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Discussion Forum 8 Question: 

Discuss how the four areas of cultural intelligence aid a leader in understanding culture as well as intercultural efforts.

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Determine how a leader must reframe their thinking when interacting with employees of different cultures.

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Examine the different methods a leader can utilize adaptive work to adjust his/her thinking.

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How can leaders demonstrate interdependence when while dealing with diverse cultures?

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Discuss how being culturally conscious is important to the success of a leader.

Response: Cultural intelligence (CQ) is one of the most important factors for leaders to be successful in an organization. Failing to understand cultural as well intercultural norms can make a leader fail his team or the company. There are four areas of cultural intelligence that aid a leader in understanding culture as well as intercultural efforts. These are reframing, adaptive work, systems thinking, and consciousness (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012). To improve CQ, a leader can rewire his perspective to understand others, practice to adapt unknown or different cultural settings, and all this while being conscious about everything. These frameworks will allow leaders to understand and resolve any cultural issue better. Reframing is a practice to shift one's perspective (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012). Reframing helps leaders to see flaws in their perspectives and hence mold them accordingly. To reframe CQ, leaders can the right ask questions like, "what can I (we) learn from this relationship, and how can the learning move us toward our vision", "or what forms of relationships need to exist in this organization", or "what do relationships mean to this organization", or "how do people in this organization work together" (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012). Such questions reframe a leader's thinking that further helps him to make better decisions and leadership style. Adaptive work is how prone a leader is to adopt a change in values, beliefs, or behaviors (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012). Only reframing thinking is not enough. By adaptive work, leaders can bring people of different beliefs together. To bring people together, it is imperative that leaders first introspect their values and behaviors. With introspection, leaders will be able to review how their personal values affect their cultural relationships (Weir, 2020). Leaders will also be able to analyze the values that trigger specific behaviors. Leaders must focus

on that its people who make an organization, thus these people must be taught or given opportunities to adapt to any change (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012). With the rise in technologies that bring people's oceans apart together, we are now living in a world where everything is inter-dependent. To maintain interdependency successfully, leaders must be clear with their purpose while working (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012). For instance, leaders should not micromanage while working with diverse groups as it is more time-consuming, and not every culture accepts it or take it positively (Weir, 2020). Also, leaders must demonstrate to their teams the value of diverse culture and interdependency and teach their teams what they will lose if diverse cultures didn't exist (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012). Cultural consciousness could be the key to the success of a leader or an organization. Culturally conscious leaders have the ability to get a positive outcome from a cultural conflict. Cultural consciousness can make leaders create harmony or balance between the opposites (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012). An increased consciousness expands an individuals' thinking horizon and improves their behavior. Such individuals can better understand the nuances and are able to better analyze theirs as well as other's values.

References Cultural Intelligence for Leaders (2012). Saylor Academy. Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0. Retrieved from: https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_leading-with-culturalintelligence/index.html Weir, C. H. (2020, June 16). Cultural intelligence and leadership. The Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship.https://entrepreneurship.mit.edu/cultural-intelligence-andleadership/...