Illustration: Emma Russell
In an industry building its diversity, ‘cultural intelligence’ is helping business leaders navigate complex relations with clients and colleagues, says Natasha Levanti.
In an industry misperceived as having few diverse or inclusive companies, the Association for Consultancy and Engineering (ACE) spoke one-on-one to leaders from firms in the sector, to show that many positive initiatives and improvements are taking place. The lessons learned, set out in its upcoming report Diversity & Inclusion – Marginal or Mandatory?, can be applied to all firms, from micro-businesses to corporates.
In our research, we found the majority of companies interviewed offer training on diversity and inclusion, but usually only to senior-level leaders. Most saw “unconscious bias” training as their preferred way to promote diversity. This is predicated on making individuals aware of their own biases, of which they may not be aware, and examine their implicit assumptions.
Without knowing their unconscious bias, an individual will use past experience or innate assumptions to make a quick judgement on an individual based on appearance or behaviours.
Proponents of unconscious bias training claim that when a person increases their understanding of innate assumptions, they will stop making decisions based only on these. This awareness can be particularly helpful in interviews, when unconscious bias can cause managers and HR staff to overlook talented individuals.
However, no form of training is without risk. Our interviews with companies that had implemented unconscious bias training elicited the criticism that it did not aid colleagues in understanding relations with others – who may also have unknown biases. Others flagged that it can lead to hypersensitivity, making individuals so aware of their own bias that any “unnecessary” interaction with those perceived as different is feared.
"Individuals will have different processes for nearly every facet of life – CI training suggests we do not highlight these but politely accept and allow for them."
However, some participants discovered another training tool, combining self-awareness with the realism to navigate complex relations in an interconnected world – cultural intelligence (CI).
CI is increasing in popularity in modern business and government programmes, specifically in North America. There are two ways of addressing CI. The first relies on tracking spectrums of cultural characteristics, cultural information acquisition and interaction potentials. This is often based on the work of Dutch organisational theorists Fons Trompenaars and Geert Hofstede. While academically intriguing, this is not so easy to use in business.
The second is to view CI as a naturally inbuilt style of conducting day-to-day business activities, by navigating personal differences, seen or unseen. This is based on a mindset of inclusivity, and is easier to assimilate into daily business behaviour.
CI is predicated on the belief that each individual is different in a multitude of ways and no one can claim to understand another person to expert level. This is vital in business, where assumptions about colleagues or clients can win – or lose – a deal.
Unconscious bias teaches that you may not fully understand your own gut reactions, but cultural intelligence shows that the factors you know about others are only roughly 10% of those influencing behaviour. Fundamental to this mentality is admitting that one does not know 90% of the influencing factors in a workplace.
Empathy is another key element. As when a client travels 3,000 miles to a meeting, a similar appearance or behaviour is not expected, you can also not expect this from colleagues. Individuals will have different processes for nearly every facet of life – CI training suggests we do not highlight these but politely accept and allow for them.
CI is hard to grasp, as it depends on individual realisation that little is explicitly known about the self or others, but it is by nature inclusive of all forms of protected characteristics including ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, disabilities, religious and socio-economic factors.
The desire to say the “right” thing is always high in business situations, yet it is reasonable to not always know what to say or do – and according to CI this is inevitable. One interviewee spoke about a member of staff who had a disability not encountered in the company before. CI allows admittance that this is a situation unknown to some involved that can be overcome by working together to ensure all individuals feel able to be themselves as well as a productive team member.
Our research also brought up examples where unconscious bias training did not adequately prepare individuals for situations they encountered, while with CI, the potential to sour work collaborations would have been less.
Here’s an example from our research: “Our team was visiting clients, when there was an obviously awkward moment between manager and employee on the client side. The manager was real chummy with most, but with this one individual the manager was completely stiff.
“When that employee left to see to another task the manager apologised to the visitors saying that he/she knew it was bad but he/she doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that the employee had a different sexuality. What made this announcement worse was that our visiting group had one member with that same sexuality. That particular group member was on high alert after that.”
Natasha Levanti is group communications executive at the Association for Consultancy and Engineering
The ACE’s report Diversity & Inclusion – Marginal or Mandatory? will be published on 21 January
