Cultural Intelligence Assignment: Personal Experiences On Cultural Differences

Question

Task: Hampden-Turner and Tromenaars (2006) argue that supporters of the concept of cultural intelligence have to contend with, and come up with convincing answers to, three critical views:
1. Cultures are entirely relative in their values.
2. Cultural studies are a backward step, leading to grand theories.
3. All attempts to categorise cultures are crude stereotypes inferred from superficial features of culture.
Drawing on your own experiences of visiting, living and/or working in another culture do you think that the evidence from cultural intelligence can answer these criticisms or not, or is it just another trendy concept with no substance?
For this assignment you are going to reflect on your experience of visiting/living and/or working in another country from a cultural perspective against the backdrop of the concept 'cultural intelligence'. The concept is relatively new to the literature and suggests some form of intelligence rather than just a general competency -a set of abilities that are necessary to adapt to, select, and shape the environmental context in which you are operating. The four components are: mind, knowledge about different cultures, heart and body.
There are however critics of the concept!
Against the backdrop of your own cross-cultural experiences as you reflect on your experience and analysis it you need to decide how useful the concept of cultural intelligence could be - in other words has it got substance or is it just another 'trendy' concept.
Please read the two articles (Earley and Mosakowski; Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars) that is attached with the document set.
You are then going to use the framework of a reflective essay to write the assignment. There are different reflective frameworks. However, I would like you to use Gibb's reflective framework. It consists of six steps. You will find an outline of the framework in the PPT slides along with a sample using group work as the theme.
Remember in reflective work you need to use the evidence to make sense of your feelings, thoughts and behaviours that you are reflecting on.

Answer

Introduction
The present report on cultural intelligence assignment critically explores the concept of cultural intelligence that has become one of the most discussed topics in education, business and academic research. Cultural intelligence could be defined as the capability to cross the barriers of different cultures and flourish in multiple cultures. Earley, and Mosakowski (2004), cultures are extensively related to cultural values. As expressed by Hampden-Turner and Tromenaars (2006), cultural studies are the backward step leads to the development of vital culture associated theories. Thereby, the cultural intelligence assignment aims to portray my critical reflection on the experiences gathered from witnessing the cultural differences. I am accustomed to the British culture, however, to work for an NGO, I served the Maori culture of indigenous Australians. I will reflect on my cultural quotient using Gibb's reflective cycle.

Gibb’s reflective cycle
Description
I am born and brought up in the UK. Hence, I am more comfortable and accustomed to British culture. I am more intended to serve society and experience people and their lifestyle closely. I worked for an NGO that gave me the opportunity to serve the indigenous Maori people with hand hygiene education. When I initiated the hand hygiene campaign as discussed in the cultural intelligence assignment, I observed that the Maori people give less importance to the education campaign and they even stop their child from joining us (Tombleson and Wolf, 2017). Eventually, the first-day campaign was futile as we did not avail people's support. In the very next day, I decided to visit the dwelling of the Maori people and as per my planning, I and my subordinates went to visit the house of the indigenous people. We, therefore, meet the people, however, we felt difficulty to communicate with them as we were incapable to communicate in their language. However, one of the subordinates was able to communicate in their language and act as the language translator. We asked the people the reason of being distant from the campaign (Reid et al. 2016). During the process, I witnessed the extent of difference between the two cultures (my culture and the cultural attributes of the indigenous people). Due to the cultural differences, I felt difficulties to become interacting with them and establish the emotional attachment with the people. However, after showing dignity to the culture and treating the people in their way enabled me to avail their support in the health education campaign (Tombleson and Wolf, 2017).

