Cultural intelligence is an outsider’s ability to interpret, understand, and react appropriately to another’s unfamiliar gestures, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, or other cultural or personal identifications and customs.
The United States is becoming increasingly diverse, and this is reflected in our workplaces, which include individuals of varying identifications, cultures, ages, religions, ethnicities, and races. To successfully communicate with and serve those different from us, cultural intelligence is a fundamental skill we all must have.
What Is Cultural Intelligence?
Sometimes referred to as cultural quotient or CQ, cultural intelligence is an outsider’s ability to interpret, understand, and react appropriately to another’s unfamiliar gestures, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, or other cultural or personal identifications and customs.
Why Cultural Intelligence Is Vital for Business?
When there is a lack of cultural intelligence within a workplace, it leads to a draining of authenticity from employees. A lack of cultural security reduces our ability to experience basic human needs and dignity needs such as psychological safety, belonging, participation, and personal fulfillment. This feeling of being misunderstood or left out, even if unintentionally, has led many employees to leave their jobs and pursue employment in a business where leadership, management, and collogues demonstrate high cultural intelligence.
The Benefits of Increasing Cultural Intelligence
When businesses pursue an increase in cultural intelligence among their leaders and employees, they benefit from the following three categories.
Increased Understanding - One of the primary benefits of increased cultural intelligence is the ability to understand and appeal to others. Whether it is pursuing negotiation with clients from different cultures, building a team of various identities, or creating a workplace where people feel secure, understanding and acceptance is a cornerstone to pursuing better policies and procedures. It also provides vital insights into pitfalls and how to avoid situations that could negatively impact a business.
Greater Trust - Trust is a fundamental asset to company success. Trust of a brand. Trust in a leader. Trust for a team. Without trust, customers and employees will keep businesses at arm’s reach, never fully diving into their goals or mission. When leaders pursue cultural intelligence, they increase their capacity for trustworthiness because they create the experience for others to feel seen and heard.
Larger Outreach - Through greater understanding and greater trust inevitably comes the ability to reach further. Crossing generations, customs, identities, and more to reach the hearts and minds of people no matter their “standard demographics.”
Online Cultural Intelligence Training Is a Smart Investment
While not everyone is born with natural cultural intelligence, it can be learned. Businesses that invest in increasing cultural intelligence on every level of their business, from new employees to high-level operators, experience the various benefits listed above. One of the easiest ways to enhance this skill among staff is through a cultural intelligence online course.
Workplace Peace Institute’s cultural intelligence online course is a 6-hour course consisting of six modules designed to be completed at the learner’s own pace. Participants will learn how to understand the nature of cultural intelligence and how it operates in the workplace, uncover the components of cultural intelligence and culture in workplace organizations and groups, explore how cultural intelligence impacts how we connect, what we create, and when we’re able to accomplish our goals, and construct dynamic mechanisms of cultural intelligence that support connection, creativity, and confidence in the workplace.
For more information on the course and how you can enroll yourself and your staff, please review the course registration page. Learn more about Workplace Peace Institute Leadership Academy here.
Workplace Peace Institute Leadership Academy exists to support leaders in honoring basic human needs and dignity needs in the workplace, so they can actualize human potential in the workplace. The online Leadership Academy optimizes competencies in human behavior, communication skills, conflict resolution, and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging to create highly engaged workplaces where basic human needs and dignity are consistently honored. All our courses are offered online and can be customized for in-person workshops and seminars.
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