cultural intelligence - acg mosco intelligance.pdf · ciphering its cultural code. within any large...

BEST PRACTICE

Knowing what makes

groups tick is as important

as understanding individuals.

Successful managers learn

to cope with different

national, corporate, and

vocational cultures.

CulturalIntelligenceby P. Christopher Earley and Elaine Mosakowski

You SEE THEM at international air-ports like Heathrow: posters ad-

vertising the global bank HSBC thatshow a grasshopper and the message"USA-Pest. China-Pet. Northern Thai-land-Appetizer."

Taxonomists pinned down the scien-tific definition of the family Acrididaemore than two centuries ago. But cul-ture is so powerful it can affect howeven a lowly insect is perceived. So itshould come as no surprise that thehuman actions, gestures, and speechpatterns a person encounters in a for-eign business setting are subject to aneven wider range of interpretations, in-cluding ones that can make misunder-standings likely and cooperation im-possible. But occasionally an outsiderhas a seemingly natural ability to inter-pret someone's unfamiliar and ambig-uous gestures in just the way that per-son's compatriots and colleagues would.

even to mirror them. We call that cul-tural intelligence or CQ. In a worldwhere crossing boundaries is routine,CQ becomes a vitally important apti-tude and skill, and not just for interna-tional bankers and borrowers.

Companies, too, have cultures, oftenvery distinctive; anyone who joins a newcompany spends the first few weeks de-ciphering its cultural code. Within anylarge company there are sparring sub-cultures as well: The sales force can'ttalk to the engineers, and the PR peoplelose patience with the lawyers. Depart-ments, divisions, professions, geograph-ical regions-each has a constellation ofmanners, meanings, histories, and val-ues that will confuse the interloper andcause him or her to stumble. Unless, thatis, he or she has a high CQ.

Cultural intelligence is related toemotional intelligence, but it picks upwhere emotional intelligence leaves off.

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BEST PRACTICE • Cultural Intelligence

A person with high emotional intelli-gence grasps what makes us human andat the same time what makes each of usdifferent from one another. A personwith high cultural intelligence can some-how tease out of a person's or group'sbehavior those features that would betrue of all people and all groups, thosepeculiar to this person or this group, andthose that are neither universal nor idio-syncratic. The vast realm that lies be-tween those two poles is culture.

An American expatriate manager weknow had his cultural intelligence testedwhile serving on a design team that in-cluded two German engineers. As otherteam members floated their ideas, theengineers condemned them repeatedlyas stunted or immature or worse. Themanager concluded that Germans ingeneral are rude and aggressive.

A modicum of cultural intelligencewould have helped the American realizehe was mistakenly equating the meritof an idea with the merit of the personpresenting it and that the Germanswere able to make a sharp distinction

reaction to the engineers' conduct, andproposed a new style of discussion thatpreserved candor but spared feelings, ifindeed anyone's feelings had been hurt.But without being able to tell how muchof the engineers' behavior was idiosyn-cratic and how much was culturally de-termined, he or she would not haveknown how to influence their actionsor how easy it would be to do that.

One critical element that cultural in-telligence and emotional intelligence doshare is, in psychologist Daniel Gole-man's words, "a propensity to suspendjudgment - to think before acting." Forsomeone richly endowed with CQ, thesuspension might take hours or days,while someone with low CQ might haveto take weeks or months. In either case,it involves using your senses to registerall the ways that the personalities in-teracting in front of you are differentfrom those in your home culture yetsimilar to one another. Only when con-duct you have actually observed beginsto settle into patterns can you safelybegin to anticipate how these people

Cultural intelligence: an outsider's seeminglynatural ability to interpret someone's unfamiliarand ambiguous gestures the way that person'scompatriots would.

between the two. A manager with evensubtler powers of discernment mighthave tried to determine how muchof the two Germans' behavior was ar-guably German and how much wasexplained by the fact that they wereengineers.

