligence in order to effectively use it.

I’ve interacted with leaders at Google about this. Google has an extremely strong corporate culture and recruiters are given a clear standard of how to spot the Google DNA when searching for new Googlers. But the questions and techniques recruiters typically use to get a sense of a job candidate’s interests, personal accomplishments, and innovative ideas need to be significantly adapted based on the cultural background of the candidate. And the ability to find the right candidates who fit with the more matrixed structure of Google requires culturally intelligent recruiters.

Global leadership itself is not a myth. It is possible to lead effectively across multiple cultures. This is the very thing we’ve been studying in our research on cultural intelligence for the last couple of decades. We have growing evidence that a leader’s cultural intelligence predicts several important leadership outcomes—something we’ll review more explicitly in Part III of the book. Effectively leading across various cultures is a capability that can be measured and improved. But it begins with a more thoughtful, situational understanding of leadership.

Conclusion

I’m sitting in an airport right now. For a split second, I forgot where I was. And the familiarity of the scene around me did little to help. The Body Shop is right in front of me, Burberry is to my left, Starbucks is to my right, and the duty-free shopping store is just around the corner. The guy next to me is typing away furiously on his smartphone. It’s easy to see the familiar airport totem poles in Sydney, Sao Paulo, London, Hong Kong, Orlando, and Johannesburg and believe the world is flat in every way. In part, it is. You can order your grande, triple-shot, nonfat, vanilla, no-foam Starbucks latte in sixty-two countries. And endless competitors offer their own versions of the same drink in many more places. But beware of thinking that the same negotiating skills, sense of humor, and motivational techniques can be used indiscriminately with everyone, everywhere.

Leading in the twenty-first-century world means maneuvering the twists and turns of a multidimensional world. The continually shifting landscape of global leadership can be disorienting; experience and intuition alone are not enough. But cultural intelligence offers a way through the maze that’s not only effective but also invigorating and fulfilling. Join a community of leaders across the world who are acquiring cultural intelligence to tap into the opportunities and results of leading across our rapidly globalizing world.

Chapter 2

WHAT IS CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE?

The vice chairman of one of the largest Fortune 100 companies in the world was speaking to a group of Asian executives in Singapore. The North American chair spent half his keynote telling the audience how much he loved Asia. He said, “I spend 200-plus days a year here.… I love the food. I just can’t get enough of this place. Asia is the future! I come here as often as possible.”

The mostly Asian audience seemed to appreciate his enthusiasm for their part of the world. But during the question-and-answer period that followed, things began to unravel for him. One individual asked, “So what are you changing about your business strategy given your commitment to Asia?” The executive looked a little caught off guard and gave a nondescript answer about working on some focus groups to determine that. And then someone else asked who on the company’s board is from Asia, to which he said, “Well, we meet quarterly in the U.S. so it’s not realistic to fly them to the States that often.” And when he was asked what challenges he faces leading people in Asia, he again had nothing of substance to say.

This North American executive was a very articulate speaker. He had a likable personality, an impressive leadership portfolio, and he exuded charisma. But his enthusiasm and charm didn’t work with this Asian audience. And when the questions started coming, he was blindsided.

If two candidates for an executive position have similar resumes, will they be equally effective working across borders? Not necessarily. This is one of the unique contributions from the cultural intelligence research. Cultural intelligence isn’t something that comes automatically based on where someone has worked, studied, or lived. It’s an individual capability. Some have it, some don’t; but anyone can become more culturally intelligent.

What leads to higher levels of cultural intelligence? Is someone who grew up in London or Singapore more likely to have high CQ than someone who grew up in Des Moines or rural China? Do Millennials have higher CQ than boomers? And what role does international experience and formal education play in your CQ? All these variables can be related to CQ but they’re correlations, not causations. I’ve met business leaders and government officials who have lived for decades overseas yet demonstrate very little ability to see beyond their cultural blinders. And I’ve met other leaders, sometimes with minimal international experience, who are extremely adept at moving in and out of various cultural contexts and situations while still remaining true to who they are. What makes the difference? What abilities and skills consistently yield results in effective cross-cultural leadership?

Who Are the Culturally Intelligent?

The question that has informed our research for the last couple of decades across more than seventy countries is this: What’s the difference between individuals and organizations that succeed in today’s multicultural, globalized world and those that fail? Our desire was to go beyond the existing notions of cultural sensitivity and awareness to identify the recurring characteristics of individuals who can successfully and respectfully accomplish their objectives, whatever the cultural context. Awareness is the first step, but it’s not enough. A culturally intelligent leader can effectively manage people and projects whatever the cultural context.

The research, which to date includes survey responses from more than 40,000 individuals across every major region of the world, reveals four capabilities consistently found among the culturally intelligent, which are depicted in Figure 2-1. These were conceptualized based on the existing research on intelligence, including academic intelligence (IQ), emotional intelligence (EQ), and other forms of intelligence such as social intelligence and practical intelligence. CQ picks up where these other forms of intelligence leave off. It gives you the practical and interpersonal skills needed when the cultural context changes. Each of the four capabilities of cultural intelligence includes more specific skills (subdimensions) that can be measured and enhanced. We’ll examine these thoroughly in the chapters that follow but here’s a brief overview:

Figure 2-1. The Four Capabilities of Culturally Intelligent Leaders

1. CQ Drive (Motivation): Having the Interest, Confidence, and Drive to Adapt Cross-Culturally.

CQ Drive, the motivational dimension of CQ, is your level of interest, drive, and energy to adapt cross-culturally. Do you have the confidence and drive to work through the challenges and conflict that inevitably accompany cross-cultural work? The ability to be personally engaged and persevere through intercultural challenges is one of the most novel and important aspects of cultural intelligence. We cannot simply assume people have the interest and motivation to adjust to cultural differences. Employees often approach diversity training apathetically or do it just because it’s required. Personnel headed to international assignments are often more concerned about moving and adjusting their families overseas than they are about developing cultural understanding. Without ample motivation for engaging interculturally, there’s little point in spending time and money on intercultural training.

CQ Drive includes three subdimensions that can be assessed and developed: intrinsic interest, the degree to which you derive enjoyment from culturally diverse situations; extrinsic interest, the tangible benefits you gain from culturally diverse experiences; and self-efficacy, the confidence that you will be effective in a cross-cultural encounter. All three of these motivational dynamics play a role in how you approach intercultural situations.

2. CQ Knowledge (Cognition): Understanding Intercultural Norms and Differences.

CQ Knowledge, the cognitive dimension of the CQ research, refers to your knowledge about culture and its role in shaping how business is done. Do you understand the way culture shapes how people think and behave? It also includes your overall knowledge of how cultures vary from one another.

CQ Knowledge includes two subdimensions that can be further assessed and learned: cultural-general understanding and context-specific understanding. Cultural general refers to a macro understanding of cultural systems and the cultural norms and values associated with different societies. To lead effectively, you need to understand ways that communication styles, predominant religious beliefs, and role expectations for men and women differ across cultures. In addition, general knowledge about different types of economic, business, legal, and political systems that exist throughout the world is important. For example, every nation has cultural systems for how its members distribute products and services or for how they mate and raise their children. Understanding how a family system works might seem unnecessary but it becomes critically relevant when you’re trying to develop human resources policies for employees who are expected to care for senior members of their extended family. And you need a core understanding of culture, language patterns, and nonverbal behaviors. This kind of knowledge helps build your confidence when working in a new cultural environment. The value a culture places on time and relationships becomes highly germane when a Scandinavian is trying to get a signed contract from a potential affiliate in China or Saudi Arabia, where different norms shape leaders’ expectations.

The other important part of CQ Knowledge is knowing how culture influences your effectiveness in specific domains. For example, being an effective global leader in business is different from being an effective leader of a multicultural university. And working across borders for an information technology company requires a different application of cultural understanding than working across borders for a charitable organization or on a military initiative. This kind of specialized, domain-specific cultural knowledge combined with a macro understanding of cultural issues is a crucial part of leading with cultural intelligence.

CQ Knowledge is the dimension most often emphasized in many approaches to managing across cultures. A large and growing training and consulting industry focuses on teaching leaders this kind of cultural knowledge. Although the information coming from CQ Knowledge is valuable, unless it is combined with the other three capabilities of CQ, its relevance to the real demands of leadership is questionable and potentially even detrimental.

3. CQ Strategy (Metacognition): Making Sense of Culturally Diverse Experiences and Planning Accordingly.

CQ Strategy, also known as metacognitive CQ, is your ability to strategize when crossing cultures. Can you slow down long enough to carefully observe what’s going on inside your mind and the minds of others? It’s the ability to draw on your cultural understanding to solve culturally complex problems. CQ Strategy helps a leader use cultural knowledge to plan an appropriate strategy, accurately interpret what’s going on, and check to see if expectations are accurate or need revision.

The three subdimensions of CQ Strategy, which can be measured and developed, are planning, awareness, and checking. Planning means taking time to prepare for a cross-cultural encounter—anticipating how to approach the people, topic, and situation. Awareness means being in tune with what’s going on in ourselves and others during an intercultural encounter. Checking means comparing our actual experience with what we expected to happen. CQ Strategy emphasizes taking the time to plan consciously, and it’s the lynchpin between understanding cultural issues and actually being able to use our understanding to be more effective.

4. CQ Action (Behavioral): Changing Verbal and Nonverbal Actions Appropriately When Interacting Cross-Culturally.

CQ Action, the behavioral dimension of CQ, is your ability to act appropriately in a range of cross-cultural situations. Can you effectively accomplish your performance goals in different cultural situations? One of the most important aspects of CQ Action is knowing when to adapt to another culture and when not to do so. A person with high CQ learns which actions will and will not enhance effectiveness and acts on that understanding. Thus, CQ Action involves flexible actions tailored to specific cultural contexts.

The subdimensions of CQ Action are speech acts, the specific words and phrases we use when we communicate specific types of messages; verbal actions; and nonverbal actions. It is these three kinds of behaviors that most need to be adapted to cultural norms. Although the demands of today’s intercultural settings make it impossible to master all the dos and don’ts of various cultures, there are certain behaviors that should be modified when we interact with different cultures. For example, Westerners need to learn the importance of carefully studying business cards presented by those from most Asian contexts. And Asians need to engage in small talk to build trust with North Americans. Also, some basic verbal and nonverbal behaviors enhance the extent to which others perceive us as effective leaders. As an example, the verbal tone (e.g., loud versus soft) in which words are spoken can convey different meanings across cultures. And perhaps far more important is the capability to adapt the way you work to different decision-making processes, deadlines, and team dynamics. Almost every approach to intercultural work has insisted on the importance of flexibility. With CQ Action, we now have an evidence-based way of assessing and improving flexibility.

Most of this book is devoted to unpacking these four capabilities and offering you insights for how to strengthen them in yourself and others you lead. As you develop each of these capabilities, you’ll tap into all kinds of opportunities in yourself and others.

How Is CQ Measured?

After conceptualizing and testing the four capabilities of CQ, my colleagues Linn Van Dyne and Soon Ang developed the Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS) and worked on confirming the validity of the CQS using culturally diverse samples that included executives, expats, military leaders, staff, students, and sales agents. The CQS measures a leader’s development in each of the four capabilities as well as the subdimensions associated with each one.

The empirical evidence for using the CQS as a valid measurement of intercultural capabilities was first published in 2007. Since then, CQ research has been peer reviewed in over a hundred academic journals. In addition, Van Dyne, Ang, and Koh validated an observer-rated version of the CQS and demonstrated its reliability as a valid way to assess leaders’ intercultural capabilities based on feedback from others (e.g., peers, reports, supervisors). The CQS continues to be available to academics for research purposes in order to continue supporting and driving the ongoing research of cultural intelligence by scholars around the world.

CQ is a more reliable, consistent way to predict how you will lead across cultures than your personality, age, gender, where you’re from, or emotional intelligence. David Matsumoto, a world-renowned cross-cultural psychologist, identified CQ as one of the only reliable ways to measure cross-border skills. He states, “There is considerable evidence for the concurrent and predictive ecological validity of CQ with samples from multiple cultures.”

