Episode 48
Sarah Black - Merging Cultural Intelligence with AI Innovation
In this episode, Trisha Carter, an organizational psychologist and expert in cultural intelligence, is joined by return guest Sarah Black, founder of Athru Communications with extensive experience in communication and PR. The discussion revolves around the four capabilities of cultural intelligence—CQ Drive, CQ Knowledge, CQ Strategy, and CQ Action—and how they apply to working with AI. The conversation explores strategies for integrating AI within organizational cultures, addressing knowledge gaps, and ensuring ethical and effective use of AI while maintaining human connection and emotional intelligence.
Check out Sarah Black on LinkedIn and sign up for her Newsletter.
Some links discussed this week:
- Ethan Mollick's book “Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI”
- David Livermore's book "Leading with Cultural Intelligence"
- Woman's Hour Podcast Ep "AI and IVF, Cousin marriage, Sugarcane documentary, 'Masculine energy'"
- Slack's Personas Study "AI team-building with the AI persona quiz"
Make sure you join Trisha in this journey of growth and discovery throughout the year via Substack or LinkedIn.
Transcript
[00:00:14]
[:[00:01:02] Trisha: Those of you who've listened to some of our earlier episodes will know that cultural intelligence, the capability to be effective in situations of diversity, is made up of four areas. Motivational, the CQ drive. Cognitive, the CQ knowledge. Metacognitive, the CQ strategy. And behavioral, the CQ action. And all four of these capabilities help us operate effectively in situations of diversity.
[:[00:01:53] Trisha: As someone who's had the privilege of seeing Sarah in action across numerous projects, I can tell you firsthand that her straight talking Belfast style, combined with deep, real empathy, makes her the most effective communications expert I know. Sarah is the founder of Athru Communications. and brings over 30 years of rich comms experience to our conversation.
[:[00:02:45] Trisha: In 2024, she achieved her CQ certification as a facilitator from the Cultural Intelligence Center, adding to her already impressive expertise, in comms and PR. Since we last spoke, Sarah has been diving deep into CQ and various communications and PR aspects, and most recently, we have each been exploring fascinating new territory, how we can bring our cultural intelligence to working with AI.
[:[00:03:37] Trisha: Welcome back, my friend.
[:[00:03:46] Sarah: Thank you. I think I'm the first returner, so it's lovely to be back. I'm very honored to
[:[00:03:55] Sarah: yes, I mean, very happy to be number two behind Dave Livermore. That's, that's very happy with that slot.
[:[00:04:02] Trisha: So those of you who've listened often will know that we have standard opening questions and I asked them of Sarah before in episode nine, but I'm going to ask again. So Sarah, tell us about a culture other than the one you grew up in that you have learned to love and appreciate.
[:[00:04:25] Trisha: Which one? Which one?
[:[00:04:36] Sarah: And I don't know that I can say that I loved, I have a very complicated relationship with Texas. I think it's full of. Really interesting tensions and polarities and complexities and, and to be in the center of Houston is very different to be out in the suburbs, which is where we lived. And then again, I worked a little bit further out for a while, but I think it was an experience that profoundly affected me. and in some ways I experienced more culture shock going to Texas than I did going to Norway. And I think that's because, naively, I know this now, but in my head it was like, oh, English, shared language but certainly going back to work full time in Texas, though I love my job and I love the people I worked with.
[:[00:05:43] Sarah: And I'm saying to my boss, people come to meetings and we don't offer them like a beverage. I was mortified because, you know, no self respecting person from the island of Ireland would not offer you a cup of
[:[00:05:57] Sarah: And maybe a sandwich or a scone. So, there were a lot of things that profoundly, not least of all that I brought two dogs back from Texas and profoundly changed my life, but there were a lot of sort of potential forks in the road in my time in Texas.
