Cultural Intelligence: Why Is It Crucial In Today's Globalized Economy?

Cultural Intelligence or CQ is a new domain of intelligence that is increasingly relevant to today's global economy. As diversity is here to stay - brought about by opportunities of global expansion and presence - traits like Intelligence Quotient [IQ] and Emotional Quotient [EQ] are no longer suffice.

CQ can be distinguished through three sources: Cognitive, Motivation and Behaviour. These sources enable an Individual to distinguish different sets of behaviour:

* Behaviours produced by the culture in question

* Behaviours that are peculiar to individuals

* Behaviours found in all human beings

Moreover, customers and markets have become more wide-ranging and sophisticated that it is critical to maintain your organization's Competitive Advantage and Market Leadership. The emergence of markets like China, India and Vietnam impact global economies; hence it is expected of both organizations and employees to develop and assume a repertoire of skilled behaviours in order to interact effectively across cultural boundaries. Not just competently, but also intelligently.

With the ever-increasing cross-border travelling and short-term international assignments that have become commonplace; the organization should ensure that procedures are in place before embarking on a global presence, for instance:

* the hiring of culturally-competent employees

* cultivate and encourage a cultural-sensitive work environment

* communicate in globally-understood English

* adapting to a global environment company-wide, inclusive overseas subsidiaries
The above emphasized factors are not exhaustive although they are the more easily identified; as well as more commonly cited. Any organization that has overseas presence outside its home market - by way of subsidiaries, joint ventures or representative offices - certainly has experienced repatriating staff who simply could not adapt to strange or foreign environments. Or receiving "complaints" about how foreign business transactions are not done accordingly to ways they are familiar with, but quoted as "idiosyncratic" too.

Likewise, the International Assignee who looks forward to an overseas experience would wish to succeed in his assignment. By equipping himself with the necessary CQ skills, chances of career promotion are definitely higher and favourable - besides becoming a better and culturally-sensitive individual.

Multi-ethnic and polyglot Ange Teo is the Founder-Managing Director of e2m expat etiquette mentoring, a Singapore-based Cross-Cultural Communications Solutions Provider.
Having worked with some of the world’s leading Multinational Companies and Singapore-based Small Medium Enterprises for over 20 years; Ange Teo specialises in the areas of Information Technology, Secretarial/Administration, and Human Resources specifically Executive Search / Headhunting.