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-John Muir
"One critical component of cultural intelligence... is a propensity to suspend judgment — to think before acting... using your senses to register all the ways the personalities interacting in front of you are different from those in your culture yet similar to one another." This is the observation of Christopher Earley in his article, "
Cultural Intelligence," in
Harvard Business Review OnPoint (Summer 2013; hbr.org). In the article he provides this quiz for diagnosing your "Cognitive Cultural Intelligence":
Rate the extent to which you agree with each of these statements with 1 representing strongly disagree; 2, disagree; 3, neutral; 4, agree; 5, strongly agree.
__ Before I interact with people from a new culture, I ask myself what I hope to achieve.
__ If I encounter something unexpected while working in a new culture, I use this experience to figure out new ways to approach other cultures in the future.
__ I plan how I'm going to relate to people from a different culture before I meet them.
__ When I come into a new cultural situation, I can immediately sense whether something is going well or something is wrong.
Now add up all your scores and divide by 4. "Generally, an average of less than 3 indicates a need for improvement, while an average greater than 4.5 reflects true CQ strength."
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Comments (2)
Displaying All 2 CommentsLanguage Castle LLC
United States
I don't like this. It creates a sort of "Us vs. Them" mentality. It assumes that you will be approaching a "new culture" like it's an animal in a zoo with a clearly marked label. The reality for early childhood educators is that every interaction we have with children, families, and staff can put us in touch with cultural differences. They won't always be obvious. An attitude of openness, observation, and respectful responsiveness should be how we meet up with everyone in our business. This should not be a score you give yourself, or a special strategy you use for 'THOSE' people. You never know when a cultural difference will appear so we should treat everyone - adult and child - as unique and worthy of our understanding and respect. That's how we can understand cultural differences and similarities.
Suva, Fiji
The statements about meeting a "new" culture are hard to understand, perhaps because too simplistic. As a person constantly moving comfoirtably between several cultures, I would get only a 1 on your scale.
What is a "new" culture? I believe every person has a unique culture.
Why try to "achieve" something? Why not just accept what you meet and respect it?
What I learn from on (group) culture may not apply to another at all.
Planning what to do may result in disappointment when you meet a different culture.
Body language differs bewteen cultures, so what you "sense" as "wrong" may be perfectly all right.
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