Why strive for Cultural Intelligence in today’s global world?

Posted on 25. November 202125. November 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

A colleague of mine was in Thailand a few years back on a business trip. On her last day, her final meeting ran a little longer than planned. She was panicking slightly that she would miss her flight home and as she finally slipped into the back seat of the taxi, she asked the driver, “How long until we reach the airport?” The driver timidly answered with his polite Thai smile, “Sorry Ma’am, do you need to wash your hands?”

I remember laughing very heartily when I first heard this story.

Cultural Intelligence is the skill of interpreting cultural patterns and then adapting our communication to be more effective.

How can such a simple sentence be interpreted so differently to what was really intended? My colleague was really nervous that she was going to miss her return flight to the Netherlands, but the Thai taxi driver thought she needed to use a restroom. In some countries the word “toilet” can seem vulgar and therefore it isn't used. Even restroom was obviously not a word this taxi driver was confident using. So he kindly asked her if she needed to wash her hands, when in fact my colleague just wanted to know how long it would take to reach the airport.

Leading in business with Cultural Intelligence

So what does this have to do with cultural intelligence? If cultural intelligence (CQ) is the skill of interpreting cultural patterns and learning to adapt our communication skills accordingly, then this is a perfect example.

If we were brought up in a society that expects good communication to be clear and transparent, in a business meeting when we ask a simple question such as, “Will the delivery arrive on Thursday?” we expect a simple answer. "Yes it will"or "No I don’t think it will because… " But that “yes/no” answer is a pattern used by societies where it is considered acceptable behaviour to speak directly and actually it is also acceptable to use negative terms without creating discomfort or creating loss of face.

However, if we are dealing with somebody brought up in a culture where a direct, "no" can be considered rude or aggressive that “no” might never come and we are expected to learn a different pattern of communication. Imagine being in Qatar, Japan or Brazil. If you ask that such a “yes / no” question questions to a business associate whom you don't know well, it is likely that you will often receive an answer that could appear (in your ears) to mean "yes". You would need to spend quite some time interpreting what that, "yes" really means. So the first cultural intelligence skill here is to recognise the communication pattern and the second skill is adapting our communication to find out what the real meaning of the sentence could be.

4 steps to developing CQ

Cultural Intelligence allows us to learn the communication and behavioural patterns of certain societies and then apply different communication techniques accordingly.

There are 4 steps to developing Cultural Intelligence

Step 1: Drive

How driven (or motivated) are you to modify and adapt your communication to reach your goals? This is a question that only you can answer. How important is it to you that that delivery arrive on Thursday and what are you willing to do to find out the true answer?

Step 2: Knowledge

What do I know about the other culture? What do you know about that person’s cultural upbringing that can help you determine what their communication pattern means?

Let's go back to that simple question, "Will the delivery arrive on Thursday?" Is the person you are speaking to from a face-saving, indirect speaking culture where the word, “no” is not often spoken? Or have they spent most of their careers working in multicultural environments and ,“I’m trying my hardest” actually could mean that the delivery might arrive?

The pattern is just that; a pattern. It is not obvious (and certainly not a pattern) if only used once. The pattern becomes more obvious when several people of the same group use the same pattern. It can take several trials and discussions before you realise what the communication pattern is.

Step 3: Strategy

Once you have understood the communication pattern you are only half way there. You still have not worked out if the delivery is arriving on Thursday. This is where cultural self-awareness comes in. Ask yourself: "How do I usually communicate in such a situation? What do I need to do to figure out if the delivery is running late, lost somewhere, if the cargo truck has had an accident or if they are expecting me to pay off the customs officials to get the cargo into the country?"

In step three you create your strategy. This could sometimes be as simple as just asking an open question, for example, "What are the chances that the delivery arrive on time or what are the challenges that we are facing right now?" Or it could be a longer strategy. Do you need to leave the "group" meeting and invite your associate to drink a cup of tea maybe a beer in a trust-binding one-on-one discussion to be told what is really going on with the delivery?

