Cultural Intelligence
Cultural Intelligence picks up where emotional intelligence leaves off – how we deal with people and situations, but now in unfamiliar surroundings.
People with high emotional intelligence do not necessarily perform well abroad where the social and business cues in the environment are unknown. It takes building a new mental framework for understanding.
When you are out of your cultural comfort zone, you must glean cues from the environment in new ways and interpret them accurately to develop trust-based relationships – and get done what you need to get done.
Coaching can be a powerful support as you gather new knowledge, practice new patterns of thinking and learning, engage effectively with others across differences and rewire neurons for new behaviors.
Cultural intelligence will help you:
• Manage and leverage change, complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity,
• Think strategically from cultural cues in the environment,
• Successfully engage with others across cultural differences,
• Select appropriate behaviors among a new repertoire,
• Build a personal framework for understanding.
The bonus is more confidence in how you operate, a better sense of who you are, and a view into your potential for living in a larger world full of wider perspectives. In this way, an experience abroad – in the midst of change and complexity – can help you become the best of who you are, professionally and in your personal life.
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My blog is dedicated to transforming international living into personal progress, with resources, stories, observations and practical applications. Keep stopping by.
Cross-cultural moments: a twitch, a deep gut-wrenching punch, a squirmy, queasy, lightheaded feeling that comes on when you find yourself outside your cultural comfort zone. We begin by recognizing these physical signals in our bodies.
Being understood and respected for who you are and what you represent is a universal value. We may not agree with the culturally based values and beliefs we find when we leave our cultural comfort zone, but we have an obligation to try to understand where they come from and respect the complex world from which they spring.
Our cross-cultural moments are generally a function of our own cultural values, beliefs and understanding of how the world works – not theirs. While this shift in perspective can be difficult to embrace, it opens up new routes to personal and professional progress.