Matsumoto goes on to report that CQ predicts a leader’s cross-cultural performance in several areas: judgment and decision making, problem solving, ability to adjust, well-being, ability to sell across cultures, culture shock, innovation, team performance, negotiation, and trust building.

The CQS was used to develop the CQ Self-Assessment and the CQ Multi-Rater Assessment (360°), both of which are being used widely by leaders in business, government, charitable settings, and universities. The CQ Self-Assessment gives leaders a personal inventory of how they perceive their cross-border leadership skills. The CQ Multi-Rater Assessment combines one’s self-assessment with feedback from others. This assessment provides a more complete and reliable picture of CQ because it allows leaders to compare their self-ratings with how others rate their CQ. Several Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, charitable organizations, and universities are using the CQ Multi-Rater Assessment in their leadership development initiatives. (Learn more about CQ assessments and research at www.culturalQ.com)

Cultural Intelligence vs. Cultural Competence

It’s certainly not a novel idea to suggest that leaders need to develop skills to work effectively across cultures at home and overseas. This often is referred to as cultural competence or more recently in some circles as one’s “global mindset.” How does cultural intelligence relate to these similar concepts? Cultural competence is an umbrella term to refer to one’s ability to understand, appreciate, and interact with people from different cultural backgrounds. There are more than thirty cultural competence models, which include over three hundred concepts ranging from personal characteristics (e.g., extravert versus introvert) to attitudes and beliefs. Many of these models have contributed significantly to my own understanding of global leadership, but as much as I enjoyed the readings and presentations I heard on many cultural competency theories, I often experienced a disconnect with knowing how to apply them as a leader. The cultural competency field has lacked a coherent model, and many of the corresponding inventories overemphasize awareness, attitudes, and understanding cultural norms. It’s nearly impossible to assess and improve these kinds of elusive ideas, and it’s demotivating if you learn that your personality predisposes you to be ineffective cross-culturally. And as important as it is to be aware of cultural norms, I’ve met plenty of people who know a great deal about cultural norms but can’t for the life of them lead effectively across different cultures.

Cultural intelligence, while drawing from many of the valuable insights provided from the cultural competence field, differs in the following key areas.

Form of Intelligence

CQ draws on the rich history of the intelligence research. It’s included in the Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence, along with other research-based forms of intelligence such as emotional intelligence and social intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the ability to detect and regulate the emotions of one’s self and others. Most leaders know the critical importance of this capability for leading effectively. But how does emotional intelligence translate into leading across cultures?

I once interviewed a group of MBA students who traveled to Bangalore, India, on a study-abroad program. One of the students, Shelly, was very vocal throughout our time together. She came to the meeting wearing heels, and a black suit, with her hair pulled up in a knot. She offered warm, nonverbal affirmation whenever her peers spoke. It only took a few minutes of interacting with Shelly to see she would probably score pretty high on an EQ assessment. She was an excellent conversationalist, and several times during the focus group meeting, Shelly not only responded to my questions but also found ways to draw in those students who had previously been sitting disengaged. Yet, ironically, when I asked Shelly, “So what was the biggest challenge you faced when you were in Bangalore?” she replied, “Just getting people to talk with me. It was totally awkward. I tried everything I could think of and most of my conversations went nowhere. Even though we speak the same language, we never seemed to get into meaningful conversations.”

Individuals who have a strong ability to empathize and relate to people in their own culture might find that the same empathetic and social skills don’t always work when interacting with people from a different cultural background. This can be extremely frustrating to someone like Shelly who usually finds social interaction natural. Books and training on emotional intelligence presume a level of familiarity with the culture of those with whom we interact and lead. Cultural intelligence picks up where emotional and practical intelligence leaves off. It allows you to develop and apply your interpersonal and problem-solving skills when working in culturally diverse situations. And because it’s a learned form of intelligence, it’s something you can apply to any culturally diverse situation rather than thinking you have to relearn how to lead for every new situation or hire.

Coherent Framework

Another way cultural intelligence differs from many cultural competency theories is the coherent framework on which the model is based. The four capabilities of CQ provide a coherent way to measure, enhance, and apply CQ. This is much more practically useful than a long list of competencies that mix together personality traits, attitudes, and learned capabilities. The four capabilities of intelligence (motivation, cognition, metacognition, and behavior) are interrelated, whatever the form of intelligence. A person who knows (cognition) how to relate interpersonally but has no desire to do so (motivation) won’t function in a socially intelligent way. An individual who can deeply analyze (metacognition) a practical situation but can’t actually solve it in real life (behavior) doesn’t have much practical intelligence.

In addition, the coherent model behind cultural intelligence offers a culture-general approach, a need identified in a variety of studies of global management. As mentioned previously, it was this broader approach of cultural intelligence that initially drew me to the research and model. Much of my own work has required regular bouts of short-term, episodic travel. I was convinced culture was a significant force in how I did my work, but I felt paralyzed by the unrealistic notion of becoming a cultural expert on all the different people and places I encountered.

There is certainly a place for learning the specifics of certain cultures. When it became clear I was going to be responsible for leading my university’s work in Liberia, I knew I needed to enhance my understanding of Liberia’s historical and cultural background. It would have been careless for me to solely rely on a general understanding of cultures to do my work effectively. But I also wasn’t starting from zero. Even though I had never been to Liberia, nor had I spent any time studying the culture, a growing measure of cultural intelligence helped me know what kinds of information to seek and the kinds of questions to ask. I’ve already demonstrated that my previous experiences and understanding didn’t keep me from making mistakes. And I have plenty more like those to share. But, thankfully, learning from our mistakes can be one of the greatest ways to improve our cultural intelligence. In fact, part of being more culturally intelligent is embracing the idea that cross-cultural conflict is inevitable and provides an opportunity for personal and professional growth.

You too will need to gain more specific understanding of certain organizational, generational, and socio-ethnic cultures. But the primary emphasis of the cultural intelligence approach is to develop a skill set that can be applied to all kinds of cultural situations. Although some initial reading and training in cultural intelligence can jump-start your growth in cultural intelligence, you will continue to add to your repertoire for culturally intelligent leadership throughout your career. The four-part model behind CQ offers leaders a coherent way to develop cultural intelligence in themselves and those they lead.

Predicts Performance

Understanding one’s “intellectual capital” or a leader’s level of “ethnocentrism”—dimensions measured on some other intercultural assessments—can be interesting insights. But there’s little reliable evidence that these measures by themselves predict a leader’s intercultural performance. The four capabilities of cultural intelligence can be mapped to specific outcomes, and there are hundreds of peer-reviewed studies to back this up. If you want to excel at intercultural negotiation, CQ predicts how well you’ll do so and sheds light on how to improve. For someone expected to lead a multicultural team, CQ predicts where the leader will have the greatest challenges. Or if you want insights on an individual’s decision-making abilities cross-culturally, CQ predicts that as well. The CQ research was designed to predict performance and adjustment in intercultural situations and, therefore, it’s best used for that purpose. The specific performance results related to high CQ are reviewed in Chapter 8.

Developmental Approach

People inevitably ask me, Is cultural intelligence nature or nurture? Are some people just genetically inclined toward being more culturally intelligent? The answer is quite possibly yes. Just as some of us are more naturally oriented to be better runners, engineers, and musicians, so also may some of us be more genetically inclined to be more flexible in our behavior cross-culturally.

For example, the research finds that the capabilities of cultural intelligence that correlate to being an extravert differ from those that correlate to being an introvert. There’s also a positive relationship between being naturally conscientious and CQ Strategy. The personality trait referred to as “openness,” a general curiosity toward circumstances and the world, is positively related to all four capabilities of cultural intelligence. So there are some interesting correlations between our personalities and cultural intelligence, something we’ll explore more fully in Chapter 8. However, the emphasis of cultural intelligence is that through learning and interventions everyone can become more culturally intelligent. Just because someone might bear a natural talent in adjusting his or her behavior for cross-cultural situations is no guarantee that the person will be a culturally intelligent leader. In the same way that possessing good genes for long-distance running doesn’t mean someone who never exercises can expect to be a marathon runner, so also someone naturally disposed toward openness has to develop that trait in order to lead with cultural intelligence. As one of the contemporary forms of intelligence, cultural intelligence is more focused on nurture than nature. Through training, experience, and accountability, anyone can improve his or her CQ. This is another important distinction of cultural intelligence as compared to some other approaches to global leadership.

Cultural intelligence is uniquely suited to the demands of global leaders. It offers leaders a realistic, practical skill set to meet the demands of leadership in today’s fast-paced world. (For ongoing updates about CQ research and materials, visit www.culturalQ.com)

Four-Step Process

There are a variety of ways to apply the four capabilities of cultural intelligence to leadership. They can be used to assess individuals you’re considering for a cross-cultural assignment. They can also serve as four categories for diversity and inclusion programs, global management training, or for a leader’s personal development plan. And each of the capabilities can be used as a four-step process for developing cultural intelligence both over the long haul and in case-by-case situations. This four-step process is one of the ways cultural intelligence is applied in this book. Although the four capabilities of cultural intelligence don’t always develop in one particular order, it can be helpful to think about the four capabilities of CQ as four steps toward increased CQ. It might look something like this:

• Step 1: CQ Drive (motivational dimension) gives us the energy and self-confidence to pursue the needed understanding and planning necessary for a particular cross-cultural project.

• Step 2: CQ Knowledge (cognitive dimension) provides us with an understanding of basic cultural issues that are relevant to this project.

• Step 3: CQ Strategy (metacognitive dimension) allows us to draw on our cultural understanding so we can plan and interpret what’s going on in this situation.

• Step 4: CQ Action (behavioral dimension) provides us with the ability to engage in effective, flexible leadership for this task.

As the process repeats itself, your cultural intelligence has the potential to keep growing. Cultural intelligence is not a static ability. It continues to morph and develop as we go about our daily work. And it doesn’t always develop in a linear direction, moving from one step to the next. But if you’re looking for a practical way to begin applying CQ to a leadership situation, using the four capabilities as four steps is one way to get started.

An Inside-Out Approach

There’s little hope we can adapt our intercultural behavior in any kind of sustained way unless we actually change the way we see our fellow citizens around the world. We have to move beyond artificial approaches in which we pretend to be respectful and move toward becoming leaders who genuinely respect and value people from different cultural backgrounds. This is a significant factor determining whether a leader truly behaves with cultural intelligence. Diversity programs and creative cross-cultural simulations are pointless if we don’t actually change the way we view each other.

One of the complaints I often hear from some employees as they assess diversity training is that it made little difference in what actually occurred in the workplace. It may indeed be helpful to remind men about appropriate ways to interact with their female colleagues, and there is benefit to teaching people different cultural values related to direct versus indirect communication. But if a guy doesn’t view his female colleagues with respect or if an Aussie leader still sees her Chinese affiliate as needing to “get to the point,” have we really accomplished much?

One study reviewed a company that had developed an extensive diversity training program to address the abysmal morale throughout the organization. Thousands of dollars and many diversity training workshops later, little had changed. Only through a more in-depth analysis did it surface that the CEO of the organization, a former U.S. Marine, was extremely prejudiced against overweight employees. In his view, an overweight worker was an undisciplined, lazy worker. He and his peers had been through numerous modules and interventions for enhancing respect of women and people of color. But the core issue wasn’t being addressed. It was an unconscious bias that shaped the whole environment of the company. Leading with cultural intelligence begins with looking internally at biases and assumptions and then making conscious decisions to address them.

Becoming culturally intelligent means we have to do more than simply change the way we talk to our culturally diverse colleagues. We have to actually transform the way we see each other. I’ll say more about this transformative approach as we move ahead on our journey toward leading with cultural intelligence.

Conclusion

Some individuals have high CQ and others don’t, but almost everyone can become more culturally intelligent. Cultural intelligence is uniquely suited for the barrage of cultural situations facing today’s leaders. It includes a set of capabilities needed by leaders in every field. Without it, leaders run the risk of driving their careers and their organizations into obsolescence. But leaders who commit to improving the ways they think, plan, and act through intercultural situations have an unusual edge for navigating the fascinating terrain of our curvy, multidimensional world.