An expatriate manager who wasmerely emotionally intelligent wouldprobably have empathized with the teammembers whose ideas were being criti-cized, modulated his or her spontaneous

P. Christopher Earley is a professor andthe chair of the department of organi-zational behavior at London BusinessSchool. Elaine Mosakowski is a professorof management at the University of Col-orado at Boulder.

will react in the next situation. The in-ferences you draw in this manner will befree of the hazards of stereotyping.

The people who are socially the mostsuccessful among their peers often havethe greatest difficulty making sense of,and then being accepted by, culturalstrangers. Those who fully embody thehabits and norms of their native culturemay be the most alien when they entera culture not their own. Sometimes, peo-ple who are somewhat detached fromtheir own culture can more easily adoptthe mores and even the body languageof an unfamiliar host. They're used tobeing observers and making a consciouseffort to fit in.

Although some aspects of cultural in-telligence are innate, anyone reasonably

alert, motivated, and poised can attainan acceptable level of cultural intelli-gence, as we have learned from survey-ing 2,000 managers in 60 countries andtraining many others. Given the num-ber of cross-fiinctional assignments, jobtransfers, new employers, and distantpostings most corporate managers arelikely to experience in the course of acareer, low CQ can turn out to be an in-herent disadvantage.

The Three Sourcesof Cultural IntelligenceCan it really be that some managers aresocially intelligent in their own settingsbut ineffective in culturally novel ones?The experience of Peter, a sales man-ager at a California medical devicesgroup acquired by Eli Lilly Pharmaceu-ticals, is not unusual. At the devicescompany, the atmosphere had beenmercenary and competitive; the best-performing employees could make asmuch in performance bonuses as in sal-ary. Senior managers hounded unpro-ductive salespeople to perform better.

At Lilly's Indianapolis headquarters,to which Peter was transferred, the salesstaff received bonuses that accountedfor only a small percentage of total com-pensation. Furthermore, criticism wasrestrained and confrontation kept to aminimum. To motivate people, Lillymanagement encouraged them. Petercommented, "Back in L.A., I knew howto handle myself and how to managemy sales team. I'd push them and con-front them if they weren't performing,and they'd respond. If you look at myevaluations, you'll see that I was verysuccessful and people respected me.Here in Indianapolis, they don't like mystyle, and they seem to avoid the chal-lenges that I put to them. 1 just can'tseem to get things done as well here asI did in California."

Peter's problem was threefold. First,he didn't comprehend how much thelandscape had changed. Second, he wasunable to make his behavior consis-tent with that of everyone around him.And third, when he recognized that thearrangement wasn't working, he be-came disheartened.

140 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

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Cultural Intell igence • BEST PRACTICE

Peter's three difficulties correspondto the three components of cultural in-telligence: the cognitive; the physical;and the emotional/motivational. Cul-turai intelligence resides in the body andthe heart, as well as the head. Althoughmost managers are not equally strong inall three areas, each faculty is seriouslyhampered without the other two.

Head. Rote learning about the be-liefs, customs, and taboos of foreign cul-tures, the approach corporate trainingprograms tend to favor, will never pre-pare a person for every situation thatarises, nor will it prevent terrible gaffes.However, inquiring about the meaningof some custom will often prove un-availing because natives may be reticentabout explaining themselves to strangers,or they may have little practice lookingat their own culture analytically.

Instead, a newcomer needs to devisewhat we call learning strategies. Al-though most people find it difficult todiscover a point of entry into alien cul-tures, whose very coherence can makethem seem like separate, parallel worlds,an individual with high cognitive CQnotices clues to a culture's shared under-standings. These can appear in any formand any context but somehow indicatea line of interpretation worth pursuing.