Step 4: Put it into action

Whatever your strategy ends up being, step 4 is where you put it into action. This is where we sometimes have to come out of our comfort zone to learn what we are really capable of. If you are uncomfortable in this kind of "trust" creating one-on-one meeting, plan it out carefully.

Step 4 needs to be tried, analysed and tried again until it works and until you start to feel more comfortable. After each new action, ask yourself three questions:

How dit feel?
How did the other person react?
Would I do it again the same way or should I change something?

Only at this point do we really start to develop cultural intelligence.

Realign your global remote teams to create a powerful team culture

Posted on 21. January 202129. November 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

Are you ready for the next step? The start of a new year brings new-found energy with it. Now is an ideal moment to realign remote global teams to create a powerful and inclusive team culture. Bring your team communication to the next level in 2021 by building on what the team recently experienced. Although studies show that working from home can be beneficial for both the employee and the company, there are several challenges. "The main challenges that arise are communication, knowledge sharing, socialisation, performance evaluation and security."

Let's not get intimidated by the word "Culture". In our case, it means, "the way things are done around here". It is a set of accepted ways of behaving, communicating and getting things done that everybody on the team is comfortable with. When the team creates its own culture, each individual feels valued, included, engaged and is therefore more productive.

A strong team culture generates motivation, team-spirit, good communication and knowledge sharing. This in turn builds trust and helps the team deliver its goals. A thriving team culture is one that allows each team member to speak up and give their point of view on what their preferred communication style is.

The powerful team culture communication meeting

Bring the team together (officially) to discuss their team culture. Individuals have had the festive season to ponder over and informally discuss what they enjoyed and what they didn't enjoy about working from home. Use this as a catalyst.

Let's start with communication. An easy way to start the discussion right now it to ask about how productive or not the last six to eight months have been for each individual. Firstly, ask them to consider at what stage, and using which medium, they felt the communication flowed best? When you have good communication flow, creative ideas spill out.

Were they most productive over the phone, during a team zoom session, in one-on-ones, when the kids were in bed, or over a virtual coffee chat? Which communication means make them apprehensive and therefore less productive? Was it long-winded emails or short-handed WhatsApp messages? Individuals will talk plainly about what is best for them, as a result, you leverage on each individual's ideal situation. If you know that "John" is most creative spurting out quick WhatsApps then use it to help him shine and also share the best ideas.

remote team coffee breakSocialisation and trust create a strong team culture

When we socialise with our teammates, we learn more about them as people and not just as business colleagues. This creates trust, which in turn helps us and them to open up and share our ideas more freely. Socialisation is one of the areas that remote teams suffer the most in general and especially during lockdown moments. Socialising does not come naturally when individuals are sitting in front of their laptop feeling cut off from the world. Socialisation has to be consciously worked at on remote teams.

You could consider spending a few minutes at the beginning of team meetings running an ice breaker. Think about creating informal situations for colleagues to chat and meet even if it needs to be virtual. Virtual "aperos" work wonders. Socialisation and therefore trust create team spirit and allow each individual to feel valued.

Knowledge sharing and the dreaded 9pm conference call

If your multicultural team members sit in offices around the globe, it's vital to bring up the topic of time zones. Joining two-hour conference calls, three times a week at 9pm, after a long day of work is not sustainable and it is not very motivational. On top of that, if the participants are passive listeners rather than colleagues who need to actively speak, it becomes even worse.

the dreaded 9pm conference call

Therefore an important topic to discuss is always related to what time of the day these calls should be made. Ask the team at what time of the day they feel they are most productive. If the weekly facilitator is comfortable skipping dinner with the kids for a meeting, that doesn't mean everybody is. Too often, the accepted time zone for such meetings is where headquarters are based. For a motivation boost, consider rotating the meeting facilitator each week. This can be particularly engaging for the facilitator, and what's more, it allows individuals who are not very forthcoming to show a different side of themselves.

