SUMMER 2012 IMQ

Intercultural Management

Quarterly

Integrating Culture and Management in Global Organizations

In This Issue...

Summer 2012 Vol. 13, No. 2

How the Media Created the Muslim Monster Myth....3

by Jack Shaheen The Impact of Cultural Diplomacy: Wide Open to Interpretation..................................................6

by John Robert Kelley and Shayna Padovano Promoting Culturally Responsive Health Communication.............................................................9

by Maria De Jesus Intercultural Challenges in German-American Communication...........................................................................12

by Uta Kremer Mobile Phones as Cultural Tools: An Arabian Example..................................................................14

by Najma Al Zidjaly and Cynthia Gordon Cultural Intelligence: Why Every Leader Needs It......18

by David Livermore, Linn Van Dyne, and Soon Ang It’s Not Us, It’s Me: Why We Need More Me-Time......22

by Grace Yoo

From the Editor Dear readers,

STAFF

Publisher: Dr. Gary R. Weaver Managing Editor: Marc Rambeau

Hello! Welcome to the Summer 2012 issue of Intercultural Management Quarterly. It’s a full issue, and I hope you enjoy this quarter’s lineup as much as I do.

Editorial Review Board: Dan Deming, Annmarie McGillicuddy, Adam Mendelson, Darrel Onizuka, Chris Saenger, Karen Santiago, Gary Weaver, Sherry Zarabi

First, we hear from two past IMQ contributors, Jack Shaheen and John Robert Kelley. Shaheen revisits the theme of his Winter 2004 article, “Hollywood’s War on ‘Reel’ Bad Arabs,” while Kelley teams up with Shayna Padovano to discuss the difficulty of measuring the impact of cultural diplomacy.

Intercultural Management Quarterly is published by the Intercultural Management Institute at American University. IMQ combines original research conducted in the field of intercultural management with the applied perspectives of industry experts, professors and students.

Then, Maria De Jesus shares some of her research on what it means to be culturally responsive in health communication with immigrant patients. Uta Kremer follows up with a look at the intercultural issues that can crop up when Germans and Americans work together (and how to address them).

Next, we hear from two collaborative groups. First, Najma Al Zidjaly and Cynthia Gordon discuss their research on the use of cell phones as “cultural tools” in Oman; then, David Livermore, Linn Van Dyne and Soon Ang introduce us to the concept of cultural intelligence (CQ).

Finally, Grace Yoo rounds out the issue by providing a humorous take on why we all could use a little more “me-time.”

Be sure to check out this fall’s Skills Institutes, as well as the exciting speakers we have planned for the Annual IMI Conference on Intercultural Relations this coming spring. Check out www.imi.american. edu for registration and for more information.

As always, feel free to send your feedback my way!

SubmissionS

Professionals, scholars, and students are invited to submit articles of 1,000–2,000 words on issues related to the study and practice of intercultural management. Articles must be innovative and contribute to knowledge in the field but should avoid overly academic jargon. Footnotes or endnotes are discouraged except in the case of direct quotations or citations. Each submission is refereed by the members of the Editorial Review Board. Accepted pieces are subject to editing.

REPRODUCTION

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the express written permission of the publication manager. Please contact the managing editor for reprint availability.

CONTACT

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Marc Rambeau Managing Editor

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Intercultural Management Quarterly © 2012 Intercultural Management Quarterly

How the Media Created the Muslim Monster Myth

by Jack Shaheen You can hit an Arab free; they’re free enemies, free villains—where you couldn’t do it to a Jew or you can’t do it to a black anymore.

—Sam Keen, author of Faces of the Enemy

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n 1918 American movie audiences were treated to their first major silver-screen glimpse of a reel bad Arab. In Tarzan of the Apes, the first of six popular Tarzan films to vilify Arabs, viewers got to see brutal Arab slave masters whipping African slaves and forcing their kidnapped Englishman “to endure ten years of agony,” all the while brandishing guns and scruffy goatees. It was quite a debut.

Three years later, with the release of Rudolph Valentino’s box-office hit The Sheik (1921), audiences got their second sustained peek at big-screen Arabs. Still brutal and erratic, these Arabs had the added awfulness of being lecherous and rapacious. “When an Arab sees a woman he wants, he takes her,” promised the titillating blurb on The Sheik’s movie posters.

For four decades I have been tracking these kinds of images of Arabs and Muslims in more than 1,200 feature films and hundreds of television programs, from dramas and news documentaries to comedies and children’s cartoons. Along the way, I’ve discovered that anti-Arab and anti-Muslim stereotypes have a long and powerful history in American popular culture. Constantly repeated, these damaging portraits have manipulated viewers’ thoughts and feelings, conditioning them to ratchet up the forces of rage and unreason.

Make no mistake: fictional narratives have the capacity to alter reality. As the Florentine philosopher Niccolò

Machiavelli reminds us, “The great majority of mankind are...more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.”

American images of Arabs and Muslims have remained remarkably consistent over the decades. Despite the diversity of Arab and Muslim experience, reel Arab women have appeared mostly mute and submissive—belly dancers, bundles in black and beasts of burden. Arab men have fared no better, appearing as Bedouin bandits, sinister sheiks, comic buffoons and weapon-wielding terrorists. As a result, when readers open the pages of Holy Terror, the 2011 graphic novel by comic book icon Frank Miller, the warped messages they receive about bloodthirsty Muslims read almost like companion drawings for John Buchan’s 1916 novel Greenmantle. (Sample Buchan line: “Islam is a fighting creed, and the mullah still stands in the pulpit with the Quran in one hand and a drawn sword in the other.”) And my late friend Edward Said’s 1980 Nation essay “Islam Through Western Eyes” feels as relevant today as it did thirty years ago.

“So far as the United States seems to be concerned,” he wrote, “it is only a slight overstatement to say that Moslems and Arabs are essentially seen as either oil suppliers or potential terrorists. Very little of...the human density, the passion of Arab-Moslem life has entered the awareness of even those people whose profession it is to report the Arab world. What we have instead [are] crude...caricatures of the Islamic world presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression.”

And yet, despite the consistency of these representations, the last decade has brought profound and critically important changes in the ways Muslims and Arabs are portrayed in the United States. The catalyzing event

Jack Shaheen is the author of Reel Bad Arabs, a former CBS news consultant on Middle East affairs, and Professor Emeritus of Mass Communications from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Shaheen has received two Fulbright teaching awards and was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at New York University’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies. Other books include: The TV Arab (1984) and Arab and Muslim Stereotyping in American Popular Culture (1997). Shaheen also wrote an article entitled “Hollywood’s War on ‘Reel’ Bad Arabs,” which first appeared in the Winter 2004 edition of IMQ.

Summer 2012

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How the Media... was September 11, when nineteen Al Qaeda terrorists killed nearly 3,000 Americans. It was an attack designed, cruelly and perversely, to inflict maximum cinematic as well as real-life horror, and in its traumatized aftermath, the shape of American fantasies began to shift. Added to the Arab threat was the Muslim threat, and as this new threat materialized, it also intensified. While antiArab and anti-Muslim imagery had long been part of the background noise of American bigotry, Arabs and Muslims now became the chief bogeys of our most paranoid fantasies. They were no longer simply some Evil Other From Over There; now they were the Evil Other From Over There and Here, wild- eyed supervillains in the ongoing American epic of good and evil.

Sleeper Cell, Threat Matrix and Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye exploited post-9/11 fears, pummeling home myths that made the profiling, imprisonment, extradition, torture and even death of these one-dimensional characters more palatable to the public. Producers made few, if any, distinctions between American Arabs and Arabs, between American Muslims and Muslims, as if it were impossible to be truly American and Arab or Muslim.

This kind of viral paranoia has a long and sordid history in this country, as Richard Hofstadter persuasively argued in his 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” Fueled by the “animosities and passions of a small minority,” the paranoid style has helped to stir many of our most virulent “scares”: from the anti-Masonic In an environment in which 62 percent of Americans and anti-Catholic movements of the nineteenth century to have never met a Muslim, these representations matter. the more recent “Yellow Peril” and “Red Menace.” And now, of course, there’s the “Green To put a sharper point on it: in a 1977 60 Minutes spe- Menace” (green being the color of Islam) with its highcial titled “The Arabs Are Coming,” Morley Safer warned pitched paranoia about 1.6 billion Muslims that serves that Arabs were “invading” by buying up US businesses not only to prime American audiences for military agand farmland; in 1990 The National Review sounded a gression—as Said suggested in his Nation essay—but similar alarm in a cover story titled “The Muslims Are make hefty sums of money for the media industry.

