CQ Strategy
Jenny has taken a couple TESL courses along with her communications major. She thought TESL might be something she’d be interested in pursuing. In some ways, the last couple days touring Shanghai with Jun’s students has increased her confidence to teach English. On the other hand, she feels less prepared. Visiting places like the Jade Buddha Temple or the local primary school made her realize that while the students she’ll be teaching are basically her peers, they’ve grown up with an entirely different perspective on faith and education.
Jenny discussed this with Jake on a run together. Jake said, “Jen, you’ve got to lighten up! You’re being too hard on yourself and too analytical. People are people. I mean, most of Jun’s students seem pretty much like us. For that matter, they’re a whole lot like my Mexican friends back home too. Look at that, for example,” he said, pointing to the cinema where most of the new releases were the same things playing in theaters back home. “And look at that,” he said, pointing to Starbucks, “and that,” pointing across the street to KFC. “The world is more and more the same everywhere, and that’s especially true for our generation. Don’t look at these students as Chinese. Just see them as people like you and me!”
“I hear what you’re saying,” Jen said. “But we also just ran by a local restaurant serving cat for lunch, and every store has an altar in front. That’s nothing like the world back home!”
“Sure,” said Jake. “But you’re overthinking it again. Just have fun with it today. Basically, we get to talk with people who drink strong coffee like we do, listen to Coldplay like we do, and enjoy a good sushi dinner like we do. God can overcome the differences that are there. He wants these people saved. So just be yourself.”
“Yeah. You’re right, I guess,” Jen said, though not entirely convinced.
How does cultural intelligence shed light on these interactions? Jenny’s questions and awareness reflect some of the ideas behind CQ Strategy. CQ Strategy helps us to take our motivation and knowledge and put them to use before, during, and after our short-term missions experiences.
What Is CQ Strategy?
CQ Strategy is the degree to which we’re mindful and aware when we interact cross-culturally, and it’s our ability to plan in light of that awareness. CQ Strategy helps us turn off the cruise control we typically use as we interact with people so that we can intentionally question our assumptions. As we interpret the cues received through CQ Strategy, we continually adjust our CQ Knowledge and plan for how to behave appropriately.
I learned how to drive on my brother’s stick-shift car. I sat at the traffic light, fully focused on the timing of the gas, clutch, and shift. I remember looking at the drivers in the cars around me who seemed to be doing anything but focusing on what they were doing. It looked as if driving was second nature to them, as if their cars were on continuous cruise control.
Now that I’ve been driving for more than twenty-five years, I jump in my car and drive without thinking. I drive miles at a time without giving a second thought to what I’m doing. Sometimes I’ll be driving down the highway and suddenly realize I don’t have a clue where I am. It’s not that I’m being reckless; my mind just goes into cruise control as I drive along the open road.
When I drive in new places, and especially when I drive in cultures where the rules are different, I’m much more alert. Driving on the left side of the road takes a much higher degree of mental awareness on my part. I have to suspend the mental cruise control and give all my attention to my driving.
When we’re in our own culture, we move in and out of many kinds of interactions and events on mental cruise control. We don’t have to work extra hard to understand what someone means by a cliché they throw out or the embrace they offer before we walk away. When we interact cross-culturally, all that changes, or at least it should. We need to suspend mental cruise control and pay close attention to the cues. The process of becoming more aware is what CQ Strategy is about.
CQ Strategy is the ability to connect our knowledge with what we’re observing in the real world. It’s developing the awareness to see and interpret cues from our cross-cultural encounters. It’s about making connections between what we know and what we’re seeing and experiencing. It allows us to question our assumptions as well as the assumptions of others. As we grow in CQ Strategy, we begin using cross-cultural interactions as a way to reframe how we think about particular people, circumstances, or even the world as a whole.
Let me explain CQ Strategy this way. Soon Ang, one of the pioneering researchers of CQ, is a dear friend and colleague who lives and works in Singapore. Shortly after Soon and I first met in the US, we agreed to meet together again during my upcoming visit to Singapore.
Soon suggested we meet at Empires Café in the Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Raffles Hotel is in a part of town familiar to most visitors and just a block away from one of the major metro train stops. The menu at Empires Café is neatly divided between Western and Asian entrées. Knowing that I come from a low-context culture, Soon explained the menu to me and made sure I understood the Asian entrées in case I was interested. She pointed out a couple entrées in both the Western and the Asian section that she considered excellent.
We simultaneously viewed the menu and engaged in some small talk for a few minutes. Soon asked how many times I had been to Singapore. I told her I’ve been visiting Singapore for several years, including having lived there for a while with my family.
“How do you find the local food?” she asked.
When I listed laksa and char kway teow as some of my favorites, she began to interact with me a bit differently.
Soon’s initial perception of me was limited to my being a North American ministry leader involved in graduate-level education and someone interested in applying CQ to mission work. Her CQ Knowledge gave her some understanding of what that might mean for me. The longer she talked with me, however, the more she reframed her interactions to line up with her new assumptions about me and my familiarity with Singapore.
Soon told me she purposely chose Empires Café because she knew it would be easy to find, and she wasn’t sure of my level of comfort with Asian food. Likewise, she wasn’t sure I would want to eat just Western food, so she chose a place with both options. As we began talking, I sent her cues that demonstrated my ease with Singaporean culture. She spent less time explaining the educational system and cultural dynamics because she adjusted her assumptions about me based on the cues she received from our interaction. Her awareness in the moment combined with her CQ Knowledge allowed her to develop a strategy or plan for how to interact with me effectively.
At one level, you could simply call Soon’s behavior “empathetic listening,” but it’s more than that. Soon considered the possible cultural dynamics at work for both of us and then adjusted her assumptions from that understanding in light of our unfolding interaction together. She exercised the interpretive dimension of CQ (or CQ Strategy) that she spends so much time researching in others.[114]
CQ Strategy would have helped the short-term participants described in part 2. The students who assumed smiles meant everyone in Ecuador is happy would have stopped to ask if that’s what the smiles really meant. Trainers who interpreted attentive students’ behavior as hunger for the material would have asked whether that’s what they really were communicating nonverbally.
CQ Strategy follows a three-step process. First, CQ Strategy begins with awareness. Soon’s understanding and experience with North Americans made her aware that meeting at a certain restaurant might be more comfortable for me. Then as we began to interact, she continued to pay attention to cues. Some people are naturally more observant than others, but all of us can grow in our ability to watch for cues—both explicit and implicit—sent by people and events we encounter cross-culturally. This is what Soon was doing as she listened to me describe my previous experiences in Singapore. Some of the cues I sent were subtle. I asked where she lives, and when she told me, I referenced a nearby landmark, which demonstrated to her my awareness of Singapore beyond what would be typical of the novice visitor. She became aware of my frame of reference by what I did and didn’t say.
Second, CQ Strategy helps us plan our cross-cultural interactions. Soon planned both before we got together (where to meet and how to interact together about our work) and in the midst of our interaction. People going on short-term missions trips that involve teaching, preaching, or making any kind of presentation need to plan how to present the content specifically as it relates to the particular cultural context, as compared to how it would be taught at home. In addition, planning must include how to most appropriately interact with authority figures and members of the opposite sex, how to approach conflict situations, and so on. Awareness and planning are directly related to CQ Knowledge. Understanding a culture’s score in individualism or power distance aids us in planning our encounter.
Checking and monitoring is the final step in CQ Strategy. This is when we compare what we planned with what’s actually happening. If we change an assumption, we need to test that altered assumption with other encounters and experiences. When appropriate, we can even talk about what we’re observing with the people we encounter in another context. We need to exercise caution here, however. Just as we need to question our own assumptions underlying our behavior, we can’t assume that another’s perspective about their behavior is based on accurate assumptions.
Those with high CQ Strategy possess an ongoing awareness of what’s going on around them beyond what they can see with their physical eyes. They possess a mindfulness that makes them aware and thus able to more accurately interpret unfamiliar behaviors and events.
Nurturing CQ Strategy
While all four CQ capabilities can improve the way we do short-term missions, this is the area I want to nurture most through this book. Serving with eyes wide open goes against the grain of our fast-paced, urgent culture by helping us reflect on and question our assumptions. Reflection doesn’t mean we should sit in isolation in a serene setting to write in our journals all day long. Instead, we have to learn to engage in reflection and interpretation even when we’re dead tired in the midst of Shanghai’s city center. This is another reason CQ Drive is important.
The challenge is not whether people can think reflectively and intellectually but how to foster it in them. Obviously, some individuals and cultures are more analytically inclined than others, but CQ Strategy can be nurtured and encouraged in all of us. There are a number of ways to nurture CQ Strategy, including:
Stepping back to think reflectively and question our assumptions is one of the biggest needs in short-term missions work. Suggestions like the ones above are a good start, but we need more guidance and help in nurturing this area that is so desperately lacking in much of our short-term work. Here are some ways to begin the process.