A team is made up of individuals

It's vital in such a "team culture creation session", to ensure everybody gets a chance to speak up. If you have a culturally diverse team, with members who perhaps come from hierarchical or collectivist cultures, you may have colleagues who are unwilling to speak up in such a public gathering. There are a number of ways to help them speak up. Tell them in advance what will be expected of them in such a meeting. Let them know that they will be expected to participate vocally. That will give them a chance to prepare something and not feel put on the spot when it occurs. Rotating the facilitator gives every team member a chance to speak up. As a result, it will also give the team a very different perspective each time on what is considered important and who prioritises what.

Keep the powerful team culture alive - write a team charter

Whatever the team decides as the best way to proceed, write it somewhere so you can look back at it occasionally. Choose four or five topics that are the most consequential during the discussion. These should be topics in which the team finds consensus. Use these topics to write the team charter. Most importantly, keep the discussion alive as time passes and as pressure increases. It's easy to stick to "good intentions" when we are not under pressure. However, when tension increases, we tend to fall back on what is the "normal" way of behaving for us. What is normal for one individual, may not be what was discussed as the best way for the team to move forward.

Remember, if culture is, "the way things are done around here," then it needs to be accepted by the whole team to allow each individual to feel included, valued and engaged.

Financial Times or Caffè Latte? Conference-call with Japanese.

Posted on 8. September 202025. November 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

An Italian sports-event manager, Elisabetta, has just finished a conference call with Japanese clients. She switches off her webcam and thinks about the meeting she just held. Her gut feeling is that she wasn’t very successful but she can’t really place her finger on what went wrong. Why did she have the feeling that her Japanese business associates didn’t really consider her to be competent and reliable?

We often hear that we need to adapt when working with people of different cultural backgrounds. Is that still important with the current pandemic? Travel is close to impossible so we don’t need to learn to use chopsticks in Japan or avoid using our left hand at the table in Qatar. Do we still need to worry about whether we should “bow, kiss or shake hands”?

It is just as important to adapt your style in virtual communication. Actually, it’s perhaps even more important. It is easy to misinterpret a message through email. There is usually little context to help you grasp the real message being sent.

Building Trust

If trust is the key to creating high-performing multicultural teams or earning new clients, then we need to learn to build trust through our virtual communication, be it a conference call with Japanese or an email to a Swiss person. The way we build trust with an Indian is different to how we build trust with a Finn or a Filipino.

Let’s go back to Elisabetta. Nobody had ever told her that firstly she needs to control her emotions in Japanese business meeting and secondly that silence is common. Silence can mean many different things in Japan and should not be interrupted, especially not in virtual meetings.

However, knowing something is not necessarily automatically going to help. Milton Bennet says that intercultural sensitivity is not natural and that ‘Adaptation means we need to consciously shift our perspective and intentionally alter our behaviour[1].

Japanese tend to say,”Only a dead fish has an open mouth”.

Italians tend to wear their heart on their sleeves. If they’re happy they’ll smile and laugh with joy, if they’re angry they’ll grimace with frustration. If they’re confused, their forehead will wrinkle in a puzzled frown. Japanese tend to say, “Only a dead fish has an open mouth”. This means, a true professional controls his/her feelings in business meetings. Loss of control is deemed unprofessional. Therefore, Elisabetta’s gut feeling was probably spot on. Her meeting was likely unsuccessful due to her constant large gestures and the fact that she kept interrupting the silence that she was “hearing” from the Japanese side.

Silence to Elisabetta means there is a lack of communication or misunderstanding and she feels she needs to break the silence. Elisabetta adds more and more information into the silence meanwhile her constant chatter doesn’t allow the Japanese clients to digest what she is saying.

Building trust with your clients, colleagues or service providers of different cultural backgrounds requires “code-switching”. This means adapting your communication and behaviour. Whether we’re writing an email, leading a conference call or meeting face-to-face, we need to deliberately work at certain skills that are not innate. This could be for example, not using too many facial gestures (in Japan) or learning the cultural values of your multicultural team to know what motivates them. It could also require learning to give feedback indirectly to an Indian service provider.