Feelings and thoughts
As expressed by Earley, and Mosakowski, (2004), it can be stated herein cultural intelligence assignment that the people who are somewhat detached from their culture are capable to accept the different body language and attributes of the different cultures. As I was more attached to our traditional British culture, I was less unadaptable to the indigenous culture. I realized that the cultural attributes, the body language and the gestures of communication seemed to devalue be to me. As I started comparing the cultural attribute of our cultures with their culture, I was facing difficulty to adapt to their culture. From the conversation with the Maori people, I came to know that the Maori people are discriminated in today’s advanced society (Reid et al. 2016). I realized they feel uneasy to communicate with the people who discriminate them. Thereby, I could remember the approaches of Earley and Mosakowski. As per Earley, and Mosakowski (2004), the relationship between cultural intelligence and emotional intelligence is unfathomable. Emotional intelligence governs cultural intelligence. The person with effective and adequate cultural intelligence could easily tease out the community's behavioural attributes and adapt to the same. Thereby, I realized, I need to establish the emotional attachment with the people at first to ascertain that I earn their faith and could adopt with them easily. It became apparent to me that showing dignity to the culture of the indigenous people could allow me to adopt with their culture (Love, 2017).

Evaluation of the experience discussed in the context of cultural intelligence assignment
My entire experience of visiting the people of the different cultural background was good. During the session, I gathered some good experiences and some harsh too. Among my good experiences, my knowledge was enriched, as I realized that there is an existence of a different cultural group apart from the world where we are more familiar with (Van et al. 2016). I realized how racial discrimination could differentiate between cultures. My experiences taught me that emotional intelligence could enable us to establish an attachment with the people of different cultural background. Honestly, the cooperation of the team was highly solicited. Their cooperation with the concept explained in the cultural intelligence assignment leads me to communicate with the Maori people, understand their concerns and cultural values. In this regard, I realized the importance of cultural value in the development of the foundation of cultural attributes. I realized that the Maori pole is more inclined to share love and affection. Emotional attachment strengthened the cultural intelligence of mine (Love, 2017).

Analysis
I carried on some research regarding the importance of cultural intelligence based on the cross-cultural references that I was able to observe between my native British culture and the culture of the Maori people (Ott and Michailova, 2018). There are two specific things that have to be considered here with respect to the acceptance and establishment of cultural intelligence or CQ according to Earley and Mosakowski (2004). First of all, the components involved with cultural intelligence have to be distinctively narrowed down as well as preserved in order to develop communication channels between the Maori people and the British population. Secondly, the cultural intelligence assignment illustrates that the influence of cultural intelligence on the second culture (which is the Maori culture in this context) has to be considered so that there is no overpowering hegemony that marginalizes the Maori people (Ting-Toomey and Dorjee, 2017). I and my group came to the realization as stated above that perhaps the Maori people were not very comfortable and emotionally out-front with people who have looked down upon them as racially inferior beings (Darvishmotevali et al. 2018). That was the basic feeling that the indigenous tribe offered.

There is also the other theory of considering the components of cultural intelligence that our group failed to pass along in a successful manner (Chao et al. 2017). While we discovered that people who are not quite committed towards their cultural roots can easily adjust and adopt a foreign culture along with its language and traditions. However, it also has to be added that the utilization of the mind, body and heart is significant in a collective font. Cultural intelligence is present in all the mentioned areas and while not all people are equally strong in all these respects, if one faculty is weakened the other two are hampered by it (Korzilius et al. 2017). In order to contend with the criticisms presented by Hampden-Turner and Tromenaars (2006), we realized that the collective working of the mind, heart and body will be helpful. While culture is relative as are its values and people have a tendency to border their beliefs on accepted stereotypes strategizing to enter into an alien culture by determining behavioral patterns is helpful. Along with its mirroring mannerisms, gestures, and habits is the elementary way of accepting foreign culture, which some Maori people who participated in the educational programs practiced. Confidence in self-efficacy was what was not quite present, but that could round up the whole concept of cultural intelligence as successful over time (Korzilius et al. 2017).

