A book recommendation from Dan Beaulieu

Leading with Cultural Intelligence: The Real Secret to Success second edition

By: David Livermore

Copyright 2015 Amacom

Price $26.95

Pages: 255 with Index

A passageway to Global Leadership

Let’s get right to it. Cultural Intelligence CQ is a measurement of your ability based on knowledge and experience to lead across cultural lines. It is the ability to communicate and lead with companies and organizations around the globe. It is having an understanding of which cultures will look you in the eye the longest and which will not look you in the eye at all. It is the ability to communicate with people in Africa as easily as with people in Nebraska. It is the ability to understand what it means to apologize in Canada as it means to apologize in China.

I was impressed with this wonderful new book by David Livermore, actually the second edition of Leading with Cultural Intelligence, full disclosure I did not read the first edition of this book so I have nothing to compare it with. The author tells us the forward that this edition is much changed from the original and I’ll take his word for it.

The timeliness of this book critical as more and more of us are doing business globally now more than ever. Truth be known I did not even think that there was a book that covered this subject until I saw this one on the shelf and even then I was not quite sure of its pertinence in my life. But once I started to read it, it all made sense. I remembered an experience I had a number of years ago when I was asked to take of the management of three electronic design service bureaus and the adaptations I had to make to communicate properly with these basically left brained people with my right approach. Being a sales manager all of my life I could see it in the eyes of the twenty or so designers I spoke to at my first meeting. They were lost, they did not know what I was talking about and they seemed to hate the very speed at which I was saying things. It was good friend of mine, actually the Design sales manager who took me aside and told me to slow it down. He told me that I was coming off as a fast talking, back slapping huckster and was just not coming across as trustworthy to these find people dealing with the fact finitely well- defined measurements of laying out printed circuit boards. I quickly realized that if I was going to lead these folks I was going to have to learn and adapt their culture if I was going to have any credibility as their leader. And they were in Pennsylvania! Never mind half way around the world.

But you get it. This is what this book is all about. Building up your CQ Cultural Intelligence so that you can successful communicate and do business with people of different cultures all over the world.

If I had had this a few years ago before I went in and spoke to my new design team I could have read David Livermore’s list of strategies when addressing an audience of non-native English speakers or in my case people of a different brain polarity.

From the book:

• Slow down. Slow down. Slow down slllllloooooooo d.o.w.n

• Use clear, slow speech. Enunciate carefully

• Avoid colloquial expressions and idioms

• Repeat important points using different words to explain the same thing

• Avoid long compound sentences

• Use visual representations

• Mix presentations with a balance of story and principles

• Hand out written summaries

• Pause more frequently

I liked this book, found it very useful and I think you will too.