Did you see evidence of Cultural Intelligence (CQ)?

The answer to the problem is not to teach employees the ins and outs of each country, instead use cultural, strategic thinking: “is your ability to think and solve problems in specific ways when you are in unfamiliar cultural settings” (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012).

 

Discuss how cultural, strategic thinking plays a part within your current organization or an organization that you are familiar with.

I work in a multinational software company with several offices across America, Europe and Asia with over 7,000 developers. Thus, cultural strategic thinking is critical to our success.

 

However, the way the implement train employees are based on three factors: online training and hands-on experience, evaluation. The organization has a website with onboarding videos about the organizations, beginning, rules, culture, etc. I remember when I joined, the videos were exciting to me because this was the first time I worked in an enterprise with some employees. One of the videos does talk about the values of the organization which among other things are respect and openness. Respect for other belief and nationalities. Openness, the organization provides multiple tools to communicate with anyone in the organization, even the CEO and other directors are reachable (though, later I realized, you supposed not to contact just because… but that’s another story).

 

The second's tool is through hands-on experience. Due to the nature of the IT industry, it is common to work with people in multiple locations. Thus, the organization hopes that everything will be resolved in the teams, without further escalation, in part due to the open channels and various layers of management that at some point will resolve conflicts or training if needed.

 

The third tool the organization has is the evaluation. Twice a year, we have a performance assessment performed by the people we have work during that period, including the managers and people above the chain of command that we may not know, but they do know us. We are evaluated in many divisions such as values, technical skills and most importantly, soft skills.

 

I believe the organization does very little to address the social thinking, for instance, I have not received a “strategy cultural thinking” training. However, the organization is very successful, and I have not known of an issue due to the combinations of the mentioned tools.

 

What two specific cultural strategic thinking techniques have you observed within your team?

[continued] Therefore, I believe that the organization uses the following cultural, strategic thinking techniques: Peer learning, writing about your experiences, mentoring.

 

Mentoring is the most significant technique because in the organization we do have a structure of mentor-mentee. Sometimes we formally select a mentor who will aid our career development until we are a position to train others. Indirectly, the performance assessment also helps our learning process which is a document in an information system.

 

Did you see evidence of Cultural Intelligence (CQ)?

[continued] I believe the organization has created an incredible culture which it is subtle but it is there and is so powerful. Furthermore, the ability to make people of different languages, nationalities, beliefs, and skills interact seamlessly, is the most valuable assets of the organization.

 

For me, it has been a fantastic experience, but I most said that my knowledge is based on working with IT related people. It will be interesting to know how salespeople or directors directly interact with business clients/partners across the globe.

 

 

References

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