Cultural Intelligence: Skills to Thrive in a Global Industry

[Music] this presentation was originally prepared for the production essentials summit of gdc20 cultural intelligence for the games industry by tina mary due to the deferment of the conference this content was delivered as a webinar on thursday march 26th the following is a curated copy of the content thank you for joining me to learn more about cultural intelligence for the games industry my name is tina marion i've been working in games since 2003. i've traveled extensively since that time and lived in four different countries while shipping 25 aaa titles i've worked with some incredibly talented teams in franchises including marvel fifa need for speed and candy crush in my work with global teams i've noted consistently that culture really does matter the teams and i have had many interesting conversations about how

culture shows up in the workplace and affects our collaborations in early 2018 i was very excited to learn about the cultural intelligence or the cq framework and understand its potential to help us build amazing gains as would seem appropriate in a webinar about cultural intelligence we have attendees joining us from all over the world let's take a quick poll to see where we all hail from in today's presentation we'll be covering three different topics the first topic will be to clearly define what is cultural intelligence and the related capabilities how do we measure it and what's the relationship to the business of making games the second topic we'll be exploring is cultural values what are they and how do they help you understand more about yourself and the world around you

final topic will be about developing culture cultural intelligence i promise you that you will come away with some tangible insights into how you can improve cultural intelligence in yourself and your team today's presentation will not only help you understand the definition of cultural intelligence but also bring together the relevance of cq in terms of the gaming industry and the practical implications that it offers for you in games development innovation is critical to all areas of your business we've also been consistently told that more diversity in our talent pool is not only the right thing to do but will also lead to the outcome of more innovation however without high cq or cultural intelligence this may not hold true according to extensive research and studies let's look at the results of two similar teams with comparable technical ability

the homogenous team will likely outperform the diverse team if they are both low in cultural intelligence however once we introduce the quotient of high cq the diverse team starts to realize its benefits they see up to three times the number of innovative solutions and improved effectiveness and this is because diverse teams with high cq are better equipped to create a place of safety and inclusion which allows innovation to flourish okay so here we have our formal definition cultural intelligence or cq is the capability to function and relate effectively in culturally diverse situations but what do we mean by culturally diverse what do we mean in fact by culture as we explore the concept of cultural diversity and cultural intelligence it's a good idea perhaps to step back and define the actual word

culture gert hofstede who was a dutch psychologist that specialized in intercultural studies stated that culture is a shared pattern of beliefs values assumptions and behaviors that differentiate one group of people from another in a way hofstede was telling us that culture really means what is accepted and familiar can change from one different group or environment to another we tend to think about culture in the common context of nationality where in the world are we from or where our parents from what ethnicity are we what religion are we and so on we can also think about culture in the concept of the family unit what is accepted and familiar and the rules that can change from one family to another from one generation to the other think about the millennial versus gen x versus baby boomers the rules of what is accepted and familiar shift the rules at your friend's house when

you were growing up were different than at home if we go to the school we think about the difference in the culture between the classroom and the playground even in the classroom the culture in the mathematics class was probably different than the culture in your art class what was accepted and familiar in terms of behaviors was different and of course then that brings us to the workplace at electronic arts we had a variety of different organizational cultures we had the global culture of ea we had the studio cultures ea vancouver ea romania ea redwood shores in ea vancouver we had the different cultures of the different studio groups the central art teams the game franchises fifa versus nhl even within the franchises we had fifa next gen versus current gen versus handheld teams you saw within the game teams the disciplines collaborating and grouping together producers versus artists versus engineers

so in all those cases what we can do is think about culture perhaps as the way we do things around here wherever here might be so we can now understand that cultural intelligence or cq helps us relate to others who are culturally different than ourselves what benefits do we realize from that knowledge the production benefits of developing cq in yourself and your teams are clear we can see increased profits and reduced costs as teams understand how to work more effectively and identify improved opportunities as teams work learn to collaborate and work more effectively together they're beginning to become happier and more engaged cultural intelligence offers us a clear framework to manage bias in the business of making games through anything from making decisions on hiring

