Discuss how the four areas of cultural intelligence aid a leader in understanding culture as well as intercultural efforts. The cultural intelligence model (CQM) is organized in the following steps: drive, knowledge, strategy, and action. Drive is the willingness to work with others from diverse backgrounds. It includes an ability to overcome explicit or unconscious bias and the capacity to persist in challenging intercultural settings, even when the individual feels confused, frustrated, or burnt out. CQ Drive is the extent to which one is energized and persistent in one’s approach to multicultural situations, one’s self-efficacy and sense of deriving benefit from intercultural interactions. Knowledge is an understanding of culture, cultural differences and similarities. CQ knowledge is the degree to which one understands how culture, cultural scripts and systems influence how people think and behave. Strategy is the ability to adapt mentally. With high CQ Strategy, individuals understand that the cultural dimensions that constitute worldviews are multiple and likely different to one’s own and awareness of these assists in the development of strategies for interpersonal and community relations and business success. Action is the extent to which you can act appropriately in multicultural situations. It includes one’s flexibility to adapt verbal and non-verbal behaviours and to adapt to different cultural norms to intentionally improve the relationship or interaction. CQ Action decreases the risk of miscommunication and helps an individual respond to diverse others in a manner that conveys respect and builds trust and rapport (Toohey, 2019). Cultural intelligence plays a meaningful role in determining cooperation among people from various corporate cultures, traditions, nationalities, disciplines, functions and cultures. The main benefits of CQ are: creating productive relationships based on giving importance to people’s differences, communicating effectively in different cultural settings, establishing a common ground, maximizing teamwork in groups where people act and think differently, differences can be used to improve innovation processes and assess intercultural communication, maximizing corporate brand investment, providing tools for improving sales success, people performance and brand image, encouraging people to be the best they can be, offering insights to better understand international colleagues and clients, and gaining a competitive edge in their specific industry (Paz, 2015). Determine how leaders must reframe their thinking when interacting with employees of different cultures. Culture intelligence (CQ) ABC process consist of the following steps: acquiring knowledge, build strategic thinking, contemplate motivation, and do behaviors. Acquire knowledge is fundamental to start new cross-cultural interactions. Any kind of intelligence, especially CQ, needs to be feed with a proper training. Leading or managing roles need a special care to understand how cultures are created, interpreted, and shared, as well as how cultural interpretations, meaning, and symbols can impact behaviors and attitudes. After a proper training activity, a strategic thinking need to be built. This metacognition step is about using the acquired knowledge and building awareness of your surrounding through preparation and planning. Strategic thinking is important because it is how to make sense of the knowledge and use it in a way that helps to better perform and interact with different cultures. The next step is about start contemplating motivation and ability to work with others. In fact, the first contact with a different cultural reality depends on a leader’s ability to pay attention to surroundings and to respond well to unfamiliar situations. This part concerns the personal interests, drive, motivation, willingness to work through, and with, cultural interactions. Finally, the last step is about monitoring how we changed our behaviors to adapt and better perform in the new cultural environment. The leader’s beliefs and values typically change with the way others perceive she/he (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012). Examine the different methods a leader can utilize adaptive work to adjust his/her thinking. As suggested by the name, adaptive leadership is about listening team individuals and environment to adapt and tailor leadership style. This involves a cultural intelligence and communication skills in order to motivate team and achieve success. Adaptive issues, differently from technical issues, depend on people and way to manage projects and team work but have not only a single way to be solved. Emotional intelligence, organizational justice, development, character, and mindfulness are common methods to be adaptive and adjust thinking in change or multi-culture environment. EI is the ability to recognize your own feelings and those of other people. With this awareness, an adaptive leader is able to build trust with other participants and foster quality relationships. Furthermore, fostering a culture of honesty is important to achieve an healthy environment. Adaptive leaders know the best policies to introduce for the good of the organization. They also know the best ways to introduce these changes so that people embrace them. Adaptive leaders are willing to accommodate other peoples’ views, hence, assuring them that they are valued and respected. Adaptive leadership entails learning new things. If one technique is not yielding desired results, an adaptive leader goes out of his or her way to discover new strategies that can work. With new techniques, both the employees and the company at large will experience growth and development. Adaptive leadership is about having a deep sense of character, being transparent and creative. Adaptive leaders may not always be right but they earn the respect of those they work with and practice what they recommend. For a multi-cultural leader also other skills are crucial: link organizational change to the primary values, abilities, and dreams of the stakeholders involved, create an environment that embraces diversity of views and takes advantage of such collective knowledge to benefit the organization, understand that change can be a painful process, understand that large-scale change is a gradual process, which calls for persistence and a willingness to bear the pressure that comes along with that, being proactive, looking for opportunities and investing the necessary resources to go after them, admitting when they make mistakes and changing or abandoning non-productive strategies, being open to experimentation and risk-taking, and liking and encouraging innovation among employees (CFI, n.d). How can leaders demonstrate interdependence while dealing with diverse cultures? From leader perspective, there are two main class of interdependence: the one between leader and team, and the other between leader and managers or other stakeholders (customers, other teams, partners, investors, suppliers, and so forth). In general, is a leader duty to work as an interface between the two worlds. This is not a simple task, especially when dealing with different cultures. In my experience I found important to show clearly what depends to what. But a leader needs to show to the team the whole scenario, so each team member can understand how to play individual role better. Typically, while senior employees know how to play their role, juniors need to be trained. However, all the team members, regardless from personal experience need to learn or find a way to work with mates. Here the leader makes the difference showing interdependence while proposing a common accepted way to do things. Again, the listen part needs to be done before acting. Discuss how being culturally conscious is important to the success of a leader. For me, being culturally conscious means being aware of (and eventually creating awareness) of cultural differences and taking them into account when facing issues. Ignoring different cultures means ignoring different ways to work, needs and reduce some individuals’ productivity in the useless effort of imposing one only way for all. This would eventually result in a rigid and difficult environment, with lack of trust in the leader figure and motivation in doing tasks. References CFI (n.d.). What is Adaptive Leadership? Retrieved from https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/careers/soft-skills/adaptiveleadership/#:~:text=In%20summary%2C%20adaptive%20leadership%20can,delegates%20roles%20to%20te am%20members. Cultural Intelligence for Leaders (2012). Saylor Academy. Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0. Retrieved from: https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_leading-with-cultural-intelligence/index.html Paz, M. (2015). Cultural Intelligence and Its Importance in the Workplace. Linkedin. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cultural-intelligence-its-importance-workplace-margot-paz/ Toohey, M. (2019). The CQ Model. Square Space. Retrieved from http://www.thecqmodel.com/
