Negotiating with CQ
Lynn Imai's research examines the abilities that managers need to negotiate effectively across cultures
It’s long been known that people from different parts of the world negotiate differently. American negotiators, for example, tend to be direct in asking for what they want. Japanese, on the other hand, are much more indirect. It’s not surprising that negotiators from different cultures, despite best intentions, often misinterpret cues and assume ulterior motives.
Ivey Professor Lynn Imai focuses her research on negotiating across cultures. This is an area of growing interest as the world becomes more globalized and interdependent. With intercultural negotiations increasing, it’s important to understand how to overcome cultural barriers and achieve optimum outcomes.
Imai defines an effective negotiation as one that leads to a win-win outcome for both negotiating parties. She gives the example of two parties negotiating over an orange. Competitive mindsets might well result in a compromise where the orange is divided roughly in half. But what if one party is more interested in the pulp, and the other the rind? In this case a win-win outcome would be each party getting one orange worth of exactly what it prioritizes, rather than just getting half an orange worth of pulp or rind.
Such outcomes require a co-operative approach, where each party is prepared to share information and be forthcoming about what they hope to gain in order to make trade-offs. “Negotiations will proceed smoothly when parties immediately reciprocate each other’s co-operative tactics in turn,” says Imai. Such a co-operative process is hard enough for people in general, but is especially a challenge for people from different cultures, where even a facial expression can lead to a wrong impression.
The ability to adapt effectively to culturally diverse situations is described as “cultural intelligence.” Cultural intelligence, also known as “CQ”, is a new concept in the research literature. In a recent study published in the renowned journal Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, Imai looked at CQ as a predictor of intercultural negotiation effectiveness.
CQ has cognitive, motivational, and behaviourial dimensions. The cognitive dimension is the extent that managers already know about other cultures and are mindful of their own cultural assumptions. The motivational involves the confidence and persistence to adapt to different cultural situations. The behavioural is the repertoire of conducts and demeanours that help managers adapt to new cultural situations. In her study Imai compared CQ with other negotiating attributes, such as cognitive ability, emotional intelligence, extraversion, openness, and international experience.
The study, conducted at the University of Maryland, divided a group of graduate students into 62 pairs of negotiators. Each pair included an American and an East Asian who had lived in the U.S. for less than five years. Imai based the CQ of each negotiator on a self-report measure well accepted among researchers.
Each pair then simulated a business negotiation, which Imai coded sentence by sentence. She found clear evidence that higher CQ led to better intercultural negotiation effectiveness. “CQ was the best predictor of negotiating success, over and beyond the other kinds of abilities,” she says. “Negotiators with higher CQ were more engaged in reciprocal sequencing of cooperative information sharing behaviours, which in turn led them to attain higher optimal negotiating outcomes.”
The CQ of the lower scoring negotiator matters the most, she says. “The weakest link is what really determines how effective the negotiation is going to be.” She also found that the motivational dimension was the strongest driver of effective negotiating. “When negotiators were confident and persistent and enjoyed working across cultures, then that motivation alone predicted the effectiveness of their negotiations.”
Imai’s paper was the first to explore CQ as a predictor in intercultural negotiation effectiveness. The paper was ranked as one of the Journal’s “hottest” articles of the year, a reflection of the interest of researchers and managers in this area.
Companies tend to select individuals for overseas assignments on the basis of technical experience and competence, says Imai. Her research suggests it’s important for managers to also look at an individual’s CQ, particularly in the context of negotiations. Managers should also consider training programs as a way to help managers increase their CQ. “The motivational side is very important,” says Imai, “and managers can be trained to increase their confidence and self-efficacy in terms of adapting to new cultures.”
Because CQ is a new concept, Imai says that research in this area still has a long way to go. “More research is needed to build on my findings,” she says. “We also need to develop more objective ways of measuring CQ.”
Managers often have a skeptical attitude towards soft skills, but Imai’s research shows that soft skills can improve hard objective performance outcomes. “Ultimately you can’t survive on technical business skills alone,” she says. “You need the cross cultural skills as well.”
Reprint from Ivey Business Journal
[© Reprinted and used by permission of the Ivey Business School]