Coming! The Muslims Are Coming!” accompanied by the requisite picture of marauding men on camels. ToAt the forefront of this effort is a series of well-funded, day’s media-makers, by contrast, have dispensed with the politically motivated campaigns dedicated to painting Isfuture tense altogether, as well as anything as nonthreat- lam as an inherently violent and savage religion. These ening or absurd as camels. Instead, they drape their Mus- campaigns are the work of a small group of wealthy dolims in shredded American flags and shriek, The Muslims nors, misinformation specialists like Rush Limbaugh have arrived and are about to destroy us! Or, as Newsweek and Glenn Beck, and groups of interconnected anti-Isblared from the newsstands in June 2003, “Al Qaeda in lam organizations: Steven Emerson’s Investigative ProjAmerica: How the Terrorists Are Recruiting—and Plot- ect on Terrorism, Daniel Pipes’s Middle East Forum ting—Here.” and so forth. Together they pound home the myth that mainstream Muslims have “terrorist” ties, that Islam is This change happened overnight, or so it seemed, as the new global ideological menace and that Muslims scores of programs began displaying Muslim Americans are intent on destroying Western civilization. Then they and Americans with Arab roots as “terrorists,” falling spread their message far and wide. into the stale trap of “seen one, seen ‘em all.” These “terrorists” waged holy wars against their fellow Americans Consider Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the from sleeper cells in Los Angeles and mosques in Wash- West (2005), the first film made by the Clarion Fund, ington. Series such as 24, The Unit, The Agency, NCIS, a pro-Israel nonprofit organization. Steeped in hatred,

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the film uses propaganda to convince the masses—including law enforcement officials, military personnel and public servants at every level—of its righteousness by systematically dehumanizing Muslims as the evil, alien “other.” The film’s frighteningly Islamophobic message also draws parallels between Islam and Nazism. Shockingly, the fund persuaded major newspapers to distribute some 28 million DVD copies to their readers, free of charge, which were inserted in more than seventy papers—predominantly in swing states—before the 2008 presidential election. Only the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and a handful of other newspapers refused to distribute the DVD. (More recently, the Clarion Fund released The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision for America, which was screened before nearly 1,500 New York City police officers, and Iranium, which warns of an Islamic nuclear threat.)

In an environment in which 62 percent of Americans have never met a Muslim, these representations matter. After all, the media mediate. Is it any wonder, then, that nearly half of us (49 percent) say the values of Islam are at odds with “American values”? Or that 45 percent of Americans say they would be uncomfortable with a mosque being built near their home? Left unchallenged, the continuous barrage of reel Islamophobic imagery makes it difficult for some Americans to accept real Muslims into our society—a situation that was painfully illustrated by the protests surrounding the reality TV show All-American Muslim.

In considering how to begin removing the sting of Islamophobia from the media, let’s return for a moment to Sam Keen’s stunning statement: “You can hit an Arab free; they’re free enemies, free villains—where you couldn’t do it to a Jew or you can’t do it to a black anymore.” This was true in 1986, when Keen made the observation to the Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and it is all the more true today.

To some, dispensing with this stereotype may seem an impossible task. Yet openness to change is an American tradition and the strength of our society. The path ahead

Intercultural Management Institute

Skills Institutes Fall 2012

Creative Arts and Intercultural Conflict Resolution

September 22–23 with Michelle LeBaron Director, Program on Dispute Resolution, University of British Columbia

Presentation Skills

September 29–30 with Dan Deming Director, Intercultural Management Institute

Intercultural Training and Facilitation

October 6–7 with Ray Leki Director, Transition Center of the Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State

Intercultural Leadership Competence October 27–28 with Bram Groen Professor, School of International Service

Crisis Public Diplomacy

November 3–4 with Rob Kelley Professor, School of International Service

Building Mediator Capacity in a Multicultural Context

November 17–18 with Gururaj Kumar Associate, KonTerra Group and Conflict Management Consultant, ADR Vantage and Jared Ordway Instructor, Advanced Mediation Practice and Ethics, Woodbury Mediation Institute

www.imi.american.edu for schedule and registration

Continued on page 8...

Summer 2012

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The Impact of Cultural Diplomacy: Wide Open to Interpretation

by John Robert Kelley and Shayna Padovano No matter how insignificant the thing you have to do, do it as well as you can… For it will be by those small things that you will be judged.

—Mahatma Gandhi

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he late political scientist Milton Cummings defined cultural diplomacy as “the exchange of ideas, information, art, and other aspects of culture among nations and their people to foster mutual understanding.” Cultural diplomats needing daily affirmation of their important work might do well to embrace Gandhi’s statement. As a cultural diplomat in his own right, the arc of his long life and sudden death illustrates what may come of delving deep into the cultural realm with the intent of altering it. Cultures are not static and change comes about slowly. Time is not the only consideration; there are so many factors involved in cultural change that there is no guarantee it will be inherently positive. However, the political realm does not take kindly to slow change, nor does it possess the patience for unsatisfactory outcomes.

Cultural diplomats face the unenviable quandary of delivering, in a relatively short amount of time, perceptible outcomes—for it is upon the merits of achieving outcomes that they are judged. Attitudinal change, increased favorability, fostering friendlier atmospheres for policy implementation—these tend to be the near-term interests of government. Meanwhile, non-governmental actors stress mutual understanding, building trust, and

a more genuine notion of exchange that reaps dividends over the long-term.

In both cases, the work of cultural diplomats ultimately begins and ends with the “small things.” Gestures of goodwill, study abroad and intercultural collaborations of all kinds seem like logical paths toward mutual understanding, and a nation with global ambitions that abstains from such activities would surely stand out. But it would be wrong to suggest that governments back into cultural diplomacy for nothing more than appearances, as recent adoptees China and Qatar demonstrate. They believe the sum of these activities will yield a political dividend somewhere down the line. They also do so in blind faith, because there is no way of knowing for certain if launching an immense network of cultural centers, as China has, or hosting a marquee international sporting event, like when the World Cup comes to Qatar in 2022, will bring these nations closer to their policy objectives. But they will do them well, nevertheless.

And this brings us to the most pressing question on the minds of cultural diplomats: for all the effort expended, how does one measure impact? Where is the “god” in these “small things”?

Unqualified Success?

It may seem like a long time ago now, but it was in fact quite recently that all the animosity between the United States and North Korea was suspended, for one night, in late February 2008. Prior to this time, the latest phase of the interminable Six Party Talks working on the peaceful disarmament of North Korea concluded without significant progress and with another

John Robert Kelley is an assistant professor in the School of International Service. He received his Ph.D. from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2007, and his dissertation, “From Monologue to Dialogue: U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Post-9/11 Era,” is currently being revised into a book. Dr. Kelley previously served as a Program Officer in the Office of Foreign Missions at the U.S. Department of State, and was an intercultural business consultant to American and Japanese firms. His recent publications include a contribution to The Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy (2008) and articles in Orbis and The Hague Journal of Diplomacy.

Shayna Padovano is an M.A. candidate at American University pursuing a concentration in Cultural and Public Diplomacy. She holds a B.F.A. in Theatre Arts from Boston University, and spent several years as a professional actor in New York City before beginning her graduate studies.

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stalemate in the works. But in an act reminiscent of the “ping-pong diplomacy” that preceded President Richard Nixon’s landmark visit to China in 1972, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra accepted the invitation of the North Korean regime to play a concert in Pyongyang.

It was the largest American contingent to visit the country since the Korean War. Controversy surrounded the Orchestra’s decision, but in the end exultation prevailed after the moving finale, “Arirang,” the achingly beautiful Korean folk song that brought a full theatre of one thousand North Korean spectators, many in tears, to their feet for a five-minute standing ovation.

