CLO 3: Defend the importance of considering cultural diversity when conducting business globally

Define “culture”.

Building cultural intelligence makes you a better manager

Cultural intelligence recognizes that different members of your team may have different ways of thinking or expressing themselves. Understanding how a team member’s culture differs from your own makes you a more inclusive, supportive, and effective manager.

Cultural intelligence is applicable in a variety of situations—from helping you lead effective 1:1 meeting to making your team members feel more comfortable in group settings. In this chapter, we’ll walk you through how to build your cultural intelligence to support all of your team members, no matter where they’re from.

What is cultural intelligence?

Simply put, cultural intelligence is the ability to work with and across multiple cultures. Managers with high cultural intelligence actively acknowledge the role culture plays on their team and adjust their management style accordingly.

What is culture?

Broadly speaking, culture is the beliefs, behaviours, norms, traditions, arts, customs, and habits that a group of people share. This umbrella term doesn’t necessarily refer to an individual’s country(s) of origin so much as the societies or communities they are a part of.

Cultural intelligence is a key skill for every manager, even if you don’t work on a distributed or global team. That’s because everyone’s unique background is part of what makes them an asset to the team. Understanding how cultural context impacts each team member helps you become a better leader.

Cultural intelligence vs. emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to recognize and regulate your own emotions to improve collaboration, connection, and empathy—as well as connect with other people or reduce conflict. EQ is key to developing good interpersonal relationships.

Cultural intelligence specifically focuses on using EQ when engaging with people whose cultural backgrounds are different from yours. People with high CQ apply their empathy and connection to understand the needs of team members who don’t necessarily share the same cultural norms.

Source

Martins J., (2022, Oct 8th). Building cultural intelligence makes you a better manager.

The Social and Cultural Environment

Student Perspective: Mexico & the U.S.

I travel out of the country to Mexico almost every year. I can see the immense cultural differences between Mexico and the United States, from the language to colors, to the values, religious beliefs, and business norms. As soon as I step out of the plane in Mexico, I feel like I am in a different world. In terms of the language, the primary is obviously Spanish; however, in the past few years, I have noticed signs in the airport with translations to English and Chinese. In terms of values, they seem to focus more on survival. For example, marketing food, shelter products, and clothing. Their religious beliefs are centred around Catholicism.

 

 

Elizabeth Garcia

Class of 2020

The cultural environment consists of the influence of religious, family, educational, and social systems in the marketing system. Marketers who intend to market their products overseas may be very sensitive to foreign cultures. While the differences between our cultural background in Canada and those of foreign nations may seem small, marketers who ignore these differences risk failure in implementing marketing programs. Failure to consider cultural differences is one of the primary reasons for marketing failures overseas.

This task is not as easy as it sounds as various features of a culture can create an illusion of similarity. Even a common language does not guarantee similarity of interpretation. For example, in Canada and the U.S. we purchase “cans” of various grocery products, but the British purchase “tins”.

A number of cultural differences can cause marketers problems in attempting to market their products overseas. These include: (a) language, (b) colour, (c) customs and taboos, (d) values, (e) aesthetics, (f) time, (g) business norms, (h) religion, and (i) social structures. Each is discussed in the following sections.

Source:

Manuel L. (2023). Global Marketing in a Digital World (Chapter 3.5). Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.