Cultural intelligence is a learned capability that builds on the other forms of intelligence needed by today’s leaders. Just as leaders can grow in their social, emotional, and technical competence, they can grow in their ability to effectively lead across various ethnic and organizational cultures. As leaders move through the four capabilities of cultural intelligence—CQ Drive, Knowledge, Strategy, and Action—they gain a repertoire of perspectives, skills, and behaviors that they can use as they move in and out of the fast-paced world of globalization. True cultural intelligence stems from within and transforms the way we lead at home and across the globe.

Part II

Developing Cultural Intelligence

Chapter 3

CQ DRIVE: DISCOVER THE POTENTIAL

CQ DRIVE: What’s my motivation?

Showing interest, confidence, and drive to adapt cross-culturally

Profile of a leader with high CQ Drive

Leaders with high CQ Drive are motivated to learn and adapt to new and diverse cultural settings. Their confidence in their adaptive abilities will influence the way they perform in multicultural situations.

I’m very energized by cross-cultural encounters. Put me in a room full of people and the internationals in the room draw me like a magnet. Ask me where I want to eat and I’ll choose something ethnically exotic. Book me on an international flight and my adrenaline starts pumping. I love to blaze the streets of a new place, savor the local food, roam the neighborhoods, and shop at the local markets. My international work has been well served by my insatiable wanderlust. But sometimes it gets me into trouble. Not all my colleagues and friends have shared my love for all things cross-cultural. One time I was at a conference in Bangkok with a group of Western colleagues and I told them I knew a great little place where we could grab some local tribal food. My suggestion was almost unanimously vetoed, and, much to my chagrin, we ended up at Tony Roma’s for steak and ribs. Another time I enthusiastically told a couple of my travel companions that our partner in Mexico had decided to move our upcoming meeting to an outlying village rather than Mexico City. Neither of them was happy about the decision, one replying, “You’ve got to be kidding” and the other asking, “Why waste all that time getting out there when we could just meet at the comfortable hotel where we always stay?”

I’m learning not to assume that everyone will be as excited as I am about venturing into a new place. We all have varying levels of motivation and drive for working across cultures, and that’s okay. Some of us love to travel and experience different places and people. Others prefer never to leave home. But no leader can escape working in a global context today.

Even without an innate passion for all things diverse, there are some simple ways to grow your motivation for leading across cultures. CQ Drive, the motivational dimension of cultural intelligence, is one of the most important findings that emerged from our research on culturally intelligent leaders. Leaders who are effective cross-culturally are curious about and interested in different cultures.

The importance of motivation to intercultural effectiveness may seem painfully obvious. Yet it’s an element that is often overlooked. Many organizations jump into training about cultural differences without first assessing whether personnel have any motivation to learn this information and whether they see it as relevant to their performance. This is one of the reasons diversity-training programs often fail. If team members don’t see the positive benefits of changing the way they interact with culturally diverse colleagues, the training can be a waste of time. There is a direct correlation between your level of motivation for adapting cross-culturally and your effectiveness. It’s not the only component, but it’s critical.

Sometimes our reluctance to work with another culture stems from something in our past experience. Take Wendy, for example, a no-nonsense, thirty-seven-year-old professional who grew up in an upper-middle-class home in upstate New York. She went to Cornell, got her MBA at Harvard, and spent seven years climbing the corporate ladder in New York City. She exudes a confidence not easily missed by her straight posture, warm but self-assured smile, and articulate speech. But throughout her studies and work, she had always been a Big Sister to kids in underprivileged neighborhoods. Five years ago, Wendy made a drastic career shift and accepted a job as CEO of a nonprofit organization focused on helping children at risk.

Throughout its fifteen-year history, Wendy’s organization has been focused primarily on serving children in under-resourced communities throughout the United States and Canada. Last year, the board charged Wendy with expanding its work into Central America. Wendy didn’t support this idea because she was afraid the organization would lose focus, but she agreed to look into it. When I met Wendy, she had spent the past six months reading everything she could about the issues facing children in places such as Tegucigalpa, Managua, and San Salvador. She read about the cultural issues throughout the region and she was even shoring up her Spanish. When Wendy agreed to meet me as part of my research on culturally intelligent leadership in nonprofits, she was two weeks away from making her first trip to Central America on behalf of the organization.

Wendy said:

Put me with a group of leaders on the south side of Chicago or among a bunch of community activists in rural Saskatchewan and I know what to do. I have a clear sense of how we can serve the needs of children there. But even after all the learning I’ve been doing about Central America, I still don’t have a strong grasp how we should adapt our programs to meet the needs of kids down there.

Frankly, I was encouraged to learn that Wendy wasn’t overly confident about how the organization’s programs would work there, but I observed an overall reticence in how Wendy talked about this expansion into Central America.

Eventually I asked Wendy, “So are you looking forward to this trip?” She replied, “Ah.… ou know what it’s like. Travel gets old fast. But it will be fine. My only visits down there have been a couple of beach vacations in Costa Rica.” I continued, “But how about this whole new emphasis into Central America? Are you excited about that added dimension to your work?” She said:

I can’t say I’m excited. I’m trying to learn what I can and then I need to hand off this endeavor to someone with the passion to go at this wholeheartedly. My passion is for kids here. It’s not that I don’t care about kids in other places. But my heart can only take on so much.

After some further interaction, Wendy told me she has a hard time working with Hispanic men. In a previous job, she was repeatedly harassed by a Mexican American colleague, though she never filed a formal complaint against him. She knew it was unfair to generalize her experience to all Hispanic men, but she couldn’t change the raw emotions she felt about thrusting herself into an environment filled with men who remind her of this past experience.

Despite Wendy’s hard work to improve her Spanish and understanding of Central American culture, her reticence for this cross-cultural project will impede her effectiveness. Many approaches to global leadership focus on information about how cultures differ. But some of the greatest challenges in managing across cultures have much less to do with inadequate information and more to do with internal motivation. Without adequate drive and confidence, leaders will continue to struggle in cross-cultural work. This is one of the first things to look for when assessing the CQ of someone who will be taking on a role that requires leading across cultures. Low CQ Drive should signal caution about whether the individual is ready for this kind of responsibility.

The good news is that any leader can increase his or her CQ Drive. Van Dyne and Ang identified three sources of motivation, which can be described as the three subdimensions of CQ Drive: intrinsic interest, extrinsic interest, and self-efficacy. These sub-dimensions are the basis of the following strategies for improving CQ Drive in yourself and others.

HOW TO DEVELOP CQ DRIVE

1. Be honest with yourself.

2. Examine your confidence level.

3. Eat and socialize.

4. Count the perks.

5. Work for something bigger.

Key question: What’s my level of confidence and motivation for this cross-cultural assignment? If it’s lacking, what can I do to increase it?

Be Honest with Yourself

The first step for improving CQ Drive is being honest with ourselves. Wendy was able to honestly acknowledge her reservations about immersing herself in the Latin American culture, and that’s a significant breakthrough.

Even though I come to life when I’m immersed in a new place, I regularly have my own moments when I hit the wall. They don’t have to be all-out meltdowns, and they usually aren’t. Take, for example, this journal entry I wrote when facilitating a leadership session with a group of executives in Malaysia:

I’m jet-lagged, Emily [my daughter] is sick at home, and the session didn’t go great yesterday; then after a late dinner with John, I came back to the hotel room to face an in-box full of urgent emails. I need some space to come up with a different approach for the seminar today; but there’s no time for that now. I have to jump on a conference call and then I start teaching in an hour.

For me, the lack of motivation stemmed from wanting to be home with my sick daughter, feeling exhausted, and questioning my effectiveness. For Wendy, the lack of motivation was rooted in fear based on a previous experience.

Klaus, a German expatriate on a two-year assignment in Nairobi, Kenya, needed a similar kind of honesty. He described the fear his family experienced when they moved to Nairobi from Munich:

We found ourselves distrusting everyone. We heard so many stories about expat families being robbed and taken advantage of. My wife resisted hiring domestic help for the longest time for fear of having Kenyans in our home. Eventually we became more relaxed. But the fear factor was a huge challenge for us during our first six months.

Surely it’s appropriate to tend to the safety of our families and to find out if we’re subjecting ourselves to danger. But then we have to discover ways to overcome our fears and persevere, as Klaus did.

Honesty also requires facing the prejudices and biases we implicitly associate with certain groups of people. Notice the frank, raw musings written by Sharise, a business leader in Portland, Oregon:

Am I a racist? Yesterday when I stopped to get my blood drawn, a black man walked in. I just assumed he was the lab tech. Only later did it become evident he’s a physician.… Why did I so quickly assume he must be the lab tech? If he had been a white guy, I probably would have guessed he was a doctor.

We all have unconscious biases toward certain groups of people. These stem from our early socialization and our brains are wired to view certain groups as “foes.” The activation in the brain is automatic. But the key is whether we act on those biases and uniformly apply them to anyone from a group. And by honestly acknowledging and understanding them, we can better control and moderate their influence on our interactions.

Here are a few ways to begin the process of being honest with yourself:

• Identify what cultures are most challenging for you. These might include certain national or ethnic cultures but they might also include other types of cultural contexts (e.g., certain age groups, professions, or ideologies). If you had to lead a group coming from a different culture, what culture(s) would stretch you most? Why? Reflecting on these questions and discussing them with trusted colleagues and friends can play a critical role in your becoming more honest with yourself.

• Try some of the implicit association tests available online (http://projectimplicit.org). These tests reveal biases we have toward people’s skin color, weight, age, and religion. They’re fascinating! They’re designed to demonstrate how unconscious bias affects the way we interact with others. And they help promote self-awareness about the automatic impulses we have toward certain cultural groups.

• Revisit assessment results you’ve received from other inventories you’ve completed, such as leadership inventories, personality assessments, and emotional competency tools. Look for any trends across these tools and think about how they might influence your cross-cultural interactions. For example, if you see a continual tendency in yourself toward prioritizing task over relationship, consider how that might influence the way you interact in cultures that frustrate you and those that you enjoy most.

If you don’t particularly enjoy intercultural interactions and experiences as a whole, owning that is a great start. Then you can begin to think about how to connect things that do motivate you with your cross-cultural work. Connect an existing interest with an intercultural component. For example, leaders in the graphic design context can look for what different cultures rate as their favorite logo and seek to understand what that says about the diversity of taste across different cultures. Or leaders in the pharmaceutical industry can learn about the lifestyles and behaviors of patients in various countries to improve the outcome of the research and resulting interventions they release. Runners can explore new terrain as they travel, photographers can capture a diversity of images even within different neighborhoods across the same community, and animal lovers can explore the different wildlife inhabiting the places they visit.

Examine Your Confidence Level

Being honest with ourselves naturally moves us toward another important way to improve CQ Drive: examining our level of confidence in doing cross-cultural work. Self-efficacy is our perception of our ability to successfully reach a goal. It’s our degree of confidence in whether we can succeed at a particular task. A great deal of research supports the premise that a leader’s level of confidence will critically determine outcomes.

Wendy demonstrated a great deal of self-efficacy as she described the broader goals for her organization. The budget was 300 percent larger than when she came on board five years before and they were helping five times as many children. And she was pretty certain they would continue that kind of growth for the next five years. But the expansion into Central America felt disorienting to Wendy. Her prior experiences and unconscious bias eroded her confidence in working in Central America.

Self-efficacy is an important predictor of cross-cultural adjustment. If you’re tentative about working in a particular culture, it will inevitably erode your effectiveness in doing things such as negotiating contracts, managing conflict, and creating new opportunities. Wendy tried to build her confidence by learning everything she could about the culture and the children at risk throughout the region. This is a good starting point for addressing low self-efficacy. In addition, talking to others who have been successful working in the culture, finding someone to be your interpreter and coach along the way, and gaining some small, positive experiences are all ways to improve your self-confidence in cross-cultural work. As Wendy begins to have positive experiences with Hispanic men, and as she reflects on those experiences, she can begin to change her internal bias and lack of confidence in and motivation for adapting to the cultures in Central America.

It’s a delicate balance. Too many leaders are overly confident that they’ll be fine wherever they go. That’s equally detrimental. But sometimes intercultural training and management courses focus so much on the mistakes leaders have made globally that it causes us to be paralyzed by the fear of failure.