to gain features and ultimately it's clear that cultural intelligence can help us build better games faster what's in it for you if you develop cultural intelligence or your cq skills you will find it's going to be easier to adapt whether you're traveling for pleasure working on a brand new team taking on a new role or maybe even being asked to take on an international assignment you'll find it easier to adapt you'll be able to better enjoy the diverse experiences that life throws at us you'll be able to persist when cultural differences come about and things get uncomfortable or awkward you'll find yourself more personally effective in all aspects of your relationships and you are going to be a more desirable employee and colleague we like working with people who are high cq they understand us and we relate well to them as we've now reflected on the definition

of cultural intelligence and started to understand its relevance to the business of making games we should stop and reflect on two very important points the first point is yes cultural intelligence can be measured as we've talked about if we look at the cq capabilities they can be defined and measured and quantified and we'll be looking at that next using that information we'll start to understand how the cq capabilities can be improved and how we can therefore improve our overall cultural intelligence there are several common myths about cultural intelligence i want to share with you the first is that individuals who have high emotional intelligence also have high cultural intelligence that's certainly not necessarily true high emotional intelligence measures our ability to effectively regulate and manage our own emotions and those of others however this is how very culturally

conditioned in other words our ability to detect happiness and sadness in others is reflected in our cultural traditions some cultures are very expressive others are less so when you think about direct eye contact in one culture that might reflect confidence in another it might reflect insubordination so really cultural intelligence is the next step on the in evolution beyond emotional intelligence and allows us to work effectively with others from different cultures the other another common myth is that international experience or significant travel is going to bring us cultural intelligence again that's a pretty common myth if in in fact the reality is that we can travel extensively but never really go beyond the tourist places and experience local cultures even if we go live abroad if we stay within the expat communities we can quite easily lack an opportunity to develop our cultural intelligence despite

our international experiences the next myth that's fairly common especially for gaming is that technical competence is going to translate into success in a culturally diverse context the scenario here is often that you'll have a lead artist or engineer who's been very effective in their local context and they're being asked to undertake an international assignment or lead a multiculturally diverse team unfortunately technical competence does not translate to success and and in terms of working across cultures okay time to look at the details the cultural intelligence or cq capabilities are made up of four different dimensions the first is called cq drive cq drive gets at our intrinsic motivation and our extrinsic motivation and confidence in dealing with culturally diverse contexts and situations

cq knowledge measures our understanding of the cultural similarities and differences that we see and how they affect the behaviors that we observe in ourselves and others cq strategy is our awareness of how culture impacts us and our ability to plan and check for the assumptions that we make prior to our culturally diverse interactions cq action allows us to adapt our behaviors according to the cultural context whether through an adaption of verbal or non-verbal behaviors or communication styles together these four capabilities define the contents of cultural intelligence now it's time to take a look at how those capabilities are measured and have a slight understanding of the science behind cultural intelligence i want to be clear that today we're just

having a very brief high level look at this anyone who may be interested in exploring this more deeply i would encourage you to reach out so i can provide you with more academic resources cultural intelligence is measured using something called the cqs or the cultural intelligence scale devised by scientists to help us predict our cq capabilities it is done by create using assessments which are benchmarked against worldwide norms to date over 150 000 of these assessments have been completed across 168 countries the results are then aggregated into three different buckets low cq scores are reflected in the bottom 25th percentile and in the chart we're going to look at in a moment we see them in a light gray band moderate scores reflect the mid 50 percentile in other words most of us see ourselves as moderate cq high cultural intelligence is reflected

in the orange band and that reflects the top 25th percentile let's take a look at an actual report now this is a sample cultural intelligence report showing the summary page the first thing i want to bring to your attention are the three bands that we just talked about for the cqs or the cultural intelligence scale they are reflected below for each of the capabilities in the color bands for each these reflect what we call the worldwide norms so again reminder that the bottom 25th percentile we see in the light gray band the mid 50 percentile is in the dark gray and the top 25th percentile we see reflected in orange the next thing i want to bring to your attention is the fact that the ranges look different for each of the four capabilities this is because these again are based on worldwide norms and it might for example tell us that