An Irish manager at an internationaladvertising firm was working with anew client, a German construction andengineering company. Devin's experi-ence with executives in the German re-tail clothing industry was that they werereasonably flexible about deadlines andreceptive to highly imaginative propos-als for an advertising campaign. He hadalso worked with executives of a Britishconstruction and engineering company,whom he found to be strict about dead-lines and intent on a media campaignthat stressed the firm's technical exper-tise and the cost savings it offered.

Devin was unsure how to proceed.Should he assume that the German con-struction company would take after theGerman clothing retailer or, instead, theBritish construction company? He re-solved to observe the new client's rep-resentative closely and draw general con-clusions about the firm and its culture

from his behavior, just as he had done inthe other two cases. Unfortunately, theclient sent a new representative to everymeeting. Many came from differentbusiness units and had grown up in dif-ferent countries. Instead of equating thefirst representative's behavior with theclient's corporate culture, Devin lookedfor consistencies in the various individ-uals' traits. Eventually he determinedthat they were all punctual, deadline-oriented, and tolerant of unconven-tional advertising messages. From that,he was able to infer much about thecharacter of their employer.

Body. You will not disarm your for-eign hosts, guests, or colleagues simplyby showing you understand their cul-

ture; your actions and demeanor mustprove that you have already to someextent entered their world. Whetherit's the way you shake hands or order acoffee, evidence of an ability to mirrorthe customs and gestures of the peoplearound you will prove that you esteemthem well enough to want to be likethem. By adopting people's habits andmannerisms, you eventually come to un-derstand in the most elemental waywhat it is like to be them. They, in tum,become more trusting and open. Uni-versity of Michigan professor JeffreySanchez-Burks's research on culturalbarriers in business found that job can-didates who adopted some of the man-nerisms of recruiters with cultural back-


B E S T P R A C T I C E • C u l t u r a l I n t e l l i g e n c e

grounds different from their own weremore likely to be made an offer.

This won't happen if a person suffersfrom a deep-seated reservation aboutthe called-for behavior or lacks the phys-ical poise to pull it off. Henri, a Frenchmanager at Aegis, a media corporation,followed the national custom of greet-ing his female clients with a hug and akiss on both cheeks. Although Melanie,a British aerospace manager, under-stood that in France such familiarity wasde rigueur in a professional setting, shecouldn't suppress her discomfort whenit happened to her, and she recoiled. In-ability to receive and reciprocate ges-tures that are culturally characteristicreflects a low level of cultural intelli-gence's physical component.

In another instance, a Hispanic com-munity leader in Los Angeles and anAnglo-American businessman fell intoconversation at a charity event. As theformer moved closer, the latter backedaway. It took nearly 30 minutes of waltz-ing around the room for the commu-nity leader to realize that "Anglos" werenot comfortable standing in such closephysical proximity.

Heart. Adapting to a new culture in-volves overcoming obstacles and set-backs. People can do that only if theybelieve in their own efficacy. If theypersevered in the face of challengingsituations in the past, their confidencegrew. Confidence is always rooted inmastery of a particular task or set ofcircumstances.

A person who doesn't believe herselfcapable of understanding people fromunfamiliar cultures will often give upafter her efforts meet with hostility orincomprehension. By contrast, a personwith high motivation will, upon con-fronting obstacles, setbacks, or even fail-ure, reengage with greater vigor. To staymotivated, highly efficacious people donot depend on obtaining rewards, whichmay be unconventional or long delayed.

Hyong Moon had experience leadingracially mixed teams of designers atGM, but when he headed up a productdesign and development team that in-cluded representatives from the sales,production, marketing, R&D, engineer-

ing, and finance departments, thingsdid not go smoothly. The sales manager,for example, objected to the safety en-gineer's attempt to add features such asside-impact air bags because they wouldboost the car's price excessively. The

Chris understood the policy as Mer-rill's attempt to reduce hierarchical dis-tinctions both within and between thecompanies. The intention, he thought,was to draw the two enterprises closertogether. Chris also identified a liking

People who are somewhat detached from theirown culture can more easily adopt the mores andeven the body language of an unfamiliar host.

conflict became so intense and so pub-lic that a senior manager had to inter-vene. Although many managers wouldhave felt chastened after that, Moonstruggled even harder to gain control,which he eventually did by convincingthe sales manager that the air bagscould make the car more marketable.Although he had no experience withcross-functional teams, his successeswith single-function teams had givenhim the confidence to persevere. Hecommented, "I'd seen these types ofdisagreements in other teams, and I'dbeen able to help team members over-come their differences, so I knew I coulddo it again."

