CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE

WORKING ACROSS CULTURES

Culture and Cultural Intelligence

Culture: The values, norms, and customs that a group of
Remember: CQ helps to
people share.
build and maintain a close or
Cultural intelligence (CQ): An outsider’s ability to interpret successful relationship.
someone’s unfamiliar and ambiguous gestures in the same
way that person’s compatriots or coworkers would. individual determines
the behavior
Setting goals will help you improve your cultural intelligence:

• Become aware of your own relative cultural biases. socially

acceptable
• Respect and value cultural differences. behaviors
• Adapt to accommodate cultural differences.
culture defines the
parameters
Adapting to a New Culture
Cultural intelligence is made up of these aspects:

• Cognitive: Knowledge about another culture that helps Culture shock has four phases:
you interpret others correctly. • Honeymoon
• Metacognitive: An overall awareness of how culture • Frustration
affects interactions and an ability to strategize
accordingly. • Adjustment
• Behavioral: The ability to mimic another culture to help • Acceptance
others interpret you correctly.
• Motivational: The emotional resilience and desire to
adapt to another culture.

Leading Across Cultures

When leading across cultures, create a unique team culture
by:
If conflicts arise, encourage
• Explicitly describing the group norms. team members to look for
cultural explanations, try
• Explaining your reasoning.
changing the group structure,
• Acknowledging how and why it may feel strange to some or, if all else fails, remove
members. problematic team members.

©2021 QUANTIC SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY

CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE

Cultural Differences
Power distance: The extent to which members of a culture
accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. Decision-making
Uncertainty avoidance: The degree to which a culture tries • Cultures that value consensus
to avoid uncertainty and ambiguity. only make decisions when
everyone is in agreement.
Members of monochronic cultures think of time in absolute
• Cultures that value top-down
terms and often focus on one task at a time.
decision-making expect
Members of polychronic cultures see time in flexible, relative everyone to support the
terms and may engage in several tasks at once. leadership’s decision.

Applications-first thinkers want actionable information first

and care more about how things work than why.
Types of decisions
Principles-first thinkers prefer to establish a general theory • decisions (little d) are made
first, then apply it to a specific situation. quickly but subject to
continued adaptation.
Specific thinking: An object or problem can be analyzed
by isolating it from its environment. Applications-first and • Decisions (capital D) are
principles-first thinking are both types of specific thinking. painstakingly planned but
final.
Holistic thinking: Analysis of any object or problem must
consider its many connections to the broader environment.

Relationship-based trust: Personal relationships are at the

core of business relationships.

Task-based trust: People place their faith in those who

demonstrate professional competence and efficiency.

Low-context communication: A person’s meaning is

contained directly in his or her words.

High-context communication: Much of what a person means

is conveyed without words.

Confrontational cultures get right to the point when giving

feedback or offering critique and may use “upgraders” like
very or extremely.

Nonconfrontational cultures often sandwich criticism with

agreement or praise. They may use “downgraders” like
somewhat or a little.

©2021 QUANTIC SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY