00:00:10
my father was a Trader he traveled the
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world he traveled every corner of the
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world and I watched him do it and he
00:00:19
used to come home and we used to talk
00:00:22
about whether the world as it got
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smaller would fulfill its
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promise and the promise was logical that
00:00:29
if if the world got smaller it would
00:00:32
become more
00:00:33
coherent and he always swore that it
00:00:35
wouldn't it never would that north and
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south and east and west and men and
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women and young and old and people of
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all different faiths would remain as
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incoherent as
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ever he part of his theory was that
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there were going to be too many people
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who followed him and that the leaders of
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the world would become increasingly the
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flying dead he used to talk about the
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flying dead a lot people who fly around
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the world and who land for a day or a
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week or a month or a year or an hour in
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a place and they're expected to deliver
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it and they have not got a clue what's
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going on around
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them um it was a pretty miserable
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version of the world um and I became
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increasingly interested in the idea that
00:01:25
we all needed cultural intelligence or
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CQ
00:01:30
cultural intelligence to me is the
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ability to cross borders between and
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boundaries between different cultures
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and actually thrive in so doing love
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doing it and never want to not do it
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um I think the world won't change that
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much uh when I started out everybody
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kept on telling me that IQ was the
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secret to everything you had to be jolly
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clever and pass every test that was ever
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thrown at you and IQ was utterly crucial
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and if I had a penny for all the idiots
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over the years who've said to me if you
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could just take the people out of this
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problem Julia there would be no problem
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and you think what an
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idiot I mean just
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breathtaking um but fortunately
00:02:13
fortunately EQ came around emotional
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intelligence um it wasn't too great for
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those of us who are women because we
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were all supposed to be terribly good at
00:02:21
it but we'll miss that point out but EQ
00:02:24
began to take on and people realized
00:02:26
that there were things called human
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beings in this and that on the whole it
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would be a good thing if leaders had a
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bit of EQ um unfortunately you then
00:02:33
began to get people who say I'm very
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good with
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people and then they would forget those
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two extra words that need to go after it
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which is like
00:02:43
me and I think increasingly you're now
00:02:45
beginning to see people who know that
00:02:47
you need seek you the ability to work
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with people and lead people who are not
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like
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you crucial I think we'll carry on
00:02:56
appointing people for IQ because no
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one's got the imagination to break break
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away from it will'll carry on sadly
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sacking some people a few years later
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for a total absence of EQ but I believe
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with in future we will be promoting
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people for cultural
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intelligence so for a long period of
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time I wandered around became one of the
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flying dead myself and went around the