since most people consider their cultural intelligence drive to be relatively high we see a more modest band up at the top end of the scale for the high scores the next thing i want to bring to your attention are the absolute scores that are listed for each capability this represents the actual self-assessment in this sample report for example if we look at the first dimension cq drive and we see the number 75 that reflects somebody whose score is in the middle of the moderate range from the worldwide norms so this is a pretty average cq score if on the other hand we look at the next number 69 for cq knowledge we note that it's almost at the top end of the moderate score pushing up into the high percentile this tells us that we need to be less concerned with the absolute number we're seeing on this report and be more concerned with where the number lies within the range of the

worldwide norms another example of how we can read this report would be the relationship between two capabilities here we see the circle around cq knowledge with an absolute score of 69 and the capability is showing is almost into the top 25th percentile conversely cq strategy at 61 is almost in the bottom 25th percentile we can also infer in addition to these absolute number relationships that this person may be under utilizing their cq knowledge in relation to their ability to apply it from a strategic perspective once we look at the detailed report we might better understand whether one of the sub-capabilities of awareness planning or checking was more the culprit this report forms the basis of how we understand and measure cultural intelligence and becomes highly useful in building our development plans so we now understand how cultural

intelligence is defined we understand that it can be measured and we understand it helps us relate to others different from ourselves however doing this helps it requires that we seek to understand our similarities and differences and one of the ways we do this is by looking at our personal value preferences or what's called our cultural values as we further explore the concept of working effectively with others that are culturally different than ourselves it's time to explore cultural values cultural values represent our preferred way of working and relating to others they run deep within us they are built up over a lifetime of experiences and their their form all of the assumptions and views we have of the world imagine you're a fish in a bowl you're swimming around and your view of the room is distorted by the water and the bowl that you're in suddenly you're scooped into a new larger bowl

you panic you can't breathe after a moment you calm down and realize this is just fresh water but simply the fish's view is distorted by the environment that it's in similarly cultural values and the culture that we're in distort our view of the world and the people around us we're never going to remove the water in the bowl for the fish nor are we going to remove our cultural values they are who they are but by understanding more about ourselves and our values we can more effectively deal with the culturally different situations we may find ourselves in as we seek to explore cultural values we can look to using cultural value profiles to do this there are a variety of tools and assessments in the market that are available most of which help us reflect on the practical implications of behaviors stemming from cultural differences so in other words these profiles help us

better understand our general perspective on life they help us uncover some of the potential biases that can come up when we're working with different cultures they are not intended to actually predict our cultural intelligence context is about our preferred way of sharing and receiving information if we are low context we prefer a direct form of communication our culture says things like say what you mean and mean what you say

in a high context culture a less direct or a very indirect form of communication is more typical focuses on saving face and harmony and much more attention needs to be paid to what is not being said and body language when we complete a cultural value profile we start to understand our cv orientation in the example below we see the pink arrow pointing to low context so if i have a low orientation my profile might show an arrow here on the report i might have a peer whose report shows that they are high context or an indirect communicator the question for us becomes how do we deal with that difference how is it showing up in the way we communicate and collaborate what are the potential for miscues that we might experience as a result of that difference so what can that mean if i'm a high

context person and i'm working with somebody who's low context i should be focusing on sharing information in an explicit and direct way and focus on getting my message across clearly and explicitly conversely if i'm working with somebody who's high context or indirect i want to recognize the importance of silence and reflection pay careful attention to what's not being said and body language and remember the importance of relationships that having been said we learned from erin meyer who's an international business professor and cultural expert that multicultural teams need low context processes she explains this in her book the culture map and helps us understand that because multicultural teams have many opportunity for miscues in how they share and receive information we should coach them to default to low context processes to avoid these misunderstandings

you likely follow many of these low context processes already but let's take a closer look we want to ensure that agendas are sent before meetings not only because we want to check for understanding on what will be covered but also be clear in what a successful outcome will look like for that meeting meeting minutes are shared not only to ensure that individuals who didn't attend the meeting know what was covered but it allows us to ensure we walked away with a common understanding of any conclusions action boards and daily scrums can help us better reflect on the status of their project defining decision-making processes helps our team reduce noise around who should make decisions when and why establishing reporting processes how do we report to when what does complete mean ultimately the day these low context processes are