Stimulate Your Imagination
Stimulating our imaginative capacity is one of the most important ways to nurture CQ Strategy. Stories, narratives, myths, tales, and rituals capture aspects of the world in ways not readily available through more traditional, bullet-point approaches to understanding cross-cultural differences. The dimensions we considered in nurturing CQ Knowledge—individuality, power distance, and event time versus clock time—are essential starting points for interacting effectively cross-culturally. However, reading fiction and biographies of people from various cultures will also help us see the more subtle assumptions and paradigms underlying cultural values. Stimulate your imagination by reading novels and biographies about and by people in the places you’re going. Before going on your short-term missions trip, ask multiple people who live there about their favorite novels or movies. Use those to get into the mental programming of the culture.
Even if you make annual treks to the Czech Republic and want to focus all your cross-cultural understanding on the Czech context, spend some time reading pieces about and by people in other cultural contexts as well. Reading narrative pieces from a diversity of cultural perspectives will further enhance your ability to interpret cultural cues and recognize differences. Few things enhance CQ Strategy as does this kind of reading.
If this kind of literature is new to you, let me recommend a few books. Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner is one of the best books I’ve read. While you may not be taking a short-term trip to Afghanistan, the story written by this Afghan is sure to challenge your cultural assumptions in many areas. Or try reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake: A Novel to gain perspective on the different assumptions Indian couples, even Indian Americans, use in naming their children. I’ve made several references throughout this book to Richard Dooling’s White Man’s Grave. The language and witchcraft in Dooling’s story are not for the lighthearted, but it’s a compelling picture of life in West Africa. Of course, there’s also much to be gained from the true stories of Brother Yun in The Heavenly Man or Nelson Mandela in The Long Walk to Freedom.
Reading novels and memoirs related to cross-cultural situations is one of the most powerful ways to nurture our minds to think creatively and reflectively. In addition, we can stimulate our imagination by simply forcing ourselves to do routine things differently. Taking an alternate route to work, ordering a different kind of coffee, and changing the order of our morning routine will impact our ability to think outside the normal paradigms of our lives.
As you can see, nurturing CQ Strategy has implications that far surpass the journey of our short-term missions trip. It’s the opportunity to begin viewing the world around us in new and significant ways.
Open or Close Your Window
Another way to nurture CQ Strategy involves adjusting the way we interact with others. Successful communication depends on accurately reading the cues of those with whom we interact. Introverted people reveal little and tend to keep the windows into their lives closed as they interact with others. Others who are more extroverted reveal more of themselves and keep their windows open. Most of us tend to keep our window relatively small when we’re in new and unfamiliar situations. In contrast, we tend to share more of ourselves when we’re with familiar people and in places where we feel safe and comfortable. With certain individuals and in certain settings, even the gregarious and extroverted are wise to open less of themselves. In other situations, even the painfully introverted need to open up more as a way to interact appropriately. This communication skill is important anytime we interact with others, but it’s especially important for cross-cultural conversations.
While personality differences exist throughout cultures, cultures as a whole have a style of relating and communicating that they deem most appropriate. The person with a growing measure of CQ Strategy learns how to read cues from both individuals and a culture at large. In knowing how much of ourselves to reveal, we are not trying to be a chameleon or to be whatever we think another person wants us to be. Instead, we are learning to interpret cues in order to adapt our communication and behavior in a way that puts the other person at ease. Envision yourself as a mirror to the people with whom you’re speaking. What’s the cadence of their speech? How loudly do they talk? What’s their body language? By adjusting your behavior to mirror theirs, they’ll automatically feel more comfortable. “This doesn’t mean, of course, that you should be disingenuous. Rather, it shows that you’re particularly sensitive to other people’s emotional temperaments. You’re just tweaking your style to ensure that the windows remain wide open.”[116] Practice this in your next conversation.
Journal
One of the most valuable tools for nurturing CQ Strategy is journaling. Some people journal quite naturally, while others find it incredibly difficult. Much of my research on short-term missions has included both my own journaling and the journals of other short-termers who graciously allowed me to read their thoughts. Participants most often wrote about what they did each day, along with some prayer requests. That’s a good start to journaling, but it’s only the beginning of learning to journal as a way to nurture an ability to interpret cues in cross-cultural interactions.
Equally important in describing our observations is thinking about the meaning behind those observations and experiences. Writing allows us to understand our lives and others in ways that few other things do. It forces us to slow down and become aware of our surroundings. Journal writing enhances our ability to interpret the barrage of cues surrounding us during our short-term trips.
Commit to spending some time journaling on your next trip. Do it before you leave, while you’re there, and after you come home. Do more than simply record the events of each day. Describe things that make you uncomfortable. Write down questions that come to mind. What insights are you gaining? What are you seeing about yourself, others, and God? How might your faith be different if you had grown up in this culture instead of at home? Read your journal out loud to someone you trust. Journaling like this can be a vital source of cultural intelligence for you.
