Cultural Intelligence: Thriving in a Diverse Global Marketplace

?“70 percent of international ventures continue to fail because of cultural differences. Simplistic approaches that teach cultural practices and taboos aren’t sufficient”

David Livermore

What are we missing?

As I listened to the panel discussion on cultural intelligence amongst my fellow coaches at the Diverse Coaching Directory earlier this year, it struck me that within organisations, we were still missing something.

From a diversity perspective, while we have been creating awareness and respect for our differences, it seemed like we did not yet understand what it really meant for the organisation.

Besides looks, the colour of our skin and languages, we have started to recognise that those from different national cultures have different mannerisms, expectations and often times different sense of ethics. Becoming cognizant of what these differences were and to accommodate them in our daily work life was hard enough. The real question was, with the organisation becoming a global melting pot, will this awareness and respect for each other be enough? Or was there any other intelligence that needed to be grown...

During my 20+ years of working globally across different cultures, my different role hats of a Leader, an Executive Coach and an Agile practitioner taught me different perspectives. As a Leader working with teams across cultures, I noticed that each culture brought something unique that could be tapped. As I worked as an Executive and Leadership Coach with the privilege of going on 1-to-1 journeys with my clients, I saw the common humanity amongst us. As an Agile practitioner working towards organisational transformation, I was curious as to why the agile journey when done right was able to ‘shift culture’ the way it did.

During these experiences, while I saw the unique strengths that cultural differences brought, I also saw the challenges they posed when people were brought together. Merely being aware of these differences was not enough. How could we solve this?

It felt like I was placing ‘dots’ on a page with my experiences and insights but I was yet to draw ‘lines’ or ‘shapes’ with them!

The world around us

As I dug deeper into this, I saw the fantastic work that had been put into this research around the world. It was found that people were not just randomly different from one another. It also wasn’t that one culture was better or worse than the other.

Hofstede described the differences between countries under 6 categories. Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner saw this to be of 7 dimensions. David Livermore divided the world into 10 cultural clusters. Through their work, I found some great pointers.

As someone who grew up in Asia and having worked in other parts of the world, I could understand the impact of ‘power-distance’ for example, where ‘high’ power-distance meant that great deference was given to a person in authority without a need for justification vs ‘low’ power-distance, where the culture valued everyone being treated equally.

As a coach working with leaders globally, I could see how someone’s perception of ‘good’ could completely be turned on its head when working with someone else from another culture. Where one might think it was good to self-sacrifice and be helpful to others (collectivist), the other might believe that good was to be self-reliant and independent (individualist) and to fulfil your personal responsibility.

I am certain there is a story behind every single cultural characteristic. Such research has made it possible to understand each country’s people (sometimes even your own!).

How does this relate?

An understanding of cultural characteristics in itself may not be enough though.

Hofstede explains that ‘National Culture’ is a group phenomenon, that can only be ‘measured in comparison’ and at scale. What that means, is these characteristics become more visible as we look at the country as a wider whole. At an individual or small group level, individual personalities may dominate more and this may not be as obvious.

How then within an organisation, could we create this cultural intelligence and how could the business thrive through these differences?

The organisational context

Since the 1980s the word ‘culture’ has come to mean ‘this is the way we do things around here’.? However, while adding ping-pong tables and providing free lunches might create a sense of commonality, this may not really explain ‘why’ they were added.

Edgar Schein saw this as three levels: 1. Artefacts (visible behaviour), 2. Values (widely communicated) and 3. Beliefs (our tacit assumptions of which others can be unaware).

As an organisational change agent, I have admired the great lengths some organisations go to in order to create global similarity at Level-1 of this framework. I like it even more when leaders take the time to think, articulate and communicate organisational values at Level-2. However, where often businesses struggle in the global context and marketplace, is at Level-3 (unspoken beliefs and assumptions).

It was interesting to read that at one time, dining at McDonald’s was a ‘show of status in Moscow, whereas it is a fast meal for a fast buck in New York’ [Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, Riding the waves of culture]. It brought back the point, that it was not what was visible on the surface, but the ‘shared meaning’ a group of people gave to it that was key.

Is this where cultural intelligence comes into play? What is cultural intelligence...

Edgar Schein’s level 3 of ‘beliefs’ that are invisible and assumed could greatly benefit from becoming aware of the culture map and national culture differences that you saw earlier. But if that understanding and awareness remained in your ‘head’ as knowledge, it might not take you anywhere further. To sense it with your ‘heart’ and show it in action with your ‘body’ is how you may get the full benefit of true cultural intelligence as an individual. David Livermore refers to the 4 stages as Drive, Knowledge, Strategy and Action and calls this ‘Cultural Intelligence’ or CQ.

So, if this was what Culture meant and what Cultural Intelligence was about, where was the gap? We seemed to be still talking at a level of individual change and it was unclear how the collective mass within an organisation could be made to shift in order to achieve ‘collective cultural intelligence’. While it is indeed valuable to train ‘individuals’ in these techniques (or groups of individuals) is there any other way to create a deeper collective shift in the organisation where this movement towards cultural intelligence can happen faster?

My Eureka moment came as I connected my experiences as an Agile practitioner and as an Agile Coach with the understanding of a Diversity Coach, as to what Culture and Cultural Intelligence meant and then to read the Hofstede insights from Culture Factor:

“...Organisational Culture is ‘what we do’ in an organisation, and is manifested through the Symbols, Rituals, Beliefs, Attitudes, Behaviours of the people collectively in an organisation”

I had originally wondered why it was that I saw ‘culture’ shifts in the organisation when Agile transformation was being ‘done right’.

This deeper research combined with my experiential observations across organisations have re-affirmed why we succeeded in culture shifts i.e. when we focussed on ‘Beliefs, Attitudes and Behaviours’ in addition to the ‘Symbols and Rituals’ in an agile journey. On the flip side, in those organisations that have only focussed on the symbols and rituals of agility, business agility efforts have failed.

I had to go on this journey of understanding of what (national) culture really meant, what made us different from each other globally, how this tied to organisational culture and what the definition of cultural intelligence and CQ was at an individual level - in order to understand how this tied in with the Agile movement of creating collective cultural intelligence shifts, that helped a business thrive in the diverse global market place.

Choose your journey

Depending on your business size and business aspirations in the global market place, you can make a choice as to what level of cultural intelligence you would like to achieve. Be it at an individual level or at a collective business level will decide how well you thrive in your chosen market with a global workforce.

Help is at hand – if you are new to culture change or curious about how agility initiatives can co-exist with executive and leadership coaching, get in touch!

* Image Credits: The images in this article have been drawn from many sources, some unknown. I thank them all, as I was able to visualise my thought journey through them!

** Research Credits: References are made to the work of Hofstede, Trompenaar, Hampden-Turner, Edgar Schein, David Livermore, P. Christopher Earley and Elaine Mosakowski

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Geetha Ramachandran has worked for 20+ years across different industries and cultures.

She is an award-winning Executive Coach, Leadership Coach and Agile practitioner, PCC accredited by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and a member of the Diverse Coaching Directory. She received the ‘Telegraph Woman of the Year' award in 2018 for creating a one-team culture and 'Acumen Made a Difference' award in 2014 for customer impact and team satisfaction. ?

She works with board members, chief execs, senior leaders and cross-functional teams within the organisation. She has a passion for creating authentic leadership and high-performance teams.