Step 1: An effective conference call with Japanese, Indians or Finns – Know yourself

The first step to becoming interculturally competent is to know yourself. Take a good look at yourself and ask, “What are my preferred ways of communicating? How do I usually behave in meetings and in situations of conflict and how do I problem solve?”

Let’s take a concrete example. You are the project lead of your team. Your preferred way of communicating is through email and you tend to be very task-oriented. You write short messages and get straight to the point in all your messages. In most cases you don’t even add a greeting or a salutation because you find it unnecessary.

The software company you have outsourced in India is not meeting your timeline needs. This frustrates you because you cannot accept any more delays in your project. You need to consider the best way to tell the Indian service provider that you are not happy with their service. Typically you would do that in a short email with bullet points that specify what you are not happy with, expecting this to get them moving faster. (Stop…. don’t click on send…yet).

Step 2: Effective conference-calls: Learn the values of the ‘other’ culture

The second step is to learn the values of the other person. What is the cultural background of this person? How might they perceive me and my communication style according to their values?

Let’s go back to our scene. Indians are generally relationship-based. As a result, they like to exchange personal information with the person they are dealing with. Secondly, they are usually high-context communicators, that is to say, they read into the body language that is being used to interpret the message rather than just listen to the words. Words that are negative, like, “no”, can create disharmony and loss of face. Moreover, they are quite hierarchical, therefore they usually wait for the manager to give them instructions on what needs to be done.

Therefore your short, negative bullet-point message, straight to the operator is unlikely going to get the response you are expecting.

What should you do?

Step 3: Code-switching – adapting your style

The third step is to ‘code-switch’. That is to say, adapt your behaviour and communication to motivate the person you’re dealing with and still get the point across.

Code-switching can be verbal or non-verbal. It’s the way you adapt your emails or even which communication medium you decide to use. It means saving face by giving indirect negative feedback. It also means that your once a fortnight task-related mails may not be the most efficient way of reaching timelines.

Is email the correct medium to use in our above case? Switching on the webcam in a conference call with Japanese or Indians could be more effective as visual aid helps read body language. Consider what words can be used that are not negative (see previous article on building trust remotely.) Especially consider whether your conversation needs to be addressed to the manager of the company or to the operator.

So how do you think Elisabetta needs to code-switch with her Japanese clients? Should she read and cite the Financial Times to improve their perspective of her competency or should she rather sip on a caffè latte in a weekly non work-related virtual, “webcam-ed” exchange with them?

[1] Milton Bennett, “Towards Ethnorelativism: A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity”, Intercultural Press, 1993. 21-71.

“Team Culture – Europe Is Getting Back Into Motion – Now Is The Time To Realign and Create a thriving Team Culture.”

Posted on 27. April 202025. November 2021 by Tania Pellegrini

Europe is slowly opening up after the COVID-19 lockdown. After weeks of isolation people are finally allowed to go out for a walk, factories are re-starting their production machines and office employees will soon be starting back. Now is the time create a thriving team culture.

Each team member has had their own difficult situations to overcome; some have had to share home office with kids who have been doing home-schooling, others who usually love being active are feeling claustrophobic at not being able to exert themselves in the gym or on a long outdoor bike ride. Maybe over the last few weeks work has not always been foremost on their minds. Now is the ideal time to “re-align” and create or revise your team culture. Many of us have been obliged recently to contemplate what matters to us most. What are our values, whether at home or at work.

What is Culture?

Culture is often overlooked by leaders because it can seem too abstract. Actually, it’s quite concrete once we sit down and discuss it with our team. A thriving team culture creates cohesion, pride, team spirit, accountability, open communication, inclusion, productivity and therefore a high-performing team. Creating a team culture is the way to bring that cohesion and team spirit back to the forefront if it is has slipped a bit during lockdown.