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world trying to talk to people who I
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thought had more cultural intelligence
00:03:21
than most and it seemed to me that there
00:03:25
was something very clear that most of
00:03:26
them had in common which was that
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they'd sort of figured out which bits of
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them was core and which bits of them
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were
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Flex which bits of them were core and
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when I say bits I mean your behaviors I
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mean your values I mean your beliefs
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just about everything that you've got in
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there which bits are absolutely core and
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without them you ain't
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you which bits are core and absolutely
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crucial that you are incredibly
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inflexible about them and the more
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inflexible you are about them the more
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people trust
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you and then there's this huge area
00:04:07
called your Flex which is just about
00:04:09
everything else and the more flexible
00:04:11
you out on that the more people trust
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you the first one the first one that
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someone was talking to me about being a
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Salesman and how difficult it is to be a
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Salesman that actually you become so
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flexible on just about everything that
00:04:30
you lose any sense whatsoever of having
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a core and no one trusts you at all
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because they have no idea at what point
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you'd
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stop yeah and the next one the purple
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that's my
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grandparents yeah they came from the
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northwest of England and everybody in
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their street was like them and there was
00:04:52
absolutely no need for them to adapt to
00:04:54
anybody and frankly everybody else could
00:04:56
adapt to them and in fact that little
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green slice at the end is just me being
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kind to them the
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really there really wasn't anything
00:05:07
there it was them and that was them and
00:05:10
that was them and they were all caught
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and I wouldn't trust them further than I
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could throw them I believe that cultural
00:05:17
intelligence comes on the sort of line
00:05:19
between the two between core and flex
00:05:22
that's where it lies and it
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moves it moves with great care but it
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moves because
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it's called life you learn more things
00:05:32
you mean more people you move
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it someone pointed out to me that one my
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children drew that one big lad of core
00:05:41
at the beginning because you get it from
00:05:42
your parents and you Nick it and then
00:05:44
quite importantly it to go quite
00:05:46
significantly down when you become a
00:05:47
teenager and you'll play you'll do just
00:05:49
about anything and that helps you to
00:05:51
figure out what your flex and your core
00:05:53
is and then towards the end it starts
00:05:55
creeping I'm 56 now it's creeping up I'm
00:05:58
getting much more intolerant of
00:06:00
everybody um and you have to keep it
00:06:02
down a story I some years ago did some
00:06:07
work or was invited to do some work in
00:06:09
jeda in Saudi
00:06:10
Arabia and I spent a lot of time
00:06:13
thinking about this because everybody
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told me I had to wear an
00:06:16
Abaya and I thought about it a lot and I
00:06:18
have three daughters who were deeply
00:06:20
horrified that I was even thinking about
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it given what I was supposed to be about
00:06:25
and all my life and my belief in women
00:06:28
and how could you even consider this and
00:06:30
I thought about it a lot and in the end
00:06:33
came to the conclusion that actually
00:06:35
what I wear is in my Flex I've never
00:06:38
much cared about what I wear or what I
00:06:40
Look to look like and therefore I would
00:06:42
wear an A buer and I went to jeda and I
00:06:44
did the work there and I learned a lot
00:06:46
because you do um discovered that I'd
00:06:49
always thought that anybody who wore any
00:06:51
woman who wore an a Bier must be a
00:06:53
wimp and I learned how stupid I
00:06:57
was extraordinary experience but the
00:06:59
interesting thing was coming back to
00:07:00
London people saying ah typical they
00:07:05
they they demand that you we an a buyer
00:07:08
when you go to jeda but when they come
00:07:10
to London will they wear western
00:07:12
