No longer need you leave home to experience foreign cultures. You can find them not only in other countries, but also in corporations, professions, and regions. This puts a premium on the ability to traverse the diverse cultural environments of business, and the habits, gestures and assumptions that comprise them. After surveying 2,000 managers in 60 countries, Earley and Mosakowski have formed a concept of “cultural intelligence” or CQ – though the word “quotient” is never used, perhaps to avoid the appearance of quantitative precision. In this 8-page article, they explain how CQ differs from IQ and EQ, why it matters, what skills it is comprised of, and how to cultivate it.

Productively interacting with individuals from a different cultural background calls for perceptiveness and adaptability. Cultural intelligence – the collection of the relevant skills and capabilities – is “the ability to make sense of unfamiliar contexts and then blend in.” The authors explain how CQ differs both from IQ and EQ (emotional intelligence), arguing that neither of the two more familiar constellations of talents suffices for mastering cultural diversity. CQ enables a person to distinguish culturally-derived behaviors from universal behaviors and purely individual behaviors. One important element that CQ and EQ share is (as Daniel Goleman puts it) “a propensity to suspend judgment – to think before acting.”

Earley and Mosakowski say that cultural intelligence has three components—cognitive, physical, and emotional/motivational. The cognitive component relies on learning strategies to analyze cultural elements and then deploy them in personal behavior. The physical component involves mirroring the habits, mannerisms, postures, vocal tones, and so on, of the other culture. The emotional/motivational component refers to a person’s sense of efficacy in their ability to overcome cultural distances. The authors’ survey shows that managers typically possess uneven strengths in these areas of CQ. They provide a simple diagnostic questionnaire to help executives identify their relative strengths and weaknesses.

To further assist readers in identifying their current CQ strong and weak points, the article outlines six profiles. Different combinations of the three components of CQ distinguish the provincial, the analyst, the natural, the ambassador, the mimic, and (the rarest, most highly skilled type) the chameleon. Finally, the authors outline six steps toward cultivating CQ.

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