For me, looking at my low motivation for and confidence in teaching in Malaysia caused me to spontaneously shift my topic for the day. We were supposed to continue a subject we began the day before: developing succession plans for retiring leaders. I knew I could cover the material, but I lacked confidence that I could get the participants engaged in discussing it beyond what we had already done the previous day. I had recently been thinking a lot about the influence of organizational culture on innovation, and a number of my informal conversations with the seminar participants were related to this topic. So I made a quick judgment call to use the next session to talk about organizational culture and innovation because I felt more confident about doing it with this group. We used a number of group exercises in which I assigned them an organizational culture and suggested a few concrete ways for them to connect the insights that emerged for how they foster ideation. I had to deal with the dissonance this shift in topic created for some participants who wanted to make sure we were going to finish covering the succession planning material promised—a fair concern by any group and accentuated by the cultural values of the participants. But the room felt like it came alive. It might have been the content and topic but it just as well might have been the shift in my personal sense of confidence that this would be something that would better connect and be valuable to them. Our sense of confidence in particular tasks varies based on the situation and context. Growing our confidence will enhance our CQ Drive.

Eat and Socialize

Food is one of the most familiar topics discussed among international travelers. Many business travelers describe the challenge of eating unfamiliar foods and the “scary” experience of being hosted by people who appear insensitive to a visitor’s dislike for the local cuisine. Aini, an Indonesian executive, talked with me about the challenges she felt during her first business trip to the United States. She related:

I still haven’t acquired a taste for all the raw greens you North Americans love. Your salads are huge but they’re pretty uninviting to me. And having seen the way they package up chicken and freeze it, I can’t bring myself to eat the cold chicken often put in the salad. It can’t be fresh like the whole ones we get at the markets in Jakarta. When I buy chicken or fish at home, I can see what it looks like before it gets all diced up. But it just turns my stomach to walk through the meat section in the supermarkets in the United States. I just dread mealtime when I’m in the States.

It’s ironic to hear Aini describe her distaste for frozen chicken in similar ways to how many North Americans describe the nauseating experience of seeing fresh meat hanging in local markets in other countries. Aini’s disgust for some North American foods isn’t likely to be as detrimental to her when she’s working in the United States as it would be in some other places. For the most part, food is primarily a functional necessity in the dominant North American culture. We eat to work and convenience is king. And if Aini was visiting my home, I’d tell her, “Don’t eat anything you don’t like.” We might feel bad if she didn’t eat anything we prepared, but for the most part, we’d want her to pick and choose based on her preferences.

But in many parts of the world, food is deeply rooted in the life of people. Sometimes I’ve had Indian hosts prepare meals for me that used spices grown on their homestead for hundreds of years. The best Indian meals take days to prepare. So to pass on eating dishes prepared or ordered for you in that context could be far more significant than passing on a dish you just don’t care for. It can be seen as an all-out rejection. And as for eating with utensils versus eating with our hands, one of my Indian friends says, “Eating with utensils is like making love through an interpreter!” That says it all when it comes to the affection most Indians have for their cuisine. To reject the food of an Indian colleague can be extremely disrespectful and can erode any possibility of business partnership. Who would have thought food could play such a strong role in successful global performance?

Edwin, a British executive from a Fortune 500 company who often travels to Southeast Asia, observed the huge advantage his love for trying new foods played in his negotiation strategies. Edwin made this commentary when reflecting on his trips to Southeast Asia:

My hosts are often keen to bring me to places with Western food. They’re amazed when I tell them I really want the local food instead. Again and again, they tell me how unusual it is for them to have a Western guest as adventurous as me. Spicy noodles, exotic seafood, fish eyes, frog, snake, insects—I’ve tried a lot of interesting things.… It’s at these extended dinner meetings after a long day in the office that the real business transactions happen. I’m convinced this is one of the most important strategies for international business.

Edwin went on to insist that most of the contracts he has negotiated in Southeast Asia happened over shared meals together, not during the formal business meetings during the day. You don’t have to be as adventurous as Edwin to gain the value that comes from trying new foods. Making an honest attempt to try something goes a long way. And that’s the case whether you are a British leader visiting China or a Chinese leader visiting Britain. When you’re willing to try the local cuisine, it has far more value than simply being seen as adventurous. It communicates a willingness to understand and appreciate the culture for what it is. For those who grow queasy thinking about it, here are some strategies you might consider:

• Always try at least a few bites.

• Don’t ask what it is. Sometimes the idea makes it seem worse than it actually tastes. Just eat it, with obvious exceptions for food allergies or religious beliefs.

• Slice it thin and swallow quickly.

• If squishy food bothers you, add good amounts of rice, noodles, or bread to firm up the texture.

• Remember that pineapple tempers the bite of hot, spicy foods and Coke makes it burn more. Eat and drink accordingly.

• If you aren’t sure how to eat it (e.g., with your hands, what to peel off), just ask. Most hosts will love showing you.

• Find something about the food you can compliment and do everything you can to avoid a negative facial expression. You are being watched!

• Ask your hosts about any significance the dish might have to them personally or in the culture.

In most cultures, eating together has far more symbolic value than simply “grabbing a bite to eat.” Sharing a meal together can often be viewed as a crucial part of building trust. The same can be true in many places when we’re invited to do some sightseeing. A Singaporean executive visiting a branch office in Thailand might feel that a ride down the Chao Phraya River in a river taxi is a waste of time. And a Dutch executive might feel that eating the local food with Kenyan bureaucrats has little influence on getting a factory built. But the research demonstrates exactly the opposite. Our level of interest in connecting with the culture and the people as a whole will directly shape how well we do our work in subtle but profound ways. Furthermore, although sightseeing might seem like a waste of time for those from more industrialized, developed countries, in other contexts it demonstrates respect for the history and traditions of a culture and it helps in developing relationships with colleagues in another context. Those coming from more ahistorical cultures often miss the importance of this kind of adaptability.

Cultural differences are more pronounced in social settings than in work settings. A software engineer can often talk “in code” with another information technology expert and immediately find common ground. The same is true between a Brazilian and a German university leader or a Chinese and a Canadian senior manager. Without question, there are challenges and differences in the work environment, but on the whole, we relate more easily with our professional counterparts when talking about work than when we venture into the social context. But many of our work norms are absent once we move into a social setting. Many of the greatest intercultural challenges occur over dinner after leaving the office: What’s appropriate conversation? Should I ask about family? Should we discuss work while we eat? What and where should we eat?

As a result, the energy required to socially interact with people from different cultural backgrounds often causes us to retreat to more familiar and comfortable social contexts. Short-term business travelers usually feel more comfortable when traveling with other colleagues from home and eating familiar food. Executives fulfilling an expatriate assignment often cloister themselves in the expat subculture rather than immerse themselves locally. But we’re much less likely to succeed in an intercultural setting when we withdraw from it or remain with a large group of colleagues from home. When we come into a new environment together as a group of outsiders, we have a built-in support group and point of identification. As a result, we aren’t as motivated to integrate ourselves into the local setting.

This brings us back to the point of being honest with ourselves. It’s not that we can never retreat. Introverts, in particular, will quickly become drained by the labor of socializing cross-culturally. And all of us will find occasions, especially when immersed in ongoing, extended work with different cultures, when we need to withdraw for a while, either to spend time with people from a familiar cultural context or to have time alone with some of the comforts of home. I think any business traveler can survive for a few days without McDonald’s and Starbucks or rice and tea. But there’s a time when tapping into the comforts of home can help sustain the ongoing CQ Drive needed. There’s nothing wrong with retreating to recharge our batteries. But if we aren’t careful, we could find ourselves progressively drawn away from the local culture. What was meant to be a time of recharging could come at the expense of failing to engage with the local culture. When we look for familiar foods and crave a current copy of our favorite newspaper on our way to a negotiation meeting, we may, as a result, miss out on a huge leveraging opportunity. Think twice before ordering room service and skipping the dinner invitation.

Count the Perks

The fatigue, fears, and anxieties that accompany intercultural work can be overwhelming, but don’t be discouraged. There are rewarding payoffs beyond the frequent-flyer miles and souvenirs for friends and family. Reviewing the following proven benefits for culturally intelligent leaders can be helpful in improving low CQ Drive in yourself or others you lead.

Career Advancement

Growing numbers of organizations require that anyone becoming a senior leader must first prove his or her effectiveness working with a multicultural team. Several corporations now require at least two different international assignments in difficult locations before an individual will be considered for an executive-level role.

A study led by INSEAD professor William W. Maddux discovered that an individual’s intercultural experiences predicted the number of job offers received, even when controlling for variables such as demographics and personality. Professionals who adapted to and learned about new cultures engaged in job interviews more creatively and demonstrated more openness and initiative. They were seen as being able to bring seemingly unrelated ideas together into meaningful wholes. As a result, these candidates were able to navigate the interview process successfully and received more job offers.

Creativity and Innovation

Learning to negotiate and expand internationally fosters a sense of creativity that can’t be gained any other way. The art of negotiation is challenging enough when cultures are shared. But learning how to reach a win-win when dealing with multiple cultural backgrounds grows an overall sense of innovation and creativity that can be applied across many other facets of life and work. It’s one thing to understand the cultural differences between German and Chinese cultures. It’s quite another to have creatively found a way to develop a working relationship that achieves the respective performance objectives while also demonstrating dignity and honor for one another. There’s a correlation between high cultural intelligence and innovation.

Global Networks

As you gain a reputation for culturally intelligent leadership, it expands your professional networks with people around the world. Customers are looking for leaders and companies that understand our diverse world and have existing connections with people and organizations in a variety of places. Leading with cultural intelligence inevitably grows these networks and connections.

Salary, Profitability, and Cost Savings

Given the 70 percent failure rate of international ventures, many organizations are willing to pay for talent who can successfully perform in intercultural situations because it yields higher profits. It doesn’t take long to see the benefit to the organization as well as the individual when calculating the cost of a leader who is ineffective working across cultures. Consider the following:

• Determine which senior-level leaders have had to deal with the fallout from an unsuccessful cross-cultural venture. What’s their pay? Try putting an hourly rate on their time. How many hours have these senior leaders spent dealing with this situation? Just a few meetings a week can equal hundreds of hours. Multiply the number of hours by these leaders’ hourly rates.

• Add the cost of other staff who get engaged in it.

• Add the cost of missed opportunities because of all the energy diverted toward this issue.

• Imagine the cost of what this does to the overall morale and future growth of the organization.

Some dismiss cultural intelligence as a lofty ideal and miss its connection to profitability and cost savings. Prioritizing cultural intelligence across an organization has been proven to play a role in increased profitability and cost savings. Subsequently, leaders with high CQ have higher earning potential than those with low CQ. Organizations are waking up to the reality that culturally intelligent leadership is worth the investment. Generously compensating those who do that work well is a helpful way to increase CQ Drive and, more importantly, to better reach your objective.

There are definite perks that come with cross-cultural work. In Part III, we’ll look more fully at the return on investment for culturally intelligent leaders and their organizations.

Work for Something Bigger

Although extrinsic motivators such as advancement in your career and salary are valid, at some point, culturally intelligent leaders need to consider something bigger as the ongoing source of motivation for culturally intelligent behavior. Ultimately, a bigger cause is needed to sustain CQ Drive.

John Elkington, dubbed the dean of the corporate social responsibility movement, coined the term triple bottom line, meaning businesses need to be equally responsible for people, planet, and profit. He argues that all three are the measure of today’s successful organization: Are we causing people suffering, despair, or injustice in the process of making a profit (people)? How does our work affect the environment (planet)? Are we profitable, and if so, what goes along with the profits being made (profits)?

Every organization needs to be fiscally profitable, including nonprofit organizations, which cannot fulfill their mission apart from economic viability. Ironically, the other two bottom lines, environmental responsibility and human welfare, need not conflict with profitability. All three can serve each other. There may be times we give up a profit-producing opportunity because it violates the other two bottom lines. But the emphasis here is more about how we perform and how we use the money earned. Money can be used to offer people opportunity, life sustenance, and empowerment or it can be used to destroy life.

The three bottom lines are indispensable to one another as we tap into a globalized market and workforce. Many companies across the world today realize that success requires earning the respect and confidence of their customers. It’s no longer a matter of simply adhering to legal rules and regulations. Whether it’s safety standards, child labor practices, or discrimination in hiring, customers are regulating how we do our work.

