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Learning about your global competencies from the Intercultural Effectiveness Scale (IES)

Learning about your global competencies from the Intercultural Effectiveness Scale (IES)

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Defining global competencies

What is a “competency”?

“Underlying characteristic of an individual or team that can be shown to predict effective superior performance in a job or situation.”

McClelland (1973)

“A capacity that exists in a person that leads to behaviors that meet the job demands within the parameters of the organizational environment.”

Boyatzis (1982)

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WHO WERE YOU COMPARED AGAINST?

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Educational Background

Percent of Norm

Sample

Some college (incl. 2-yr. degree) 38.8

4-yr. degree 30.8

Some graduate courses 11.9

Masters level degree 10.8

Doctoral/Terminal degree 1.9

Other/None of the above 5.9

Totals 100

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Age

Percent of Norm

Sample

Under 20 10.5

20 to 29 62.3

30 to 39 16.2

40 to 49 8.2

50 and above 2.8

Totals 100

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Gender

Percent of Norm

Sample

Male 56.8

Female 43.2

Totals 100

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Work Experience

Percent of

Norm SampleTop Level Executive 2.2Middle Manager 11.4Entry-level Manager/Supervisor 15.4Employee 36.3Other (Including Students) 34.7Totals 100

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Ethnicity

Percent of Norm

Sample

Asian 30.3

Black 3.4

Hispanic 7.2

Middle Eastern 2.2

Pacific Islander 1.3

White 52.2

Other 3.4

Totals 100

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The IES examines three main dimensions of intercultural adaptability:

• Continuous Learning is comprised of two

dimensions: • Exploration and Self- Awareness

• Interpersonal Engagement is comprised of two dimensions:

• Global Mindset and Relationship Interest.• Hardiness is comprised of two dimensions:

• Open-Mindedness and Resilience.• An Overall IES score is generated by combining these

six dimensions

The Intercultural Effectiveness Scale (IES)

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1. Continuous Learning

• This factor reflects the degree to which you engage the world by continually seeking to understand and learn about the activities, behavior, and events that occur around you.

• Continuous learning influences your intercultural success by acting as an internal motivator to learn about why people in other cultures behave and think the way they do.

• People who consistently strive to learn new things are more successful at living and working effectively with people from other cultures than those who are comfortable with what they already know.

• Two specific sub-dimensions comprise this factor: Self-Awareness and Exploration.

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SELF-AWARENESS

• This dimension measures the degree to which you are aware of your personal values, strengths, weaknesses, interpersonal style, and behavioral tendencies, as well as the impact of these things on other people. It also assesses the degree to which you reflect on this knowledge in order to engage in personal development and learning activities.

• High scorers are extremely aware of their own personal values, strengths, weaknesses, interpersonal style, and behavioral tendencies and how they impact and affect others; they are constantly evaluating their personal growth and reflecting on their experiences and what they can learn from them.

• Low scorers are uninterested in self discovery and find it very difficult to discern how their personal values, strengths, weaknesses, interpersonal style, behavioral tendencies affect other people; they are not very attuned to or motivated to try to understand this process.

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EXPLORATION

• This dimension assesses the extend to which you are open to and pursue an understanding of ideas, values, norms, situations and behaviors that are different from your own. It reflects a fundamental inquisitiveness, curiosity, and an inner desire to learn new things.

• It also reflects your willingness to seek out new experiences that can cause learning or a change in your perspective and behavior. It also reflects the ability to learn from mistakes and to make adjustments to your personal strategies to ensure success in what you do.

 • High scorers are extremely inquisitive, curious, and open to new

ideas and experiences, even to the extent of actively seeking them out. Low scorers have a strong preference for maintaining current habits, traditions and ways of thinking, and exhibit little or no interest in exploring other ideas or ways of doing things. Low scorers are not very curious or inquisitive about the world around them.

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2. Interpersonal Engagement.

This factor assesses your interest in other cultures and the importance of developing relationships with people from other cultures in general. The development of positive interpersonal relations is essential for effective performance in an intercultural environment.

This factor is comprised of two dimensions: Global Mindset and Relationship Interest.

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GLOBAL MINDSET

• This dimension measures the degree to which you are interested in, and seek to actively learn about, other cultures and the people that live in them. This learning can take place from newspapers, the Internet, movies, foreign media outlets, course electives in school, or television documentaries. The degree to which you seek out these outlets, by your own choice, to expand your global knowledge about people and their cultures, reflects the strength of your global mindset. It also provides the basis upon which you can interact more effectively with people from other cultures.