[:[00:06:37] Sarah: I'm not a dog trainer, but opportunities to really dive into and learn things about animal behavior that I wouldn't have had anywhere else that are very much formed. my thinking about a lot of things. So, yeah, complex. I'd say I respect Texas. I don't know if I loved it. I love bits of it,
[:[00:06:57] Trisha: And I wonder if there's echoes back to home in Belfast with some of the polarization between people.
[:[00:07:21] Trisha: mm.
[:[00:07:35] Sarah: But my husband had an experience one night when he was picking up takeaway pizza. We had friends visiting and he'd gone to pick it up. And because he was going to the pickup place for pre ordered thing, it looked like he was cutting in front. And so the gentleman behind him got very aggressive and told him to go back to where he came from.
[:[00:08:07] Sarah: And it was just that moment of like, he was very disturbed by it.
[:[00:08:22] Sarah: so, yeah, there was a lot of very, you know, uncomfortable situations where people would say things about migrants and I'd go, hello.
[:[00:08:40] Sarah: ways. So whilst I can't say I loved it unreservedly. I think it's interesting sometimes to stop and unpack its impact.
[:[00:08:58] Sarah: Yes. And you will know that occasionally I like a y'all slips out
[:[00:09:04] Sarah: so y'all need to yeah the all the all will never leave me I don't think completely
[:[00:09:11] Sarah: Yeah, and I do love to say y'all means all y'all.
[:[00:09:23] Sarah: this, yes, and I think this ties into what we're going to go on to talk about perhaps a little bit. When I did my CQ certification there's, I think almost like a tipping point where you're in, it was for me anyway, but I was in the session going, uh oh there's, and there's particularly because I'd done the 360 CQ assessment, which is a really interesting experience.
[:[00:09:49] Sarah: there's just so much that I don't know. And what was interesting was through the course of those two days. I, the shift for me was to go from the overwhelm of there's so much to learn to go to the excitement of there is so much to learn and the curiosity and the exciting like, oh, and you know, to be stimulated, but excited about learning new things and to see the lack of knowledge.
[:[00:10:30] Sarah: Where it kind of amped up my curiosity and my enthusiasm for learning and being curious again.
[:[00:10:50] Sarah: And I think the more I think about it for me, the opposite of cynicism and the, the antidote to cynicism is, is curiosity.
[:[00:11:15] Sarah: How do we do this? What are the questions we need to ask?
[:[00:11:30] Trisha: I love that
[:[00:11:52] Sarah: we could just talk about this.
[:[00:12:09] Sarah: Well, you know me, the answer to this, any question is almost always, it depends, Trisha.
[:[00:12:15] Sarah: So I, I think it might depend on, again, where your curiosity sits. And I think, but I think there's sort of a continuum between fear and a sort of a resistance to the uncertainty of this, the scale of this, the potential negatives of AI.
[:[00:13:08] Sarah: And it's interesting to me to sit back and go, wait a minute, this technology has actually been around since the 1950s. It's been growing. And yes, it has kind of boomed. We've just seen, like, we're recording this, what, two, three days after DeepSeek has merged into the
[:[00:13:22] Trisha: Yes indeed
[:[00:13:25] Sarah: And so I think there's some trepidation. I think there's a lack of knowledge for a lot of people. And I think I'm also conscious about who's who's leading the discourse.
[:[00:13:44] Trisha: The comms and PR people?
[:[00:13:54] Trisha: Of course. And that fits with some of the data coming out of things like the WEF Future of Jobs report?
[:[00:14:12] Sarah: Our industry.
[:[00:14:14] Sarah: So I think there's a lot to grapple with. I suspect a lot of people just feel overwhelmed.
[:[00:14:27] Sarah: And I, that's probably the educated professionals the weird. So, I can't explain the weird, but it's the Western educated industrial. There's a strata of society that are very worried about AI and thinking about it all the time. And I think there are lots of people who don't think about AI at all, or very little, who are like, if you're using Netflix, AI is in your life.