Conclusion
From the stated experiment illustrated in the segments of cultural intelligence assignment I was able to learn that the Maori people tend to share their emotions if they are respected the way they deserve. The utilization of a group task helped us to understand the general feeling of union and community-based relations between the Maori people. The cross-cultural understanding would have produced better results if we could involve more Maori people who have been involved with other cultures and are familiar with it. Categorization of the Maori people into sub-groups of interested and semi-interested people for the educational, hygiene, and communication campaigns would have agreed with the aims of cultural intelligence (Ting-Toomey and Dorjee, 2017). The challenges that we faced could be handled in the future with the help of knowledge development regarding foreign cultures and being a little more considerate towards the rest of the world.

Action plan
When I work with my group to communicate and establish meaningful relations with a foreign culture for the second time (it might be the Maori people again) I would consider involving people who are more confident on their efficacy. I would like to mention within this cultural intelligence assignment that I would choose to select the proper involvement of all the components of cultural intelligence so that I can myself dwell deeper into the foreign culture I am working with and can also stipulate the Maori people appropriately to join our campaigns (Walker, 2016). We can challenge their beliefs and concerns and can show them that the effect of globalization has made the concept of cultural intelligence viable. The competency between cultures has improved through the incorporation of scientific studies, objectives and hypothesis. I will finally ask my subordinates and my group members to impart their opinions as they can be helpful to improve the diversity aspect of the subject. That is how cultural intelligence can help in unifying people from separate cultures without making anyone feel inferior to the other (Chao et al. 2017).

Conclusion
As cultural intelligence is a frequent topic for discussion in the corporate, native and social-cultural circles it is important that the concept is intercepted and evaluated to understand its full potential in the future. Therefore, the cross-cultural experiences that I was able to gather with the involvement of Gibb's reflective cycle helped both my group and the Maori people to understand each other a little better. The theories and the hypothesis presented in both the articles examined herein cultural intelligence assignment helped in the evaluation of the concept to and in conclusion I can state that the aspect holds much significance in the days to come.

References
Earley, P.C. and Mosakowski, E., 2004. Cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence assignment Harvard business review, 82(10), pp.139-146.

Hampden-Turner, C. and Trompenaars, F., 2006. Cultural intelligence: is such a capacity credible?. Group & Organization Management, 31(1), pp.56-63.

Reid, J., Varona, G., Fisher, M. and Smith, C., 2016. Understanding Maori ‘lived’culture to determine cultural connectedness and wellbeing. Journal of Population Research, 33(1), pp.31-49.

Love, C., 2017. Family Group Conferencing Cultural Origins, Sharing, and Appropriation—A Maori Reflection. In Family Group Conferencing (pp. 15-30).

Walker, R., 2016. Reclaiming M?ori education. Decolonisation in Aotearoa: Education, research and practice, pp.19-38.

Tombleson, B. and Wolf, K., 2017. Rethinking the circuit of culture: How participatory culture has transformed cross-cultural communication. Public Relations Review, 43(1), pp.14-25.

Ting-Toomey, S. and Dorjee, T., 2017. Multifaceted identity approaches and cross-cultural communication styles: Selective overview and future directions. Handbook of intercultural communication, pp.141-177.

Van Dyne, L., Ang, S. and Tan, M.L., 2016. Cultural intelligence.

Ott, D.L. and Michailova, S., 2018. Cultural intelligence: A review and new research avenues. International Journal of Management Reviews, 20(1), pp.99-119.

Chao, M.M., Takeuchi, R. and Farh, J.L., 2017. Enhancing cultural intelligence: The roles of implicit culture beliefs and adjustment. Cultural intelligence assignment Personnel Psychology, 70(1), pp.257-292.

Darvishmotevali, M., Altinay, L. and De Vita, G., 2018. Emotional intelligence and creative performance: Looking through the lens of environmental uncertainty and cultural intelligence. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 73, pp.44-54.

Korzilius, H., Bücker, J.J. and Beerlage, S., 2017. Multiculturalism and innovative work behavior: The mediating role of cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence assignment International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 56, pp.13-24.