How Head, Body, and HeartWork TogetherAt the end of 1997, U.S.-based MerrillLynch acquired UK-based Mercury AssetManagement. At the time of the merger.Mercury was a decorous, understated,hierarchical company known for doingbusiness in the manner of an earliergeneration. Merrill, by contrast, was in-formal, fast-paced, aggressive, and en-trepreneurial. Both companies had em-ployees of many nationalities. VisitingMercury about six months after themerger announcement, we were greetedby Chris, a Mercury personnel managerdressed in khakis and a knit shirt. Sur-prised by the deviation from his usualuniform of gray or navy pinstripes, weasked him what had happened. He toldus that Merrill had instituted casual Fri-days in its own offices and then ex-tended the policy on a volunteer basis toits UK sites.

for casual dress as probably an Ameri-can cultural trait.

Not all Mercury managers were re-ceptive to the change, however. Somewent along with casual Fridays for afew weeks, then gave up. Others neverdoffed their more formal attire, viewingthe new policy as a victory of careless-ness over prudence and an attempt byMerrill to impose its identity on Mer-cury, whose professional dignity wouldsuffer as a result. In short, the Mercuryresisters did not understand the impulsebehind the change (head); they couldnot bring themselves to alter their ap-pearance (body); and they had been inthe Mercury environment for so longthat they lacked the motivation (heart)to see the experiment through. To put iteven more simply, they dreaded beingmistaken for Merrill executives.

How would you behave in a similarsituation? The exhibit "Diagnosing YourCultural Intelligence" allows you to as-sess the three facets of your own cul-tural intelligence and learn where yourrelative strengths and weaknesses lie.Attaining a high absolute score is notthe objective.

Cultural Intelligence ProfilesMost managers fit at least one of the fol-lowing six profiles. By answering thequestions in the exhibit, you can decidewhich one describes you best.

The provincial can be quite effectivewhen working with people of similarbackground but runs into trouble whenventuring farther afield. A young engi-neer at Chevrolet's truck division re-ceived positive evaluations of his tech-




Diagnosing Your Cultural Intelligence

These statements reflect different facets of cultural intelligence. For each set,

add up your scores and divide by four to produce an average. Our work with

large groups of managers shows that for purposes of your own development,

it is most useful to think about your three scores in comparison to one another.

Generally, an average oflessthan 3 would indicate an area calling for improve-

ment, while an average of greater than 4.5 reflects a true CQ strength.

Rate the extent to which you agree with each statement, using the scale:

1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree.

Total

Total

Total

Before I interact with people from a new culture, I askmyself what I hope to achieve.

If I encounter something unexpected while working in anew culture, I use this experience to figure out new waysto approach ot/jer cultures in the future.

I plan how I'm going to relate to people from a differentculture before I meet them.

When I come into a new cultural situation,! canimmediately sense whether something is going wellor something is wrong.

Cognitive CQ

It's easy for me to change my body language (forexample, eye contactor posture) to suit people fromadifferent culture.

I can alter my expression when a cultural encounterrequires it.

I modify my speech style (for example, accent or tone)to suit people from a different culture.

I easily change the way I act when a cross-culturalencounter seems to require it.

Physical CQ

I have confidence that I can deal well with people fromadifferent culture.

I am certain that I can befriend people whose culturalbackgrounds are different from mine.