Elkington’s work is an example of what it means to work for something bigger. A deeper, altruistic drive is a far more sustainable motivation for cultural intelligence than merely pursuing global markets for selfish interests. In fact, cultural intelligence cannot exist apart from true care for the world and for people. At the very core of cultural intelligence is the desire to learn with and about other people. So we must beware of penetrating the cultural contexts of other groups and imposing our views of life on them. Instead, our global operations give us a chance to gain mutually beneficial insights and beliefs from transcontinental relationships.

What might a more transcendent motivation look like for leaders from the United States? Perhaps a word of caution is needed here. For several years, there was a sense that a leader from the United States could be welcomed anywhere in the world with our services, products, and ideas. But in recent years, there’s been a sea change in attitudes toward the United States and what it means to work with us. International leaders in business, government, and nonprofit organizations whisper behind closed doors about the way visiting Americans live in their own bubbles without having much genuine interaction with their overseas counterparts, much less the locals. One senior foreign policy adviser told Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek, “When we meet with American officials, they talk and we listen—we rarely disagree or speak frankly because they simply can’t take it in.” Kisore Mahbubani, Singapore’s former foreign secretary and ambassador to the United Nations, put it this way: “There are two sets of conversations, one with Americans in the room and one without.” But as U.S. leaders posture themselves with a spirit of openness, collaboration, and even compromise, not only will it change their one-on-one interactions, but it may also begin to slowly change the global view of the United States.

Leaders from other contexts need to wrestle with a more transcendent motivation as well. As emerging economies such as the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and MINT (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey) nations become more influential, leaders in both the public and private sectors need to consider how to use their growing influence and power to wield good. Leaders from places such as China and Saudi Arabia can readily identify with having been the underdog, and they can draw on that experience to increase their altruistic drive to help others. They might even consider the counterintuitive move of coming alongside leaders in places such as Japan, Germany, and the United States to help them reinvent themselves in this new era of globalization. And as nations such as China rise in prominence, they need to consider how to steward their influence globally. These are far more compelling reasons for cross-cultural effectiveness than merely pursuing self-interests.

The call toward something bigger can play a powerful role in increasing our overall CQ Drive. In fact, perhaps the greatest way for Wendy to enhance her self-efficacy and CQ Drive for her upcoming trip and future work in Central America is to tap into her humanitarian orientation. As CEO of an organization committed to underprivileged children, she cares deeply about the pursuit of fairness and equity for all children. Tapping into her altruistic motivation to help children might be what she needs most to compel her to persevere despite some of the cultural dissonance she anticipates and will likely face. The same is true for Klaus, the German expatriate in Nairobi. When he no longer views Kenyans as merely the people to use to help his company get ahead, it can help him mitigate some of the fears he and his family have about living in Kenya. As he begins to enjoy the opportunity and wonder of working and relating with Kenyan people, he’ll tap into a life-giving discovery.

CQ Drive rests in something bigger than us. The challenge for us as leaders is to see our existence not only in terms of our own interests but ultimately about things larger than us. If more power, wealth, and success are all that drive us, we’ll burn out pretty fast. But as we and our organizations use the triple bottom line to fit into things larger than us, join them, and serve them, we can take our role in the big picture and find ourselves with heightened energy for persevering through the hard work of cross-cultural leadership. Life is about things that transcend us.

Conclusion

CQ Drive goes beyond the excitement of traveling to a new place or experimenting with ethnically different foods. It’s the perseverance required when the novelty wears off and the differences start to chafe at us. We have to move beyond our fear, be willing to take risks, and grow in our ability to perform effectively among people and places that seem more foreign than familiar. Trying new foods, taking in some of the local culture, and persevering through the fatigue of relating cross-culturally offers great benefits.

Although the work of CQ Drive is never really done, at some level, it becomes more familiar and comfortable the more we do it. I don’t know that it ever becomes easy, but the benefits of persevering through these challenges are immense, in terms of both how it allows you to accomplish your work-related objectives and the portal it gives you to see the world through different eyes.

CQ DRIVE PRACTICES

1. Calculate the personal, organizational, and global cost of not prioritizing cultural intelligence. An honest assessment can quickly motivate you and your team to grow your CQ. Write down some consequences that can occur if you can’t lead across cultures. What’s at stake?

2. Connect a cross-cultural project with other interests. If you aren’t naturally motivated to experience different cultures, find a way to connect the project with something that does interest you. If you like art, what artistic expressions can you discover in the respective cultures? If you love sports, discover what sports are hot in those cultures. If you’re a foodie, the options are endless. If you eat, drink, and sleep business, use this as a way to learn new business insights.

3. Accept whatever cross-cultural assignments are available. Direct experience working in cross-cultural situations—watching others who do it successfully and learning on the job—is one of the most important ways to gain confidence to do it more. Multiple intercultural experiences, work and nonwork, are among the best ways to develop CQ Drive.

4. Try the local specialties. Most places around the world are gaining more ethnic diversity in the foods available. Break out of your routine and try new foods. And especially when visiting another place, always try at least a few bites. Slice it thin and swallow quickly if you must. But eat, eat, eat!

5. Live for something bigger. We were made for more than working ourselves to death and making money. Some of us will take on causes on a large scale. Others will mentor one business leader and make that person’s life better. Cultural intelligence offers a way of making the world a better place.

Chapter 4

CQ KNOWLEDGE (PART 1): KNOW WHAT DIFFERENCES MATTER

CQ Knowledge: What do I need to know?

Understanding cultural similarities and differences

Profile of a leader with high CQ Knowledge

Leaders high in CQ Knowledge have a rich, well-organized understanding of culture and how it affects the way people think and behave. They possess a repertoire of knowledge about how cultures are alike and different. They understand how culture shapes behavior.

“Can we please eat something normal tonight?!” It’s the kind of question I’ve heard countless times while traveling internationally with people. But this time, the question was coming from my four-year-old daughter! Our family was living in Singapore, and though Western food is readily available there, my wife and I love the local food. Looking straight into my daughter’s brilliant blue eyes, I quickly retorted, “Emily. You want something normal? You can’t get much more normal than rice. Do you know how many people eat rice in the world? That’s about as normal as you can get.” Before I could go any further, my wife gave me the look. Now was not the time to go off on a cultural intelligence lecture with our kids. But I wanted my daughters to understand that “normal” is relative to our experience.

Ethnocentrism—evaluating other people and their culture by the standards of our own cultural preferences—is found among people everywhere. Seeing the world in light of our own cultural background and experience is inevitable. But ignoring the impact of ethnocentrism on how we lead is the single greatest obstacle to CQ Knowledge.

Most of us tend to underestimate the degree to which we ourselves are a product of culture. It’s much easier to see it in others. Emily’s question made explicit a guiding assumption for many of us: My experience is what’s normal and best. Nowadays, Emily and my younger daughter, Grace, enjoy all kinds of spicy, different foods, and they’re as quick to catch me in my cultural blind spots as I am them. Grace recently asked me, “Shouldn’t CQ mean you show more respect for my love of country music?” Touché.

Is it really such a big deal to think certain kinds of food and music are “normal” and others are “weird”? Maybe and maybe not. But to remain unaware of how culture shapes the way people think and behave is not only foolish, it’s expensive. From Fortune 500 businesses to small and medium-side organizations around the world, research consistently demonstrates a high level of failure when expansion into international markets is done without an awareness of how people from other cultures think and behave.

After eight years of struggling in Germany, Wal-Mart sold its eighty-five stores there. Many journalists have theorized about what led to Wal-Mart’s failure given its huge success at home, but it’s widely agreed that its primary flaw was in ignoring the cultural differences between the United States and Germany. It tried to apply its success formula here in the States to a German market without modifying it. Whether it was the kinds of products offered, the ways items were displayed, the greeters at the entrance, or the policies used in the employee handbook, Wal-Mart’s stint in Germany seems to be a case study of what happens when greater attention isn’t given to understanding the relevance of cultural differences. As a result, Wal-Mart filed a loss of USD $1 billion because of the failure in Germany and has since become much more adaptive and successful in other overseas markets.

Even if an organization never expands internationally, it’s impossible to be an effective leader without having some insight into how culture shapes the thoughts and behaviors of the people touched by your leadership. In fact, Edgar Schein, author of the bestselling book Organizational Culture and Leadership, says it’s impossible to separate culture and leadership. Schein says cultural norms significantly influence how you define leadership—for example, who should get promoted, what success is, and how to motivate employees. He argues that creating and managing culture is all that’s really important for leaders. According to Schein, “The unique talent of leaders is their ability to understand and work with culture”—both the organizational and the socio-ethnic cultures they regularly encounter. Don’t dismiss cultural understanding as simply politically correct, warm and fuzzy stuff. It will define your leadership.

The ability to understand and work with a culture doesn’t just come intuitively. It requires a disciplined effort to better understand cultural differences. CQ Knowledge, the second capability of cultural intelligence, refers to our level of understanding about culture and the ways cultures differ. It’s not that leaders with high levels of CQ Knowledge are walking encyclopedias of every culture in the world. That’s impossible. Instead, they possess a growing repertoire of knowledge about the macro patterns across cultures. And they can discern when something should be attributed to culture, and when it’s more likely a result of something else—such as a personality conflict or power struggle.

In this chapter and the next one, we’ll review the most important cultural knowledge you need to lead with cultural intelligence. Our research reveals two subdimensions of CQ Knowledge: cultural-general knowledge, which includes understanding cultural systems, values, and language differences; and context-specific knowledge. Because this is a leadership book, we’ll focus on context-specific knowledge about leadership. These subdimensions are the basis of the strategies we’ll cover for developing CQ Knowledge. First, we’ll learn how to see culture and its role in the way we think, behave, and lead. Next, we’ll examine the role of language in how we understand and lead across cultures. Then, we’ll review the most relevant cultural systems and values that need to be understood. Finally, we’ll examine ten cultural value dimensions. Given the volume of information relevant to CQ Knowledge, the material is divided across two chapters. In this chapter, we’ll look at the first three ways to develop CQ Knowledge: (1) see culture’s role in yourself and others, (2) understand different languages, and (3) review the basic cultural systems. The fourth element—learn about cultural values—will be discussed in Chapter 5.

HOW TO DEVELOP CQ KNOWLEDGE

1. See culture’s role in yourself and others.

2. Understand different languages.

3. Review the basic cultural systems.

4. Learn about cultural values (Chapter 5).

Key Question: What cultural understanding do I need for this cross-cultural assignment?

See Culture’s Role in Yourself and Others

The path toward improving CQ Knowledge begins with seeing the influence of culture on everything we think, say, and do. Culture is defined as the beliefs, values, behaviors, customs, and attitudes that distinguish one group from another. Or as some more simply put it, “It’s the way we do things around here.”

One time my friend Vijay took me to a cricket match in Delhi. I had tried watching cricket before but I was always confused. But Vijay was a great teacher. As we watched the game in the sweltering heat, he started to explain the basic rules, the use of the wickets, the way scoring happened, and the ultimate goal of getting each bats-man on the opponent’s team out. Not only was the game starting to make sense, I actually felt myself getting drawn into the excitement of the competition. I would have been a sorry sight if I had actually tried to get out on the field and play. But I had a better understanding of what was going on while the cricket pros played their game.

Despite the emphasis of many leadership courses and books on strategic planning and rational decision-making processes, many seasoned executives lead from the gut. As pointed out earlier, this works surprisingly well when leading in a familiar culture. It’s not that there’s no strategic thinking behind what these executives are doing. Instead, the graduate school of experience has programmed their subconscious to quickly arrive at decisions based on understanding they’ve gained throughout the years. The challenge comes when a leader relies on that same implicit understanding for making decisions related to different cultures. It might be like a football player jumping in to play cricket assuming they’re playing football.

By growing your CQ Knowledge, you can better understand things you may otherwise miss when moving into a new cultural context. This involves understanding the rules, albeit often unspoken, that are behind the behavior and assumptions in a particular culture—whether that’s an ethnic group, an organizational culture, or the subculture of a political party or religious group. The objective of the acquired understanding isn’t to become like the people in that cultural group or to be able to play their games. The goal is to understand and appreciate the rules behind their lives and society so that you can effectively lead.

