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What is Cultural intelligence framework?


According to the textbook Cultural Intelligence for Leaders (2012) "The framework for cultural intelligence consists of the following parts: knowledge, strategic thinking, motivation, and behaviors. It may be helpful to think about these as the ABCs of CI: Acquire, Build, Contemplate, and Do".

To illustrate the framework, I'm going to use the portfolio activity for the second week: "How to learn a new language."

Acquire is about the learning process, awareness, understanding, and proficiency of the culture. Even though cultural intelligence goes further than only knowledge, it is a crucial part and the very first step toward cultural intelligence. If I were to learn a new language, I mostly study the fundamentals of the language like grammar, verbs, pronunciation, even the phonetic.

The build is the process of putting into practice what you have learned. "Build" is a live process. It requires practice and repetition to understand how it plays in the culture and how to improve on it. If I were to learn a new language, at this stage, I would practice conversation and pronunciation. I would probably use an app or if possible join a conversation group of that language either physically through a classroom or virtually by video calling. By experiencing the word, I would learn and would adjustment to my learning process by focusing on what I could do better.

Contemplate is the phase where you learn by observing your environment, to notice the non-verbal language like actions, expressions, reactions, etc. At this point, hands-on experience is required. There is no magic pill to learn this ability other than observation and reflection of the situation.

Do: the last stage of the process is to put what's learned into practice and adapt if necessary. If I were to learn a new language, this step would require to put in action what's learned and be vigilant of the interactions that I do, as well as other interactions. For instance, during a recent trip to Singapore, I learn the essential words and phrases in Chinese like to order food and ask for necessities. When I communicated, I noticed that even though they appreciated that I tried, they still responded to me in English. Later, I found out that they did that to speed up the conversation and to make the conversation pleased.



There many types of intelligence like emotional and social. The three types of intelligence explained this week, agree on one point: intelligence is about understanding and sympathy to yourself and others. However, Cultural intelligence is unique because it demands adaption and involvement.

 Emotional intelligence is knowing yourself and be empathetic to others. Social intelligence is the ability to understand and move through your environment. Cultural intelligence involves both but goes further. It requires to be empathy in a social environment outside our group through adaptation. Having to know all the social environments is a daunting task or else impossible. Thus, the adjustment is a critical piece on cultural intelligence.



There is a common saying:

"Your car is Japanese. Your beer is German. Your wine is Spanish. Your democracy is Greek. Your coffee is Colombian. Your tea is Chinese. Your watch is Swiss. Your fashion is French. Your shirt is Indian. Your shoes are Thai. Your radio is Korean. Your vodka is Russian. And then you complain that your neighbor is an immigrant?" (Anonymous, n.d.)

Although, the phrases originally refer to immigration. It also makes evident how connected is the world. Nowadays it is common to interact with multiple people around the world to do business. Therefore, cultural intelligence is more critical now than ever if a company wants to succeed and for you if you want to succeed as a person.



References:

Anonymous. n.d. Quote.

Cultural Intelligence for Leaders. (2012). Saylor Academy. Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0. Retrieved Sep 6, 2018, from https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_leading-with-cultural-intelligence/index.html

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