What is the difference between individuals and organizations that succeed in today’s globalized, multicultural world and those that fail?

Cultural Intelligence (CQ®) is the capability to function and relate effectively in culturally diverse situations.”

International diversity occurs when people travel to different countries or interact with people from different countries.

Domestic diversity occurs when people interact with people who have different cultural backgrounds or are from a different subgroup (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity, religion, functional background, etc.).

Cultural intelligence is a multi-dimensional construct. Sternberg defined “intelligence” as the capability to function effectively in a particular situation and identified four key factors of “intelligence”— motivation, cognition, metacognition, and behavioural flexibility.

Cultural Intelligence research based on:

• 20+ years
• 1148+ peer reviewed studies
• 150,000+ surveyed
• 168 countries

4 Dimensions of Cultural Intelligence

Cultural intelligence has four dimensions based on the application of Robert Sternberg’s integrative theoretical framework of different “loci” of intelligence. Unlike most measures of intercultural competence, CQ is based on theory. The dimensions of cultural intelligence represent qualitatively different aspects of the overall capability to function and manage effectively in culturally diverse settings.

Cultural intelligence is comprised of four factors. All four factors are important for overall cultural effectiveness:

Cultural Intelligence is not…

Cultural intelligence is distinct from individual differences such as personality, which describes what a person typically does across time and across situations. For example, people who are high in the personality trait of agreeableness are typically cooperative and easy to get along with. Individual differences, such as agreeableness, are not based on culture. Instead, the personality trait of agreeableness reflects the person’s natural tendency to be agreeable. Cultural intelligence is also different from emotional intelligence (EQ) because CQ focuses specifically on the capability to read situations and adjust to culturally diverse contexts. Emotional intelligence is culture-bound because cultures differ in the ways they manage and express emotions. An individual may have high EQ in their own cultural setting, but EQ may not transfer easily to other cultural settings.

Benefits of developing CQ for organisations

• Success in culturally diverse markets
• Speed and efficiency across borders
• Multicultural and global team effectiveness
• Profitability and cost-savings
• Harmonised and productive workplace 

Impact of CQ Training

What all organisations have in common is the need for results in the workplace.

When integrated with leadership programs, M&A culture integration, new hire orientations, and high potential programs, our CQ solutions result in improvements in several key areas of effectiveness.

• Trust
• Innovation
• Idea Sharing
• Profitability
• Productivity
• Cost-Savings
• Leadership Effectiveness
• Negotiation Effectiveness
• Judgment & Decision Making

You can improve your CQ

Cultural intelligence is a malleable capability that can be enhanced by multicultural experiences, training and self-awareness programs, travel, education, etc.

Learning outcomes include:

■ Self-awareness of how culture influences your interactions with others

■ Understanding how to develop and apply CQ in yourself and others

■ Effectiveness in working with multicultural colleagues and customers

You may think that homogenous teams don’t perform as well as diverse teams, but that’s not true UNLESS you build CQ