Work with me · 03
Culture shapes how we see, decide, and treat one another, usually without our noticing.
Cultural Intelligence (CQ®): learning to work across difference
Cultural Intelligence, or CQ®, is a research-based framework for understanding the capability to work effectively in culturally diverse situations. It looks at four connected capabilities:
- Drive: your motivation to engage across difference
- Knowledge: your understanding of how cultures are similar and different
- Strategy: your awareness as you plan and interpret interactions
- Action: your ability to adjust what you say and do
CQ can be assessed and it can be developed. As a CQ® Certified Facilitator, I use the assessment as a starting point for an honest conversation, not a score to manage.
What it looks like at work
Consider a team where some people see direct feedback as a sign of respect, while others experience the same approach as confrontational. Nobody is wrong, and everybody is frustrated. Cultural Intelligence gives us a way to examine those differences, question our assumptions, and practice more effective ways of working together.
CQ isn’t another diversity training. It shows up in everyday leadership: who speaks in meetings, how decisions get made, how feedback lands, and who quietly stops contributing.
My perspective
I come to this work through two different traditions. La Cultura Cura, culture heals, shapes how I understand culture and healing. I learned the practice from elders and teachers of medicine, and I point to Jerry Tello and the National Compadres Network for its published framework. Cultural Intelligence offers an established, research-based framework for understanding and developing cultural capabilities. They come from different places, and I don’t treat them as the same thing. I draw on both: CQ gives us a shared, practical language, and my ancestral perspective keeps the people at the center of it.
Culture can hurt people quietly, every day. It can also hold them.
What we can do together
Individual CQ® Assessment & Debrief
Explore your CQ® assessment results, reflect on your own experiences across cultures, and identify where to keep growing.
Team CQ® Assessment & Debrief
Help your team understand their cultural capabilities, their differences, and how to work together more effectively.
CQ® Workshops & Training
Learning built around the four CQ® capabilities and connected to the real situations your people face.
Organizational Conversations
Facilitated discussions with leaders and teams about how culture shows up in relationships, communication, policies, and decisions.
Who it’s for
HR professionals, managers, leadership teams, and organizations working across cultures, locations, generations, or disciplines. It’s for anyone who wants collaboration, communication, and decision-making to work better for everyone involved.
Every team’s situation is different. Let’s start with yours.
20 minutes · Complimentary
Prefer email? Reach me at [email protected].