How to Lead With Cultural Intelligence

Maximize productivity by adapting to diversity.

Managers that aspire to be international executives must not only have intellectual and emotional intelligence, they must also possess cultural intelligence. From the the command-and-control mentality to the transactional manager, management methods have changed in the last century. Popular Six Sigma/Lean principles include eliminating wasteful approval and inspection cycles, instead opting to include quality checks within the process.



Authors Chen Oi Chin, Ph.D. and Lisa P. Gaynier, M.A, in their white paper essay "Global Leadership, A Cultural Intelligence Perspective," hypothesize that successful cultural intelligence requires a core competency of adaptation and transformation.

Things You'll Need

• Organization
• Culture

Instructions

Leading with Cultural Intelligence

1. Capitalize on diverse inputs by acknowledging, understanding and adapting your leadership or management style to allow for cultural differences. For example, a leader may be responsible for work produced in France, Hong Kong and the United States. Religion, politics and culture will impact how different divisions make decisions and disseminate information to workers. Local laws will impact global initiatives.

   One approach to handling the nuances of diversity is to think globally but act locally. Using this method, an organization would hire local people to operate within their legacy cultures to minimize the effects of diversity from the corporate culture. An example is how McDonald's Corporation modifies their menu and removes the beef hamburgers in countries where the cow is sacred, to assimilate and adapt to local culture.

2. Leaders must provide employees with the framework around what is and what is not allowed through hiring, training, accountability and mentoring management methods. Document certain standards such as a policy that includes "zero tolerance for discrimination based upon gender, race, religion, sexual orientation and age." Establish expectations clearly, then enforce accountability to global practices and policies.

   Employees have emotions and feelings, so treat people and transactions consistently. Favoritism or signaling out one group and treating them differently will impact morale and management effectiveness.

3. Adapting personal style to another person's personality is also important to be an effective culturally intelligent manager. Leaders who are culturally intelligent will modify their use of language, tone, method of delivery, body stance and timing based on how they want to impact their employee. Treating all employees the same way is not desirable. Education, gender, and culture may all affect how a person is accustomed to hearing a message.

4. Adopt a strategic goal deployment method so that everyone on the top level of management is working on the same objectives. Align tasks based on available resources, capability and cost, rather than through a silo or "the way we always did it" mentality. Focus on measurable objectives rather than personalities.

Tips & Warnings

• A common approach to leadership is to lead with your heart or by how you feel. This can be a good method if your culture is aligned with those around you. However, if there is a mixed culture and diversity is causing conflict, accept and appreciate the differences, and then internalize the differences (manage differently to accommodate) so that the culture adapts.

• Prevent discrimination litigation from cropping up in your company by surveying employees periodically to understand how they feel about company morale, diversity, ethics and discrimination. If situations are identified where there are risks, understand the risks further, incorporate public relations to address the situation and do risk mitigation by announcing the adopted corrective actions. As a leader, you must set the expectations and the consequences for not following the appropriate actions.

References

• Chn, Chen and Lisa Gaynier: Global Leadership