Chapter 2: Cultural Competence for Leaders
Chapter Overview
Chapter 2: Cultural Competence for Leaders examines the questions: As leaders, how can we fit
together all of the puzzling culture pieces? How do we develop our cultural competence so that
we can interact appropriately with people from different backgrounds? What is ethnocentrism?
How do we become more ethnorelative? What are some practical frameworks that we can use
to aid us in this developmental process? These are the key questions we will address in Chapter
2.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
As leaders, we must understand our hidden bias and deal with the human tendency towards
ethnocentrism.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• We all have unconscious bias that gets in the way of being non-judgmental toward cultural
differences.
LEADERSHIP APPLICATIONS
• Global leaders must work on attaining knowledge, mindfulness, and skills in order to
Introduction
• What’s in a name?
• Concerns for more than functional skills.
Nike Pe’a
This is not the first time that Nike has offended the public, and we’ll discuss another case in a
later chapter. The critical issue here is that the people who run companies need to go beyond
merely having excellent functional skills to developing the interpersonal and cultural skills that
are critical for global leadership development.
Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Cultural Intelligence (CQ)
• Emotional intelligence (EQ)
• Cultural intelligence (CQ)
Emotional Intelligence
A person with a high EQ possesses the following attributes.
• Self-awareness and other-awareness: The ability to know how you are feeling and how
those around you are feeling; also, to know how your emotions might be affecting
others. It also includes the ability to be reflective and take an honest look at oneself to
Cultural Intelligence
CQ is a person’s ability to function skillfully in a cultural context different than one’s own.
• A culturally intelligent person is someone who is not only able to empathize and work
well with others, but can acknowledge differing values, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors
Christopher P. Earley
Linn VanDyne (Michigan State University): http://www.linnvandyne.com/cq.html.
Four strategies: CQ strategy, CQ knowledge, CQ motivation, and CQ behavior. This framework
will help us as we later talk about ethnocentrism.
• CQ strategy involves your ability to make sense of intercultural experiences. We all go
through a process of socialization where we acquire cultural knowledge and begin to
• CQ knowledge is what you know about other cultures. Have you studied world history,
read the newspaper, traveled or lived in an area of the world where you had to learn
something about the history, politics, religion and social influences of its many people
groups?
Components of Cultural Intelligence
• The Cultural Intelligence Model
o Knowledge
o Mindfulness
o Competence
Three-Step Model of Intercultural Competence
(Excerpts from David C. Thomas)
Knowledge is what the culturally intelligent person needs to learn. This includes being aware of
Reflection is what the culturally intelligent person needs to consider. This means paying
attention in a mindful way to the cues in intercultural situations and also observing one’s own
Competence is what the culturally intelligent person needs to practice. This means improvising
and revising thoughts, reactions, and behaviors in order to become competent—skillful—across
The CRITICAL LINK to developing cultural competence is the willingness to spend time in self–
reflection and to do something about specific areas for improvement.
Example of Cultural Intelligence Model
• Knowledge
• Mindfulness
• Competence
As a business person, you may have strong negotiation skills back in your home country. Let’s
assume you are from a western perspective; however, the rules of the game switch when
• What went wrong?
• Did your counterpart forget?
• Was he expecting a counter offer?
• Were you too early or was he late?
Ethnocentrism and Enculturation
• Social psychology foundation
• Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) by Milton Bennett
o Phases in the model:
▪ Denial, defense, minimization, acceptance, adaptation
• Awareness is key
While it may be human nature to engage in ethnocentric thinking and behavior, becoming an
effective intercultural communicator requires that we have a holistic understanding of people.
Phases in the Model
The first stage is denial. Denial means that we see no difference at all, viewing all things from
our own worldview or experience. It is easy, for example, to lump people into a single category,
such as Asians or Americans. The former means that all Asians, whether Chinese, Japanese,
Vietnamese, or Korean belong to the same culture. The latter usually means residents of the
United States and neglects the fact that Canadians and South Americans are, in fact, Americans
as well.
The fourth stage is acceptance. Moving from the third stage of minimization to the fourth,
acceptance is the beginning of intercultural understanding. Acceptance recognizes and explores
cultural differences by identifying them both by behavior, such as language, styles of verbal
Unconscious Bias
Think of it this way. We all have unconscious bias—we can be blinded from seeing reality as it
really is. One scientific theory, the Dunning-Kruger effect, demonstrates that people have a
false sense of ability and think that they are more skilled at something than they really are.
Professor Stella Ting-Toomey, best known for her work regarding identity negotiation,
conceptualizes this phenomenon along four stages: unconscious incompetence, conscious
incompetence, unconscious competence, conscious competence.
1. Unawareness of our intercultural communication blunders.
Cultural Sense-Making Model
• Framing the Situation
Cultural Sense-Making
Cultural sense-making involves reframing and changing one’s script rather than restricting
oneself to rigid, standard scripts. It is about changing perspective and opening up to new
opportunities and ways of looking at the world.
Framing
Making Attributions
In the second step, making attributions, we analyze those cues and try to match them to
schema, or mental patterns, that we create. These schemas are cognitive frameworks that help
Selecting a Script
The third step is selecting a script, which we make based upon the frame we create and the
Cultural Bridging
This model helps us to practice mindful thinking in order to see events from a different
perspective without using judgment.
By searching for multiple meanings, we can seek confirmation when possible.
• In this model, draw a column for person A and a column for person B.
• Under each column write down the observable words or actions of that person: What
It’s really hard to do, so have another column where you can write down any judgment or
stereotype that comes to mind. In order to “bridge” to the other person’s perspective, it is
necessary to give benefit of doubt by considering possible positive intentions.
Questions to ask might be:
• What values and beliefs could have motivated the behavior?
• What were some of the cultural cues I might have missed or misinterpreted?
Summary
This chapter explores a model of cultural intelligence as a core component of intercultural
communication.
As an extension of the idea of emotional intelligence proposed by Daniel Goleman, CQ
encompasses not just an understanding of other cultures and intercultural relationships, but
At every step of the journey, it is important to gain a wider understanding of the cultural
nuances, reflect on the implications of these subtleties, and then develop the ability to respond
perceptively to every situation.
It is about changing perspectives, and there are a myriad of ways to do so.
***
CASE: Nike Pe’a
ACTIVITY:
• Gung Ho, 1986 movie with Michael Keaton and Gedde Watanabe
• Cultural sense-making
• Cultural bridging