Cultural Intelligence (CQ) has always been valuable, but I believe that we need it now
more than ever. The world is shifting in ways that demand leaders who can navigate
complexity, bridge divides, and bring people together. In organisations and communities
worldwide, leadership that thrives on difference rather than fears it is no longer optional
- it’s essential.What is CQ? It is the ability to cross boundaries between cultures and
thrive while doing it. It’s about working well with people who are not like you – across
geographies, industries, aspirations, generations beliefs, and backgrounds.
I see eight major shifts that underscore why the time for CQ has come. There may be
more, but these eight illustrate why leaders must develop the ability to collaborate
across boundaries, build trust in diverse environments, and embrace the discomfort that
comes with real innovation.
- The need for collaboration
Big problems can no longer – if they ever could – be solved by one person, one sector,
one culture, one community, one country or even one continent operating alone. So,
leading across boundaries through collaboration is increasingly crucial. The problems
faced by organisations require their separate divisions – production, sales, marketing
finance – and their leaders to collaborate. Communities need the public, private and not
for profit sectors to find ways to work more effectively, together, if they have to use their
resources and assets to best effect. Countries and continents face global problems of
an order that requires old and new divides to be crossed.
Leaders who see that the only sustainable route to change is collaboration are having to
learn to work with people from different cultures and backgrounds, people of different
ages, people whom they don’t understand or know whether to trust. People who are
difficult, sensitive, touchy, even hurt. People who can be precious, on occasions rude
or offensive or simply confused. In many cases people who really really don’t want to
collaborate at all.
Such collaboration is not easy because mostly leaders spend the bulk of their time
operating within the boundaries of their division, their sector or their nation. And this
effect is compounded because leaders so often respond to the scale and complexity of
problems around them by retreating into isolation. By operating in parallel universes,
their collaborations becoming more like ships passing in the night, unable to understand
each other’s points of reference and vocabulary.
To reverse this, we need CQ. Without it, leaders will lead underperforming
collaborations, where two and two struggle to add up to one. Or collaborations will
simply never get off the ground as people go their own way. SILO’s will go unbusted,
sectors will continue to clash, resources will be wasted, divides will deepen, and the big
problems will simply stay unsolved.
- The reality of networks
Leaders know they must build networks to cope with the scale of change all around
them, to avoid their blind spots and to capitalise on the opportunities change presents.
There will always be a role for networks of people ‘like me’ to give leaders,
encouragement reinforcement and support. But ‘like me’ networks will always be of
limited value for leaders who want to see what other others see and to cross
boundaries. Leaders need to develop ‘turbulent networks’ to give them a
counterbalancing discomfort, and sometimes even distance.
Turbulent networks are difficult to create. Generally – and not surprisingly – human
beings much prefer support networks; we all seek out people like ourselves. And the
internet has made this ever easier, allowing leaders to create new forms of closed
clubs, seeking out yet more people ‘like me’.
I believe the temptation for leaders to simply increase their homogenous networks,
needs to be resisted in order to address complex problems and bring people together to
solve them. Leaders must go further field, and they’ll need to build turbulent networks
that will challenge and discomfort them and this will require CQ. - The importance of trust
In this new less structured world trust has become the greatest of assets. People buy
brands they trust and listen to sources they trust. And they choose to follow leaders they
trust. Without trust they don’t give their best. Or worse they eventually simply move on
to follow someone they do trust.
I think it’s up to the leader to build up a record over time to become and remain worthy
of peoples trust. It is one thing for a leader to do this in their own culture, where the
reference points for trust will be familiar on all sides. It’s much harder to establish
trustworthiness with people whose frame of reference for trust is very different. This
also calls for CQ. - The demands of demographics
Perhaps it’s a natural precondition of progress that old and young must clash but I
believe it’s also a precondition of progress that they must connect and particularly in
such a rapidly changing world facing such daunting problems. I have heard many times
variations on ‘oh they won’t be interested in an old man like me’ or from a young person
‘they don’t want to hear from the youth voice’ the more these words are uttered the
more self-fulfilling they become.
I also too often hear the expression ‘harnessing young talent’. People seem to forget
just what harnesses are: thick pieces of leather that are strapped around an animal’s
head to force it to go where it doesn’t want to go or to prevent it from going where it
does want to go. My instinct says that the established leaders who will succeed will do
exactly the opposite to this harnessing, they will be the ones young people will choose
to follow, choose to learn from and choose to throw their energy and ideas behind. But
it’ll require the leaders to accept the different cultures of different generations, to resist
the temptation to preach or use excessive control, and instead to back young leaders
emerging around them.
