Assessment remit and follow-up procedures for level 7

¶ … CQ in your chosen vocational area and analyze the extent to which the development of CQ might help the progression of your future career.

Vocational Area: Business Leader

Interest in cross cultural management research has increased drastically as a result of global business. It has become vital to learn to deal effectively with people from a variety of cultures as diversity is now seen as a business advantage. The concepts of internationalization, multinationality, multiculturalism, as well as globalization are now commonly understood. The collaboration of all people across various business sectors is leading to increased revenue and business for corporations. The international service sector has seen an incredible increase in diversity and therefore a special need to learn to work together properly. The various cultural beliefs and traditions of different groups can easily lead to conflict since they are different for every people and nationality (Arora & Rohmetra, 2010).

The relationship between business and the societal and cultural relationships needs to be understood by business leaders who wish to have success on the global market. However, it is far more difficult to be competent and able in regards to cross cultural communication and understanding than one would think. Mindfulness is therefore a highly useful business skill that works in helping a person understand another. It functions in a way of making a person reflect and make connections between what people know and what they do. Adaptability is necessary by global leaders so that they can handle the difficult relationships that are bound to come their ways as they work in a global market permeated with a plethora of beliefs and traditions. CQ is the term coined for intercultural competence which means a person's ability to understand and conform to social norms of another's culture. This is also known as cultural intelligence (Earley, 2002; Earley and Ang, 2003; Ng, Van Dyne and Ang, 2009a and 2009b). A part of this is also the ability to be flexible and give a little in order to accommodate another's beliefs (Tuleja, 2014).

Metacognitive CQ

The level of an individual's actual conscious awareness of culture during intercultural relations is known as metacognitive CQ. This usually comes about through higher level information processing and strong cognitive functioning, because of that only those with practice in multicultural relationships have this ability. The people that are able to use metacognitive CQ are much more aware of the differences as well as similarities of the diverse people around them. They don't simply accept social norms as they are but rather they question, and then adapt themselves to the proper codes of conduct (Triandis, 2006). Cognitive CQ differs from metacognitive CQ in the way that it is not a process of the higher cognitive processes, instead it is an assimilation of experiences involving: Practices, norms, personal experience, and cultural conventions. Again, this also includes both the similarities and the differences of various cultures. The people that possess high cognitive CQ are usually very aware of the self in the culture, have solid maps of culture, as well as cultural environments. Through this information that they have stored they are able to make assumptions as to how and what kinds of interactions they will have with a specific culture (Rockstuhl, et al., 2011).

Motivational CQ

The ability, or rather the desire and capability to focus one's attention towards the study and learning of various cultures is known as motivational CQ. That motivational functions affect our cognition and ability to accomplished goals was argued by Kanfer & Heggestad (1997, P. 39). Additionally, our associated values or expectations that are connected to actually reaching a goal very heavily influence the amount of effort we put forth towards that task (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002). The people that have strong motivational CQ are usually highly interested in cross-cultural relationships and environments, and are also very confident in such situations. (Bandura, 2002).

Behavioral CQ

The type of CQ that focuses on behavioral ability is behavioral CQ. This field narrows in on the way that people from different cultures actually interact. It includes the responses used in conversations as well as the unspoken forms of communication. The people who excel at behavioral CQ are usually highly effective communicators with the ability to adapt to an array of various situations. (Rockstuhl, et al., 2011).

Cultural Intelligence and Cross-Border Leadership Effectiveness

Leadership is one area of business that is especially influenced by cultural norms since every culture has their own schemas and blueprints of what makes for a good leader. The leadership styles (House et al., 2004), relationship natures, and the behavior of management (Shin et al., 2007) are all things very heavily influenced by a person's cultural background. This creates a need for highly effective cross-culture communication, leadership, and flexibility. We tend to group intelligence, both emotional (Caruso, Meyer, & Salovey, 2002) and general (Judge, Colbert, & Ilies, 2004), as qualities that every strong leader needs. However, no amount of general intelligence will help a person deal with multicultural context. That is where cultural intelligence is needed. This concept was created by Earley and Ang (2003) as a derivative from Sternberg and Detterman's (1986) previous intelligence models. The definition as coined by the creators of the term is the ability to be effective in culturally diverse situations. (Rockstuhl, et al., 2011).

Cultural Intelligence as a Moderator of Authentic Leadership

Leadership that is authentic will work together with cultural intelligence in order to allow the leader to take action while still being considerate of another's cultural background. Morals are therefore accounted and the cross cultural relationship and flourish without conflict. Being able to do global business without losing track of your personal values make it possible for business leaders to remain genuine and be effective.