meant to define what good looks like and remove as many assumptions as possible for your diverse teams what assumptions do we make in daily interactions with others which biases show up and what is their possible impact how does culture come into the equation how much do we attribute behaviors different to our own to cultural preferences versus personality differences for example if i'm low context and i don't get the information that i expect from somebody that is high context what should be my assumptions do i think they're hiding information from me for example or that they have nothing relevant to share if you see a colleague not in a meeting what would you assume that nod meant if you then later heard them overheard them disagreeing with the comments you made in the meeting what assumptions could you bring then icq requires that we suspend judgment before reacting but can we always i want to take a moment to try a short

test imagine you're in a boat with your mother your spouse and your child and the boat starts to sink you're only able to save one of them who will you save will you save your mother your spouse or partner or will you save your child how certain did you feel in your response when i did this test as part of my certification process i practically ran to the spot in the room that represented my answer because it just felt right to me and despite the fact that i consider myself relatively culturally aware in high psyche high cq i really did assume most people would join me in that corner of the room what do you think really happened the results from at least one related survey provided these outcomes and factually mirrored what i saw in my own workshop

did these results surprise you at all i was at least at first at the time the facilitator asked some of us to offer explanations for our responses someone and then explained to us if mom were here she would say you can have more children you can marry again but you will only have one mother for me it was a strong reminder that we cannot take our values and assumptions for granted what's familiar and accepted to us as a basic value of course i should save my child might not be true for a colleague from another cultural background we've now had an opportunity to understand what is cultural intelligence what's the relevance to the business of making games how is it measured and how do cultural values come into the conversation let's talk about how we pull that all together

in terms of how we develop our cq how do we take actions and what can we do to help ourselves and our teams move forward let's now do a recap of the four cq capabilities and as we do so reflect on which of these capabilities you'd like to develop in yourself or your teams so cq drive is measuring our ability to gain enjoyment from culturally diverse experiences and our understanding of how we'll benefit from them it also measures our confidence in those experiences cq knowledge is measuring how we understand cultures are similar and different and how those similarities and differences affect the way people think and behave with cq strategy we begin to understand and be aware of how to plan for multicultural interactions and in cq action we're able to flex our behavior both verbal and non-verbal to behave appropriately in different cultural situations

i think you're going to find this chart very interesting it comes to us courtesy of the cultural intelligence center and helps us understand that not all cultural intelligence capabilities are created equal we want to sit back and reflect on what the desired performance outcome is based on the role that we have in the organization or our current needs as an example if we look in the in the far left column for cultural adaptation you'll note that the only cultural intelligence capability that's ticked off is cq drive this would represent the role of an expat or a member of a culturally diverse team and the most important capability for that individual to have is cq drive if on the other hand we are accountable for cultural decision making in other words we're going to make a decision on which markets to collaborate with or build new products in then cq knowledge and cq strategy become much more critical skills

our cq drive is not quite as relevant anymore because it's not about actually working with those different cultures but understanding how they work similarly if our role is cultural negotiation such as a business development person or a lawyer then our ability to have strong motivation to seek out culturally diverse experiences and to act appropriately under different circumstances are the two most k important capabilities for us to develop in the fourth column leading a multicultural team probably many of you can see yourself there if you're a producer or a director on a game team in this case cq knowledge you'll notice is not ticked off and the reason for that is this less critical to know specifics around how cultures are similar and different and more important on strategizing on how you can help your own team be effective expanding into new markets such as your vp might do a vp might do when building out a new product or deciding to

bring a product to a new area of the world requires that we have effective skills in all four of our capabilities we've covered a lot so now let's reflect on specific strategies we can use to develop cq in our self and our teams cq drive to improve cq drive consider making a list of all the benefits that you gain in your team gains from having culturally diverse teams and from being high cq build a presentation and show your team that so they can understand the roi of building cq cq knowledge reflect on how cultural values are showing up in your leadership style look at the needs of your team and try to understand how you might need to flex your style accordingly strategy cq strategy and awareness

