Monday, September 9, 2024

Saving Face in African Time While Bowing to the Boss

 David Livermore’s 3rd edition of Leading with Cultural Intelligence is being published. Livermore is an expert in the field of cultural intelligence and gives us an updated framework for assessing our cultural quotient (CQ). He describes four dimensions: Drive (motivation), Knowledge, Strategy and Action. Lots of other cross-cultural books and articles deal mainly with Knowledge. This part is easy to gain if you’re interested. And it’s this interest, this motivation that Livermore realized was missing from some of his early efforts; he assumed everyone in a cross-cultural situation would want to know more and figure out how to adopt/adapt and execute in someone else’s culture, in order to be the most effective. Sadly this turned out not to be the case with some of his clients.


Even if you’re not working in international endeavors (or traveling to other countries), we all interact with many sub-cultures (north vs. south, rural vs urban, 1st generation immigrant vs established family history, socioeconomic status, generational, levels of industry experience, single industry vs multi-industry exposure, etc. and obviously ethnicities). Livermore provides some solutions to any of the fear, paralysis, blundering, blustering, over-exuberant responses we may be tempted to have in our daily situations.

I highly recommend this book and am appreciative of the publisher for letting me see an advanced copy of this edition.


No comments:

Post a Comment