Globalization plays an essential role today because technological and scientific advancements contribute to the interdependence of individuals, businesses, economies, and cultures. Consequently, people of various backgrounds can cooperate to achieve shared goals, and international organizations and corporations draw attention to their staff diversity. In turn, this scenario leads to additional challenges, and the necessity to manage multicultural teams is among them. That is why leaders should invest more effort in developing their cultural intelligence (CQ) to deal with diverse subordinates. This paper aims to demonstrate that leaders’ sufficient attention to CQ and its theoretical dimensions will lead to employees’ better motivation and performance.
To begin with, one should offer a definition of what CQ is. According to Solomon and Steyn (2017), it is the leader’s ability to adapt and manage multicultural teams effectively. Since such groups include representatives of different cultures, genders, religions, and others, managers should know how to respect these issues. Scientific evidence reveals that the given competence leads to essential advantages. On the one hand, Hu et al. (2019) admit that leaders’ high CQ allows them to communicate efficiently with their subordinates. This fact denotes that employees feel respected because they can express their beliefs and concerns to their managers. As a result, their motivation is at a high level, which positively affects their performance indicators. On the other hand, Ramsey et al. (2017) stipulate that CQ leads to better transformational leadership that positively influences both individual and organizational outcomes in various contexts. It is so because this competence allows managers to understand and modify their employees’ behavior. This information denotes that the phenomenon under consideration contributes to more effective leadership.
Various theories focus on CQ elements and explain how leaders can use this phenomenon to manage multicultural teams. On the one hand, Gozzoli and Gazzaroli (2018) stipulate that CQ relies on four theoretical dimensions, including metacognitive, cognitive, motivational, and behavioral ones. Metacognitive and cognitive CQ lead to adequate decision making, motivational and behavioral CQ promote cultural adaptation, while the four improve task performance (Gozzoli & Gazzaroli, 2018). On the other hand, Whitaker and Greenleaf (2017) admit that the dimensions are “motivation, sense-making, behavioral skills, and knowledge” (p. 179). These dimensions determine how actively and effectively leaders engage in managing diverse teams. For example, motivation makes an individual participate in cross-cultural interaction, knowledge refers to information about different cultures, sense-making implies understanding of how to apply this information in practice, and behavior leads to specific actions (Whitaker & Greenleaf, 2017). These theoretical dimensions create a set of guidelines that a manager should follow to become an effective leader in a multicultural environment.
In conclusion, the paper has demonstrated that cultural intelligence is an essential phenomenon in the modern world. Since globalization is a current trend, managers should ensure that they succeed in this skill. It is so because cultural intelligence plays a significant role in shaping the emerging trends in leadership. This claim relates to the fact that the given competence allows leaders to understand and motivate employees with diverse backgrounds. Consequently, this state of affairs will contribute to the employees’ better motivation and increased performance indicators. It is also worth mentioning that various theories explain the cultural intelligence dimensions. They reveal that managers should have the motivation, adequate knowledge, understanding of how to interpret it, and the ability to behave in a particular manner to lead multicultural teams.
References
Gozzoli, C., & Gazzaroli, D. (2018). The Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS): A contribution to the Italian validation. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1-8.
Hu, N., Wu, J., & Gu, J. (2019). Cultural intelligence and employees’ creative performance: The moderating role of team conflict in interorganizational teams. Journal of Management & Organization, 25(1), 96-116.
Ramsey, J. R., Rutti, R. M., Lorenz, M. P., Barakat, L. L., & Sant’anna, A. S. (2017). Developing global transformation leaders. Journal of World Business, 52(4), 461-473.
Solomon, A., & Steyn, R. (2017). Leadership styles: The role of cultural intelligence. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology, 43(0), 1-12.
Whitaker, B. L., & Greenleaf, J. P. (2017). Using a cultural intelligence assessment to teach global leadership. Journal of Leadership Education, 169-178.