[:[00:15:01] Sarah: Is there weeding some content out? We can debate how well they're doing that at another time. But I, and that's where I worry about people saying, oh, we're going to roll out AI and it's going to improve everybody's life. I'm like, have we skilled people? Have we, have we asked if they want that?
[:[00:15:15] Sarah: Like,
[:[00:15:22] Trisha: You're talking about a number of different responses for people here. You're talking about some of it is emotional, some of it is capability, some of it is thinking. So, as we think about those, Those sorts of terminology, those are often the terminologies that we bring from cultural intelligence as we think about different worlds.
[:[00:16:03] Sarah: So I have to give credit to my friend Trudy Lewis. Because I was having a conversation with her before Christmas and about lots of things and Judy is a leadership coach and a very wise person. And we were talking about lots of things. And I said, but what if AI was like another country? What if it was like a different world?
[:[00:16:21] Trisha: Absolutely.
[:[00:16:42] Sarah: They're all called Harry in my life after a journalist, former journalist and communicator who I work with the beginning of my career. And so I asked Harry and Harry said, but I have no cultural values. AI doesn't have cultural norms. And I felt a bit like saying, oh, mate, you have ours. Like we have heaven help us.
[:[00:16:59] Sarah: So they're probably in there somewhere. You just don't have them uniquely as your own yet. So I think that's really interesting process. And I'm conscious that people listening to this who are deep into CQ who are going, you can't do that. But I think it's a really interesting leap of imagination and creative thinking.
[:[00:17:23] Sarah: that we're learning a new language. We're constantly having to think about new perspectives.
[:[00:17:37] Sarah: Says that like on the tin, please check,
[:[00:17:41] Sarah: yes, it bridges gaps because it goes, well, this is what this makes sense to me. We can all do that actually to a point. And so, and I said to you in a message this week, we were talking about it and about deep seek. And I said, it feels like culture shock. Like, just when you think you've made sense of it, boom, something else you're like, Whoa, no, I didn't.
[:[00:18:04] Trisha: yeah, within the schema that I've built that helps me to understand this place? How does this new piece of knowledge fit? Yeah.
[:[00:18:33] Sarah: There's so much conversation to be had around the ethics of AI. I mean, just yesterday I was in a webinar. We were talking about the impact on the environment and AI's use of water, which I had never, like, I'd heard. I don't know enough about that. I
[:[00:18:47] Trisha: We won't go down that one because,
[:[00:18:51] Trisha: it is massive and the data centers and what they're going to be doing.
[:[00:18:57] Sarah: So, yes.
[:[00:19:17] Trisha: And so if we think about it capability by capability, if you like and how it applies to AI. So. Let's start with CQ Drive, a very good place to start and see how that might apply to working with AI. What are your thoughts?
[:[00:19:57] Trisha: Mm.
[:[00:20:02] Trisha: For sure.
[:[00:20:11] Sarah: a little bit of suspicion perhaps about where it's coming from.
[:[00:20:32] Sarah: Because you are going to have to keep learning,
[:[00:20:35] Sarah: that's hard. Like that's, it's a weight, it's a load. And so keeping pace on top of everything else in life in an already very complex world, is a lot. And so being able to dig in and use the CQ model to maybe help you build that persistence think about, and also reflect on intentionally building that persistence,
[:[00:21:00] Sarah: But I know you've often said to me, like your CQ is not particularly high if you're tired and stressed
[:[00:21:31] Trisha: And at the same time, the value of novelty might, for some people, increase the drive, increase the, the positive feeling towards it. So yeah, it is.
[:[00:22:00] Trisha: Yeah. Yeah.
[:[00:22:10] Trisha: Because you've got multiple years of knowledge and experience and, and the ability to see it from lots of different perspectives.
[:[00:22:29] Trisha: Mm hmm.
[:[00:22:43] Trisha: Mm. Mm.
[:[00:23:05] Trisha: you're almost stepping now into the metacognition in terms of thinking about what other people might be thinking, as well as thinking about what you might be thinking as you come to try and help them. And so metacognition, which is really what we focus on in this podcast, almost more than anything is how to.
