BUS272 TB

to diversity goes beyond employers. In September 2011, at an exhibition game between
the Philadelphia Flyers and the Detroit Red Wings played in London, Ontario, someone
from the audience threw a banana at Flyers’ player Wayne Simmonds, one of the few
black players in the NHL. Retired Montreal Canadiens forward Georges Laraque, when
asked to comment on the incident, noted that “throughout [my] career, [I] had to
endure the ‘N’ word a number of times.” 161
Chapter 3 Values, Attitudes, and Diversity in the Workplace 107
Cultural Intelligence
Are some individuals better than others at dealing with people from different cultures?
Management professors Christopher Earley of the London School of Business and
Elaine Mosakowski of the University of Colorado at Boulder have recently introduced
the idea of cultural intelligence (CQ) , to suggest that people vary in how they deal
with other cultures. CQ is defined as “the seemingly natural ability to interpret someone’s
unfamiliar and ambiguous gestures in just the way that person’s compatriots and
colleagues would, even to mirror them.” 162
Earley and Mosakowski suggest that CQ “picks up where emotional intelligence
leaves off.” Those with CQ try to figure out whether a person’s behaviour is representative
of all members of a group or just that person. Thus, for example, a person with
high CQ who encounters two German engineers would be able to determine which of
the engineers’ conduct is explained by the fact of being an engineer, by being German,
and by behaviour that is simply particular to the individual. A recent study found that
CQ is particularly helpful to expatriates on international assignment because the ability
to be confident about and interested in being in new cultural environments makes it
easier to adjust to the demands of foreign assignments. 163
10
Identify the benefits of
cultural intelligence.
RESEARCH FINDINGS: Cultural Intelligence
According to researchers, “cultural intelligence resides in the body [the
physical] and the heart [the emotional/motivational], as well as the head
[the cognitive].” 164 Individuals who have high cognitive CQ look for clues to help
them identify a culture’s shared understandings. Specifically, an individual does this by
looking for consistencies in behaviours across a variety of people from the same cultural
background. Individuals with high physical CQ learn the customs and gestures of those
from other cultures and therefore act more like them. This increases understanding,
trust, and openness between people of different cultures. One study found that job
candidates who used some of the mannerisms of recruiters who had different cultural
backgrounds from themselves were more likely to receive job offers than those who did
not do so. 165 Those with high emotional/motivational CQ believe that they are capable of
understanding people from other cultures, and will keep trying to do so, even if faced
with difficulties in doing so.
Based on their research, Earley and Mosakowski have discovered that most managers
fall into the following CQ profiles: 166
• Provincial . They work best with people of similar background, but have difficulties
working with those from different backgrounds.
• Analyst . They analyze a foreign culture’s rules and expectations to figure out
how to interact with others.
• Natural . They use intuition rather than systematic study to understand those
from other cultural backgrounds.
• Ambassador . They communicate convincingly that they fit in, even if they do
not know much about the foreign culture.
cultural intelligence (CQ) The
ability to understand someone’s
unfamiliar and ambiguous gestures in
the same way as would people from
that person’s culture.