Little is spoken of cultural intelligence and much of emotional intelligence, understood by the latter as the ability to perceive, assimilate, understand and balance one’s own and others’ emotions, favoring emotional and intellectual growth. From this information, we interpret the world around us. us, who determines how we think and behave.
We generally give it a lot of importance when we talk about relationships between people, but when relationships are established with people from different cultures, it is necessary to consider another intelligence: cultural intelligence.
- But what is cultural intelligence? This is just the ability to adapt by interacting with people from different cultures.
Cultural intelligence is made up of four factors. A motivational factor, a cognitive factor, another metacognitive factor and, finally, a behavioral factor.
“When I stop being who I am, I become what I could be. -Lao-Tzu-
Perhaps, in these times characterized by globalization, with the insistence on the development of emotional intelligence, we should add to the learning of cultural intelligence, because in this way we could better understand other cultures and, in the end, get to know each other better because we know each other. it’s just that we know each other.
Anyone who does not understand a look will also not understand a long explanation. -Arabic proverb-
How would you feel if someone kicked you in the door?It would be strange behavior, but perhaps not as much as it would be for the Afghan people, who see this gesture as much more than an insult.
The war in Afghanistan is a case where cultural differences have become apparent and the military has become a cultural intelligence.
One of the things that soldiers did all the time and that was very poorly seen by the people of Afghanistan was to put dogs in their homes, in Brazil it can be very annoying or not, depending on the person, but certainly, if instead of a dog it was a pig who walked around our houses, more reserves would arise.
At first, American soldiers did not know that dogs were not very popular and were not considered pets, so they took them to people’s homes.
These two behaviors, among many other differences that have arisen, are examples of how the same behavior is not perceived in the same way in different cultures. Fortunately, General David Petraeus, in charge of the troops at the time, realized the shortcomings of the men under his command in terms of cultural intelligence and was able to remedy them.