Cultural Intelligence: Why isn’t it that simple to just transfer the knowledge to an international assignment and succeed the same way?

How many times have we seen executives and managers who have been successful working in their home-country based organizations, arriving to an international assignment overseas and failing after a few months/years? How do we explain such failure, considering these individuals have proven to demonstrate strong technical skills, solid experience in their field of work, and the right leadership capabilities?

Why isn’t it that simple to just transfer the knowledge and experience to an international assignment and continue to succeed the same way? Or why do we so often face difficulties in working with cross-country teams, or dealing with bosses or subordinates who are not from the same culture as ours? Why doesn’t the communication flow easily and sometimes the interactions seem awkward?

There are many reasons why this could happen, and one of the most common relates to low (or lack of) Cultural Intelligence (CQ).

Conceptually, Cultural Intelligence is an individual’s ability to understand someone’s way of behaving, eliminating judgment, and being able to communicate and interact in an effective way. That means understanding similarities and differences, and being able to interact with the same familiarity you would with someone from your own culture.

Mind, Heart and Body

There are three known Dimensions of Cultural Intelligence that can help us better understand how it works:

• The mind (cognitive and metacognitive) – a rational component, your knowledge of the norms and practices, cultural awareness;
• The heart (emotional/motivational) – your motivation to learn about the other culture, your curiosity and passion for diversity, the willingness to engage;
• The body (physical) – the way you behave towards that other culture, verbally and through non-verbal actions.

In order to be successful in this area, it is critical to ensure these three dimensions can work together during cross-cultural interactions. There are also assessments available to help individuals identify if they have high or low scores of CQ.

When we talk about Cultural knowledge we refer to components such as business etiquettes of a given market or country, language expressions that are used, the way people think, the level of assertiveness, the relationship with time, the degree of power, the hierarchical norms, level of individualism, amongst other components.

Cultural Intelligence and the Digital Era

We know we have entered a digital era, where there are no boundaries in the globe, where people’s professional and personal lives are more exposed, and communication happens 24/7, from everywhere, anytime. More than ever, CQ is a key competency to develop to thrive in this new era, and will continue to be useful in face-to-face or virtual environments.

Before entering new waters, these are some questions that you could ask yourself. What do I know about that region or country? How does that market, industry or company work? How do people behave in that culture, what are their customs and habits.