In recent articles, we’ve talked about Cultural Intelligence (CQ) as something that is truly tested in real time – when you interact with others, that is, when two cultures meet. Sometimes, this meeting is between a core and a flex; other times, it’s between two cores. These moments can feel like clashes, but they can also be opportunities for collaboration and deeper understanding. Listen to Julia’s helpful tips on how to turn culture meetings into collaboration rather than chaos.
But what happens when the test for Cultural Intelligence is not with others but within yourself? When two cores collide inside you? Julia calls this internal CQ and it is a crucial test of your CQ because it shows up in everyday leadership and life scenarios. In this podcast episode, Julia shares a few real stories that might sound familiar to you.
Julia’s friend, a professional and a mother, once brought her daughter to her workplace. When her daughter saw Julia, she shared her confusion at seeing her mother become who she thought was someone else. How did the warm, playful mom suddenly transform into a tough professional? It was a shift that felt like a collision of cores.
Another example comes from Rhidima, an ambitious Hindi woman who moved to London. She noticed herself adopting a more “British” way of speaking at work and being more willing to share with her colleagues what she ordinarily wouldn’t. She was quite torn between building her career network and staying true to her own language and expression, two powerful cores pulling in different directions.
Elsbeth experience was slightly different, her struggle was between core and flex, not two cores. As a South African who’s grown up outside of the culture, she found herself wrestling with the balance of how much flex was okay without betraying her core. What could she let slide in conversations without being untrue to herself?
In this podcast episode, Julia reflects on these collisions and shares her own approach. She discourages what she calls switching, where you totally ignore one core for the other. For two reasons; people are not able to trust you and also because it is exhausting but she recommends what she calls weaving, allowing you integrate two different cultures inside of you so that you are able to maintain trust with others and yet stay true to yourself. Julia shares vivid examples of what weaving looks like in practice. Kindly listen to the episode here to find out more.