I can adapt to the lifestyle of a different culture withrelative ease.

I am confident that I can deal with a cultural situationthat's unfamiliar.

4 = Emotional/motivational CQ

nical abilities as well as his interper-sonal skills. Soon he was asked to leada team at Saturn, an autonomous divi-sion of GM. He was not able to adjust toSaturn's highly participative approachto teamwork-he mistakenly assumedit would be as orderly and deferential asChevy's. Eventually, he was sent backto Chevy's truck division.

The analyst methodically deciphers aforeign culture's rules and expectationsby resorting to a variety of elaboratelearning strategies. The most commonform of analyst realizes pretty quicklyhe is in alien territory but then ascer-tains, usually in stages, the nature of thepatterns at work and how he shouldInteract with them. Deirdre, for exam-ple, works as a broadcast director for aLondon-based company. Her principalresponsibility is negotiating contractswith broadcast media owners. In June2002, her company decided that all unitsshould adopt a single negotiating strat-egy, and it was Deirdre's job to makesure this happened. Instead of forcinga showdown with the managers whoresisted, she held one-on-one meetingsin which she probed their reasons forresisting, got them together to shareideas, and revised the negotiating strat-egy to incorporate approaches they hadfound successful. The revised strategywas more culturally flexible than theoriginal proposal - and the managerschose to cooperate.

The natural relies entirely on his in-tuition rather than on a systematiclearning style. He is rarely steered wrongby first impressions. Donald, a brandmanager for Unilever, commented, "Aspart of my job, I need to judge peoplefrom a wide variety of cultural back-grounds and understand their needsquickly. When I come into a new situa-tion, I watch everyone for a few min-utes and then I get a general sense ofwhat is going on and how I need to act.I'm not really sure how I do it, but itseems to work." When facing ambigu-ous multicultural situations that he musttake control of, the natural may falterbecause he has never had to improviselearning strategies or cope with feelingsof disorientation.


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The ambassador, like many politicalappointees, may not know much aboutthe culture he has just entered, but heconvincingly communicates his cer-tainty that he belongs there. Among themanagers of multinational companieswe have studied, the ambassador is themost common type. His confidence is

a very powerful component of his cul-tural Intelligence. Some of it may bederived from watching how other man-agers have succeeded in comparablesituations. The ambassador must havethe humility to know what he doesn'tknow - that is, to know how to avoidunderestimating cultural differences,

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Helmut was a manager at a Berlin-based high-tech company who partic-

ipated in our cultural-Intelligence training program at London Business

School. Three months earlier, he had been assigned to a large manu-

facturing facility in southern Germany to supervise the completion of

a new plant and guide the local staff through the launch. Helmut came

from northern Germany and had never worked in southern Germany;

his direct reports had been raised in southern Germany and had worked

for the local business unit for an average of seven years.

Helmut was good at developing new learning strategies, and he wasn't

bad at adapting his behavior to his surroundings. But he had low confi-

dence in his ability to cope with his new colleagues. To him, southern

Germans were essentially foreigners; he found them "loud, brash, and

cliquish."

To capitalize on his resourcefulness and build his confidence, we

placed Helmut in heterogeneous groupsof people, whom we encour-

aged to engage in freewheeling discussions. We also encouraged him

to express his emotions more openly, in the manner of his southern com-

patriots, and to make more direct eye contact In the course of role-play-

ing exercises.

Helmut's resourcefulness might have impelled him to take on more

ambitious tasks than he could quite handle. It was important he get his

footingfirst, so that some subsequent reversal would not paralyze him.

To enhance his motivational CQ, we asked him to list ten activities he

thought would be part of his daily or weekly routine when he returned

to Munich.