Let’s consider a few of the different layers of culture we experience as leaders. National culture, such as French or Chinese culture, is the layer of culture that most powerfully shapes behavior. We may not think of ourselves as overly influenced by our national culture until we travel abroad. Then suddenly we find ourselves identifying with other people from our country more than we do when we’re home. Though many subcultures exist within most countries, national culture is the cultural orientation that most significantly shapes how most people think and behave.

Next is the influence of different ethnic cultures. I’ll repeatedly note the danger of making broad generalizations about all people from a particular country, and this is partly because of the diversity within most domestic contexts—whether it’s Zulus and Afrikaans in South Africa; ethnic Chinese, Indians, and Malays in Malaysia; or African Americans and Hispanics in the United States. Most leaders have some consciousness of the ethnic diversity within their own country, but they may need to grow their awareness of the diversity that exists elsewhere. Leaders outside the United States are often perplexed by what appears to be an overly sensitized concern about racism and prejudice in the United States related to the African American subculture. And the very fact that we refer to that subculture as “African American” rather than “black” is confounding to many non-U.S. leaders. But if you’re going to be working in the U.S. context, it’s important to understand the long history that helps explain the values, behavior, and customs of African Americans compared to the dominant Anglo culture in the United States.

The other culture most consistently encountered by leaders is organizational culture. One of the things I love about my work is the chance to experience so many diverse cultures across different industries and organizations. Spending one day with Coke’s executives and the next day with Facebook’s can make me feel like I should have had a passport to move from one place to the next—even though I haven’t left the country. The same is true when presenting to a group of executives at Samsung as compared to Hyundai. I have to further shift my thinking before presenting to a group of academics and yet again before talking with a group of faith-based leaders. CQ Knowledge includes growing our understanding of the distinct ways organizations celebrate successes, motivate teams, and share their stories.

Each of us is part of several other subcultures, including cultures organized around generational differences, sexual orientation, regions across a country, and religions. Consider the cultures of which you are a part and the ones that most strongly influence how you lead. We aren’t merely passive recipients of culture in any of these contexts. Culture isn’t something that just happens to us; we’re also active creators of it. Many leaders inherit organizational cultures with unhealthy practices and dysfunctional behavior throughout the company. It’s extremely challenging to change an organizational culture but it can be done. And we play a role in morphing and adapting the other cultures we belong to as well.

One of leaders’ most important roles is to be conscious of how culture shapes their behavior and that of others. Take, for example, Giovanni Bisignani, who recently stepped down from a decade as CEO and director general of the International Air Transportation Association (IATA), the trade association for over 90 percent of commercial airlines globally. One could easily mistake Bisignani’s bright-eyed, affable nature as simply that of a nice guy who has had a lot of global experiences. He’s one of the warmest people I’ve ever met. Within seconds of talking to him, he puts you at ease, makes a personal connection, and starts telling stories about tea with Mrs. Gandhi and his favorite travel spots. But this hospitable, gregarious character is a ferociously determined leader who loves a challenge and is relentlessly focused on driving change and bringing about results. The impact of his ten years of leadership at IATA is more than impressive:

• Since 2004, he saved the air industry $54 billion.

• He reformed a dusty, near obsolete organization into the largest Citibank customer in the world.

• He improved the ease by which we travel through e-ticketing, bar-coded boarding passes, and self-service check-in kiosks. More important, he’s led air travel to become the safest mode of transportation in the world.

• He built collaborative initiatives between some of the most unlikely partners: competing airlines, democratic presidents and dictators, big guys like Lufthansa and little guys like Air Zimbabwe—just to name a few.

• He moved IATA from being an organization led and dominated by Europeans and North Americans to one in which 60 percent of its members are from developing countries and more than 65 percent of its revenue is from the Middle East and Asia.

Giovanni understood the ubiquitous role of culture in every interaction and negotiation, and as a result, he led monumental change to one of the hardest hit industries of the twenty-first century—the air industry. And he’s been a catalyst for some of the most unlikely cross-border collaborations. This is a guy who has dinner with U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano one evening and heads off to Iraq the next day to help Iraqi Airways get the airplane parts they need to fly passengers safely. Giovanni’s cultural understanding is the compass that gives him the direction he needs when stepping into any meeting.

Not every leader is as convinced as Giovanni about the relevance of cultural understanding. Jeff, a U.S. sales manager from a billion-dollar manufacturing company, talked to me a week before making his second business trip to China to visit a couple of factories in Guangzhou.

Jeff was very animated as we talked. With his legs constantly moving up and down and his fingers nervously tapping on the table, he said, “Okay, no offense. But doesn’t this whole cultural thing get a little overplayed? I mean, people are people and business is business. I’ll probably have to eat some weird food next week, but otherwise, I don’t see what the big differences are.”

I resisted jumping in for the moment and listened as Jeff carried on with his line of reasoning. Continuing with what seemed like a lot of nervous energy, Jeff said:

The way I see it, everyone is just trying to find a way to make a decent living and get ahead in life. I don’t care whether you’re Chinese, Mexican, or American, people are pretty much the same everywhere. They care about their kids, like you and me. They know you have to be aggressive to survive in this global market. And everyone wants to get ahead. The marketing strategy might need to adapt a little bit, but I think manufacturing is manufacturing and selling is selling wherever you go. Either you’re cut out for it or not!

If you only travel to major cities, stay in global hotel chains, and interact with locals who have been trained how to serve international travelers, it’s easy to believe the world is pretty much the same everywhere. And there’s some merit to Jeff’s point that all people share some basic universal characteristics. But the way we express and approach those universal characteristics varies widely across cultural and individual differences. A leader’s ability to distinguish between what’s universal, what’s cultural, and what’s personal is one of the most important indicators of cultural intelligence. This discernment stems from growing your CQ Knowledge. As you gain a better understanding of cultural norms, you know whether you’re experiencing something that is unique to an individual or typical of most individuals from the culture involved.

The iceberg is a familiar metaphor used when talking about the powerful influence of culture (see Figure 4-1). In my version of this metaphor, I place the universals shared across all humanity at the tip of the iceberg. As Jeff noted, there are a few universals that are true for most everyone and these are things we can readily see. But when you go a bit deeper, you find a slew of differences attributable to varying cultures and individual personalities. This is an important point of understanding. We’ll refer back to these three categories of human behavior (universal, cultural, and personal) throughout the book, but here’s a brief explanation.

Universal

I love to sit in a busy train station or shopping center and watch all the people. Even in a faraway place where I don’t know anyone, I can feel a level of connection simply by watching what appears to be a father with his children, a fellow traveler with her bags, or a couple laughing together. I relate to all these things. We share basic human needs. And emotions such as fear, joy, and disappointment are common to everyone. Acknowledging what we have in common can be the first step toward making the foreign seem more familiar. But it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Figure 4-1. Three Categories of Human Behavior

Cultural

If I sit in a train station and watch a stranger with his kids, I can experience a form of connection as a dad, but if I make assumptions about what their relationship should look like, I’ve moved into questionable territory. Or to use the earlier analogy, interpreting cricket using the rules of football would lead to misunderstanding and confusion. I might think I understand and be entirely wrong.

As noted in Figure 4-1, certain aspects of a culture are visible. The way people drive, the local currency, religious symbols, or the way a business images itself are things that can be observed and identified. These are the visible cues about cultural differences that exist in any culture. But the most important points of understanding are the beliefs, values, and assumptions that lie beneath the surface of what’s visible. As represented by the iceberg, beneath the surface are the beliefs, values, and assumptions that drive behavior.

If Jeff fails to see the profound differences between the way a Chinese business partner and an American one thinks and behaves, he’s sure to hit all kinds of roadblocks and will unlikely see lasting success working cross-culturally. Ignorance about the cultural differences that abound in the multicultural workforce around us puts us on the pathway toward ineffective, irrelevant leadership.

Consider the Chinese concept of guanxi as an example of why Jeff needs to realize that a “people are people” approach is an insufficient rule of thumb for guiding his interactions in China. Guanxi refers to the connections and resulting obligations between two individuals. It exists between Chinese families first and foremost, but it’s also found among classmates and professional colleagues because of a shared history together. When adopting guanxi, individuals loosely keep track of the favors given and the debts owed between one another. Given the underlying presence of guanxi in most Chinese relationships, Jeff would be wise to learn the significance of the gifts his colleagues in Guangzhou may give him as a way to establish and build a relationship together. The same actions done at home might appear to be bribery or little more than just a token gesture. But misunderstanding what this means in China could derail everything Jeff was sent there to do.

Talk to most anyone who has worked on getting a deal in China and he will tell you stories about people who insisted on getting him drunk. In a culture where guanxi can make or break you in business, getting drunk with a potential business partner is often viewed as a crucial way of solidifying that relationship and showing that you are, in fact, friends. First, business dinners usually start with an invitation. Typically, the person doing the inviting should be of at least the same leadership level as the person being invited. Furthermore, the person doing the inviting pays for dinner. Chinese individuals who follow more traditional norms will make the dinner invitation in person or by phone, not by email or text message. Email is considered too impersonal, and it allows a tangible record of those with whom you do business.

Unlike during most Western business dinners, business itself is usually the least talked about topic during a Chinese business dinner. If anything, it’s saved for a sliver of time at the end of dinner, although at that point, most of the people involved are so drunk that no real business decisions can come out of it. But don’t think this means it’s a waste of time. The point of the dinner is to solidify relationships. It’s a big part of determining whether you’re trustworthy and to see how you behave when you aren’t sober enough to filter what you say. Expect personal questions and don’t be afraid to talk about your personal life. And if you keep drinking, it will be seen as a symbol of friendship. The more you drink, the more pleased your cohorts will be, because it shows you’re willing to get drunk with them, just like you would with your friends. The Chinese believe that drinking together deepens and strengthens friendships because it loosens people up and helps relieve misunderstanding, no matter how tense the situation might be. Granted, there are certainly times when excessive drinking will be used to wear you down. But the primary orientation behind this practice is social.

If Jeff assumes that going out for dinner and drinks is optional, similar to what it might mean in many other cultural contexts, he can be blindsided. There may be health or religious reasons why Jeff decides he can’t fully participate in this drinking scene. But he at least needs to make that decision being consciously aware of the meaning behind it. We’ll further address how to use this kind of cultural understanding to effectively lead when we get to CQ Strategy and CQ Action.

For now, the point is to see the relevance of cultural differences to how we lead and do business. A former U.S. ambassador to Yemen and the United Arab Emirates told me that during his career he had witnessed a continual stream of U.S. salespeople moving in and out of the Persian Gulf to sell their goods and services. All too often he saw North American sales reps losing opportunities to their British, French, or Japanese counterparts because they tried to use the same sales pitch from home in the Middle East. Meanwhile, their counterparts from other countries spent more time learning about the local culture and even the local language. As a result, they secured contracts lost by the North Americans. This might not be any more true of North American sales reps than sales reps from other countries but the point is that learning about cultural markets has a direct connection to generating sales.

Culture is everywhere. It shapes how you lead and it influences how others perceive your leadership. As you better understand the relevance of culture, you’ll be much better equipped to assess situations and make decisions that are appropriate for your organization and the individuals involved.

Personal

At the deepest level of the iceberg are individual differences. Leaders functioning at the highest levels of cultural intelligence are able to see when the behavior of others is a reflection of their cultural background and when it’s idiosyncratic behavior from one individual. There are ways I behave that are consistent with how most North American men behave. I’m task-oriented, independent, and I prefer clear, explicit communication. And there are characteristics of me that would be unfair to generalize to other North American men, including my insatiable wanderlust and the intensity with which I approach most anything I do. A culturally intelligent leader will learn to identify the personal quirks and characteristics of individuals versus those that fit cultural norms. The best way to do so is by understanding cultural systems and values—something explained later in this chapter and the next. By learning these broad cultural norms, you have a way of knowing whether a behavior is consistent with cultural tendencies or idiosyncratic.

