Cultural intelligence can be defined as a particular framework of intercultural skills – unlike intercultural competencies it’s more of a structured practice, says the director of Executive Programs at The Center for Leadership and Cultural Intelligence at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore – a department that was a spearhead of the idea.

“The idea behind cultural intelligence was started with a research question.

“Why is it that some people are very good at working in an international context – meaning, adapting to other cultures when they move to a new country, but also when they work in a multicultural team, which does not necessarily require you to go abroad.

“Whereas others – if one has to take a class with a bunch of international students – they just stay away and never speak to the international students. What is the difference between these people?” posits Catherine Wu.

She says that if that question, of why one needs to cross cultures effectively, is posed to 100 people, you’ll get a different answer from each of them.

And when the researchers at Nanyang began to try answering this question, they couldn’t use the old methodology – they had to go another way.

“One professor asked, “what does it mean to adapt?” and in psychology, adaptation is about intelligence. We think it is to do well on a test, but that’s only one type of intelligence,” Wu recounts.

Cultural intelligence consists of four components. One is drive; another is knowledge of both similarities and differences in cultures; metacognition, i.e. one’s strategy to use fixed knowledge to allow you to function in a specific situation; and finally, action: the flexibility to adapt yourself, your behaviour and your communication.

There has already been much development of the concept of cultural intelligence in South East Asia, Northern Europe, Australia, and even the US – but the UK has been quite slow to adapt, says Lucy Butters.

“When I discovered this, it gave me a framework that I can layer my development upon, and it just makes so much sense to me,” recounts Butter, who specialises in assessing and developing cultural intelligence and is one of eight master facilitators of the practice across the globe, working with The Cultural Intelligence Centre.

“Those four capabilities always sit in there, and that’s been discovered in independent studies – to be followed across cultures, by people who aren’t even researchers in the field.

“There’s over 2,000 peer reviewed articles on cultural intelligence now  – and having come out of the universities, that paper trail is really important for me,” she notes.

In terms of internationalisation, Butters has been getting to work attempting to show universities just how beneficial this can be for them – not just for their students, but also for their staff.

A taster of master classes with University College Dublin in 2023 saw participants look at how CQ could enhance global potential – which required first learning how it interacted with things like friendship, communication, employability and other themes.

“The key word for me when it comes to CQ in internationalisation… is intentionality. If you’re intentional and you know what you’re trying to impact,” Butters explains.

She recounts how early work with study abroad with CQ looked at assessments pre and post-experience. And they found that the only capability within CQ that grew was knowledge.

“When they brought in different pre-study, reflection during study, and debrief when they got back, it changed the dynamic. I think it’s as much about intercultural learning as it as about discomfort and flexibility to adapt,” she says.

The key word for me when it comes to CQ in internationalisation… is intentionality

Lucy Butters, The Cultural Intelligence Centre

“It works in different scenarios for different purposes. But the key, I think, is intention – it can be used as a measure for how well programs function, be that internationalisation at home, or study overseas; or even leadership development.”

Butters additionally worked with the University of Kent – one of the spearheads of UK Internationalisation at Home – on how to integrate CQ into the curriculum.

“We’ve been trying to integrate CQ – which is essentially the new kid on the block – into IaH,” says Anthony Manning, dean for global and lifelong learning at Kent.

“We had some training from Lucy in weaving cultural intelligence into your provision for students for several years. I then trained through her to be a cultural intelligence facilitator.

“if you’re devising things like international student experience, or even staff training, you can link the activities to the different dimensions of the CQ framework,” he notes.

Wu had her own experience of where CQ could have helped a great deal; her exchange period she took in the UK at school.

“There were a few British girls, and then there was me, who couldn’t speak English – how often did they ask me to say anything? Never. They only gave me the lesser job to do because they didn’t think I was capable, they didn’t know how to deal with me.

When there is a system in place to facilitate, you can work on rebalancing roles

Catherine Wu, Nanyang Technological University

“It’s nothing to do with who you are and where you come from – I think it’s just human nature because you protect yourself. Learning cannot really happen there because there is this power imbalance.

“When there is a system in place to facilitate, you can work on rebalancing roles in a team, work on highlighting that actually, people have things to contribute,” she says, adding that sometimes even international students interacting with domestic students could benefit from CQ training,” she explains.

She also says – matching perfectly with Butters’ assessment of how to go about implementing CQ – it requires intention and commitment.

“It’s not going to happen on its own – you have to maintain the effort over a period so you can build that culture where people are open to accepting the differences,” Wu declares.

Just to see how I’d fare – and to help me write this article, of course, I took the cultural intelligence test for myself.

I’ve lived in two different countries with different cultures for at least six months each; I’ve learned three different languages. I liked to think I was quite culturally intelligent.

Out of 100, my overall score with all four capabilities was 59. Not bad, but probably less than I expected. My CQ drive and CQ action were 61 and 53. Encouragingly, my CQ knowledge was 73 – respectable. But in contrast, my CQ strategy was only 33.

It showed me that whatever level you’re at, whatever level your students are with study abroad, working with a multicultural team or even simply learning about other cultures… we could all use some CQ training.