What did it achieve? For those in attendance, the significance was palpable. The American guests were equally moved by the emotional performance. North Korea’s vice-minister of culture called the concert “an important occasion to open a chapter of mutual understanding between the two countries.” Others were not so sure. “History suggests orchestral diplomacy may be of little real relevance,” remarked a subsequent appraisal in The Economist. “At the end of the day, we consider this concert to be a concert and it’s not a diplomatic coup,” quipped then-White House Press Secretary Dana Perino.

In its earliest renditions, cultural diplomacy often involved “mission”-style displays of cultural figures and artifacts within foreign environments. More recently, however, practitioners of cultural diplomacy have toyed with a more collaborative format in which representatives from distinct groups work together to solve shared problems. The notion that “exchange” takes place quite easily connotes a level of fair dealing or “tit-for-tat” spirit of reciprocity, when in fact sponsoring states demand gains instead of losses. According to Cynthia Schneider of Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, cultural diplomacy is above all a tool for exercising and acquiring “soft” power, which breeds permissive foreign constituencies through the power of persuasion.

Another persistent quality of cultural diplomacy is its reliance on citizens to assume the bulk of activities in the belief that they will present the most apolitical, and ultimately the most genuine and attractive aspects of the Summer 2012

sponsoring culture. Carried out in this way, cultural diplomacy expresses a certain confidence both in citizens to exude qualities of universal appeal as well as in audiences to find those qualities appealing.

In no small measure, the nature of diplomatic work overall is intrinsically cultural, found in both the “high” platforms of performance and visual arts to the popular domains of language and mass media. The history of cultural diplomacy by the United States as a soft power tool to win trust and respect abroad includes many notable initiatives, ranging from its various exchange programs—most notably the Fulbright—to arts exhibits and musical performance tours such as jazz artists during the Cold War and the orchestral visit to North Korea.

Universal Good?

The belief that such experiences can transcend barriers between peoples and ignite international cooperation encourages cultural diplomacy between nations, yet within this act of sharing lie inherent risks. Cultural diplomacy is not just the sharing of culture for its own sake; embedded within the act lies a calculated political objective. With this in mind, many aspects of a cultural program can go wrong. If the United States wants to encourage democracy through hip hop dance, for instance, it must be sure that the environment is amenable to this type of import. If not, the program might fail or take a turn in an unplanned—and detrimental—direction. In this case, an act that was considered a normative good would not necessarily be so.

However, if a program does prove “successful,” its effects could take a long period of time to manifest. This lack of immediate return on investment can lead to lukewarm or questionable sentiments toward cultural exchange programs and what “good” they can actually do. Yet, even taking such inherent risks into consideration, the export of culture through diplomatic channels is still an essential tool for relationship building. Cultural diplomacy, inside or outside the soft power frame, thrives on the multiplier effect of positive association: a nation invests its culture and acts of goodwill to fos-

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The Impact... ter trust, understanding, and establish strong relational ties that form the foundation for future collaboration in other sectors.

To warrant such a long-term investment, nations need to be sure they are headed in the right direction. The United Kingdom’s British Council and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs within the U.S. Department of State are two institutions that are developing more detailed instruments for measuring cultural program outcomes.

The British Council recently released a report entitled Trust Pays, a multi-tiered study that examined how cultural programming increased trust between the UK and other nations. The study emphasized how the development of trust through cultural programs influenced other sectors; for example, higher levels of trust were associated with a greater propensity to engage in economic relations with the UK. Additionally, higher levels of trust showed an increased willingness to travel to the UK and engage with British citizens abroad. The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs also recently released a report evaluating its journalism and media programs. The report contains an extensive framework that highlights program-specific outcomes, the most tangible of which asks whether or not participants in the program returned to their home countries and instituted any organizational change within their countries’ media outlets.

These examples emphasize the ability that larger organizations have to use extensive methodologies and resources in order to assess the success of cultural programs. However, there are still additional questions that are not being asked, even within more extensive program evaluations. Should there be more investigation into the durability of the personal change that takes place as a result of cultural diplomacy? What could the threshold be for a reversal of this positive change? The absence of this kind of evaluation casts a shadow over any claim that cultural diplomacy is working for both sponsors and audiences. What research that does exist is unfortunately limited to larger institutions. More must be done.

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If we begin with the assumption that all cultural exchange programs seek to achieve aspects of similar overarching goals, such as fostering mutual understanding, building trust, encouraging expression and empowering individuals, we must ask how the “small things” lead to real and mutually beneficial changes. Past and present metrics often rely on the use of testimonials from participants in a program as data to be interpreted. This data is mined for evidence that may illustrate changes in thinking toward the host nation, a breakdown of preconceived notions, and the development of increased affection for and identification with the nation of interest.

Yet, we must question whether such evidence is sufficient to draw larger conclusions about the success, or lack thereof, of a particular program. It is necessary to continue to explore more refined and structured methodologies—methodologies that can extract multidimensional data to help determine to what degree programs do (or do not) achieve their goals, and what the ripple effects of such change may be. i

How the Media... continued from page 5 may be littered with ingrained, prejudicial precedents, but I believe these baleful portraits will be shattered, one image at a time. Young scholars and artists will lead the way, creating inventive new portraits that depict Arabs and Muslims as neither saints nor devils but as fellow human beings, with all the strengths and frailties that condition implies. Bold leaders and audiences of conscience will make it more costly, morally and politically, for the media to demean a whole population. And as Americans begin to experience the humanity of Muslims and Arabs of all beliefs, backgrounds, opinions and cultures, we too will regain some of our lost humanity. i This article first appeared in the July 2-9, 2012 edition of The Nation. It has been reproduced here with permission from the copyright holder.

Intercultural Management Quarterly

Promoting Culturally Responsive Health Communication

by Maria De Jesus

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iomedicine tends to focus on one-way, individualized strategies, and privileges mainstream Western understandings of health over less “accepted” paradigms. However, conventional practices and perspectives do not always “fit” the realities of immigrants from diverse cultural and ethnic groups who face enormous social, linguistic, economic, and health care barriers. Health providers, therefore, are increasingly interested in developing more culturally responsive—and, thus, more effective—health communication strategies that can facilitate interactions with these patient populations. This article examines health promoter perspectives on effective cross-cultural health communication strategies with immigrant patients from a wide range of cultures.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defines health promoters as “members of communities who work either for pay or as volunteers in association with the local health care system in both urban and rural environments and usually share ethnicity, language, socioeconomic status, and life experiences with the community members they serve.” They have a long history of providing public health services in many different cultures and countries, especially among groups that have been denied adequate health care, such as minority and socio-economically disadvantaged populations in resource-poor neighborhoods.

These health promoters form a bridge between ethnically diverse immigrant populations and health service delivery systems; they also facilitate appropriate use of health resources by providing outreach and cultural Dr. Maria De Jesus is an assistant professor in the School of International Service at American University. She specializes in health inequalities with a focus on cross-cultural communication and health promotion. She was a Yerby post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Center for Community-Based Research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston; she has also taught at Boston University and Boston College, where she earned her Ph.D. and M.A. Summer 2012

linkages to the communities they serve. They are critical resources in improving health care access and providerpatient communication, as well as providing health education and culturally responsive health care to members of underserved communities. In part, their effectiveness within these communities is due to their ability to understand community problems in context, to develop innovative health interventions appropriate to that context, and to translate these interventions into practice, thus responding creatively to local needs and individuals’ realities.

Building Relationality My community-based qualitative research was grounded in an emic or idiographic approach to research, which “concerns itself with the specific and unique richness of a phenomenon, so that we understand the particular rather than the general.”1 I have drawn the findings reported here from interviews with health promoters at different community health organizations, who described effective strategies in their work with multicultural immigrant patients.

Building relationality—attending to the effects of patient-provider interactions to develop trust between patients and providers—is the core and overarching category that links all of the others. Health promoters described many effective health communication strategies that they adopt to build relationality with patients; these strategies, described below and accompanied by representative quotations from health promoters, can inform all health providers: Understanding health holistically. Health promoters’ definitions of health are informed by context, which contributes to an understanding of health in broad terms: “Health is not simply preventing disease on a physical level; it is about balancing the stresses that damage us mentally, physically, and emotionally. Health not only relates to men and women at an individual level, but it is also concerned with what is happening in the community and with what makes a community healthy.”

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Promoting...

Engaging with patients in a more egalitarian way.