What are we referring to when we say culture? Culture is a set of norms accepted and encouraged by the group; acceptable ways of behaving, communicating and getting things done, for example:

Giving Feedback: What is the acceptable way that our group gives feedback to one another?
Risk-taking: Do we plan and wait until we are more “certain” or jump and “fail fast”.
Disagreeing: Is it acceptable to disagree openly with another teammate in a group meeting and encourage constructive conflict or is that rather frowned upon?
Decision-making: What is a productive way for us as a team to make decisions?
Problem-solving: How do we problem-solve when we have little time on our hands, etc.

The team creates it own culture

There are different methods of creating your thriving team culture. What is essential is that it be created by the team, not a few individuals or leaders. Below is a 4-step activity you can start with, there are obviously other methods. This exercise can be done face-to-face or virtually. If you plan to do it virtually then consider planning 4 short sessions rather than one long session.

If you do the below 4-step activity you need to invest time in the discussion part of the activity (step 2). Give every team member the opportunity to express themselves and allow for possible introverts to have their say about how they also envision the team functioning well.

The important message here is that it is the team that creates the culture it believes in. You’ll need to discuss common values and therefore have every member speak up. This could be difficult on a virtual culturally diverse team, so prepare well for that moderation hurdle.

Step 1 to a thriving team culture: Plot a Culture Map

Each team member plots themselves on a Culture Map along 4 scales related to behaviour or communication. Each scale shows each team member’s preference (see sample culture map below). The four scales can be varied, but those that create strong discussions often are:

Building trust and managing conflict
Problem Solving techniques
Decision making – do you feel the need to be involved or not
Dealing with uncertainty / risk-taking,

Similarities and differences between team members are more obvious once everyone is plotted on the map. Remember, differences can be complementary and can enhance creativity and problem solving solutions, therefore don’t play them down.

Step two: Discussion

This is the most essential part of the exercise. Do not skip it. This is the time for discussion. Let’s zoom in on scale 1 above and use it as an example.

Ask each person to discuss their preferences according to what they plotted. In the above example, which looks at communication and how we give feedback or disagree, Elena might come across to Emmanuel as being domineering or aggressive. She may not realise it. You could probably discuss here what the benefits are of having somebody always play devil’s advocate and on the other hand discuss how important it might be with clients to have colleagues who steer away from conflict, such as Emmanuel.

Expect Disagreements

Consider how team behaviour might differ according to what Elena’s role is. If she is the leader of the team it might come across differently compared to if she is not. You might discuss what conflict actually means to the individuals. For some it could mean saying, “I think your plan is really inefficient and our client will hate it.” This could come across as quite aggressive for some Asian cultures. For others, conflict could be as simple as a gentle disagreement. Another topic to discuss here is when (if ever) do the individuals feel comfortable disagreeing; do they need a relationship of trust before being able to disagree?

Discussing preferences creates inclusion

This discussion is the heart of the workshop and to creating a thriving team culture. Each person openly speaks about what their preference is. Discuss each scale and only then move onto step 3. If you do this as a virtual workshop you may prefer to do one complete scale from step 1 to step 4 during each virtual session.

Step three: Write a Strategy for a thriving team culture

Discuss a strategy to be more efficient (if necessary) thereby creating your ideal team culture. For the above scale, your discussion might start with:

How can we come up with good ideas and exchanges in the future and get everyone involved, including those who don’t like conflict?
Let’s create more open/transparent discussions within the team?
Ensure everyone on the team is listened to, both the risk-takers and the risk-averse even though some of them have stated they don’t like to enter conflict?
Can this knowledge help us run more productive meetings?

Step four: Team Charter

Write your Team Charter. The team follows the “behaviour and norms” of the charter. It is important to write them somewhere the whole team has access to and each member can occasionally go back to them and review them.

The Team Charter should be “Our Culture”: Not yours, not mine, but ours. It is a culture in which each team member thinks: “I feel comfortable working here because my values are appreciated. I feel I can be myself and therefore it brings out the best of me.”