In the 1990’s and beyond people who made culturally offensive comments were often sent to “sensitivity training,” in the hopes that they would come back with remorse. It was viewed as a punishment and met with resistance.

While some organizations and institutions are still providing sensitivity training to employees who have made statements deemed offensive, there is the growing understanding that by providing cultural intelligence education, people are better able to communicate across differences, and develop peer relationships.

Cultural Intelligence is the capacity to work effectively with groups of people from any culture. In other words, someone with a high cultural IQ can be dropped in a culture they know nothing about, and they will be able to observe, empathize and be flexible enough to form relationships with people despite not speaking a word of their language.

This helps break down biases, and helps people be comfortable in new situations with people from different cultural groups

Academic Institutions play an important role in readying students to become leaders in today’s multicultural workforce.  Faculty and administration need to raise their “cultural IQ” in order to work better together, and prepare students for their careers in the global business environment.

When people in organizations or institutions develop a high level of cultural intelligence, they have the skills they need to ask the right questions, give the right answers, and work with people who are from a mixture of different groups in terms of ethnicity, age, religion, economic background, and sexual orientation. People have a larger capacity for success.