Effective health promoters challenge the asymmetric power dynamics that exist in mainstream health provider-patient relationships: “It’s just like never putting yourself in a higher position than they are. It’s really breaking down your language to words that they can understand and showing them that you are sitting down at the same table. Patients tell me information and I pass on information to them.”

tion as being about ourselves, for example, thinking ‘Let me shine, let me do this because I’m going to be recognized.’”

Purposefully self-disclosing. Health promoters share relevant information about their life experiences as a way to build reciprocal relationships with patients: “I share about myself so that there is a bond. For example, I may share that I am a parent too with a patient so he or she sees that we share a similar role.”

Being consistent. Health promoters also point out that following through is vital in creating and sustaining relationships with patients: “If I say I am going to follow up about a specific topic, then I do it.”

Being an ally to the patient. Health promoters demonstrate that they are “on the patient’s side”: “Stance matters. If you are open and an ally to your patients, they will less likely shun you. They will accept you as someone who is trying to help them and will open up with you.”

Being non-judgmental. It is important for health promoters not to convey negative judgment toward patients via words, facial expressions, or body language: “All patients have strengths, and I think our job is to work with their strengths. When patients do something right, it could be the smallest of things; we should point that out to them.”

Being compassionate. Health promoters express a sense of common humanity with their patients: “You have to make yourself human to do this type of work with patients well.”

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Being authentic. Health promoters need to be completely honest with their patients, even about very sensitive topics: “There are ways that you can address patients without offending them, but at the same time, not sugarcoating or anything like that is important.”

Continually learning about the community. Health promoters describe the need to educate themselves continually about issues that were pertinent to the community in which they work: “I learned how to work effectively with patients through trial and error, having to learn that maybe what I knew about the culture was not everything that I needed to know, and learning from other people who had experience with a particular community.”

Establishing trust. Trust facilitates the process whereby patients can communicate openly, directly, and honestly with the health promoters: “For many immigrants, the health promoter’s credibility has a lot to do with trust. Once the patient sees that that you are genuinely a person who is here to work with them on specific goals and they trust you, they will be more open with you.”

Being empathic. Health promoters also try to understand their patients from a patient’s perspective: “I don’t think you can do this work without having empathy and trying to put yourself in the patient’s position.”

Demonstrating respect. Respect entails not only being polite in word or deed with patients, but also validating their feelings and experiences: “Some immigrant patients have had negative experiences with health professionals in the past, which has affected the work of other health providers. To overcome these histories, one needs to validate what the patient went through and try a different approach.”

Being humble. Health promoters demonstrate a sense of humility in their roles: “I think not seeing the situa-

Learning from different knowledge sources. Apart from medical information, health promoters discuss

Intercultural Management Quarterly

drawing from four different sources of knowledge to inform their health promotion practice with community members: •

Cultural knowledge. Developing knowledge of an immigrant community’s way of life and the systems of communication such as language, religion, rituals, beliefs, and norms of behavior.

•

Experiential knowledge. Knowledge gained through experience in working with immigrant patients over time.

•

Spiritual/religious knowledge. Religious beliefs, values, and faith, as well as the role of spirituality or religion on the patient’s thinking and behavior.

•

Sociohistorical knowledge. Having information about the sociohistorical context of the patient’s country of origin, immigration patterns in the U.S., and an understanding of the current situation of the immigrant community in the U.S.

Toward a “Best Practice” Model Evidently, developing strong relationships with immigrant patients is important for facilitating culturally responsive health communication. The relational theory of health promotion practice reflects the dynamic health communication strategies through which health promoters develop relationships with multicultural immigrant patients. Such research also contributes to a “best practice” model of reaching ethnically diverse immigrant populations.

Several important implications for health education and research emerge from these interviews. First, health promoters who serve as cultural mediators have a strong role to play in health promotion practice and in the development of culturally responsive health communication programs and strategies. Second, the process of building relationality with patients should be a priority

Summer 2012

topic for health training and educational programs for health providers.

It is important for health providers to be self-reflexive in their practice. They should be aware of the power dynamics in relationships with patients and strive to create contexts that facilitate mutual sharing of information— especially in the current climate, where provider-patient dynamics are increasingly shifting towards more active patient models. Health promoters also view becoming culturally responsive—that is, to continuously educate themselves about the patients and communities they serve—as a core responsibility. Relying solely on theoretical and biomedical knowledge is not sufficient. Thus, institutional training and educational programs for health providers should focus on facilitating a process of continual learning about the cultural communities they serve.

Conclusion Health promoters’ perspectives challenge universalist theories of health communication and promotion that focus primarily on one-way, individual-level strategies and privilege mainstream Western understandings of health. Although Western biomedicine places ultimate responsibility for health on the individual, immigrant patients’ ability to make health-related choices is constrained by social, linguistic, and economic barriers. Therefore, health communication and promotion strategies and programs must be responsive to the contextual realities of patients’ lives. Health professionals need to equip themselves with relational, cross-cultural health communication strategies to effectively interact with immigrant populations, and there are clear demographic and ethical imperatives that call for this type of training. i Notes 1. L.C. Watson and M.B Watson-Franke, Interpreting Life Histories: An Anthropological Inquiry (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1985).

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Intercultural Challenges in German-American Communication

by Uta Kremer

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ow does an American executive critique others? Most likely, she says something nice or encouraging, inserts the difficult or critical part, and ends with yet more praise: I really appreciate the work you’re doing. Maybe you ought to put a bit more emphasis on X and Y, but I admire the way you’ve done Z. We are mostly not aware of the everyday communication strategies we employ, but we all use them. We are generally able to understand and be understood by others—within our own cultures. Outside our cultural comfort zones, however, our standard strategies do not necessarily work. Even though people might be aware of the existence of intercultural differences, taking it to heart and trying to overcome our own culture-bound communication patterns in an international setting appears to be next to impossible. It comes as no surprise, then, that companies seeking to expand internationally run into trouble.

employees felt criticized all the way through. Their new bosses would never say anything when they did well— which they interpreted as constant disapproval. On top of this, their German managers’ critiques were often very blunt. Puzzlement led to frustration, which led to resignations. These were not the working conditions the Americans had expected.

The Daimler employees sent to the U.S., on the other hand, were quite happy. So much praise and no criticism—or was there? The German style of leadership and motivation is fundamentally different from the American one. German managers do not praise verbally; they simply say nothing when things go well. This is clearly understood by fellow Germans as approval of their performance, on a given task or in general. If things go wrong, however, Germans do not hold back and they criticize directly. It is their understanding of efficient leadership.

Coming from different backgrounds in which different communication strategies applied, with distinct coding and decoding “rules” for praise and criticism, fundamental misunderstandings between the Americans and Germans occurred. The Americans decoded the German way of praising—saying nothing when things go well—as criticism. There was also plenty of direct verbal criticism. Thus, the Americans felt only criticized, and twice as harshly as they were used to.

When Chrysler’s U.S. staff was sent to Germany to work for Daimler, the employees felt criticized all the way through.

The oft-quoted experience of Daimler Chrysler illustrates this well. The American leadership style includes constant praising. Well done! and Thanks for your effort! are phrases used frequently to give positive feedback to employees and to motivate them to continue working well. Should there be a problem, the manager tends to say nothing—the employee understands implicitly that he has done something wrong or performed below expectations.

When Chrysler’s U.S. staff was sent to Germany to work for Daimler in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Dr. Uta Kremer has taught international career development workshops for over a decade, including regularly at the Leipzig University School of Management. She is a specialist in GermanAmerican cross-cultural work practices.

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The Germans, on the other hand, coming from a background in which praise is normally given implicitly only in the form of a lack of criticism, were not familiar with the frequency of verbal praise common in the U.S. Not being used either to the way in which Americans deliver disapproval—“sandwiched” in a constructive way between two praising statements—they simply did not get that they were criticized at all.

Why do German managers seem to have such a hard time praising their employees? Why are Americans always complimentary, even if they seek to communicate criticism? The answer to these questions lies in the fun-

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damentally different understanding of credibility among Americans and Germans. To Germans, credibility means being serious, keeping a distance, and being “honest” and straightforward. Within their particular culture of communication, Germans express these attributes by saying only what they think, without adding anything “extra” to make someone feel good.

