Cultural Intelligence – what’s that?
Recently, a lovely couple from an Asian society invited us for lunch, curry. We were ready to start, I noticed, oh dear they forgot the cutlery! Dumb me, I was about to ask for spoon (because in many Asian societies, eat rice and curry with a spoon), then noticed – of course! There is the chapati. We would use the flat bread as our “spoon”. Without blinking an eye, grabbed the bread and literally dug in … working the food with the bread, couldn’t taste better! 10 minutes into the meal, the husband brought out the cutlery. This is a simple but great example of moving between cultures as we shared bread together
Welcome to our course on Cultural Intelligence. With CI, I mean that I understand my own culture, understand and appreciate other cultures. And then I learn how to relate well people from other cultures so we can work together in harmony.
What is Culture?
We begin by asking the question, what’s culture in the first place? We can think of it in several levels – what a group of people generally do and say (their actions and words) and then deeper, what a group of people think and accept as important (their values & beliefs).
Remember culture does not refer to an individual’s specific behavior or what a one person thinks is important. Culture refers to collective behavior, values and beliefs of a group of people, maybe a tribe, or people from a specific country
Example of Group Behavior
Consider this easy example of eating: one group of people use chopsticks when they eat; another group eat with their fingers; and yet another group use bread to scoop up their food and then, some, for example will eat with a fork, in their left hand and the fork has to be upside-down. So it’s group behavior.
To help us understand culture we are going to complete this short exercise. It will help to contrast individual behavior, cultural behavior and what we could call universal human behavior.
You can check out this
“It goes without saying”
But it’s not always so easy to understand cultural differences: Take role and value of children for example, one group expects that children will be quiet and only speak when they’re permitted. Other cultures dote over their children. In some traditional groups, men celebrate when a boy is born, but remain strangely silent when a girl is born.
In some cultures, you will see the men at the local coffee house, playing card games – all evening, almost every evening.
Someone from a Western culture will soon think, “Where’s the rest of the family? Don’t these men care about their homes? It’s easy to judge a culture that celebrates the birth of a boy or where men only “sit at the gate”.
For some cultures, it’s important to save money, to have pensions, while in other cultures, people spend lots of money on fancy mobile phones, extravagant clothing, carpets, or maybe on wedding celebrations – even the poor do so. These are status symbols but why are they important? Why do they need status, to “be looked up to”? Why is this more important than financial security? It is not always easy to explain such values.
Another simple but profound example is hospitality. For some cultures having people over and eating together is part of normal life; and children quickly imbibe this, or at least inviting people over! While in other culture, this would be seen as a special event. More on this later.
I like to define culture as that what a group of people assumes and accepts as normative, “that what goes without saying”, what people do without explicitly teaching each other about it. I got that simply phrase from the book Misreading Scripture through Western Eyes, by Randolph Richards.
“goes without saying” – actions, words, values, beliefs – that we are often unaware of. [boy who began to serve us dried nuts!]
This means that we must intentionally pay attention to how others do what they do and that helps us to see what we do ourselves, because we are often unaware of our own ways.
And the challenge is: How can we enter the world of another culture and see their perspective?
Cultural Intelligence CI – Explained
And so, cultural intelligence is much deeper than observing outward actions of other cultures and listening to how they express things. We need CI to understand and appreciate the values and beliefs that go beneath the words and actions. How essential this is as we work with and relate to people from a differing culture – in intl teams or multi-cultural churches.
So, becoming culturally intelligent will mean at least the following …
- We will develop a healthy self-awareness of our own culture.
- We will realize that each of us is somewhat of a foreigner among those who are from another cultural group.
- WE will be careful not to immediately judge others from different cultures for what they do and value.
- Rather, we will try to “step-in” to another cultural world, not by mimicking them, but seeing the world from their point of view and interacting with them in such a way that our perspectives don’t clash, but we enrich each other.
- This means we relate and interact healthily with people of other cultures.
In CI, we make room not only to understand and appreciate people from different cultures, but we adjust our behavior so we can work together in positive ways.
Cold and Hot Cultures
One very basic and helpful way to describe cultural differences is to talk about people coming from hot-climate or cold-climate cultures.[1] I’ve taken these terms from the book Foreign to Familiar – A Guide to Understanding Hot and Cold Climate Cultures, by Sarah Lanier.
A hot culture does not refer to weather, nor does ‘cold’ mean cold-hearted. Rather, people from hot cultures are seen as being more relational and community oriented. On the other hand, people from cold cultures value order and structures, even though they may think of themselves as being sociable.
Map of World
Very generally speaking, people from the Global South which would include the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America are from hot (relational) cultures. On the other hand, people growing up in the West (Caucasians of Europe and North America) come from cold-climate cultures (blue and red color)
Let me explain this further by contrasting some values and behaviors between cold and hot cultures. In doing this, we are making generalizations. It does not mean that every person in their home culture would agree with these characteristics. :
Consider these two questions …
- What do you think, is the culture you come from generally known as a hot-climate culture or a cold culture (map)?