A recent study asked people in seventy-two nations to share their predominant images of the United States. The winners: war and Baywatch! In a post-9/11 era, it takes little guessing to figure out why many people in the world equate the United States with war. As for Baywatch, it’s the most exported U.S. television program in the world, quickly being crowded out by Friends, which is now in syndication every hour of the day somewhere in the world.

Many of my U.S. friends are very conflicted about our military interventions, and I don’t know many Americans who watch, much less like, the characters on Baywatch. But that doesn’t change the fact that some people will make assumptions about people from the United States that are entirely off base. And the same thing happens everywhere. Not all Chinese leaders want to take people drinking and not all Millennials are looking for flexible work schedules.

The reverse is also problematic—that is, observing an individual’s behavior and generalizing it to an entire culture. One Canadian leader who managed a Sikh Indian employee told me, “One of the things I’ve noticed about Sikhs is they don’t like to travel. Every time I ask Mr. Singh to attend a meeting out of town, he comes up with an excuse.” When I asked her whether she had observed this among other Sikh employees, she said Mr. Singh was the first Sikh she’d hired. But she had assumed it was a cultural thing because who wouldn’t want to get out of London, Ontario, every once in a while at the company’s expense. She presumed any unfamiliar, inexplicable behavior she observed must have been related to his cultural background.

Later, we’ll note the value of using cultural norms and values as a starting point for understanding others. But caution is always needed. Cultural intelligence is required to discern between what’s universal, what’s cultural, and what’s personal. Once we understand the impact of culture, we’re ready to understand the middle layer of the iceberg: languages, cultural systems, and cultural value orientations.

Understand Different Languages

A few years ago, the Dairy Association led a wildly successful marketing campaign throughout the United States built on the slogan “Got Milk?” Unfortunately, when the campaign was exported to Mexico, the translation read, “Are you lactating?” There are countless other examples like this. A U.S. software company suffered from having the name of its industry translated as “underwear” when launching internationally. A European company couldn’t succeed selling its chocolate and fruit dessert called “Zit” in the United States nor could the Finns who attempted to sell “Super Piss,” a Finnish product for unfreezing car door locks. These examples are humorous but the challenge of language goes beyond funny translations. Microsoft experienced a great deal of resistance from many regions around the world in response to its icon “My Computer,” which assumed everyone owned his or her own computer. And Microsoft’s “mail” and “trash” icons looked nothing like the mailboxes and trash bins used in most places globally.

Read almost any book on effective leadership, and you’ll learn about the essential role of consistent, clear communication. Clarity is one of the universal leadership skills desired by followers from all cultures. And communication, whether creating a marketing campaign, drafting a memo, or casting a vision, is ubiquitously tied to culture. Some say language and culture are one and the same, pointing to the reality that Eskimos have several different words for snow and very few to describe tropical fruits. The reverse is true in some tropical contexts. Language and culture evolve together as people live in relationship to their surroundings. As we grow in CQ Knowledge, we need to understand some basics about communication and language and their relationship to culture.

Some flippantly quip, “English is becoming the lingua franca of international business.” But in actuality, English is just one of the major languages of world trade and the mother tongue of only 5 percent of the world’s population. Leaders who speak more than one language have an advantage over those who don’t because when you’re fluent in a language, speaking and thinking in that language becomes an automatic, subconscious action. Not only can we more easily communicate with others who speak that language, we also gain a heightened ability to see how they label the world. It provides a way to understand what’s going on that is much harder to grasp when done through translation. Jaguar, the British automobile maker, discovered the importance of language when it began in-house German-language studies to help increase its competitiveness in Germany against Mercedes and BMW. A year after doing so, Jaguar’s sales in Germany jumped 60 percent.

If you speak only one language, consider signing up for an introductory course or hiring a tutor to learn a foreign language. Chances are, you won’t have to look far to find someone who can teach you the basics. Or you could get a Skype “pen pal” with whom you can regularly communicate in another language for free. While becoming fluent is a great ideal, just the process of learning another language significantly contributes to growth in CQ Knowledge. You might find yourself innovating and leading in new ways simply as a result of learning a new language. And being able to say even a few words in a counterpart’s native tongue speaks volumes.

Language understanding can be an issue even when working within another English-speaking context. Different expressions and terms are frequent points of confusion among North Americans, Brits, Indians, and Australians.

Similar communication challenges exist when moving from one organization or profession to the next. An academic talking with a group of business executives needs to translate academic terms into words that communicate effectively in the corporate context. I often encounter people who work in professional cultures that are unfamiliar to me, such as medical professionals, biochemists, or automotive manufacturers. I immediately observe the difference between the cultural intelligence of those individuals who can talk to me about their work using language I understand versus others who use all kinds of trade lingo that means nothing to me. Doctors and nurses with CQ Knowledge have to adjust their verbal and nonverbal language when talking about a diagnosis with family members versus doing so with medical peers. With CQ Knowledge, we understand that our words stem from a variety of the cultural contexts that shape who we are.

I chair the board of a nonprofit organization. This nonprofit was extremely successful during the first seven years of its existence. But then for the next three years its activity and bottom line began a steady decline. One of the things a consultant observed in talking with several of the staff and constituents was an unusual aversion toward anything that sounded “corporate” or institutional. In fact, one business leader who observed this nonprofit described the organizational culture as having antibodies in its system toward anything that sounded remotely corporate. Our board was in the midst of seeking a new leader for the organization, and part of applying cultural intelligence was to change the title of the primary leader from CEO to team leader. Of course, if the sole change made was in the title on the job description, the aversion toward corporate culture would be addressed only momentarily. But this shift in language was the first step toward developing a leadership plan that uniquely suited the culture of the organization, expressed in a language that resonated with its members rather than just mimicking titles and structures from other places.

Communicating, both formally and informally, is perhaps the most important thing a leader does. Many of the problems that occur in an organization are the direct result of people failing to communicate in ways that truly enhance understanding. Learning appropriate language for a cultural context provides the understanding necessary for adapting the way we communicate, something we’ll revisit when looking at the fourth CQ capability, CQ Action.

Review the Basic Cultural Systems

Another important part of understanding different cultures is to learn about different cultural systems. Cultural systems are the ways a society has organized itself in terms of meeting basic needs and the structures required for order. Without careful observation, the significance of these systems can easily be missed. There are six cultural systems that are most relevant for leaders: economic, marriage and family, educational, legal and political, religious, and artistic.

Economic Systems: Capitalist vs. Socialist

Every society has to come up with basic ways of meeting its members’ universal needs of food, water, clothing, and housing. Understanding how a culture has organized itself to produce, allocate, and distribute these basic resources is extremely important to culturally intelligent leadership. Most of us are pretty familiar with the two most predominant economic systems today—capitalism and socialism (Table 4-1)—though most economic systems are a mix of the two.

Capitalism, found in places like the United States and Singapore, is based on the principle of individuals gaining resources and services based on their capacity to pay for them. The assumption underlying capitalism is that individuals are motivated to care for themselves and the market exists to meet their needs. Competition is seen as good for the consumer and thus for the whole.

On the other end of the continuum is socialism, found in places like Denmark and New Zealand. The state plays a much more active role in the production and distribution of basic resources by ensuring some equality of access for everyone in society to basic resources. Most of us have strong opinions about which system is superior, but we must beware of assuming there’s only one right way to distribute goods and services. There is a wide range of other possibilities for how cultures address economic needs, particularly in more tribal contexts. You don’t need to be an expert on how the entire economic system works in every culture; but a general awareness of the differing ways in which economic systems are organized will enhance your ability to negotiate and develop a working relationship outside your home culture. Table 4-1 offers you a few ways to begin thinking about the leadership implications of these cultural differences.

Marriage and Family Systems: Kinship vs. Nuclear Family

Each society works out a system for who can marry whom, under what conditions, and according to what procedures. A related system of child care becomes standardized in most cultures. The most commonly described family systems are kinship systems and nuclear-family systems (Table 4-2). Most of the world is organized around kinship-based societies in which blood relationship and solidarity within one’s family and clan is central. For example, a Chinese philanthropist is likely to be more concerned about giving in a way that benefits his or her family and heirs than to making a pledge with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Or a Middle Eastern executive is more likely to do business with someone who knows his family or has some previous connections to his family than with someone who has impressive credentials. This is called consanguine kinship, in which identity rests most in how individuals are genealogically connected. Kinship societies are made up of extended families in which the household often includes three or more generations. Even corporate leaders in kinship cultures like South Africa or Oman will often spend time trying to determine one’s genealogical connections as part of a first encounter.

Table 4-1. Economic Systems

Economic Systems

The basic ways a society organizes itself to meet its members’ universal needs of food, water, clothing, and housing.

Capitalism

A society created around the idea of individuals gaining resources and services based on their capacity to pay for them. Decisions are market driven.

Socialism

A society in which the state coordinates and implements the production and distribution of basic resources through central planning and control.

Leadership Implications

• Consider how best to motivate personnel in light of the predominant economic system. Competition tends to be a better motivational strategy in capitalist societies and cooperation in socialist ones.

• Understand which industries in a particular place are state run and which are privatized. And be aware that even some privatized companies have heavy state-level investment.

• When expanding your organization into a country with a different economic system, consider what human resources policies will need to be revised in light of the way health care and retirement is done, how to do performance reviews, and appropriate compensation.

In contrast, the nuclear-family system, sometimes called affinal kinship, is found more predominantly in the Western world and among the middle class. It is usually based on two generations whose group members are related by marriage. Family refers to parents and children, and, essentially, it dissolves with the death of a spouse. Societies based on nuclear families are those where employees are much more apt to pick up and move when a better career opportunity comes along. And the identity of individuals in these societies is more typically derived from one’s immediate family and one’s vocation rather than the heritage of one’s extended family. Nuclear-family systems place a great deal of value on parent-child relationships, husband-and-wife relationships, and sibling relationships. Family systems play a profound role in the choices employees make and the things that motivate potential markets.

Table 4-2. Family Systems

Family Systems

The system a society develops for who can marry whom and the arrangements for how children and senior members are cared for.

Kinship Family

The family finds its identity in several generations of history and the household often includes three or more generations.

Nuclear Family

The family is based on two generations whose members are related by marriage and consists primarily of parents and children.

Leadership Implications

• Expect introductions in kinship societies to be embedded with references to siblings, uncles, parents and grandparents, etc. Learning about the career of an individual’s parent may be very important. In contrast, introductions in nuclear-family societies are usually focused on one’s vocational role and what one does for the organization. Conversations about family are considered “personal” and only appropriate after getting to know one another a bit better.

• When leaders from nuclear-family systems work with colleagues and employees from kinship family systems, keep in mind that allowing room for family obligations will be important when recruiting and retaining talent from kinship societies.

• When leaders from kinship family systems work with colleagues and employees from nuclear-family systems, beware that they may not see the importance of hearing or sharing about extended-family relationships during an initial introduction.

Understanding the colliding approaches to family life is becoming increasingly relevant to how we lead. As elderly parents are living longer and as more men take on responsibility caring for children, understanding a culture’s approach to family is critical. In fact, the family system is widely regarded as the single most important cultural system leaders need to understand; but this information often feels irrelevant to some leaders. Consider why some basic knowledge of these kinds of differences would help a Western leader trying to negotiate a contract with a business owned by an ethnic Chinese family. Many of the most successful firms in cities like Beijing, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore are run by ethnic Chinese leaders who reflect a kinship approach to business. These companies are typically managed by the patriarch of the family, who leads with unquestioned authority and is aided by a small group of family members and close subordinates. When the owner retires, the firm is typically passed to the next generation. These companies rarely relinquish control to outsiders and they usually put only family members on the board of directors. Or for multinational companies working in Middle Eastern contexts, it would be beneficial to consider the importance of working with local contractors who are connected to a local sheik’s family or donating funds for a sheik’s family village in order to gain the sheik’s cooperation and approval. Family systems are an extremely relevant issue for how you lead across borders. The material in Table 4-2 will help you consider this further.

