Leadership & Cultural Intelligence

When the first theory about leadership was defined, it was thought that a high Intellectual Quotient (IQ) was necessary to be a good leader, in order to have the ability to process information fast and intellectually. After IQ, it came the emphasis on Emotional Intelligence (EQ) for leadership, comprising the ability to understand others and engage them aiming to achieve a common goal. Recently, the importance of Cultural Intelligence (CQ) arrived due to globalization and the increase in interconnection among people from different cultures. Cultural Intelligence is the ability to understand others who come from different cultures, or, in the business environment, it is also defined as the level of effectiveness working among cultures.

Before starting with Cultural Intelligence, the term culture should be defined. A culture is a group of beliefs, values, rules, norms, symbols and traditions that are common to a certain group of people. However, when talking about Cultural Intelligence, not only a differentiation based on geographical aspects must be done, but generations, sections, specializations and backgrounds must be included as well. 

Due to globalization, more and more companies are doing businesses with companies from different cultures. There are companies with subsidiaries or branches all over the world, employing people coming from such a variety and numerous nationalities and cultures. Other companies need products or services from companies from different cultures that are the core of their value chain. Therefore, only considering the business world, more and more companies are having multicultural and diverse environments. But not only these facts are true, but we as human beings are also starting to travel much more than our previous relatives did, moving to work in different countries, loving people from different cultures, and then, spending our lives in different cultures than our original one. Therefore, we are facing a huge multicultural world, and, probably, it will be much more relevant in the coming years. That is why cultural intelligence is so important nowadays and is a skill that should be taught and learnt to all the people in the world, not only in the business environment. 

Teams with cultural intelligence are much more innovative and resilient than those who are not, and this fact is essential in order to solve all the current problems we are facing nowadays, such as the growing population, the increase in inequalities among and within cultures, the environmental problems and the increasing needs of food to feed all the human beings on the Earth. In order to achieve cultural intelligence in organisations, leadership and leaders with cultural intelligence are key. Leaders should encourage people to achieve this cultural intelligence for them to gain trust from people coming from different cultures, as well as to achieve better communication quality and empathy among people. 

Talking from my personal experience, I may say that since I started, almost two years ago, the master program I am currently studying, I have suffered my lack of cultural intelligence, that I have been acquiring since that moment. I had been living in Spain for my whole life until I started that master, so I had almost no cultural intelligence and started studying with people coming from more than 12 different countries (e.i. India, Pakistan, China, France, Colombia, USA, etc). Since the beginning of the master, I faced some problems related to misunderstandings, different ways of thinking, a different way of working and so on. I thought I was right, and all the rest of the people were wrong, so they did not know how to work and to solve problems. However, after deeply knowing all of them, and especially empathising with them all, I realised they just have a different way of communicating, a different way of thinking and a different way of working, as well as their objectives for the future, were far different from mines. When I was able to notice these facts I started getting the maximum from each person when I had professional and leisure time with them.

To reach that point of Cultural Intelligence is necessary to know and understand the cultural, political and business environment of the person with whom we are interacting, to empathise and to understand why they do what they do and how they do so. Curiosity is an advantage when getting to know new cultures and working the Cultural Intelligence skill since it is what makes you willing to know more about other cultures, to adapt to living and communicating with them, and mainly, to treat them the same way you treat the people in your own culture.

At this point, the term “ethnocentrism” appears, that is the belief that our own culture is the best and the most natural one. All of us are ethnocentrist to some degree, but the more ethnocentrist a person is, the less tolerant is, so the less acceptance has to different points of view. Together with ethnocentrism comes “prejudices”, that are the predetermine thoughts or beliefs that we have from other cultures or groups and are based in non-confirmed data and usually tends to generalisation. Then, good leaders with cultural intelligence should know how to face their degree of ethnocentrism and prejudices, as well as dealing with the ethnocentrism and prejudices of their followers. There is no playbook for leaders to apply a specific leadership theory in order to achieve good cultural intelligence since the best option is to adapt to each situation and culture to the theory that best fits with them.

Summing up, considering globalization, interconnectedness, the facility we have to interact with people from different cultures, and all the good results we can get from this evidence, it’s essential to achieve cultural intelligence (the sooner the better).