How Culturally Intelligent Are You?
Working, travelling and getting along with people who play by different rules
Some people land in a foreign office, a mixed team or a partner's family from another country and find their feet within weeks; others stay puzzled for years. Researchers call the difference cultural intelligence and found that it is not one skill but four: noticing your own assumptions, knowing how other cultures work, wanting to engage, and adjusting how you actually speak and act. Knowledge, the part people usually invest in, turned out not to predict how well they settled in.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Think of real encounters with people from other cultures - at work, while travelling, in your neighbourhood or family - rather than how you would ideally behave.
What it measures
The four capabilities in Earley and Ang's model, as measured by the Cultural Intelligence Scale: metacognitive (awareness of your own cultural assumptions and checking them as you go), cognitive (knowledge of how other cultures work), motivational (interest in and confidence about intercultural situations) and behavioural (adjusting how you speak and act). It differs from emotional intelligence and empathy, which concern reading emotions in general; cultural intelligence is about the rules that change when the culture does.
Based on: Cultural Intelligence Scale, CQS (Ang et al., 2007), based on Earley & Ang's model of cultural intelligence
Possible results
Cultural awareness
Noticing and questioning your own cultural assumptions.
Cultural knowledge
What you know about how other cultures work.
Motivation
Your interest in, and confidence about, intercultural situations.
Adapting behaviour
Adjusting how you speak and act to the cultural setting.
Common questions
Is cultural intelligence the same as emotional intelligence?
No. Emotional intelligence is about reading and managing emotions, mostly within familiar social rules. Cultural intelligence is about what happens when the rules themselves change - when a pause signals respect rather than hesitation, or a direct no is polite rather than rude. Someone can be emotionally perceptive at home and badly misread people abroad.
Which of the four matters most?
It depends on the goal. In the original studies, awareness and knowledge predicted sound judgement in intercultural situations, motivation and behaviour predicted how well people adapted, and awareness, knowledge and behaviour together predicted performance on the task. Knowledge, the part most training focuses on, was not among the predictors of adaptation.
Can cultural intelligence be developed?
It was designed as a set of capabilities rather than a fixed trait, so yes, in principle. Knowledge is the easiest to build, through reading and contact; awareness grows by reflecting honestly on misunderstandings; and behaviour improves with practice in real situations. Time abroad helps most when it involves genuine interaction rather than staying inside a bubble of people like you.
Sources
- Ang, S., Van Dyne, L., Koh, C., Ng, K. Y., Templer, K. J., Tay, C., & Chandrasekar, N. A. (2007). Cultural intelligence: Its measurement and effects on cultural judgment and decision making, cultural adaptation and task performance. Management and Organization Review. doi:10.1111/j.1740-8784.2007.00082.x
- Earley, P. C., & Ang, S. (2003). Cultural intelligence: Individual interactions across cultures. Stanford University Press.
An honest note The statements are Quinthea's own wording, adapted from the four factors of the Cultural Intelligence Scale, so your scores cannot be compared with published norms. Self-ratings are only a rough guide here - the real test is how people from other cultures experience you. The original validation studies were run in the United States and Singapore, mostly with students and managers. The scale measures capabilities in cross-cultural encounters, not how tolerant or kind you are as a person.