Reflective Journal 1

Cultural intelligence is very important if one wants to strive in other cultures. Cultural intelligence would come in handy when a person wants to interact with people from other cultures, be it in doing business or just making friends.

In class, a video on cultural intelligence was shown. It was a video on commercials made by HSBC, a bank. It showed some different practices in different cultures. It showed that if a person does not truly understand another person’s culture, there would most definitely be misunderstanding which might lead to undesired outcomes. The first question asked was what message the video was trying to give to viewers. To me, the video aims to tell viewers the importance of cultural intelligence, not only in doing business but also in daily get-along with other people of other cultural background. The video also wants to tell viewers that HSBC is a bank that is able to do business with anyone in any part of the world, regardless of culture, as it is the world’s local bank.

There were some discussions on cultural intelligence and a sharing of a classmate’s experience let to another topic for discussion, which was whether language could be a deciding factor to one’s cultural intelligence. I feel that language is important in communicating in that particular culture. Knowing their language would surely help in interactions between both parties. Knowing how to speak their language would surely enable better communication as a person can simply ask the other party about their culture straight away. This would surely help in getting a better relation with those of other cultural background. However, language is not really that important. It is impossible to know the language of so many different cultures. I feel that taking an interest in that particular culture and knowing what they practice and believe is important. Even without being able to speak their language, with an understanding of that particular culture, one would know the appropriate actions to take under different circumstances.  Hence, one does not need to truly understand the language of that culture to be able to get along well with the people of that culture, although it is rather useful to know how to speak that particular language as this aids in communication with the people of that culture.

At the end of the lesson, a classmate made his view on measuring a person’s cultural intelligence with a number. I agree with him that cultural intelligence could not be fully measured and quantified using a number. He also said that the best way to truly understand a person’s cultural intelligence is through observing that certain individual when he or she goes to a place of different culture and the action he or she would take to handle the situation. I do agree with him on that as people react differently under different circumstances. Every single person has their own unique way of handling a certain situation and there is no perfect way of handling a situation. I believe that every individual’s action and handling of situations is based on their personality. Some might be bold in their actions, while some might be more passive about it. Everyone would approach a situation with different ways. By observing a person when he handles a situation, the outcome would give us a better understanding of his cultural intelligence as different methods of approaching a situation would have different outcomes. Measuring a person’s cultural intelligence purely by numbers is not an accurate measure to his or her cultural intelligence. A person’s cultural intelligence cannot be simply quantified using a simple number. However, it can be a rough gauge of that particular individual’s cultural intelligence.

I feel that having cultural intelligence is really useful. With a good cultural intelligence, a person would be able to grasp the culture of others much easily. He or she would be much more aware of the believes and practices of the other culture. With this, I would be able to communicate with them better and by not doing something offensive in their culture, as most cultures have differing views on different matters. Furthermore, with a good cultural intelligence relations with people of other cultures could be fostered much more easily. In a rapidly globalizing world, interactions with people of other cultural backgrounds would be inevitable. People would go on overseas business trips, to discuss business deals with potential business partners who are from a different culture. Having a good CQ competency would definitely come in handy while doing business with other people and also help one in getting along with those people much more easily. With good cultural intelligence, one would know the appropriate actions to take when faced with different situations posed by different cultures.  Hence, cultural intelligence is indeed important.