Americans, on the other hand, generally want to be liked. They say nice things to have them reciprocated.

Appearance is what counts—a smile, a compliment, overstatement. People talk to each other easily, and small

talk is no issue. This, again, is different from the Germans, who take every How are you? as a serious question to be answered honestly (and at length).

As a result, communication strategies also shape people’s perceptions of each other. Without an ability to code or decode in a way that can be heard and understood by our counterparts, miscommunication and misperception are bound to happen. At best, to Americans, then, Germans may appear to be too honest to be polite; while for Germans, Americans seem too polite to be honest. i

CONNECT. DISCOVER. ADVANCE.

INTERCULTURAL MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE · SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL SERVICE · AMERICAN UNIVERSITY

14th Annual IMI Conference on Intercultural Relations

March 14–15, 2013

With more than 30 workshop sessions to choose from, the Annual Conference offers exciting hands-on experience to a diverse group of practitioners, scholars and students.

To register, visit www.imi.american.edu

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Featured Keynote Speakers: Bryan A. Stevenson Executive Director, Equal Justice Initiative • MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award recipient • Successfully argued Miller v. Alabama at the Supreme Court, banning life-without-parole sentences for children in June 2012 • His TED Talk, We Need to Talk About an Injustice, had one of the loudest & longest standing ovations in TED history Dr. Janet Bennett Co-Founder and Executive Director, Intercultural Communication Institute • Chairs ICI/ University of the Pacific Masters of Arts in Intercultural Relations program • Co-edited third edition of Handbook of Intercultural Training • Expert in developmental “layered” intercultural training and adjustment processes

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Mobile Phones as Cultural Tools: An Arabian Example

by Najma Al Zidjaly and Cynthia Gordon

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ost scholarly research on mobile phones— conducted largely in North American, European, and Asian contexts—suggests that they facilitate social interaction, enable multitasking, serve as fashion accessories, and can even become a nuisance.

We know that people use mobile phones, and smartphones in particular, in various ways. They make voice calls, send text messages, surf the Internet, manage their schedules, take and share photos, and so on. But a mobile phone is not simply a piece of technology: it is a cultural tool.

Cultural tools, according to linguist Ron Scollon, are material or symbolic “mediational means” that people use to accomplish or communicate social actions. Because all cultural tools have histories, they facilitate certain actions (i.e., have affordances) while constraining others (i.e., have limitations). In this way, cultural tools not only affect how people use them, but are also affected by specific uses.

For example, in some African and Arabian cultures, it makes practical and economic sense to use mobile phones as beepers. Mobile phones offer an affordance that makes this beeper function possible: One can call another and hang up before the other answers; the person called gets a “missed call” message that can, depending on prior agreement, be understood to indicate safe arrival or even, “Come pick me up.” This cultural practice does not readily translate in the American context of unlimited voice and texting plans; Americans typically do not take advantage of this affordance.

Conceptualizing mobile phones as cultural tools enhances our ability to understand how people of various cultural backgrounds orient to and use them, thus helping reduce the likelihood of intercultural miscommunication when mobile phones are at play. Examples from two case studies, conducted ten years apart in the Middle Eastern country of Oman, demonstrate how a “cultural tools” approach lends new insight into mobile phones as culturally situated, an understanding that has the potential to mitigate problems in intercultural education and training.

The culture of Oman is generally characterized as collectivist, and mobile phone use is rapidly on the rise there. Part of contemporary Omani collectivism is a focus on the family, rather than the tribe; this leads outsiders to find Omani culture particularly impenetrable.

Even so, Oman could stand as a fair representative of much of the Arabian Gulf region—it manages a tension between modernization and tradition, and features a modest economy as well as moderate political and religious stances. The examples we consider are drawn from research conducted by the first author, a native Omani and linguistics professor in Oman, as part of a collaborative project by both authors examining mobile phone practices across cultures.

Mobile phone use in the Arab world started booming in the early 2000s, when the first case study was conducted. Researchers observed that Arabian youth quickly adapted their mobile phone use to “blur the clearly marked lines in the Arab Muslim world between the public and private,” defying customs by connecting with the opposite sex.1 For economic reasons, prepaid card systems were and still are widespread. Text messaging was and continues to be very popular, likely because it

Dr. Najma Al Zidjaly is an associate professor of linguistics and intercultural communication at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. Her publications focus on culture, social media, and Arab identity. Al Zidjaly is also a public intellectual in Oman, with essays published in The New York Times, Times of Oman, and Muscat Daily.

Dr. Cynthia Gordon, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Syracuse University, is author of Making Meanings, Creating Family: Intertextuality and Framing in Family Discourse (Oxford, 2009). She is interested in intersections between family communication, health communication, culture, and electronically mediated discourse.

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is private and covert; the Arab world might be described as a “text messaging culture.” The case studies reveal how Omanis, and young Omanis in particular, use mobile phones to exercise autonomy, challenge customs and authority, and to accentuate cultural unity.

Defying Islamic Prohibitions In 2002, Al Zidjaly conducted a case study analysis of how young people, especially young women, were using mobile phones in Oman.2 What she found in her ethnographic study is that young people used mobile phones not only to mark their freedom and independence, something valued by youth across many cultures, but also to create an underground discourse. They used mobile phones as a tool to get around cultural prohibitions regarding interactions with members of the opposite sex, which are restricted in traditional Islamic cultures and controlled by parents. This is particularly important for young Omani women, whose independence in malefemale relations is traditionally most constrained. Young people also used mobile phones to discuss taboo topics such as sex.

According to this case study, boys (and some girls) would call random numbers or send random text messages in the hope of connecting with an age-appropriate member of the opposite sex. If the two people enjoyed one other’s voices or texts, then a mobile relationship between them would ensue. In many (indeed, most) cases, break-up and heartache would follow due to a more pleasing voice or more cleverly formulated text from another random caller.

Young people thus were taking advantage of some of the affordances of mobile phones: they are owned by individuals rather than families or households, they are portable, they can be used to contact potentially anyone, and they can be used unobtrusively. In doing so, young Omani women and men not only expanded their social circles, but also defied the cultural and religious conventions of Oman.

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The practice conflicted not only with existing conventions but also with the wishes of the Omani government, which owned Omantel, the sole telecommunication company at the time. The government found itself in a double bind—on one hand, it wanted to promote the use of technology among young people (and especially women) in line with its greater development goals; on the other hand, it did not want technology to change the nation’s traditional Islamic practices. Omantel’s solution was to design pre-paid phone cards that indirectly addressed and discouraged these actions. Since most Omanis used such cards, they were a convenient way to “send a message.” The newly designed cards depicted phone users in traditional clothing contacting family members.

However, Omani young women continued to use mobile phones covertly to facilitate freedom and challenge cultural practices. To this day, they continue to take advantage of the affordance that allows them to connect with anyone, female or male. The government, while not encouraging this practice, has allowed it to continue, in part because of Omani ideologies of government but also because the practice is relatively invisible.

Asserting Individuality The second case study, which began in 2011, expands on the first. Using survey reports, ethnographic observations, interviews, and artifacts, it examines mobile phone use nationally and in undergraduate classrooms. The preliminary results of this study complement the findings of the first in interesting ways. Mobile phones continue to be used to subvert dominant cultural practices, but they are also emerging as tools for the presentation of individual and cultural identity and for developing a sense of collectivity.

To Omanis, the mobile phone is a necessity rather than an accessory. It serves as a status and national identity marker while also having personal value; many Omanis report sleeping with their phones (as in fact do Americans3). Mobile phones tend to take precedence, in the Arabian Gulf in general, over face-to-face interaction.4 The ensuing lack of face-to-face contact has the poten-

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Mobile Phones... tial, of course, to lead to many problems in both intercultural business and social situations.

ber with a pleasing or meaningful sequence of numerals can be bought for up to $2,500.

Some Omanis so greatly fear being without a mobile phone that they have at least two to three, complete with different lines, in case one gets disconnected due to late bill payments (a common occurrence in Oman). Others have at least two to separate their private and public lives. Typically, one is reserved for family and close friends, and one for students (very popular among university teachers) or people one meets at superficial social gatherings. For some, especially the young, one phone line is dedicated to texting and chatting—mainly with friends and acquaintances of the opposite sex—and one for family or just for phone calls.