clothes well actually in this context
00:07:15
it's a perfectly stupid question because
00:07:18
to the women I met in jeda what you were
00:07:21
is in your core and what I were is in my
00:07:25
Flex and I found it increasingly
00:07:27
something that helped me begin to
00:07:30
understand the world but as you went on
00:07:32
you needed the braveness to then look at
00:07:35
the next ones the
00:07:38
knots because as you do test your purple
00:07:41
as you do cast your core as you do meet
00:07:44
new
00:07:45
people if you're like me you discover
00:07:48
little bits in your core that you're not
00:07:50
very proud
00:07:52
of that aren't based on judgment they're
00:07:56
based on
00:07:57
prejudgment if you think you haven't got
00:07:59
any knots I I'd like to suggest you're
00:08:02
probably not human and probably kidding
00:08:05
yourself we all have knots in our core
00:08:08
and it seems to me that as you discover
00:08:11
them and you dust them down and you find
00:08:13
them curious and you work on them you
00:08:16
can either move them to your Flex or if
00:08:18
you absolutely can't because they're so
00:08:21
deep inside you then at least make them
00:08:23
your problem not anybody
00:08:27
else's it's um it helped
00:08:30
me I remember years ago going to speak
00:08:35
to a group about 100 um business women
00:08:39
from the
00:08:40
US and um as usual I was late we have
00:08:45
many things in common um I was late and
00:08:48
I was rushing for the train knowing I
00:08:50
was late and as I was jumping on the
00:08:52
train at Liverpool Street I fell and I
00:08:56
ripped my
00:08:58
trousers and and um so i' got on the
00:09:01
train got there as fast as I could
00:09:03
rushed when I got to it was in Cambridge
00:09:05
I rushed across and I rushed onto the
00:09:08
platform and I started talking to this
00:09:10
extraordinary group of about 100
00:09:11
business women from the
00:09:13
US and about 2 minutes in I suddenly
00:09:15
said hang on let's just stop CU none of
00:09:18
you are listening to a word I'm saying
00:09:20
you're only looking at my
00:09:24
knee and I understand that you're
00:09:26
looking my knee but I just need to be
00:09:28
really clear my values my core says that
00:09:31
if I say I'm going to be here to speak I
00:09:33
will make it under whatever
00:09:35
circumstances holding my trousers or not
00:09:39
we never finished the speech we had the
00:09:40
most wonderful conversation and I
00:09:43
discovered to what extent what they
00:09:45
really said to me is if we did what
00:09:46
you're doing now Julia it would be the
00:09:48
end of our careers however good we
00:09:51
were and I think that a lot of cultural
00:09:54
intelligence is unpicking or nots and
00:09:56
having those Brave conversations that on
00:09:58
the H you would prefer not to
00:10:01
have uh there's something curious about
00:10:04
cultural intelligence and I would have
00:10:06
it's a sort of paradox that you only
00:10:09
really develop cultural intelligence if
00:10:12
you sir decide to give it me I can only
00:10:17
really figure out what's going if if you
00:10:19
will reveal things to me and the Paradox
00:10:22
is of course that you'll only reveal
00:10:24
things to me if you think I have enough
00:10:26
cultural intelligence to receive them
00:10:30
and and I think that that cultural
00:10:32
intelligence is Dee rooted in an
00:10:35
interest in other human beings and such
00:10:38
a deep interest in other human
00:10:41
beings that you will not judge them with
00:10:45
yourself as The
00:10:47
Benchmark I think it comes from a
00:10:51
determination to unpick the knots and to
00:10:53
keep going and to keep on making a full
00:10:55
of yourself cuz boy do you make a full
00:10:57
of yourself and to get into the habit of
00:11:00
apologizing
00:11:02
freely I think it comes from the ability
00:11:05
to remember that Flex if you're again a
00:11:07
flex then Flex it is extraordinary how
00:11:11
quickly things get sclerotic is that a
00:11:14
word I don't know they they begin to
00:11:17
just tighten up and you say but that's
00:11:19
your Flex so Flex
00:11:21
it and I think the last one actually I
00:11:24
think is that you'll probably trust that
00:11:27
I have some cultural intelligence if you
00:11:30
occasionally observe me standing up in
00:11:33
the presence of the opposite of cultural
00:11:35
intelligence which is cultural
00:11:38
intolerance and in those moments when it
00:11:40
would be easier to say nothing on the
00:11:42
whole it's better to say something even
00:11:44
if you make a bit of an idiot of
00:11:51
yourself but in the
00:11:54
end the thing that fascinated
00:11:57
me was that the more I talked about
00:12:01
cultural intelligence with people the
00:12:02
more I
00:12:03
realized everybody assumes that cultural
00:12:06
intelligence comes
00:12:08
from understanding other people's
00:12:11
cultures and the further I went the more
00:12:15
I began to realize that there was one
00:12:18
most difficult culture of them all to
00:12:21
Crunch which is your
00:12:24
own
00:12:26
um that's the culture you really have to
00:12:29
understand
00:12:29
understand understand when it helps you
00:12:32
and understand when it hinders you
00:12:35
understand when it opens things up for
00:12:36
you when it closes you down when it
00:12:39
causes other people's problems when it
00:12:41
gives you
00:12:42
knots and it when it misses you
00:12:45
opportunities so
00:12:47
alter ultimately cultural intelligence
00:12:50
fascinates me I think people will be
00:12:52
promoted for it because the world does
00:12:54
require us to cope in a smaller but more
00:12:57
complex World um I think it gives us a
00:13:00
hope of being those kinds of leaders who
00:13:02
do make the world more coherent and I
00:13:05
think it also gives us the hope of being
00:13:07
I want to be a leader could I want to
00:13:09
change things I know there are some
00:13:10
leaders who want to keep things the same
00:13:12
but I want to change things and um and I
00:13:16
think cultural intelligence will help
00:13:17
you to produce the change that you dream
00:13:20
of
00:13:21
producing you
