Leah Cottham sits down with Renita Käsper, a global talent acquisition leader with 20 years of experience building multicultural teams across Asia Pacific, Europe, and beyond. Renita shares why cultural intelligence has become essential for remote leaders managing distributed teams and explains the critical difference between hiring globally and actually setting teams up for success.

The conversation explores how unintentional systems and processes can silence diverse voices, even when companies have good intentions about building inclusive teams. Renita walks through real examples of cultural miscommunication in remote settings, from misunderstood urgency levels to the dangers of acronym-heavy onboarding processes. She emphasizes that cultural intelligence goes beyond one-off training sessions and must be embedded into daily communication systems, feedback processes, and leadership approaches.

Key topics covered:

[00:00] Intro

[04:53] Cultural intelligence as core leadership skill

[09:22] Defining cultural intelligence and curiosity

[14:17] Treating others as they want to be treated

[20:03] Remote first companies need intentional cultural systems

[26:05] Unintentionally silencing cultural voices in global teams

[31:23] When remote teams become afraid to speak up

[34:08] Embedding cultural intelligence from the start

[38:32] Building culturally intelligent onboarding processes

[50:00] Buddy systems and connection tools like Donut

[54:54] Moving beyond culture fit to culture enrichment

[1:02:43] Building relationships before focusing on tasks

[1:04:57] Ask more questions and assume less

This episode offers practical strategies for remote leaders looking to move beyond culture fit toward what Renita calls culture enrichment, where teams intentionally leverage diverse perspectives rather than defaulting to homogeneous hiring practices.