Strengthening Group Identity

The “meaning” of having multiple mobile phones must be interpreted in its cultural context; in American culture, for example, this practice could be erroneously interpreted as “living a double life.” Further, it is not appropriate in all cultures for mobile phones to be used to connect students and professors. Multiple-phone ownership in Oman, however, has important cultural functions, including enabling people to manage their different social identities and relationships.

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Besides using mobile phones to put their individual identities and social status on display, Omanis also use them to accentuate collective cultural identities. For example, mobile phones are used for religious bonding among family members, colleagues, and acquaintances.

Every Friday, the holy day of Islam, Omanis send and forward religious greetings via text message. This practice, which has also been noted in other Gulf countries, not only strengthens group identity but also facilitates the creation of new social bonds. Many use these exchanges to connect with colleagues. Also, it serves to initiate outsiders into the group; sending Friday greeting messages is a sure way for outsiders to establish good relationships with Omanis.

By the time an Omani student is in college, he or she usually has two phones with two different numbers.

Most children get their first phone by early adolescence (boys around age 10 and girls around age 13); parents take advantage of this fact to (attempt to) keep tabs on their children. They thus benefit from the affordances that mobile phones provide, namely, their portability and the fact that they are always with the child.

As in many Arab countries, mobile phones in Oman also facilitate the sharing of cultural jokes. These jokes, which poke fun at Oman or neighboring Arab countries, accentuate the connections among Omanis and can even create bonds with outsiders—once they come to understand the practice. However, it is often misunderstood.

Last year, for instance, an Omani official offended a visiting American colleague by repeatedly sending her such jokes. The American interpreted his behavior as racist, inappropriate, and described it as “harassment.”

The Omani, however, was simply trying to help her feel welcome by including her in his text messaging group.

Omanis use such text messaging groups to build rapport among members of work and hobby groups.

Indeed, most Omanis are never far from their phones.

However, age and economic differences do exist. Among the young, especially women, a mobile phone serves as a fashion symbol and a marker of personal taste, as it does to young women in Japan (another collectivist culture). To the older generation, mobile phones are status symbols; older people spend money on the latest mobile phones and buy unique phone numbers, either from Omantel directly or on the black market, where a num-

While protesters have used mobile phones and social media to organize anti-government political action throughout the Arab world, the case is different in Oman. As Al Zidjaly argued in a 2011 op-ed in The New York Times, Omanis actually used mobile phones and text messaging to pacify protests and connect people and their government. For example, many sent positive messages to the Sultan of Oman via social media during the period of unrest in 2011. This gives credence to

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the scholarly argument that social media do not make changes—people do. Social media, including mobile phones, serve as cultural tools that social agents use in any manner they choose to create identities and accomplish other social goals.

Deepening Intercultural Understanding We suggest that conceptualizing mobile phones as cultural tools highlights how people take advantage of the affordances of the technology to accomplish culturally meaningful actions. In the Omani context, these actions include subverting authority, asserting individuality, and creating community.

Of course, it is likely that mobile phone use by people in different cultural groups overlaps in some ways with that of Omanis while diverging in others. When all parties share an understanding of cultural practices, communication tends to go well. However, when an outsider faces a foreign culture’s communication practices, including uses of cultural tools like mobile phones, there is great potential for misunderstanding. In highlighting mobile phone practices in contemporary Omani culture, we hope to encourage readers to reflect on how their own cultures shape how they approach and use tools like mobile phones.

For example, teens’ random texting and calling in Oman serves as a valuable exercise in autonomy and testing boundaries; such a practice might be perceived as dangerous by protective American parents. Audience members’ use of phones during college lectures, training seminars, and other formal situations may not reflect disrespect, but rather an innocuous way to stay in touch with the all-important family. A professor and student exchanging phone numbers might be appropriate or not, depending on cultural practices; it can improve studentprofessor communication in some cultural contexts while being taboo in others. An expensive phone may reflect not only a desire for high technology, but serve as a marker of social status that is highly valued in the culture. Someone in the same room who chooses to text

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instead of talk with you may be following the cultural norm, not being rude.

The media tend to highlight problems mobile phones present—such as how they adversely affect teenagers’ sleep patterns or distract students—while simultaneously arguing that mobile phones can cause political revolutions and make life better or more efficient. These views treat phones as technological material objects. Empirical observation and surveys on mobile phone use from a “cultural tools” perspective tell a different story. Our Omani example lends insight into what exactly it means for mobile phones to be understood as cultural tools.

While we do not discount the limitations and potential downsides of mobile phones, a “cultural tools” approach suggests that when intercultural problems arise around phones, it is not especially useful to discuss the phone as mere technology. Instead, managers, trainers, and others who work in intercultural settings must facilitate dialogues that elucidate how individuals actually use their mobile phones, and how such uses are situated in, and shaped by, culture. Only through such conversations can we achieve shared understanding. i Notes 1. Mohammad Ibahrine, “Mobile Communication and Sociopolitical Change in the Arab World,” in Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies, edited by James E. Katz (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008), 257–272.

2. Najma Al Zidjaly, “Omanis and GSMs,” Muscat Daily, February 18, 2012.

3. Amanda Lenhart, “Cell Phones and American Adults,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2010 http://www. pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Cell-Phones-and-American-Adults/Overview/Findings.aspx 4. Yasser Hareb, Picasso and Starbucks (Beirut: Madarek Publishing House, 2011).

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Cultural Intelligence: Why Every Leader Needs It

by David Livermore, Linn Van Dyne, and Soon Ang

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or many business leaders, cultural awareness and understanding is considered a soft skill that can be taken lightly compared to hard skills like market research, negotiation strategies, and business development acumen. But a leader’s ability to do any of these tasks successfully in a multicultural context quickly becomes a bottom-line issue when dealing with real people in real situations. Thankfully, there’s an emerging body of research1 that provides tangible ways to assess and develop cultural intelligence, or CQ—the capability to function effectively across various cultural contexts.

Cultural intelligence is rooted in more than a decade of rigorous academic research2 across dozens of different cultures. It has led to a whole new way of approaching cross-border management, diversity training, and virtual team development. Previously, the predominant approach to cultural competence was to teach people about specific cultures and assume that knowledge would translate into sensitivity and effectiveness in intercultural contexts. In contrast, our findings indicate that a leader’s cultural intelligence is largely a personal capability rooted in the individual’s internal motivation, thinking, consciousness, and adaptability. Research demonstrates that CQ is a capability that can be assessed and developed with promising results for those who manage with cultural intelligence. We begin by reviewing the four capabilities of cultural intelligence and then we describe ways leaders can assess and develop this CQ capability in themselves and others.

The Four Capabilities of Culturally Intelligent Leaders Leaders with high CQ can effectively adapt their leadership style to fit multicultural situations involving customers, suppliers, and associates from diverse backgrounds. They demonstrate strength in four distinct CQ capabilities (Drive, Knowledge, Strategy, and Action).

Leaders need all four capabilities, because focusing on one without the others can actually result in increased cultural ignorance rather than enhanced cultural intelligence. This is because CQ requires an overall repertoire of adaptive capabilities. The four CQ capabilities are: 1. Drive: Showing interest, confidence, and drive to adapt cross-culturally. CQ Drive is the leader’s level of interest, motivation, and confidence to adapt crossculturally. This refers to whether or not you have the confidence and drive to work through the challenges and conflict that often accompany intercultural work.

The ability to be personally engaged and to persevere through intercultural challenges is one of the most novel aspects of cultural intelligence. Many intercultural training approaches simply assume that people are motivated to gain cross-cultural capabilities. Yet employees often approach diversity training apathetically, and employees headed out on international assignments are often more concerned about moving their families overseas and getting settled than they are about developing cultural understanding. Without ample motivation, there is little point in spending time and money on training.

Dr. David Livermore has written several books on global leadership and cultural intelligence including Leading with Cultural Intelligence and his newest release, The Cultural Intelligence Difference. He is president of the Cultural Intelligence Center in East Lansing, Mich., and has worked with leaders in more than 100 countries.

Dr. Linn Van Dyne is a professor of management at Michigan State University, where she conducts research on discretionary behavior and cultural intelligence, serves on five editorial boards, and is Associate Editor of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. She co-edited the Handbook of Cultural Intelligence. Prior to her academic career, she held management positions in worldwide for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.

