Cultural Intelligence Assessment

Cultural intelligence assessment will enable the individual to have certain information about himself. It is posited that cultural difference has a greater impact on business effectiveness than we think. That our cultural backgrounds really influence the way we think and act and the way we interpret each others contributions. Our success or failure in communication will depend on the extent at which we understand the different cultural background of the employees and create a fruitful collaboration in situations where cultural differences play a role. To achieve this, we need to act in an appropriate way in multicultural situations coupled with the ability to have an open mind which admits new information and this is curious about difference. We need to both know who we are and be curious about “the other” so that differences can be elaborated rather than smoothed down.

Cultural intelligence cannot do without dimensions. These include emotional, cognitive and action dimensions. Under the emotional dimension, I learnt of the need to have the ability to cope with one’s own and other people’s emotional reactions when cultural misunderstanding occur. The cognitive component on the other hand, is based on reason and the capacity to develop mental structures, which enable us to understand the encounter, to think about what is going on and to make judgments, based on conceptual frameworks and language. It consists of understanding oneself as a cultural being as well as understanding people with different cultural background. The last component; the action component is about what happens during an encounter, what we decide to do based on our judgments about the situation coming from the emotional and rational data we have collected. T...

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...ces. To achieve this, people in organizations need to develop the skills and attitudes of cultural intelligence.

We can take our own culture for granted as the natural and right way to behave or think and as a result, we fail to discover the existence of cultural differences. It is only when we are confronted with something different that we are able to see culture in operation. At times cultural differences are exaggerated and are used as a way of avoiding some types of conflicts. We often hear the phrase “It is a cultural issue” When in fact it may be something about power or lack of clarity about role. This is a way of not taking responsibility, an easy way out. Talking about culture, is difficult unless we are ready to look at the different cultural backgrounds whereas cultural intelligence gives us framework for understanding the different aspects of culture.