By the time Helmut returned to London for his second training ses-

sion, he had proved to himself he could manage simple encounters like

getting a coffee, shopping, and having a drink with colleagues. So we

suggested he might be ready for more challenging tasks, such as provid-

ing face-to-face personnel appraisals. Even though Helmut was skilled at

analyzing people's behavior, he doubted he was equal to this next set of

hurdles. We encouraged him to view his analytic skills as giving him an

important advantage. For example, Helmut had noticed that Bavarians

were extroverted only with people familiar to them. With strangers they

could be as formal as any Prussian. Realizing this allowed him to re-

spond flexibly to either situation instead of being put off balance.

By the time he was asked to lead a quality-improvement team, he had

concluded that his leadership style must unfold in two stages-com-

manding at the outset, then more personal and inclusive. On his third

visit to London, Helmut reported good relations with the quality im-

provement team, and the members corroborated his assessment.

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW



even though doing so will inflict a de-gree of discomfort.

The mimic has a high degree of con-trol over his actions and behavior, if nota great deal of insight into the signifi-cance of the cultural cues he picks up.Mimicry definitely puts hosts and guestsat ease, facilitates communication, andbuilds trust. Mimicry is not, however,the same as pure imitation, which canbe interpreted as mocking. Ming, a man-ager at the Shanghai regional powerauthority, relates, "When I deal withforeigners, I try to adopt their style ofspeaking and interacting, i find thatsimple things like keeping the right dis-tance from the other person or makingeye contact or speaking English at aspeed that matches the other person'sputs them at ease and makes it easier tomake a connection. This really makesa difference to newcomers to China be-cause they often are a bit threatened bythe place."

The chameleon possesses high levelsof ail three CQ components and is a very

uncommon managerial type. He or sheeven may be mistaken for a native ofthe country. More important, chame-leons don't generate any of the ripplesthat unassimilated foreigners inevitablydo. Some are able to achieve results thatnatives cannot, due to their insider'sskills and outsider's perspective. Wefound that only about 5% of the man-agers we surveyed belonged in this re-markable category.

One of them is Nigel, a British entre-preneur wbo has started businesses inAustralia, France, and Germany. The sonof diplomats, Nigel grew up all over theworld. Most of his childhood, however,was spent in Saudi Arabia. After severalsuccesses of his own, some venture cap-italists asked him to represent them indealings with the founder of a money-losing Pakistani start-up.

To the founder, his company existedchiefly to employ members of his ex-tended family and, secondarily, the citi-zens of Lahore. The VCs, naturally, hada different idea. They were tired of

losses and wanted Nigel to persuade thefounder to close down the business.

Upon relocating to Lahore, Nigel re-alized that the interests of family andcommunity were not aligned. So hecalled in several community leaders,who agreed to meet with managers andtry to convince them that the largercommunity of Lahore would be hurt ifpotential investors came to view it asfull of businesspeople unconcerned witha company's solvency. Nigel's Saudi up-bringing had made him aware of Islamicprinciples of personal responsibility tothe wider community, while his Britishorigins tempered what in another per-son's hands might have been the me-chanical application of those tenets.Throughout the negotiations, he dis-played an authoritative style appropri-ate to the Pakistani setting. In relativelyshort order, the managers and the fam-ily agreed to terminate operations.

Many managers, of course, are a hy-brid of two or more of tbe types. We dis-covered in our survey of more than

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B E S T P R A C T I C E • Cul tural Intel l igence

2,000 managers that even more preva-lent than the ambassador was a hybridof that type and the analyst. One exam-pie was afemaie African-American man-ager in Cairo named Brenda, who wasinsulted when a small group of young,well-meaning Egyptian males greetedher with a phrase they'd learned fromrap music.

"1 turned on my heel, went right upto the group and began upbraidingthem as strongly as my Arabic wouldallow," she said. "When I'd had my say,I stormed off to meet a friend."