Dr. Soon Ang is the Goh Tjoei Kok Distinguished Chair and Professor in Management at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. She co-authored two foundational books on CQ and co-edited the Handbook of Cultural Intelligence.

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Doug, an American with a multinational firm who was sent to manage a team in Bangkok, describes how little he paid attention to the cultural training he received before moving to Thailand. It wasn’t that he didn’t care. It’s just that he was overwhelmed getting ready for the move and he found the training overly theoretical and too focused upon cultural stereotypes. But he definitely wanted to succeed.

beliefs, gender role expectations, etc. can differ across cultures. In addition, general knowledge about different types of economic, business, legal, and political systems that exist throughout the world is important. And you need a core understanding of culture, language patterns and non-verbal behaviors. This kind of knowledge helps build your confidence when working in a new cultural environment.

CQ Drive includes intrinsic motivation (the degree to which you derive enjoyment from culturally diverse situThe other important part of CQ Knowledge is knowations), extrinsic motivation (the more tangible benefits ing how culture influences your effectiveness in specific you gain from culturally diverse experiences), and self- domains. For example, being an effective global leader efficacy (your confidence that you will be effective in an in business looks different from being an effective leader intercultural encounter). All three of these motivational of a multicultural university. And working across bordynamics play a role in how leaders approach multicul- ders for an information technology company requires tural situations. Stop and examine your motivation for a different application of cultural understanding than doing cross-cultural work.

Your CQ Drive is strongly reDeveloping cultural intelligence takes more than just lated to your effectiveness in the gut-level sixth sense promoted in leadership circles. new cultural contexts.

2. Knowledge: Understanding intercultural issues and differences. CQ Knowledge is the cognitive dimension of cultural intelligence. It refers to the leader’s level of understanding about culture and culture’s role in shaping the way to do business when different cultures are involved. Your CQ Knowledge is based upon the degree to which you understand the idea of culture and how it influences the way you think and behave. It also includes your overall understanding of the ways cultures vary from one context to the next.

When Doug got to Bangkok, he quickly discovered that leading and motivating his mostly Asian team wasn’t coming easily. And he had a reputation for being a phenomenal negotiator. But his negotiations kept getting stalled. Even though he had extensive management experience, he was losing confidence in his ability to be a good leader there.

One of the most important parts of CQ Knowledge is a macro-level understanding of cultural systems and the cultural norms and values associated with different societies. In order to lead effectively you need to understand ways that communication styles, predominant religious

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working across borders for a charitable organization or on a military initiative. This kind of specialized, domainspecific cultural knowledge combined with a macro understanding of cultural issues is a crucial part of leading with cultural intelligence.

CQ Knowledge is the area that is most often emphasized in typical approaches to intercultural competency.

A large and growing training and consulting industry focuses on teaching leaders about general cultural values.

While valuable on its own, the information that stems from CQ Knowledge has to be combined with the other three capabilities of CQ or its relevance to the real demands of leadership is questionable and potentially detrimental.

3. Strategy: Making sense of culturally diverse experiences and planning accordingly. CQ Strategy refers to the leader’s level of awareness and ability to strategize when crossing cultures. This capability involves slowing the pace long enough to carefully observe what is going on inside our own and other people’s heads. It is the ability to think about our own thought processes and draw

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Cultural Intelligence... upon our cultural knowledge to understand a different cultural context and solve problems in that situation. It includes whether we can use our cultural knowledge to plan an appropriate strategy, accurately interpret what is going on in an intercultural situation, and check to see if our expectations are accurate or need to be adjusted.

Doug has always used a leadership style focused upon developing individuals to pursue their personal goals and to “lead themselves”. He was aware that this was a countercultural approach in Asia. But he had no interest in becoming a highly directive leader. So he had to develop a strategy for how to be true to himself while effectively leading a team with values different from his.

Seasoned leaders often jump into meetings and new situations with little planning. This works fine when meeting with colleagues or clients from a similar cultural background. By drawing upon emotional intelligence and leadership experience, we can get away with “winging it” because we know how to respond to cues and how to talk about various projects. When meetings involve individuals from different cultural contexts, however, many of the rules change. Relying upon our ability to intuitively respond to cues in these more novel situations is dangerous. That is where CQ Strategy comes in.

CQ Strategy includes planning, awareness, and checking. Planning is taking the time to prepare for an intercultural encounter—anticipating how to approach the people, topic, and situation. Awareness means being in tune with what is going on in one’s self and others.

Checking is the monitoring we do as we engage in interactions to see if the plans and expectations we had were appropriate. It is comparing what we expected with our actual experience. CQ Strategy emphasizes implementation, and it is the lynchpin between understanding cultural issues and actually being able to use that understanding to manage effectively.

4. Action: Changing verbal and nonverbal actions appropriately when interacting cross-culturally. Finally, CQ Action is the leader’s ability to act appropriately in a wide range of cultural situations. It influences

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whether we can actually accomplish our performance goals effectively in light of different cultural situations.

One of the most important aspects of CQ Action is knowing when to adapt to another culture and when not to do so. A leader with high CQ learns which actions will and won’t enhance effectiveness and acts upon that understanding. Thus, CQ Action involves flexible behaviors tailored to the specific cultural context.

Doug is grateful for a team of staff who are fluent in English. He’s learning some basic Thai to get along. But at times, he feels like he has to relearn English too. His assistant needs very explicit, step-by-step directions. And on the rare occasion when she makes a request, he has the hardest time figuring out exactly what she’s asking for.

CQ Action includes the capability to be flexible in verbal and nonverbal actions. It also includes appropriate flexibility in speech acts—the exact words and phrases we use when we communicate specific types of messages (e.g., offering negative feedback directly or indirectly or knowing how to appropriately make a request). While the demands of today’s intercultural settings make it impossible to master all the dos and don’ts of various cultures, there are certain behaviors that should be modified when we interact with different cultures. For example, Westerners need to learn the importance of carefully studying business cards presented by those from most Asian contexts. Also, some basic verbal and nonverbal behaviors enhance the extent to which others see us as effective. As an example, the verbal tone (e.g., loud vs. soft) in which words are spoken can convey different meanings across cultures. And although it is not necessary for an outsider to master the intricacies of bowing in Japan, appropriate use of touch is something to bear in mind. In sum, almost every approach to intercultural work has insisted on the importance of flexibility. With CQ Action, we now have a way to enhance flexibility.

Leading with Cultural Intelligence In order for cultural intelligence to impact the bottom line, leaders need to think strategically about a long-term approach for developing this capability. A few of the key

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strategies for leading with cultural intelligence include the following: 1. Reflect on your own CQ capabilities. Begin with a commitment to consider your own capabilities for leading across cultures. By thinking through the four capabilities of CQ, consider which area is strongest and weakest for you: • Drive: What is my level of interest in cross-cultural issues?

• Knowledge: To what degree do I understand how cultures are similar and different?

• Strategy: Am I aware of what is occurring in a cross-cultural situation and am I able to plan accordingly?

• Action: Do I know when I should adapt and when I should not adapt my behavior cross-culturally?

Each of us is stronger in some of these areas than others. Zero in on one specific CQ capability to begin increasing your overall CQ. 2. Assess and develop the cultural intelligence of others. Next, utilize the above ideas with your colleagues and with those you manage. Begin by assessing the CQ of strategic leaders and associates who have the most interaction with culturally diverse contexts. Next, add CQ assessment and feedback to ongoing human resources programs for large numbers of employees.

Don’t put everyone through the same one-size fits all intercultural training plan. Some have plenty of knowledge but not a lot of motivation. Others are very motivated but aren’t quite sure how to translate that into effective behavior. Empower your team and your colleagues to develop personalized CQ development plans based upon their CQ strengths and weaknesses.

Bringing in speakers, offering workshops, and distributing books to offer a common language and vision can be very helpful within this context. Just be sure the education and training fits within a larger plan. And whenever possible, provide personnel with individualized feedback and coaching to help them in this process.

