Cultural Intelligence

Running Head: Cultural intelligence

Cultural intelligence

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Cultural intelligence

Introduction

Cultural intelligence is our capacity to interact effectively with people of other cultures. When we talk about culture we are not referring only to nationalities. If culture is composed of values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours shared by a group of people, we talk about culture we also refer to organisational cultures, professionals and others who we identify with the groups to which they belong. (Mayer 2000: 274-78)

Cultural intelligence allows us to have the breadth, flexibility and ability to cope with these challenges effectively. Requires an understanding that no culture is superior, better or worse than another and that to understand the differences, we can coordinate with people from different cultures to achieve common purposes. (Schmidt and Hunter 2000: 3-14)

What it involves

Cultural intelligence is divided into three parts in themselves: cultural engagement (emotional aspect), cultural understanding (cognitive aspect) and intercultural communication competence (practical aspect). (Yamazaki and Kayes 2004: 366-74) Cultural means to deal intelligently aware of codes and their decoding handle to reveal differences in the underlying understanding and to make it usable. It remains for ourselves, for organisations and executives with a great challenge to recognise one's own cultural imprint and deconstructing familiar expression and ways of understanding in dealing with others in order to create a common language and emotional platform. (Campbell 1999: 416)

The first step in developing cultural intelligence means recognising our values, beliefs and attitudes. There are other ways of seeing reality and to the extent that we understand these differences, we will be able to relate to other cultures more effectively. (Roberts 2005: 694) In other words, empathy or the ability to put ourselves in another's shoes, we can be sensitive to the needs of others. (Wonderlic 1999: 16-24) To the extent that we are aware of our "cultural filters" or glasses we use to see the reality according to our perspectives of life, we participate in the exercise of exploring alternative ways to understand reality and behave without fear of "losing" something to accept those differences. This requires humility, curiosity, flexibility, ability to the subtleties of cultural differences, and willingness to take risks in attempting to bridge these cultural gaps. (Brislin et al. 2006: 51)

The privatisation of human knowledge and