• High scorers consistently exhibit patterns of learning by exposing themselves to information about cultures other than the culture in which they are members; thus, such individuals have a strong global mindset. This expands the basis for finding commonalities and topics that encourage discussions with those from other cultures.

• Low scorers reflect strong tendencies to avoid learning about other cultures and rarely go out of their way to expose themselves to information about new cultures. This reflects the possession of a mindset that is more domestic or provincial in nature, and as a result, decreases the opportunity to engage others.

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RELATIONSHIP INTEREST

• This dimension measures the extent to which you are likely to initiate and maintain positive relationships with people from other cultures. It measures how much you are inclined to seek out others in new cultures in order to build relationships, as well as your desire and ability to maintain those relationships once they have been created. It also measures whether engaging others is an energy-producing or energy-depleting activity. Your willingness to use a foreign language in developing new relationships is also an important part of this dimension.

• High scorers are extremely interested in developing new relationships, and then maintaining those friendships. They find this process stimulating, and would be willing to learn and use a foreign language in order to develop relationships with people from other cultures.

• Low scorers tend to put very little effort into developing new friendships or maintaining existing ones; they would expect the other party to take responsibility to maintain the relationship and are much more likely to believe that others need to learn their language in order for there to be a relationship. 

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3. Hardiness

• This factor measures your ability to effectively manage your thoughts and emotions in intercultural situations, along with your ability to be open-minded and nonjudgmental about ideas and behaviors that are new to you. Open-mindedness dampens the natural tendency to stereotype people, which in turn facilitates learning about the new culture and developing personal strategies to adapt to it.

• Open-mindedness also helps you to not get upset, stressed, frustrated or angry when you encounter situations, people, behavior, and ideas that are different from what you are used to. Avoidance of such strong negative emotions allows you to draw upon favorable psychological energy to address these new situations in positive ways. Hardiness also includes the degree to which you can manage your emotions constructively and learn from failures and setbacks.

• This factor is comprised of two dimensions: Open-Mindedness and Emotional Resilience.

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OPEN-MINDEDNESS

• This dimension measures the degree to which you withhold judgments about situations or people that are new or unfamiliar to you. It also reflects the degree to which you are open to alternative perspectives and behaviors in general. It measures your tendency to avoid stereotypes and be open to perceiving the complexity of individual behavior and differences within a group of people.

• High scorers nearly always wait to understand the situation or people before making a judgment and refrain from extreme stereotyping.

• Low scorers have a strong tendency to make snap judgments about situations or people and usually are reluctant to change their conclusions once made. They also tend to make sense of the world around them by regularly stereotyping people and situations they encounter, especially in new cultures.

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EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE

• This dimension measures your level of emotional strength and your ability to cope with challenging emotional experiences. It also assesses your capacity to recover quickly from psychologically and emotionally challenging situations. How you manage these kinds of experiences influences your tendency to remain open, develop relationships and interact effectively with others. 

• High scorers have the ability to cope well with challenging emotional situations, and as a result their recovery from psychologically or emotionally difficult experiences usually takes little time. They are able to continue learning about the foreign culture and develop effective relationships.

• Low scorers find it extremely difficult to handle psychologically and emotionally challenging experiences well; their recovery from such experience takes a long time and, ever then, may never be fully achieved. This limits their ability to remain open to others and learn from their experiences.

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Can We Develop Global Competencies?

• What should we focus on?

• What’s the process?

• What can individuals do?

• What can organizations do?

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Individuals can focus on developing their competencies on their own

Requires:• Experiential learning and reflection

• Crucible experiences

• Extensive practice

• Challenging cross-cultural exposure

• Extracting/absorbing tacit knowledge

• Ability and willingness to learn and transform oneself

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What can companies do?

Provide Experiences• Multicultural teams• International education • Long-term international

assignments• Short-term international

assignments• Mentors from other cultures

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More specifically, companies can:

• Design integrated, holistic developmental programs

• Start early

• Leverage experiences

• Bolster with multi-method training and coaching

• Ensure organizational support

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Films/books

Business seminars

International exposure trips

Global project teams

Global task forces

Global virtual teams

LectureSelf-study

Cultural briefings

Role playing

Case analysis

Cultural assimilator training

Language training

Strategic international business travel

Global assessment centers

Planned field experiences

Sophisticated simulations

Non-buffered expatriate assignments

High Potential For DevelopmentHigh Potential For Development

LowLow

Degree ofExperiential

Rigor

Degree ofExperiential

Rigor

Number and Valence of Feedback SourcesNumber and Valence of Feedback Sources

HighHigh

HighHigh

Classroom20%

Classroom20%

Developmental methodologies