Cultural Intelligence - Taking a Center Stage in Organization Design and Leadership Behavior.

In a world where-in social economic boundaries are getting blurry. Overweight on virtual / global work culture elevates the need to understand the cultural aspects across the teams in a global set up. If emotional intelligent taught us more about "empathy" in our leadership styles , its critical for us to understand more about "Cultural Intelligence" in a team set up and its application in the leadership styles. In this article I have done some work to bring literature work on Cultural Intelligence. Being an immigrant to US from Asia I have personally gone through many cultural transformation and still practicing on how to sharpen my skills on handling leaders of different nation and culture.

Reflection of Cultural Engagement

In a highly competitive business environment, it is becoming more and more important for companies to innovate in order to gain or maintain a competitive advantage over their competitors. According to Asfar et al. (2020), one of the most important individual competences is cultural intelligence and understanding cultural differences. Due to globalization, organizations nowadays are becoming more and more diversified, also in respect of their workforce, which is becoming more and more culturally diversified (Asfar et al., 2020). According to Asfar et al. (2020) organizations need to motivate their employees to engage in innovative work behaviors. Innovative work behaviors are complex in nature as it is not easy to generate ideas that are practical, novel, proactive, realistic, and feasible. Moreover, uncertainty, risk and resistance from the organizational members further add to the complexity of the innovative processes (De Jong and Den Hartog, 2010). Nowadays, organizations have diversified workforce and teams usually comprise of people with different nationalities, cultures, ethnicities, backgrounds, and religions.

Why Culture intelligence matters in Business : Here are some stats :

1. International ventures that fail because of cultural differences : 70%
2. Executives from 68 countries who say cross-cultural management is their top challenge :90%
3. Multinational firms losing money in China: 82%

Culture is a catch-all term that can refer to the style and ethos of an organization, national customs and foods, or even the latest trends in fashion, movies and music. Culture is a deeply rooted patterns of values, customs, attitudes and beliefs that distinguish one group from another. It subconsciously guides behavior and thoughts and thus influences just about everything that happens in an organization. One of the most important individual competence of a lead is to understand cultural differences and possess requisite cultural intelligence. Such differences make employees cognize and behave differently, thereby resulting in misunderstandings and interaction problems (Pothukuchi et al., 2002). Lacking cultural intelligence might result in knowledge hiding and conflicts (Bogilovic et al., 2017), making innovation more challenging.

Cultural Quotient (CQ) refers to an individual’s capability to function and manage effectively in culturally diverse situations and settings (Van Dyne et al., 2012). CQ helps individuals to adapt effectively to foreign environments and work with members of other nationalities and cultures through a repertoire of cognitive, behavioral and motivational abilities. People who are used to their own culture find it difficult to switch norms or beliefs rapidly to accommodate other cultures. A culture is a very strong bond. People tend to feel more comfortable in a similar culture to their own because unfamiliar signs or symbols can cause anxiety. Just like other intelligences (e.g. cognitive, emotional or social) that are associated with the ability to accomplish tasks, CQ is reported as another key predictor of attitudinal or work outcomes. However, because the significance of CQ has been emphasized in the global context, most scholars have studied situations where people have relocated to unfamiliar cultural environments for work or study (e.g. international entrepreneurs, expatriate managers and international students) (Bucker € et al., 2014; Huff et al., 2014; Lough, 2011; MacNab and Worthley, 2012). Multinational organizations need a better understanding of the possible role of their employees’ CQ in organizational success. The amount of cultural diversity in multinational firms is more as compared to local or national firms

Engaged employees, in turn, are more likely to have a strong intention to share their work-related knowledge and to put significant effort into innovative work behavior for their organizations (Kim and Park, 2017). Built on the philosophies of affective events theory (AET) (Weiss and Cropanzano, 1996), it been argued that interpersonal trust, as a result of CQ, could also act as a mediator between CQ and innovative work behavior. In particular, employees with a high level of CQ are more likely to trust their colleagues (Rockstuhl and Ng, 2015). Consequently, higher levels of interpersonal trust should lead to higher levels of innovative work behavior (Lee, 2008). The highest correlation was found between CQ and innovative work behavior. Since organizations nowadays have diverse workforce where people from different cultures, ethnicities, values, languages and norms interact with each other to achieve organizational goals. Studies described the significant role of cultural intelligence in forming the employees’ attitudes (work engagement and trust) and behaviors (innovative work behavior).

This explains some of the behavioral aspects of cultural dimension why German /Nordic perceived as rude or blunt and Asians obtuse or unclear in a direct communication. Asian may be uptight on handling uncertainty as compared to Arabs. Anglo may be perceived as highly assertive and combative as compared to African. Its important to understand intercultural - CQ cognitive knowledges - general understanding of the cultural and also understand the context specific. As one develop more understanding on the CQ knowledge about a culture, its important to develop a CQ strategy and actions. Strategy involves in planning , awareness and checking. Different dimension of the action depends on : Verbal actions , Speech acts and Non Verbal Behavior. In every cultural situation, individual cultural drivers brings the basic difference in understanding the cultural intelligence. Cultural drivers depends on intrinsic and extrinsic interest of the person in cultural diverse situation and person's self efficacy being effective.

There are multiple ways organization conduct intercultural assessment :

1. Individual Preference : Cultural value profile , Multicultural Personality Questionnaire ( MPQ)
2. Cultural Awareness : Intercultural Developmental Inventory ( IDI)
3. Intercultural Skills : Cultural Intelligence Scale and Intercultural Adjustment Potential Scale.

?In Every good Endeavor , Keller explains culture engagement reflection in different sections. Work as Cultivation. God gave man a role in creating culture and civilization – to “be fruitful, fill the earth and subdue it.” God’s plan for all work is creative and assertive, rearranging God-given materials and creation in a way that helps the world and people to thrive and flourish. The word “culture” comes from the word “cultivation.” God doesn’t make junk and neither should we. We “bring order out of chaos, create new entities, exploit the pattern of creation, and interweave the human community.

As conclusion , Senior leaders in the organization should active role in developing CQ strategy for their business or function which starts with a commitment , conducting CQ audit and developing a strategy .

Note : this article is for knowledge sharing and bringing awareness on cultural intelligence , which is becoming a convoluted topics for many organization and businesses.

Reference

Kreider B (2015). Reflection on Every Good Endeavor by Timothy Keller. The Anchor Academy

Afsar B , Al-Ghazali B , Cheema S & Javed?F ( 2020) . Cultural intelligence and innovative work behavior: the role of work engagement and interpersonal trust, European Journal of Innovation Management. Issue(s) available: 93 – From Volume: 1 Issue: 1, to Volume: 24

Cultural Intelligence : The essential intelligence for the 21st century -Ingersoll Rand; SHRM foundation's effective practice guidelines series.