[:[00:23:44] Trisha: So in the same way, we can recognize how we can shift our perspective about it. And maybe sometimes learning something can help us make that shift. Maybe seeing it from someone else's perspective. One of the things I've been really encouraged to see is how people for whom English is not their first language and who haven't had all of the, all of the benefits that us weird people might have had are using AI to produce things that look like you and I who, who grew up in an English language might have produced. And so there's a, there's an element that AI can democratize people's capabilities and lift up the people at the bottom. And Ethan Mollick pointed out that those people at the bottom of writing capabilities will improve significantly and the people at the top won't gain heaps from it, from the writing parts of it anyway.
[:[00:24:47] Sarah: Yeah, and I think that's really true. And I think also looking at AI globally, because I'm conscious that so much information I consume about it is from certain voices in certain parts of the world. But when you look at it, perhaps in different cultures, the applications of AI to something like health and education are vastly different because they don't have the education system that, we might have, maybe it's more complex, maybe the access to medical care is different and the AI is potentially going to have, you know, more revolutionary impact there. So, yes, thinking about it. Also, I've been thinking a lot about what voices am I hearing in the conversation and where are they coming from, which is probably, again, a little bit around strategy and also into knowledge.
[:[00:25:39] Sarah: this could get like a shopping list, so we'll have to contain ourselves. I, for me, the thing I, the thing that I'm increasingly coming back to on the knowledge, and this I think is going to be in the white paper in a bit more detail, is. Yes, there is the kind of technical capability of, I can write a good prompt or I can build my own, you know, LLM or I can, you know, I've been reading a lot about what industry, what agencies and the creative industries are doing.
[:[00:26:47] Sarah: Or is it actually going to cause us more problems? That idea of being like fit for purpose.
[:[00:27:07] Sarah: And there's a lot of thought then around governance and we're seeing the EU's now got guidance should there be, within your own organization, should there be governance? Whose governance? If you're building something as an AI tool to sell. And you're going to sell it outside the EU or in the, like all of those layers.
[:[00:27:26] Sarah: And it's also about training people to have the judgment and discernment to go, that's good enough to use.
[:[00:28:07] Trisha: No, that sounds rather risky
[:[00:28:11] Sarah: So, and it's not always about the press release, so it's really interesting to think about even just how the, the knowledge will change and then thinking about the skills. What are the future skills that we need
[:[00:28:25] Sarah: to really embrace AI in I hope a way that's positive and, and I know ethics can be culturally mitigated a little bit.
[:[00:28:32] Trisha: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
[:[00:28:34] Trisha: And professionally. So ethics within your profession is different to mine.
[:[00:28:40] Sarah: yeah, yes. And I think we also often conflate like ethics with our morals and our
[:[00:28:49] Trisha: And, you know, I would say ethics from a psychological perspective within the Western world is probably different from ethics as a psychologist in other parts of the world. And there are a You know, ways that I operate in some parts of the world, which are like in the West. It's very clear where a psychologist should draw boundaries, but it isn't so clear in some other parts of the world where society is more collective and where it might be more important for you to go to somebody's funeral, who's a client, you know, whose, whose mother has died or something like that.
[:[00:29:45] Sarah: yeah, and I think building tools that are global or you can tell has been built to regional that maybe have a profoundly, I mean, a lot of what we're hearing about AI up until last week. Was coming out of the U. S.
[:[00:30:04] Trisha: Oh, absolutely.
[:[00:30:05] Sarah: so thinking about different cultural values show up in the world, are you, like, to your point?
[:[00:30:33] Sarah: And there's a lot of. Discussion about how AI affects the individual performing their job. I suspect that conversation is very different in other parts of the world. So holding those things and thinking about those things, you know, if, if, if that little fact was a huge shock to you, then that's a little knowledge gap that you might want to think about. because I think we just assume that AI is universal. Not, we're Not,
[:[00:31:17] Trisha: Yeah.
