Leader's Edge Newsletter: September 2007

Tips on Developing "Cultural Intelligence" For Global Leadership

By Richard Martin

Note - While the following content is mine, I got the term "cultural intelligence" from a book by Thomson and Inkson called, you guessed it, Cultural Intelligence.

• Be naturally curious. Don't shut yourself off from dialogue or interaction with people of other cultures. This includes other professions, occupations, or organizations - yes, it is possible to understand engineers…
  
• When you encounter someone with an accent you can't identify, ask them politely and with curiosity what it is. I have done this quite often and people respond well to the inquiry because they love to talk about their home country and culture.
  
• Be open minded and receptive to other people and other ways of doing things. There is seldom one perfect way of doing things. Even more, there is never one single way of seeing the world.
  
• Ask questions and listen to the answers. If you don't know how to act in a certain situation, then ask a trusted advisor about the custom and expected behaviour. I have often asked this of my interlocutor in an exchange. Sometimes I get a laugh, but it breaks the ice and creates a dynamic of open communication.
  
• Use humour. I'm always astounded that people from around the world find essentially the same things funny.
  
• Be aware of your own implicit theories. We all carry around our own cultural baggage, whether that be professional, organizational, ethnic, linguistic, gender based, or whatever else. Try to see your behaviour from others' points of view and continually question your assumptions and perceptions.
  
• When you travel, go off the beaten track. That doesn't mean you should walk around a dark souk alone at two in the morning, but you can certainly get out of the stultifying, yet comfortable, business/tourist travel circuit.
  
• You don't have to “go native” to understand another national culture. I have worked in many different countries without adopting their traits and behaviours. The important thing is to respect others, and to get respected. The key way of doing this is by reading beforehand, asking candid questions, listening and observing. If you don't want to do something, then don't do it. You may have to explain your reasoning, but people are more sophisticated than we give them credit for.

Recommended Reading

As a new feature, I've decided to occasionally offer free reading advice. This month I would like to recommend - at great risk to my own life and limb - Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007). I make this recommendation because global warming is about to cost us billions, so it will have an organizational and business impact for decades to come, whether it is real or not.

The book, while quite polemical, offers an interesting, and refreshing, counterpoint to all the claims about an overwhelming "scientific consensus" on man-made global warming in the popular press. The authors' favourite target is of course the UN funded International Panel on Climate Change, but that doesn't stop the book from being an eye opening read which could lead you to challenge some of the alarmist pabulum we are being fed on a constant basis these days.

Singer and Avery are favourite targets of the environmental movement in the U.S. because they are highly sceptical of man made global warming and the dire predictions of Al Bore and acolytes. Here is the interesting thing. Singer is actually a professional meteorologist and climate scientist. The main thesis is this: the earth warms and cools over an approximate 1,500 year cycle. This is primarily caused by fluctuations in solar radiation and its interplay with cosmic rays and the earth's own variations in orbit, inclination, etc. If your head still doesn't hurt, you can examine the many graphs of ice-core samples from Greenland and upper atmosphere temperature readings by satellites. You could also read the dozens of pages of references to articles by reputable climate scientists in refereed academic journals.

In the final analysis, you can agree or disagree with the thesis of man-made global warming. Unstoppable Global Warming at least provides an alternative viewpoint to the so-called scientific consensus. It also provides another perspective on the world of academic publishing and paradigm building, but that's just a bonus in my mind.

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