"After I had walked about half a block,I registered the shocked look on theirfaces as they listened to my words. Ithen realized they must have thoughtthey were greeting me in a friendly way.So I went back to talk to the group. Theyasked me why I was so angry, I explained,they apologized profusely, and we allsat down and had tea and an interestingtalk about how the wrong words caneasily cause trouble. During our con-versation, I brought up a number ofexamples of how Arabic expressionsuttered in the wrong way or by thewrong person could spark an equivalentreaction in them. After spending aboutan hour with them, 1 had some newfriends."

Brenda's narrative illustrates the com-plexities and the perils of cross-culturalinteractions. The young men had pro-voked her by trying, ineptly, to ingrati-ate themselves by using a bit of currentslang from her native land. Forgettingin her anger that she was the stranger,she berated them for what was an actof cultural ignorance, not malice. Cul-turally uninformed mimicry got theyoung men in trouble; Brenda's - andthe men's-cognitive flexibility and will-ingness to reengage got them out of it.

Cultivating YourCultural IntelligenceUnlike other aspects of personality, cul-tural intelligence can be developed inpsychologically healthy and profession-ally competent people. In our work withDeutsche Bank, we introduced a pro-gram to improve managers' work rela-tionships with outsourcing partners in

India. We developed a two-and-a-halfday program that first identified a par-ticipant's strengths and weaknessesand then provided a series of steps,which we outline below, to enhancetheir CQ.

Step 1. The individual examines hisCQ strengths and weaknesses in order toestablish a starting point for subsequentdevelopment efforts. Qur self-assessmentinstrument is one approach, but thereare others, such as an assessment of aperson's behavior in a simulated busi-ness encounter and 360-degree feed-back on a person's past behavior in anactual situation. Hughes Electronics, forexample, staged a cocktail party to eval-

unit provide support for it? A realisticassessment of her workload and thetime available for CQ enhancement isimportant.

Step 5. The person enters the culturalsetting he needs to master. He coordi-nates his plans with others, basing themon his CQ strengths and remainingweaknesses. If his strength is mimicry,for example, he would be among thefirst in his training group to ventureforth. If his strength is analysis, hewould first want to observe events un-fold and then explain to the others whythey followed the pattern they did.

Step 6. The individual reevaluates hernewly developed skills and how effec-

You will not disarm your foreign hosts simply byshowing you understand their culture; your actionsmust prove that you have entered their world.

uate an expatriate manager's grasp ofSouth Korean social etiquette. Ideally,a manager will undergo a variety of as-sessments.

Step 2. The person selects trainingthat focuses on her weaknesses. For ex-ample, someone lacking physical CQmight enroll in acting classes. Someonelacking cognitive CQ might work ondeveloping his analogical and inductivereasoning-by, for example, reading sev-eral business case studies and distillingtheir common principles.

Step 3. The general training set outabove is applied. If motivational CQ islow, a person might be given a series ofsimple exercises to perform, such asfinding out where to buy a newspaper orgreeting someone who has arrived to beinterviewed. Mastering simple activitiessuch as greetings or transactions withlocal shopkeepers establishes a solidbase from which to move into moredemanding activities, such as giving anemployee a performance appraisal.

Step 4. The individual organizes herpersonal resources to support the ap-proach she has chosen. Are there peopleat her organization with the skills toconduct this training, and does her work

tive they have been in the new setting,perhaps after collecting 360-degreefeedback from colleagues individuallyor eavesdropping on a casual focusgroup that was formed to discuss herprogress. She may decide to undergofurther training in specific areas.

In the sidebar "Confidence Training,"we describe how we applied these sixsteps to the case of Helmut, one of fiveGerman managers we helped at theiremployer's behest as they coped withnew assignments within and outside ofGermany.

Why can some people act appropri-ately and effectively in new cultures oramong people with unfamiliar back-grounds while others flounder? Ouranecdotal and empirical evidence sug-gests that the answer doesn t lie in tacitknowledge or in emotional or social in-telligence. But a person with high CQ,whether cultivated or innate, can un-derstand and master such situations,persevere, and do the right thing whenneeded. ^

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