Cultural IQ

Cross-Cultural Living

When I lived in my first foreign country, I arrived naively thinking I could learn the language and the culture in one year.

That was about 30 years ago. I was 18. And I came from the Bahamas. Where I grew up and with the American television and radio I had listened to, everything lead me to believe I could learn a language in a year.

I was highly motivated and young enough that a year seemed like a long enough time.

And, what was my second mistake in being naive? I went to German-speaking Switzerland to learn German.

Learning German in Switzerland is something that gets a good cackle of laughter out of any German speaking person. Luckily I got some very good advice as soon as I got there, and my language skills did not suffer from a bad choice in location.

I will not get into this now. But in the end, I am very happy my total ignorance lead me to the wrong place to learn German. Not only do I speak German, the “real” one. but I also understand all, yes all, Swiss German accents. And I can also follow conversations and understand a fair amount of the several other languages from countries nearby. My brain got used to picking up “distorted” accents and “bad” grammar.

Four years later I left Switzerland with a full understanding of the value of a mother-tongue and of the many different levels of language skills.

Cultural IQ

The personal lesson I learned at that time:

Only culturally naive people can put a time value on how long it takes to learn a language

When I was growing up, there was only IQ. I knew about this because my father had his IQ tested when he was young and his IQ score was the same as Einsteins. In the Bahamas, no one got IQ scores, but in later life it became apparent my mother was in the same playing ground as my father.

Many years ago, another IQ became popular. The Emotional IQ. As a daughter of two parents with high IQ scores, I was very interested in this one. The Emotional IQ explained a lot to me at the time, and helped me to understand people better, beyond the standard IQ.

Today with the comments and questions I get from my prospects and clients, I also wonder if there is a Cultural IQ.

• Not a Cultural IQ based on the original IQ criteria of what you know.
• But a Cultural IQ based on the wider Emotional IQ criteria.

And these are the observation that made me wonder about Cultural IQ.

I do think some people get stuck in certain thinking patterns that limit them. When these people get stuck they are not able to open up to better cross-cultural communication.

I personally do not like to think that anyone can be culturally handicapped. I guess I think a little like Tony Robbins here. Sometimes you need a bang on the head, or some unexpected event to open the right doors.

Blocking Yourself Without Realizing It

This reminds me of something I experienced in the first 6 months of living in a foreign country.

Now, remember I studied French in high school, even to the British A-Level standard before learning German.

It took me 6 months of living, studying and working exclusively in German for my ears to hear the difference between “o” and “ö”. It was only after 6 months that a kind soul told me that to two German words “schon” and “schön” had the same difference in sound as the two French words “jaune” and “jeune”.

Then miraculously in that same instant my ears were able to hear the difference in sound and I was able to reproduce the right sounds accurately.

I had been struggling with this for weeks and weeks. Asking everyone to slowly and clearly repeat the two sounds directly into my ear.

Today I cannot imagine how or why my ears were not able to hear the difference…until someone starts talking to me about the Chinese language and I realize my ears would probably not differentiate many of the sounds in this language today.

There is obviously a good explanation somewhere. If anyone has it, please let me know.

And if there is a theory about Cultural IQ, I would love to hear that too, although I will probably remain an idealist.

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Tagged as: ccc, Cross-Cultural Communication, cultural iq, german, switzerland