- Who is someone you know that comes from a culture that is different than yours?
As I talk about differences between hot and cold climate cultures, please take note of any illustrations that are of specific interest to you and the setting you find yourself in. At the end of today’s lesson, I would like you to discuss these differences with someone on your team.
Individual vs. collective
Perhaps the major difference between cold and hot cultures is that hot cultures emphasize Community, the Group. The extended family is more important than the individual. For example, people from hot cultures do not understand the Western world’s (cold-climate, structured way of senior citizen homes. Why would any family send their elderly parent into an institution to be all alone? This seems cruel. One the other hand, people on the West, emphasize the Individual – one person’s freedoms and rights, which are more important than the group. Why would the elderly want to (or be forced) to live with the noise of grandchildren day in, day out? People from cold cultures wonder how so many people from a hot culture can live together in one house and would say that the privacy and rights of an individual are more important.
Direct vs. Indirect Speech
Why and how do we speak to each other? Is it to transfer facts and provide correct information. Or is it ‘Feel-good’ talk? Or both? Hot cultures want to make sure that there is a ‘good-feel’ in communication, while direct cold cultures emphasize what is right in contrast to what is wrong.
Equal vs. Hierarchical
In the cold cultures, the boss or teacher can be a friend, but generally in hot cultures, i.e., in the Global South, the boss is really the boss, on top. The students in hot cultures will stand up for their teacher and be hesitant to ask the teacher questions. In a cold culture, a student is normally not be afraid to challenge their teacher.
Emotions: Open or reserved?
What we share with others is expressed diversely between cultures. How open are you with others? Do you share what you’re thinking? How much do you express emotions? If you feel upset, do you express it? Interestingly, the hot, communal cultures will not as easily share their feelings and inner thoughts with others.
Family Life – Nuclear or Extended
Family life is one of the greatest differences between the West and the Global South; and of course, family life is very different among the many cultural groups of the Global South.
[Josh, it would be better that the family life design is simply a nuclear family for blue and an extended family for red]
Slide 15: Seniors – role and place of elders
How does a culture value the elders? When they no longer have full-time jobs, do they move aside, (which is what happens in cold-climate societies) or do the elders continue to play a key role in the society?
What is important – work or tea?
In the West, people quickly ask other, “What work do you do?” And whatever job we’re doing, we need to get the job done. For Global South people, Greetings and tea come first, and then business. Personal relationships are essential, irrespective of one’s job. In many cultures, a job is secondary.
Time Orientation: When does an event start?
This is area that often comes up in multi-cultural times and the topic of many jokes. For hot cultures, people are more important than time and efficiency. And so, we can adjust the time because right now I’m with someone else (which is important too!) For cultures in the West, time and efficiency are very important, and so is the person waiting for me. When we’ve set a time for an event or meeting it is expected that everyone will arrive at that time.
This can often cause misunderstanding and frustration in office and team settings.
Conflicts: Face Problems? Avoid Problems
How do we best handle conflicts? Conflict resolution is a challenge within one’s own culture, how much more when the conflict happens cross-culturally.
Some will face a conflict head on. Others will appear to avoid the problem, but perhaps they are using a different means for arriving at a similar result. What have you experienced?
A summary
So here we have these two rooms. One room is the cold-climate culture room and the hot-climate culture room. We could summarize each room in this way: (maybe a map or diagram … )
Cold cultures, mostly Western societies, people …
- emphasize the individual
- need to have a job, get the job done
- speak the facts (truth)
- are time conscious
- emphasize logic and order (structure),
- eat out in a restaurant.
- Have a more secular outlook on things
In ho-climate cultures, on the other hand, people
- emphasize the community, group
- are relational
- talk in a way that everyone feels good,
- value the event more than the clock
- say we should be flexible.
- Hospitality is a key value
- In general, have a spiritual outlook, God conscious.
Of course, these are huge generalizations, and there are 100s of cultures within the large “cold-climate” room and “hot-climate” room.
So as we observe the two rooms and these different illustrations, do we stay in our own comfortable rooms? Or can we learn to appreciate the other room as well? Can we enter the other room, so-to-speak, and can those from the other room enter ours? If we are from different rooms, but now we are in an international, multi-cultural team, how can we work together in positive ways?
- What room is most common for you- a hot culture room or cold culture room??
- Was there anything that I described about the other room strange, surprising or that seems uncomfortable?
- What differences between the hot and cold cultures most interest you and you’d want to learn more about it?
This is what we want to explore further in this course. Each module will focus on one of the different illustrations that I’ve mentioned.
[1] See Sarah A. Lanier, Foreign to Familiar – A Guide to Understanding Hot- and Cold-Climate Cultures (2000. This is a very easy-to-read book on understanding different cultures and societies. Recommend for Sunday School studies or mission groups.