Educational Systems: Formal vs. Informal

Societies develop patterns for how their senior members transmit their values, beliefs, and behaviors to their offspring. This is at the core of how societies develop systems for educating and socializing their young (Table 4-3). Most of the world today is moving toward more formalized education in which young people are taught through schools, books, and professional teachers. But even in many developed cultures, such as South Africa, Israel, or Japan, informal education from one’s senior family members is seen as critically important alongside the priority of rigorous, formal education in these places. And the use of rote teaching in which students are expected to recite information taught versus the development of analytical skills is an important difference among many educational approaches. If you play a role in designing training, consider how the varied educational perspectives and experiences will shape how participants respond and learn. Think carefully about the age of the person you send to conduct training in a context where people expect teachers to be more senior.

Table 4-3. Educational Systems

Educational Systems

The patterns for how the senior members of a culture transmit their values, beliefs, and behaviors to their offspring.

Formal

The use of schools, books, and professionally trained teachers to educate youth.

Informal

The emphasis of wisdom passed to youth from extended-family members, parents, and siblings.

Leadership Implications

• Develop and adapt training programs for employees with an understanding of the educational systems and preferences of people in different cultures. Some teaching methods may be very foreign or uncomfortable to individuals from certain cultures.

• Seek to understand the extent to which formal, academic research is valued as compared to conventional wisdom in the ways you motivate, negotiate, and market your work.

• When seeking to debunk a myth or advance a new idea, understand the primary source of socialization in a culture (e.g., sage wisdom versus academic research).

Leaders coming from Asia are often frustrated with the perceived limitations among Westerners for memorizing and retaining information. They see Westerners as struggling to synthesize individual parts into a whole. Western leaders experience the same frustration when their attempts at analysis are met with resistance from Eastern counterparts. An understanding of the educational system and approach to learning used by a culture will enhance the way you conduct meetings; develop partnerships; and market, train, and develop personnel.

Legal and Political Systems: Formal vs. Informal Governance

Most cultures develop systems for maintaining order to ensure citizens will not violate the rights of others in the society. This results in the legal system of a society, which is closely tied with the government of a particular place. In places like the United States, there’s a formal legal system governed by a written constitution and through local, state, and federal laws. Although less formalized and complex, many smaller-scale, technologically simple societies also have effective ways of controlling behaviors (Table 4-4).

Because many businesses lack knowledge of how the governing system works in a new place, they become extremely frustrated when it comes to maintaining good working relationships among employees and with local officials. One of the greatest mistakes made by leaders as they move in and out of various countries is assuming the government system works pretty much like it does at home. Another typical response is assuming a legal system is corrupt or inferior because it’s different. Understanding and respecting a society’s legal system will significantly enhance the ability to work effectively in that culture.

It’s also important to be aware that there are often variations even within a nation’s given legal system. For example, China has universal laws that govern the country, but there are numerous issues that are governed by individual provinces and cities. Many other countries have similar variations among different districts, provinces, and regions. In some contexts, laws apply differently to different ethnic groups within a society. Malaysia, an Islamic state, has a different set of standards for its indigenous Malay citizens than it does for citizens of Chinese or Indian descent. One U.S. company operating in Kuala Lumpur began offering yoga classes for employees during the lunch hour. The class was led by a North American instructor as a way to offer employees holistic exercise. There was enthusiastic participation from several of the Indian and Chinese personnel. But no Malays, the predominant population in the country, ever came to yoga. Eventually the company learned that it’s illegal for Malays to practice yoga because yoga is believed to incorporate elements of Hinduism, which could corrupt a Muslim’s faith. Complete understanding of all the specific legal structures is not necessary, but an appreciation for the significance of how a legal system affects the way we work in different contexts is essential. The suggestions in Table 4-4 will help you get started.

Religious Systems: Rational vs. Mystical

Why do bad things happen to good people? How come drunk drivers survive while innocent people get killed? Why do tsunamis kill some innocent people while others escape?

Every culture develops a way of explaining what otherwise seems inexplicable. There are no uniform conventions for answering these questions, but all societies offer a variety of supernatural and religious beliefs for things that go beyond human understanding. Admittedly, there are many differences within most cultures for how different individuals and their religions answer questions like these. One of the distinguishing differences between how many cultures organize their supernatural belief systems is rooted in the extent to which they take a rational, scientific approach to answering the inexplicable versus a more spiritual and mystical outlook on life. The rational approach puts more emphasis on individual responsibility and work ethic whereas the mystical way places a higher degree of confidence in supernatural powers, both good and evil (Table 4-5).

Table 4-4. Legal Systems

Legal Systems

The systems developed by a society to protect citizens’ rights.

Formal

A very formalized system that is chronicled in things such as a written constitution and laws.

Informal

Although less formalized, simple legal systems are still binding and are passed along through conventional wisdom. Citizens and visitors are presumed to understand and follow the rules.

Leadership Implications

• Recruit local expertise to aid you in negotiating with legal and government officials.

• Take the time to learn which laws are relevant for your work in a respective place.

• Find out what unwritten practices should be used or avoided with legal officials. For example, giving a gift to a government official will be essential in some cultures and can get you arrested in another.

Religious and supernatural beliefs can shape work-related attitudes in profound ways. Max Weber, often called the founder of sociology, analyzed the relationship between Protestantism and capitalism. Capitalism is partially driven by a Protestant work ethic, which is prevalent in Western societies and emphasizes hard work, diligence, and frugality with the aim of accumulating capital. It’s assumed this approach will be the best for society. The guiding thought is: A society won’t survive without expecting people to work hard for it.

Table 4-5. Religious Systems

Religious Systems

The ways a culture explains the supernatural and what otherwise seems inexplicable.

Rational

The emphasis is on finding reason-based scientific answers to the supernatural with a focus on individual responsibility and work ethic.

Mystical

The emphasis is on supernatural powers, both good and evil, that control day-to-day events and life.

Leadership Implications

• Be respectful about how you discuss your religious beliefs and learn what might be most likely to offend someone in light of his or her religious beliefs. Be alert to the most potentially offensive things that could be done in regard to a culture’s religious beliefs and seek to avoid those practices.

• Become a student of how religious values and supernatural beliefs affect the financial, management, and marketing decisions made by organizations in a particular culture.

• Find out key religious dates. Avoid opening a new business in China during the Festival of the Dead or on Deepavali in India. And don’t schedule an important meeting on days such as Christmas or Chinese New Year.

In contrast, Islam emphasizes charity to the poor and has rigorous measures to ensure profitable gains don’t come at the expense of the poor. As a result, most Islamic banks prohibit charging interest on loans because gains from loans are seen as exploitive gains from the poor. Innovative businesses working in the Islamic context have factored in this reality by charging a fee up front rather than charging interest. Non-Islamic companies working in Islamic countries need to have a basic understanding of these Islamic practices.

One French business opened its Thailand office one flight above a statue of Buddha. Only after several months of virtually no business did this company learn that no one was coming to the office because it was violating a sacred rule: Never put yourself above Buddha, literally! After moving to a new location, business took off. Elsewhere, a Japanese multinational corporation was caught off guard by the extent to which religious beliefs affected its global expansion. The company decided to build a factory on a piece of land in rural Malaysia that was formerly a burial ground of the aboriginal people who had lived in the region. After the factory was built, mass hysteria resulted among the factory workers of Malay origin. Many employees claimed they were being possessed by spirits. They believed that erecting the factory on the former burial ground had disturbed the spirits, causing them to swarm the factory premises.

We can’t underestimate the powerful role of religious beliefs and practices in how we work in different places. For Western leaders, who are often perceived to be Christian even if they aren’t, conversing about some of the other great religions of the world will demonstrate significant respect when interacting with leaders from other parts of the globe. Those coming from religiously devout contexts into more secular ones need to understand the perceptions that may be associated with religious devotion. You need not abandon your own religious convictions or pretend to have them in order to convey honor and appreciation for the views and practices of others. This is a significant point to understand about cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence doesn’t mean abandoning our convictions, values, and assumptions. Instead, we’re seeking to understand and respect the beliefs and priorities of others and express our own values and beliefs in ways that are appropriate, respectful, and effective.

Artistic Systems: Solid vs. Fluid

Finally, every society develops a system of aesthetic standards that gets manifested in everything from decorative art, music, and dance to the architecture and planning of buildings and communities. There are many different ways we could examine artistic systems. One way of thinking about it is to observe the extent to which a society’s aesthetics reflect clear lines and solid boundaries versus more fluid ones. Many Western cultures favor clean, tight boundaries, whereas many Eastern cultures prefer more fluid, indiscriminate lines (Table 4-6).

In most Western homes, kitchen drawers are organized so that forks are with forks and knives are with knives. The walls of a room are usually uniform in color, and when there is a creative shift in color, it usually happens at a corner or along a straight line midway down a wall. Pictures are framed with straight edges, molding covers up seams in the wall, and lawns are edged to form a clear line between the sidewalk and the lawn. Why? Because Westerners view life in terms of classifications, categories, and taxonomies. And cleanliness itself is largely defined by the degree of order that exists. It has little to do with sanitation and far more to do with whether things appear to be in their proper place.

Maintaining boundaries is essential in the Western world; otherwise, categories begin to disintegrate and chaos sets in. Most Westerners want dandelion-free lawns and roads with clear lanes prescribing where to drive and where not to drive. Men wear a tie to cover the adjoining fabric on the shirt they put on before going to a symphony, where they listen to classical music based on a scale with seven notes and five half steps. Each note has a fixed pitch, defined in terms of the lengths of the sound waves it produces. A good performance occurs when the musicians hit the notes precisely.

Table 4-6. Artistic Systems

Artistic Systems

A society’s approach to aesthetics including decorative art, music, architecture, web design, and city planning.

Solid

A preference for clean, tight boundaries that emphasize precision and straight lines.

Fluid

A preference for more fluid, indiscriminate lines with an emphasis on ebb and flow and flexibility.

Leadership Implications

• Determine whether you need to alter the color schemes, navigation logic, and representations on your website for various regions. What might seem like a clear navigation approach in your culture might be very confusing in another place.

• Beware of assuming that symbols or logos can be universally applied in all cultural contexts. Do your homework to find out how symbols will be received in the places where you work.

• Learn what cultural icons are revered. For example, inappropriate use of lions or the Great Wall when marketing to Chinese will erode credibility.

In contrast, many Eastern cultures have little concern in everyday life for sharp boundaries and uniform categories. Different colors of paint may be used at various places on the same wall. And the paint may “spill” over onto the window glass and ceiling. Meals are a fascinating array of ingredients where food is best enjoyed when mixed together on your plate or, just as likely, on a communal plate. Roads and driving patterns are flexible. The lanes ebb and flow as needed depending on the volume of traffic. In a place like Cambodia or Nigeria, the road space is available for whichever direction a vehicle needs it most, whatever the time of day. And people often meander along the road in their vehicles the same way they walk along a path.

There are many other ways aesthetics between one place and another could be contrasted. But consistent with the CQ model, the important point is a basic understanding of how cultures differ within the realm of aesthetics. Soak in the local art of a place and chalk it up to informing your strategy for international business. When designing a website, beware of how culturally bound color, navigation, and symbols are. Do more than simply translate the words of a brochure or instructional guidebook. Consider how the layout and design may need to be adjusted. It’s unrealistic to come up with a different version of every document for every culture reflected in today’s global organization. But careful thinking about the role of culture in how people will understand and react to design and aesthetics is essential. Use the suggestions in Table 4-6 to consider how this relates to your team.

Understanding these basic cultural systems and some overarching ways they function across various cultures is a key part of developing your CQ Knowledge. It’s easy to overlook the importance and relevance of these systems if we don’t take time to consider them. And as demonstrated in the iceberg metaphor (see Figure 4-1), there will always be individuals within a culture who stray from the cultural norms for aesthetics or any of these cultural systems.

Conclusion

CQ Knowledge begins with understanding culture’s role in people’s thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors. It’s a matter of discerning what’s universal to all humans, what’s attributable to specific cultures, and what’s idiosyncratic to individuals. Then we need to understand the role of language in culture and gain a basic grasp of the systems developed by cultures to deal with economics, family, education, legal issues, religion, and artistic expression. In the next chapter, we’ll look at one more crucial aspect of CQ Knowledge: understanding ten cultural dimensions used to compare cultures.

David Livermore, Leading with Cultural Intelligence: The Real Secret to Success, Second Edition. (American Management Association, 2015), 3–97.