Excellent resource for gaining “cultural intelligence”

from Joyce Lasecke, President

on June 06, 2010

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Many of our clients are Learning & Development departments in multinational companies. Anecdotally, it seems that most recognize the need to adapt learning and development methods to audiences in different cultures, yet lack the capacity and sometimes the strategy to make such adaptations. A good place to start for learning leaders, instructional designers, and trainers might be self-education. We're compiling a reading list of books and articles about global training and cultural awareness; we'll share it on our website once we've read enough of the items to make a decent list. I'd like to recommend two books. I've read one and I've read the table of contents of the other (the 7-page TOC was enough to ascertain that the book was relevant!)

Cultural Intelligence: Living and Working Globally, 2nd Ed., by David C. Thomas and Kerr Inkson. This book neatly presents a research-based framework and provides loads of examples of workplace situations where people operating from their cultural contexts misunderstood each other and missed or misinterpreted cues. The book is organized in a way that makes it useful as a field guide--there are chapters on cross-cultural decision-making, leading, negotiating, and teamwork. Even if you just page through to read the real-life situations, you will be enlightened.

Cultures and Organizations, 3rd Ed. (just released!), by Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede, and Michael Minkov. Geert Hoftstede is one of the well-regarded researchers and authors on the subject of society-based culture. As with Cultural Intelligence, there are numerous ways to use this book besides reading it cover-to-cover. For example, there are tables that any tech writer would admire that contrast key differences in behavior between societies that are weak or strong in a particular cultural dimension, such as individualism (e.g., the US) versus collectivism (e.g., Japan). Here are just a few ways that I think these books are useful to the L&D profession:

• Designing and developing soft skills training
• Creating scenarios in eLearning courses that are realistic and credible
• Working with colleagues in other countries

I'd love to add your recommendations to our list. You can find me on LinkedIn.

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