Diversity is the new normal and we’d better get used to it! We are living and working in an age of rapid change: increasing globalisation and connectivity, faster time to market, more cross-border mergers and acquisitions, many new and more accessible markets, and greater mobility of workforces and teams.

Even thirty years ago, we would have been able to more or less predict whom our business partners, suppliers, distributors, customers, bosses, work colleagues, and team members would be. We would have expected to interact with them safe in the certainty that most of them would be People Like Us.

Nowadays, these certainties are gone. Under the impact of migration, globalisation, and the concentration of work in super-connected cities across the world, we are dealing with people of many different national, ethnic, cultural, social, and generational backgrounds on a daily basis.

This means we are now required to develop and use a once neglected skill—cultural intelligence—as never before. The good news is that cultural intelligence can be discovered and forged into a powerful capability for success in the new global economy. Two decades of research by scholars in dozens of countries have contributed to the evolution of the cultural intelligence (CQ)* model, a simple and clear four-part system for approaching culturally diverse situations and the challenges of cross-cultural encounters.

I have written Bamboo Strong as a very personal exploration of the CQ model and its four capabilities—CQ Drive, CQ Knowledge, CQ Strategy, and CQ Action. Each of the central chapters takes as its reference point one of the four aspects of the CQ model as laid out in the excellent studies and publications of the Cultural Intelligence Center, LLC, based in Michigan, Illinois.

GLOBAL LEADERSHIP STARTS WITH YOU

But I also believe that, beyond the systematic application and development of cultural intelligence, the real driver for success in today’s globalised world is you. In other words, it’s your own pliancy, adaptability, readiness to learn and to empathise. Cultural intelligence and global leadership start with the personal—with how you see yourself in different cultural situations, how much awareness you have of your own culture, and how it affects your thinking and behavior.

This book is intended to both motivate and inspire you rather than dull you with facts or extensive lists of behaviour. Throughout my life, I’ve been very fortunate and privileged to travel, live, and work in many countries around the globe.

I’ve married into families from two cultures that are very different to my own. I’ve had a rich variety of diverse occupations from academic to wine and olive farmer, to novelist, travel writer, international speechwriter and speaker, senior leadership mentor, and global strategist.

But this does not necessarily make me unique. The fact is, many of us are now global citizens of a world where multicultural diversity exists right on our doorstep and in all aspects of our lives, from going to the gym to shopping to dining out to using social media.

THE CQ JOURNEY

I didn’t start off as a global citizen. I grew up in a very different environment of People Like Us, of safe certainties, of expected behaviour and social assumptions that were typical of an Anglo-Welsh, London-born, grammar school- and university-educated boy of the time.

It was only when I broke away from this background, and went to live with my first husband in Switzerland and Italy, that I discovered the elements of cultural intelligence that were to stand me in such good stead in my future life and career.

One of the central themes of this book is that you can only develop strong cultural intelligence if you are open to, and ready to learn from, cross-cultural experiences in real life. And the more of them you experience, the stronger your CQ will be.

I have made countless cultural mistakes and blunders in new cultural environments and when meeting new people from oth[...]