Immerse Yourself Cross-Culturally
At the risk of missing the obvious, few things have the ability to nurture CQ Strategy like actual cross-cultural experiences. As we’ve seen countless times in this journey, experience alone doesn’t ensure growth in our ability to interpret what’s occurring cross-culturally. In fact, if we fail to engage with a reflective spirit whereby we question the assumptions of ourselves and others, immersing ourselves cross-culturally can actually be a detriment to improving CQ. We can end up perpetuating erroneous assumptions and stereotypes in others and ourselves by failing to engage in CQ Strategy. Jake’s experience as a missionary kid will be either an asset or a liability to his overall CQ, depending on whether he exercises CQ Strategy.
When we seek to understand and question whether we truly understand, we begin to progress in using our cross-cultural experiences themselves as a way to nurture CQ Strategy. Hands-on experiences in different cultures are extremely effective ways to learn about cross-cultural dynamics and differences, especially when combined with CQ Strategy. There’s benefit both to continued exposure to the same place and to a variety of experiences in many different contexts. If a person’s CQ Strategy is high, multiple experiences in diverse settings yield some of the greatest growth in overall cultural intelligence.[117]
Don’t limit your thinking about these kinds of immersions to the encounters that happen when you’re on a short-term missions trip. Cross-cultural encounters abound all around us. Watch the Spanish channel for a while, eat at a Thai restaurant, attend the Irish festival in a nearby town, interview a nearby seasonal farming worker, or watch BBC news online. Few things aid us in developing CQ Strategy like cross-cultural encounters themselves.
One of the leading experts on the educational value of cross-cultural travel, Kenneth Cushner, writes, “Travel affords one to see the world from another perspective. But these lessons don’t always jump right out at you. More often than not, they are missed because of one’s inability to perceive what has gone on from the local perspective, or one’s inability to step back from the situation.”[118] We have to shut down our mental cruise control to benefit most from our travel abroad.
Don’t miss the chance to use your short-term missions trip to see the world differently. Step back from a situation to interpret what’s going on. That’s what we’re after with CQ Strategy. We’re trying to reframe what we see and create new categories for understanding. In the short run, engaging in CQ Strategy can result in a far more healthy and redemptive short-term missions trip. In the long run, thinking more critically and carefully about what we observe can significantly transform the way we understand, interpret, and live out God’s mission in the world. Surely that’s worth the hard work of journaling, reading some good novels, and questioning our assumptions.
Most short-term missions trips occur in groups. Teams go together from churches, schools, and other organizations. A key component to team members being able to engage in CQ Strategy on a short-term missions trip is spending time on planning and reflection. Dialoguing with others about cues and their interpretation is a real asset to doing short-term missions in community rather than by oneself.
Back to Shanghai
No one in the group meandering through Shanghai seems to have a whole lot of CQ Strategy. Jake assumes his extended experience in Mexico makes him a natural. Overall, he’s a confident guy who isn’t very fazed by how he may come off to others, particularly in a vastly different world like China.
Sarah, the resident intercultural expert on the team, has just enough knowledge about cultures to make her dangerous. She seems to know all the answers but isn’t aware or mindful enough to be able to interpret accurately what she’s observing. As a result, her high CQ Knowledge, when not combined with high CQ Strategy, may actually hinder her effectiveness in China. This is something I’ve observed again and again. Pre-departure training can be vitally helpful in developing CQ Knowledge. When we fail to use it in tandem with CQ Strategy, however, it often results in worsened engagement cross-culturally than if we’d spent no time at all studying the cultural nuances. This is what my African friend Mark described to me in London when he said, “[Those North American youth pastors] have prepared just enough for this trip to make them dangerous.” The goal is to grow in our cross-cultural understanding and then combine that with a thoughtful, reflective perspective.
Jenny gives us the most hope for CQ Strategy of anyone on the Shanghai team. She lacks the ability to interpret what she’s observing, but she knows enough to stop herself and question what’s really going on. With a heightened degree of CQ Knowledge through more interaction with Chinese people and by additional study about how cultures relate, Jenny will be well on her way toward cultural intelligence.
Join me in committing to work on CQ Strategy. As we learn to interpret, reflect on, and reframe our observations, we create a link between our cross-cultural understanding and the behavior we’re after in our mission work. CQ Strategy helps connect our cultural knowledge with something deeper. Once we start down this road, we see an ever-growing window into life as a whole. Suddenly we have a new way of seeing and approaching our faith, our interactions with people, our family, and our life. Open your eyes! Wider! Once you get a glimpse of God’s world this way, you’ll never want to go back to life without cultural intelligence.
Strategies to Improve Your CQ Strategy
Anytime:
On Your Short-Term Trip: