Cultural Intelligence as Extension of Emotional Intelligence

Cultural Intelligence
Culture matters not just to people but also to organizations. There is always going to be an organizational culture in which people work and operate, a culture that reinforces how they interact with others and provides them with a sense of what values are appropriate and what ethical principles they should align their actions. Yet when one talks about cultural intelligence one is talking about cultural understanding, i.e., one’s knowledge of other cultures, the values that are promoted in other cultures, the experiences, ideals, worldview, and sense of identity that can be found in other cultures. Why is this important for a person in a leadership position or in human resources? The answer is easy: connecting with others, relating with them, and interacting with them in an effective manner can best be achieved if one is open to and understanding of that person’s culture. In other words, the more open-minded and informed an individual is about other cultures, the more likely that person is to get along with others in a genial and positive manner.
Cultural intelligence can best be defined as understanding of human beings that goes beyond the universal and focuses on the particular, with regards to where people and groups come from. As Earley and Mosakowski (2004) put it, cultural intelligence comes into play where emotional intelligence leaves off: “A person with high emotional intelligence grasps what makes us human and at the same time what makes each of us different from one another. A person with high cultural intelligence can somehow tease out of a person’s or group’s behavior those features that would be true of all people and all groups, those peculiar to this person or this group, and those that are neither universal nor idiosyncratic” (Early & Mosakowski, 2004, p. 139).
So why does one need cultural intelligence? Again, the answer is easy: the world has been globalized and today’s communities and organizations are full of diverse people. If one is unfamiliar with a person of a culture that is different from one’s own, cultural intelligence will help the person to be cautious about making assumptions or holding expectations that would be inappropriate when interacting with a person of different cultural values and experience. For instance, an individual from Qatar is likely to have different cultural values than an individual from the US. A person from China is likely to have different values than a person from France. Qatar and China are both collectivist societies with clear hierarchies. The nations of the West are more liberal, and do not have clear hierarchies because the notion of equality is more prevalent. Were a person from the US to assume that everyone in China worshiped liberty the same way he does he would make a grave mistake. In fact, Mattel made this mistake when it attempted to sell Barbie dolls in China in the early 21st century. Mattel did not bother to research the culture of China and thus was shocked when it found that it had to close its doors due to lack of sales (Kuhne, 2016).
When one has cultural intelligence, one is better prepared to make the right decisions when it comes to interacting with people of other cultures. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions can be a great aid in developing one’s culture intelligence. Hofstede looks at the cultural dimensions of cultures all over the world and ranks them according to a scale. He looks at the way certain cultures view power distance, at the way they view leisure, at the way they view individualism vs. collectivism, whether they are oriented towards a long-term vision or a short-term vision, and so on. These dimensions can tell one a lot about a culture and what to expect from it.
References
Earley, P. C., & Mosakowski, E. (2004). Cultural intelligence. Harvard Business Review, 82(10), 139-146.
Kühne, B. (2016). Mattel’s Second Attempt to Crack the Chinese Market: Will China
Embrace the American Barbie Doll This Time?. In Market Entry in China (pp. 147-163). Springer, Cham.