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3. Assess the cross-border effectiveness of the organization as a whole. Cultural intelligence begins at the personal level. But leading with cultural intelligence must also include an analysis of the organization’s practices. Some questions to begin with are: What is our level of success working internationally or across different ethnic cultures domestically? What is the level of satisfaction from personnel and clients or constituents who come from different cultural backgrounds? To what degree do cultural differences inform our strategic decisions? What is our plan for retaining our core identity or brand while also adapting to various cultures?

4. Integrate global effectiveness into your strategic plan. Rather than simply relegating cross-border effectiveness to the “international sales” division or to the “diversity and inclusion officer”, make it part of the overall strategic plan for the organization: How does culture need to inform the way R&D do their work? How does a globally dispersed workforce or clientele need to shape the way I.S. develops their processes? How will the targets identified at the C-suite level be informed by cross-border issues?

The demands of leading in an era of escalating globalization are fast and furious. Companies need leaders who have the know-how to quickly adjust to dozens of different cultures on a daily basis. This is a capability that can be developed by any manager, but it takes more than just the gut-level sixth sense that is often promoted in leadership circles. It requires discipline and hard work as well as adaptability for leaders to inspire, innovate, and negotiate effectively in today’s increasingly diverse world.

And with that hard work, slowly but surely, managers and companies can expect to see the bottom line implications of leading with cultural intelligence. i Notes 1. Soon Ang and Linn Van Dyne, Handbook of Cultural Intelligence (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2008).

2. A sampling of articles from more than 70 peer-reviewed journals that have included research on cultural intelligence can be found at http://culturalq.com/researcharticles.html.

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It’s Not Us, It’s Me: Why We Need More Me-Time

by Grace Yoo

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he unsuspecting American stepping into the seating area of a multi-story McDonald’s in Tokyo is met with rows upon rows of counter seats for solo burger seekers. In a sight bizarrely reminiscent of a college library, some Japanese McDonald’s even have dividers between seats to ensure cozy, carefree munching. A lot goes on in the privacy of these burger cells, from sleeping it out until the first morning train to enjoying a post-McNugget smoke over a raunchy manga book.

For many around the world, the omnipresent golden arches of McDonald’s have become the most visible symbol of globalization. The famous Thomas Friedman saying goes: “No two countries that both have a McDonald’s ever fought a war against each other.” From the proliferation of multinational companies to increasingly interconnected trade relations, it’s old news that growing globalization is changing the face of the world as we know it. Social media allow for regular communication with friends around the world, and cultural products are finding national boundaries to be largely porous. With this ever-heightening focus on the growing interconnectedness of the world, emphasis has largely shifted from IQ to “EQ” (emotional intelligence), from ability to ability to work well with others. Books like How to Talk to Anyone are steady bestsellers, and constant text messages, tweets, and status updates make true “me-time” a rarity. Without a doubt, recognizing the importance of networking, teamwork, and discussion is critical to the success of individuals, corporations, governments and societies at large. However, in highlighting the importance of connecting and collaborating with others, we may be neglecting just how much a healthy dose of metime affects creativity and productivity.

Grace (Haenim) Yoo is an M.A. candidate in the School of International Service at American University. As a Thomas R. Pickering Fellow, she will join the U.S. Foreign Service upon receiving her degree in International Communication next year.

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In fact, things may have taken a negative turn for the introspective among us who thrive on me-time. Bombarded with endless team brainstorming sessions, shared Google documents, and networking receptions, the present century allows very little opportunity for true metime in the professional context. TIME magazine’s Tokyo bureau chief recalls catching up on some much-needed me-time in the bathroom of the American embassy in Tokyo, feeling the pressures of a job that prods him to be “trolling” or “mining” for gossip at gigs like the ambassador’s annual holiday party. A February 6, 2012 TIME article he authored, “The Upside of Being An Introvert (And Why Extroverts Are Overrated),” tackles the issue of under-appreciating the potential of introverts.

It has been known that many of the world’s most notable, creative figures in the past and present highly value time spent alone. Introspective philosophers and science nerds from history aside, from Jessica Alba to Steve Jobs to Joel Osteen, countless famous and influential figures today claim to be “nerds” or “introverts” who most enjoy spending time alone or in the company of the very few individuals with whom they feel most comfortable. Sufficient me-time not only ensures the adequate tapping of the creative potential of introspection, but also prevents burnout from the constant badgering that accompanies an increasingly interconnected world. Both introverts and extroverts can benefit from a healthy dose of isolation. Encouraging employees to take a few minutes to sufficiently think things through or to catch a break from the tsunami of on- and off-line interactions that characterize life in 2012 may be just the nudge needed to complete America’s next top management model.

The twenty-first century is often characterized as a cold, gadget-filled, inhuman age where interpersonal communication is sacrificed for personal convenience and privacy. Needless to say, some of this looks to be true. But, in developing an effective management model for the age of heightened globalization, it may be worthwhile to consider the unprecedented level of interconnectedness that characterizes today’s workplace.

E-mails, instant messages, video conferencing—the list goes on. This is perhaps true for most busy work settings

Intercultural Management Quarterly

throughout history, but the twenty-first century workplace provides a particularly unfavorable environment for introspection. A focus on collaboration and staying “in the loop”—both digitally and personally—may have given rise to a more high-context workplace that mimics Ferdinand Tönnies’ Gemeinschaft model in character.

Clues on how best to implement me-time may best be found through the example of Japan, the land of semiprivate McDonald’s seating. Japan is among those societies that are traditionally considered high-context, where the focus is generally on functioning as a community rather than on ensuring individualism. Offices in Japan are marked by open rows of desks rather than cozy cubicle walls, and there is generally very little time or space devoted to the individual. It has been said that Japanese live amidst seken, a concept considered to be native to Japan. Seken combines the two Chinese characters that mean “world” and “space between,” and refers to “the total network of social relations that surround an individual.” The term also conveys the corresponding norms and values that function to regulate social behavior and maintain such relations. In other words, an individual’s behaviors and actions are constantly measured against and adjusted to the surrounding context that is created by others who are also inhabiting the space, be it at the office, the grocery store, or a rock concert. This can get tiresome—more so for some than others. Hikikomori are Japanese who have grown so tired of interacting with the world in this way that they have chosen to become recluses, never leaving their homes and surviving for years by receiving deliveries of essentials. Many hikikomori are former hardworking employees who were known at the workplace for their polite smiles and considerate e-mails.

But in this country where collectivism and conformity have long been the name of the game (and even the ingredient to success), quiet recognition of the importance of me-time has steadily emerged. To counter the burdens of constantly shaping one’s actions based on the context of the surrounding environment, mini-opportunities for escape are sprouting all over Japan—with divider-clad, semi-private McDonald’s branches leading the way. Barbecue bars, where the exhausted can enjoy grilled meat

Summer 2012

in peace and solitude after a hard day’s work, are taking this idea to the next level. Comfortably settled in single-occupancy counter seats, customers can satisfy meat cravings without feeling the embarrassing gaze of whispering onlookers who click their tongues at the lonely, desperate solo barbecue-griller. In Asia, as in many other parts of the world, barbecues are usually a communal affair, and it is almost taboo to enter a barbecue restaurant without at least one other companion. Tired of having to enjoy barbecued meat only when accompanied by soon-to-be drunk coworkers, Japan’s after-work crowds have driven the rising popularity of these bars.

Ramen restaurants have also long been known for their counter seats and have been a longtime friend of those who seek me-time; coffee chains around Japan are also increasing their counter seating to accommodate those seeking a solitary midday break from the office. Japan has long been known as a crowded island where a keen awareness of other’s perceptions has dominated customs, practices and behaviors. However, precisely this burden—a lifelong awareness of seken—has given rise to an understanding of the importance and power of me-time.

Contemporary Japanese society is increasingly creating spaces for individuals to be alone, away from the shared space of the office or the crowds of the subway trains.

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that one of the world’s most collectivist, conformist societies is also the mecca of futuristic robots, innovative breakthroughs and imaginative animated worlds. Japan has learned to preserve a highly interconnected societal structure without compromising creativity, and perhaps the country’s respect for me-time is at the core of this success.

In the twenty-first century workplace, an environment that runs the risk of overemphasizing “we-time,” sufficient incorporation of me-time can foster creative thinking through a healthy dose of introspection and increase productivity by preventing burnout. Dividers and counter seating just may be the next big thing. i

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