It also calls for young leaders to grab the benefits of working with established leaders,
taking what is good, discarding what is not, and adapting what hasn’t worked yet but
might just this time. They must avoid either dismissing established leaders or putting
them on a pedestal or perhaps the worst paying them necessary homage but with ears
firmly shut.
Ever more CQ is called for, this time across the generations.
- The Spark of innovation
Everywhere you look everyone is crying out for innovation, new ways, new ideas, new
processes, new technologies, new ventures. I believe the secret to innovation is that it
comes best from well lead discord. The enemy is group think. Mixed teams led by
leaders with cultural intelligence see things quite different. People help each other to
think the unthinkable, they take ideas and turn them on their heads and in the process,
they break out of group think to create something genuinely new. They start to say
different things, speak from opposite points of view, argue the unarguable, play with
crazy ideas, question, challenge, sometimes even offend one another as they prod and
prompt each other to shift thinking. But this seldom happens if it’s led by people who are
so frightened of dissonance and discord or saying the wrong thing that they rush to
close it all down. It calls for leaders with CQ who are not frightened by difference in
conflict, who are not timid about holding dissonance in the room, who take time to
understand the different cultures at play, who don’t think it’s polite to ignore those
differences or pretend they aren’t there.
Innovation needs leaders who actively seek to encourage difference, who enjoy it and
thrive in it, even if they secretly know that they have no real idea where it might take
them, just that it won’t be where they have been before. - The urban magnet
People are moving as never before, and this will only accelerate as climate change
dictates the areas of the world where people can live. Cities are growing in size and are
becoming magnets of talent, coming together from multiple countries and different
cultures. To be a leader in any of these cities, people will need to have serious CQ.
They’ll need to be able to set diverse groups alight and not set out to homogenise them,
instructing them to leave the difference at the door. They will need to create a culture in
which people know they belong while at the same time being different and to be many
different things all at the same time.
These cities will thrive only if they have enough leaders with CQ, and their leaders won’t
be asking ‘where are you from?’ expecting a one-word answer (and glaze over when
they get more than one) because they risk making themselves irrelevant. - Growing world, shrinking leaders
Leaders are crossing the world almost constantly, physically and remotely.
My father used to call them the flying dead, people who fly around or reach across the
world and are expected to deliver with little idea of the cultures they were crossing. My
father’s fear was that the world would be increasingly run by the flying dead who
thought that they were running the world simply because they travelled or zoomed
across it.
Globalisation has meant that there are more potential flying dead leaders than ever
before. Many of course would claim to have CQ in abundance. Unfortunately, they
measure it in air miles or online minutes. Yet with real CQ they could become bridge
builders who can genuinely connect the world and counterbalance the increasing
fragmentation. - The pressure to focus
I’ve always thought that leadership journeys look very much like an hourglass. Leaders
become more and more knowledgeable in a smaller and smaller field. And then
suddenly they get that next promotion when they need to be broad again and nothing
has prepared them for it. I think the forces that create the narrowing of the lenses are
even stronger now because the world has gone through many shocks over the last few
years and history shows us the people react to such shocks by looking inwards and
building new walls.
When dangers and pitfalls and opportunities surround you, it’s the job of a leader to spot
them and ideally anticipate them. Because they can come from unexpected places, in
unexpected ways, that demand a wider lens at the very point when everything and
everyone else is pressing you to focus.
If leaders don’t see context, don’t see what’s coming, whether it’s a problem or a blow
or a way through or a golden opportunity, I believe that their legitimacy comes into
question.
Eight shifts that call CQ. No, I think they demand CQ. They are shifts that also have the
potential to pull people apart, it is our role in leading to do the opposite and use our CQ
to pull people together.
I’m going to be having a conversation on this on LinkedIn, 2 nd April at 2pm UK time. If
you’re intrigued join me and let’s explore what CQ really is and why it matters more than
ever.
https://www.linkedin.com/events/everythingyouneedtoknowaboutcul7308110467602784
328/theater/
About the author: Julia Middleton is the mother of practical CQ and the founder of
Women Emerging.
