Uncertainty Avoidance
Finally, uncertainty avoidance is the extent to which a culture is at ease with risk and unpredictability. Cultures that score high in uncertainty avoidance are places where people have been programmed to have little tolerance for the unknown. They focus on ways to reduce uncertainty and ambiguity, and they create structures to help ensure some measure of predictability. For example, cultures such as Greece, Japan, and France want clear instructions and predictable timetables for completing assignments in order to reduce any ambiguity.
On the other hand, cultures low in uncertainty avoidance, such as Britain, Jamaica, and Sweden, are not as threatened by unknown situations and what lies ahead. Open-ended instructions, varying ways of doing things, and loose deadlines are more typical in countries with low scores in uncertainty avoidance.
There is a high correlation between this cultural dimension and the way a culture approaches time. Clock-time cultures tend to be higher on the uncertainty avoidance scale than event-time cultures. Understanding this particular dimension is also a way to understand the differences that exist between two cultures that may otherwise seem to be much the same. For example, Germany and Great Britain have a great deal in common. Both are in Western Europe, both speak a Germanic language, both had relatively similar populations before the German reunification, and the British royal family is of German descent. But the person who understands the uncertainty avoidance dimension will quickly notice considerable differences between life in Frankfurt and life in London. Punctuality, structure, and order are modus operandi in German culture, whereas Brits are much more easygoing and less concerned about precision. This can be explained in part due to the different views the cultures have toward the unknown.
Keep in mind that these are generalizations. For example, while Australians are listed as having a clock-time orientation, someone observing the South Sea Islanders in Australia would find that laughable. The South Sea Islanders are very much oriented by event time. Similar exceptions exist in each of the countries or regions listed. But these scores provide some sense of the differences we must understand to strengthen our CQ Knowledge.
Exploring the differences between how people view time, status, and uncertainty are the types of issues central to developing CQ Knowledge. One of the most effective ways to think through and understand the implications of these dynamics is to use case studies from different cultures that demonstrate how these differences play out. Books such as Robert L. Kohls and John M. Knight’s Developing Intercultural Awareness and Craig Storti’s Cross-Cultural Dialogues are some of the best resources available for such exercises.
In addition, interactive learning, conversations, and readings related to cultural differences are helpful in gaining understanding about cross-cultural differences. These, coupled with our cross-cultural experiences, provide a powerful way of nurturing CQ Knowledge. We’ll look more specifically at the role of travel itself in nurturing both knowledge and CQ Strategy in the next chapter. For now, suffice it to say that international experiences coupled with good information about cross-cultural differences are the most effective means of nurturing CQ Knowledge.[111]
[112]
We’ll have a better perspective on our short-term missions trips if we think about the values explored in this chapter. We need to understand both the general dimensions of cross-cultural differences and the ways those dimensions play out in the specific cultures we’re going to visit. In addition, the issues explored in part 2—motivation, urgency, common ground, the Bible, money, and simplicity—are the areas in which we need to grow in our understanding of how our cultural programming as North Americans affects the way we do short-term missions.
The danger in approaching CQ Knowledge through the categories described in this chapter is that we can repeat the very pitfalls we looked at earlier, wherein we oversimplify. We can too easily ignore personality differences that are as complex as cultural differences. My wife, Linda, thrives in event-time cultures. She loves to be spontaneous and cares little about watching the clock. I find event time a welcome change for a couple days of vacation, but then I’m ready to get back to structure, start-and-end times, and punctuality. We need to develop CQ Knowledge based on more than just one or two individuals. This is precisely why CQ Knowledge alone does not equal cultural intelligence. It’s only one of four interdependent capabilities.
Back in Shanghai
How might CQ Knowledge shed light on what happened when Jun said, “I can’t say the food is the very best at this restaurant, but hopefully it will be okay”?
What about Jun’s comment about living with his parents? Sarah, the intercultural studies major, was the only one not surprised when Jun said he and his wife have no intentions of moving out. Is she the one who has CQ Knowledge here?
Meanwhile, Jenny, the reflective one on the team, has enough understanding of Chinese culture to sense Jun’s apparent discomfort with the conversation. But she doesn’t know how to make sense of it all.
As we move through the other CQ capabilities, we’ll continue to use the students’ short-term missions experience in Shanghai to shed light on how CQ intersects with short-term missions. For now, we can see a few different expressions of CQ Knowledge among Jake, Jenny, and Sarah. Jake’s had more cross-cultural experience than anyone on the team, having grown up in Mexico. His experiential knowledge base of cross-cultural issues is pretty high. Does that make him a natural at responding to Jun? It gives him a head start in developing CQ Knowledge, but without the other three areas, there’s no guarantee Jake’s experience will make him any more culturally intelligent than someone who has never left the United States. And he doesn’t seem very knowledgeable about Chinese culture.
Jenny has a surface-level understanding of Chinese culture, but it does little to help her. She has some crude stereotypes about the way Chinese people tend to be indirect or self-effacing. However, she lacks the cultural intelligence to see how her individualist perspective shapes her view of Jun’s living situation, and she isn’t sure how to interpret the apology for the food at the restaurant.
If the students had a greater degree of CQ Knowledge, they would have known that it is customary in China to show respect for guests by disparaging one’s own accomplishments, even the selection of a restaurant. In turn, the guest is expected to repay this respect with a compliment. When Jake simply said, “We’ll make the best of it,” he made a cultural blunder with Jun.[113]
Jake, Jenny, and Sarah’s various forms of preparation to understand Chinese culture are a part of CQ, but by themselves they aren’t enough. In some cases, CQ Knowledge by itself can be worse than no CQ Knowledge at all. Watch Sarah in the next couple chapters to see what that looks like!
Strategies to Improve Your CQ Knowledge
Anytime:
Study yourself and your own cultures.
Read a novel or watch a movie that is set in a different culture.
Study the Scriptures through the eyes of someone from a different culture.
On Your Short-Term Trip:
Buy a copy of USA Today and a copy of a local newspaper. Compare stories.
Talk to taxi drivers and hear their perspectives on life in this place.
Go to a grocery store. Notice what’s sold and how it’s advertised.
11
On Second Thought
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:
Serving with Eyes Wide Open Page 14