Cognitive interaction of cultural intelligence and authentic leadership

That the balanced processing and self-awareness portions of leadership can be defined as cognitive functions has already been suggested. These components will, coupled with cultural intelligence will improve leadership over all, but specifically their moral adaptations to culture. Being morally grounded, again, means that you are able to remain honest and true to a personal value system. So, by combining cultural intelligence with the various components of leadership business leaders will be more successful and flexible in the face of a multinational market (Earley & Ang, 2003).

The load of information that honest leaders will be able to receive from the environment will increase drastically as the leader uses balanced processing techniques and treats all data equally. This should be obvious since the awareness of multiple perspectives allow a leader to make more informed decisions and pay more attention to detail. Leaders will thus gain great benefit from combining both cognitive and metacognitive CQ since it will allow them to increase their cultural knowledge and their learning ability. In conclusion, a broader set of data will lead to a broader set of solutions (Vogelgesang, et al., 2009).

Behavioral signals, value systems, and one's personal role in any interpersonal situation is dealt with through self-awareness (Walumbwa et al., 2008). If a leader is skilled in metacognition the will also be able to recognize how their own information processing skills are influenced by culture. Such an ability to be self-aware will not only allow for a leader to be sympathetic to other cultural traditions, but it will allow them gain a deeper understanding of themselves and why they live the morals the do. Proficiency in crossing cultural boundaries and stepping over personal limitations is possible mainly through the combination of cognitive components of leadership and cultural intelligence (Vogelgesang, et al., 2009).

Developing global leadership EQ

Steven J. Stein as well as Howard E. Book wrote a book called the EQ Edge in 2000. The text examined the 30 most managerial as well as professional careerfields, and it revealed that roughly 50% of reported work success comes as a result of EQ (Stein & Book, 2000). More evidence supporting this claim that EQ is linked to success of business leaders was recorded by Annie McKeein, Daniel Goleman, and Richard Boyatzis 2002 novel called Primal Leadership. They reported emotional intelligence as the number one critical skill for leaders in America (Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2002). Others have compiled research that supports this claim. Hay-McBer's consulting firm is another research study that showed the overwhelming amount of business success traits being related to high EQ. Therefore it seems obvious that at least in America, emotional intelligence is incredibly influential in causing successful business behavior. In close relation, organizational Cl is most vital in the United States when working with new organizations. Corporate failures can often be attributed to a lack of organizational Cl (Alon & Higgins, 2005).

Success in both work and life requires emotional intelligence. The evolutionary importance of emotional intelligence as a biological factor is huge. That emotion is the very first screen for all information shared between individuals is higher for humans than any other creature on earth was stated by Nigel Nicholson in a Harvard Business Journal (Nicholson, 1998, p. 138). Fight or flight responses in small hunting groups demonstrates emotional intelligence's importance in assessing situations. Thus when a person receives any piece of information they will assess it emotionally first. Fight or flight is still being used in our brains as we assess information we have received. This explains why when we receive 99% praise, a person will focus on the 1% and evaluate what they need to change. So as a result, self-awareness of one's own personal emotions allows a person to be more conscious of information assessing and reactions to data. Additionally, a strong honest leader needs to be able to be aware of others emotional responses as well so that they can manage interactions. The EQ service will measure a person's abilities across a wide emotional intelligence spectrum (Alon & Higgins, 2005).

EQ and global leadership

Human emotional response is the main conflict faced as an individual tries to cultivate healthy emotional behavior. Russel Cropanzano as well as Howard Weiss put together 6 universal basic emotions: Happiness, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, and anger (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). Even though a nation can have very specific definitions of what certain emotions mean, these interpretations don't always translate well across cultural boundaries. These emotional expressions do not need to be spoken as they can be non-verbal emotional cues as well. A great example of this is the 1991 Los Angeles Times Report, Emmons (1991) in which had American citizens identify emotions based on people's faces. The results showed that the people were able to determine the emotions with high accuracy. However, when Japanese people were asked to identify the emotions on the same faces (the faces were American) the results showed that most students were in disagreement with each other. The only emotion that was identified accurately was surprise. For the other emotions accuracy ranged from as low as 24% up to 70%. This demonstrates the high importance of Cl as it is increasingly difficult to identify emotions across cultures. Skillful Cl becomes extremely important and enables leaders to internalize and translate various EQ behaviors in order to choose an appropriate response (Alon & Higgins, 2005).

Developing a global leader's cultural intelligence

The question becomes how a persona can transfer their own emotional intelligence across cultural borders since it is so highly linked with success. Cultural intelligence is the answer that bridges the cultural gap. Christopher Early and Soon Ang reported emotional intelligence as being unable to transition across cultural borders if the ability to react to affective states to other individuals is interpreted differently across cultures (Earley & Ang, 2003). So CQ and EQ effectiveness is directly related.

Project Globe that was created in 2002 by Robert House and his fellow colleagues demonstrates how different cultures value various successful leadership abilities (House et al., 2002). Cross-cultural environments are becoming ever more common in the workplace and managers need to understand this ethnic and cultural diversity in order to provide healthy and effective working environments. It has become clear and vital for leaders in today's world that they need to adapt their behaviors to the variety of the workforce (Alon & Higgins, 2005).

So how is global leadership then affected by CQ? That there is an immediate need for cross-cultural leadership was a notion put forth by Tracey Manning in 2003. She also put forth that the ability to adapt to cultural diversity is a precursor for powerful global leadership (Manning, 2003).

Robert Rosen and his colleagues performed a wide variety of interviews and surveys across multiple companies in 28 different countries in order to get enough information for their book: Global Literacies: Lessons on Business Leadership and National Cultures. The text reports that the very cornerstone of universal leadership comes from global literacies. Also, the text argues that the more integrated economically the world becomes; the more cultural variety becomes vital (Rosen et al., 2000). So the ability to handle cultural differences properly (cultural intelligence) is a vital component of global literacy. The concept of cultural literacy coined by Rosen is very similar to the one by Earley & Ang (2003). The concept was that cultural intelligence relates intelligence to the best managerial habits and leadership success. Additional information was provided by Offerman & Phan (2002) as they demonstrated the relationship between cultural congruence from the leader to the follower as being very dependent on the level of worker satisfaction and effectiveness. (Alon & Higgins, 2005).

CQ's help in the progression of Future Career

Leaders that exhibit strong cultural intelligence are usually very interested in different cultures and traditions (Earley & Ang, 2003) as well as in gaining an understanding of what the individuals in other cultures expectations are (Thomas & Inkson, 2004). They also seek reasoning skills that will aid their quest for cultural interactions and knowledge (Earley, Ang, & Tan, 2006). Chinese prospective interviewees all reported the personal importance that their managers appreciate and respect their culture (Deng & Gibson, 2008).

This desire by Chinese interviewees is mirrored by many managers with a strong cultural intelligence trait. They feel that it is absolutely crucial to seek to understand the employees' culture on a very personal level. Through seeking understanding of an individual's culture and traditions, the manager can gain additional understanding into why the employee makes certain decisions and behaves in certain ways. By cultivating an open work environment in which cultures are sought to be learned and understood, effectiveness and employee satisfaction will increase.

Communication has also been reported as the very most fundamental element in order to be a strong leader. The conflicts that cultural barriers create for communication can be quite large. There is a huge lack of shared understanding due to the different backgrounds and misunderstandings can easily occur. (Thomas & Inkson, 2004). The absolute greatest barrier in communication is language though. However, only those interviewees that spoke no Chinese reported this as an issue (Deng & Gibson, 2008).

The consequences of cultural differences can be dire. Misunderstanding, low morale, conflict, and lower productivity are all results of cultural differences (Levy-Leboyer, 2004).Therefore one of the biggest elements of a managers CQ is cultural awareness. Rather than discussing the differences between one culture and another, most respondents focused simply on the importance of the concept of cultural awareness and the willingness to be flexible. This was because it was difficult for the respondents to answer direct questions in regards to cultural differences. So this supports the thought that cultural awareness is a general sense, not a specific response to the specific reported cultural differences. As Early (2006) stated, there are many various sub-cultures that a person can belong too, and a person's heritage does not necessarily define its culture (Deng & Gibson, 2008).

All of these findings combine to show the importance of communication across cultural boundaries as a vital way to understand a host culture, and thus it also becomes a measurement for a leaders CQ. The finding of solutions or making of compromises can be relatively complicated to make in cross-cultural environments, and it is the essence of effective cross-cultural communication according to Javidan and House (2001). The ability to speak the language fluently does not necessarily define a person's level of CQ since they can still behave appropriately for the situation (Earley & Ang, 2003).