Coronavirus and quarantine are two words that were not part of our active vocabulary until a few months ago. They seemed like terms you would hear on TV, far from our lives. Today it has all changed: the storm was not foreseen, yet we find ourselves in the midst of it. And we all have to row, in the same direction. It is the changes to our daily life, marred in our everyday routine, that make us reflect. Reflect on our way of life. On the possible changes to our culture.
“Culture is how we do things here and now”. This is the definition used by the American consulting company McKinsey to explain this complex and multidimensional concept. That’s right: how we do things. How we analyze, interpret and face what happens to us and to the world around. How we choose our own reactions, whether we are aware or not that we are in fact able to choose. We have various possibilities.
The tools that help us organize our life are many. What does out culture teach us about our abilities to navigate into uncertainty? What tools does it give us to win? I am not a fan of the Silver Bullet idea, I prefer to imagine a suitcase with very diverse tools, each one with its own purpose.
Each generation believes that its suitcase is sufficiently full, but the following generation faces new challenges and discovers that there is place for a new tool, suitable for that time.
In these dark days, we see clearly and maybe better than before – as we are now free from everyday distractions – that there is something that is crucially important and that goes beyond technology, the quality of infrastructure and of the services offered to us by our contemporary society: the need that a human being has to feel another being close to them – a doctor, a bartender, a musician. To share the stories that bring us together. Once our basic needs (shelter and food) are satisfied, however, we discovered that sharing our deepest stories is not that easy.
We carry generational, professional and national differences. Our ways of doing things can sometimes lead to conflict. And mutual understanding does not always take place without a conscious effort.
This ability to understand the Other is called Cultural Intelligence (CQ). It is a soft skill that is useful not only to the managers of multinational corporations or those people working with foreigners or immigrants. It is useful for anyone who is interested in listening to other “voices” besides their own internal voice. Some time ago, before the lockdown, while I was drafting professional article on Cultural Intelligence, I wrote about “the boat game”. An exercise that presents a situation in which the players should imagine a stressful situation. A useful, almost cruel, game that is meant to push us out of our mental patterns. I did not imagine that reality would soon make us face a far greater challenge. What CQ score helps us face our everyday situations? How inclusive is the reality we live in and how are we and our ways of interacting with Others who are different from us in the way they think, in their accents or their profession? Do we realize that this inclusivity could even save lives today, quite literally in the current context?
After all, storms do not last forever. The recovery will be difficult, but I am sure that we will be able to repair the boat . With the right tools. And when this will happen, we will have to return to the office and face life in our block of flats with an open mind, knowing that we have cultural intelligence in our suitcase. In order to do this, however, let us start practicing immediately.
Prepare the sleigh in the Summer and the carriage in the Winter, goes a Russian proverb. Have a good trip.
Olga Plyaskina, Cultural intelligence trainer
Photo: Dollar Gill / Unsplash
Translated by Olga Plyaskina