by adding an empty chair to a meeting we can ensure that we reflect a missing perspective as an example of where the local team and our remote team is unable to attend we can ask that the empty chair represent their perspective in the conversation cq action is about getting out of our comfort zone by practicing non-typical behaviors we can improve our cq action an example for me would be using a quieter demeanor when i speak and perhaps less body language let's take a look at how we can remove some of that noise and conflict by applying cultural intelligence best practices so first of all let's reflect on feedback whether the feedback is is criticism or praise we should be thinking about what is the preferred cultural preference for the individuals we're working with

do they prefer direct or indirect feedback should the feedback be provided in public or in private should i direct my feedback to the team as a whole or just to the individual when i'm praising somebody all of these things have cultural consequences when we're thinking about how we assign work cultural intelligence comes into play in terms of thinking about are individuals more competitive or cooperative in their cultural preferences do they like to see more individual or group goals an example here would be when i was working on the fifa street project with the team in russia the team in vancouver thrived on individual goal setting for bug fixing targets and so on however the team in russia worked much more effectively when we set group targets and they worked on them together to achieve them over a period of time this was because their culture is more collective in nature when it comes to assessing performance or defining what good looks like

again we should be considering cultural and preferred cultural preferences and also going back to that recommendation of being as explicit as possible in other words going defaulting to low context define exactly what's going to be measured how it will be measured how it will be reported and so on help your team understand how their performance will be measured and how the project's performance will be measured when you're reflecting on how information is shared again consider what cultural preferences might come into play as an example think about who's providing the feedback and how and when they're sharing information i learned as an example that in romania big news should never be delivered in writing and that due to a preference for hierarchy big news should also be delivered by a big boss so often we would fly in one of the senior leaders to the studio to deliver big news in person and then we would follow it up in writing

let's also take a quick look at some of the learning paths that are available to you to develop cultural intelligence if we start at measuring cultural intelligence we have the opportunity to do formalized assessments that are either self-based or 36 and or 360. we can do audits that are organizational audits where we can assess the collective cq of an organization or a team we can do the act of self-reflection by understanding our cq skills and how cq is defined we can self-reflect and understand perhaps where our own opportunities for improvement lie by utilizing the opportunity to run events in workshops we can spread the word and help train in cultural intelligence we might utilize a leadership top-down approach as an example i recently ran a workshop for the cto and his vps of an it organization within a larger company you might do a team-based training for example the

central art team at king did cultural intelligence workshop across barcelona and london teams and you might take a bottom-up approach as an example here i heard about a case study where bell chose to train their filipina call center staff after they rolled out a new uh and after they'd offshored the services and had some initial early poor feedback from customers that resulted in a significant uptake in improved customer feedback and they saw a definite roi with that approach you might choose to do online and or self-directed training in that case you have definitely a variety of e-learning opportunities both free and paid you can use a blended option you might use some some personalized coaching and online courses to direct your own professional development in this area

um train the trainer is also an option as i mentioned i have been certified in cultural intelligence by doing uh train the trainer we can create running workshops as an example we create cq champions within the organization those we can take a further step in certifying individuals to train the cultural intelligence model which is what i have as you seek to explore opportunities to develop your cultural intelligence i'd like to share a few resources for measuring and developing your cultural intelligence start with the cultural intelligence center this is where i was certified they offer a variety of assessments workshops certifications and online resources both free as well as product based you can also look up details regarding each of the cultural values that we had in the list that i shared for developing your cultural intelligence knowledge please also

consider exploring hofstede's intercultural dimensions framework i provided a link to a site where you can compare two different countries and understand similarities and differences at a high level and provide yourself with a sophisticated stereotype to build your knowledge erin meyer's book the culture map is fantastic i mentioned this previously she's an intercultural expert and a professor at a business school in europe her work in the book demonstrates the practical examples of applying cultural intelligence in action there are effectively many base case studies and this link that i've provided also allows you to do a free assessment using her eight skilled culture map thank you very much for taking the time to join me and learn more about cultural intelligence for the games industry if you have any questions at all please don't hesitate to reach out

through linkedin email or even phone thank you be safe and be well