[:[00:31:31] Trisha: Mm. Agreed.
[:[00:31:34] Sarah: If you're a part of the world and would like to send us stuff, then please do.
[:[00:32:07] Trisha: So how, where does the positivity sit? And yeah, Sarah and I are not saying we have expertise. We're saying we have curiosity and openness about all of this. And we're tossing a lot of ideas around. And I think that's helpful to do. I think that's part of one of the, one of the behaviors, CQ action that we should be applying is to ask questions and to discuss with people and, and to discuss with Harry themselves.
[:[00:32:49] Sarah: Yes. And as in many other things, having a diversity of perspectives and voices is. I think really helpful. I mean, I listened to a fascinating piece last week about the use of AI and IVF in the UK. It was one of the first clinics that's using AI to, for all kinds of things, really for better outcomes.
[:[00:33:30] Sarah: Let's increase the chances of, you know, happy, happy pregnancies but also decrease the chances of people being very disappointed and heartbroken. And then hopefully spend more time with people because you're not. You know, you're a lot of the data is there for you. I mean, it's just endlessly fascinating.
[:[00:34:27] Sarah: Yeah.
[:[00:34:32] Sarah: And, Harry admits, I think it was chat GPT. But admits that. The nuance of culture and it's such a, I recognize this experience in my own life that it's things like idioms and humor and the subtleties of high value show up that they're like, I'm not getting it.
[:[00:35:00] Sarah: and it's the human who can go, wait a minute, you can't tell that joke in Belfast. No or that's offensive in that part of the world, or that's not what that means, or no, that's, that doesn't, and a lot of it is, it's perhaps the emotional side, but it's that knowing that that doesn't feel right, that doesn't feel appropriate. That doesn't feel maybe inclusive, but that language isn't right. I think also the judgment, the creative thinking, the knowing how to brief, the knowing how to use is partly the knowledge, but then also sits into the action.
[:[00:35:46] Sarah: Because, you know, that's. It's all, it all comes together beautifully. but yeah, I think keeping the humanity and that means that we also need to work on our own cultural intelligence and that ability to see other perspectives so that when AI produces something, we can look at it and go, now, how is that going to land
[:[00:36:06] Sarah: And I think that applies in a number of contexts and the training that I do, we don't just talk about national and regional cultural differences, but it's about applying the CQ model to. Organizational cultures. So, is my organization like my customers? Where's the cultural tensions there? The different perspectives on things.
[:[00:36:35] Sarah: And it was interesting, for example, the Slack personas are based entirely on people that are sitting at desks.
[:[00:36:42] Trisha: no definitely.
[:[00:36:43] Trisha: And let's not forget the generational differences,
[:[00:37:12] Trisha: I'm curious about what you think might be the things as organizations change as the future of work changes. What are the things we hold onto and say, this is what we can work on developing and growing, because this is not going to be done by AI.
[:[00:37:32] Sarah: Oh so much change and I'm conscious that there are connections between cultural intelligence and our ability to innovate and our ability to handle change. I'm not going to try and talk about that because David Livermoore's written a book and it's, you know, Go read Dave's book. We'll link to that in the show notes.
[:[00:38:16] Sarah: So we do have bias and we do have gaps in our knowledge and we do have things that we don't see about others. and I don't know that we can expect AI to overcome that. you know, on its own. And so judgment, knowing when to use which tool for what occasion and in what way thinking about planning, self reflection, perspective taking, the ability to connect effectively.
[:[00:39:14] Trisha: so those are the things that I think we will always be good at, those of us who are good at it, and those are things we can always develop because they will set us apart.
[:[00:39:39] Trisha: Yes.
[:[00:39:56] Sarah: And so knowing that about myself and how I work best.
[:[00:40:17] Sarah: I, I think what's interesting was I, I read a great LinkedIn post this week from someone called Sharon O'Day. And I will try and put a link to it, but she was. Reflecting on, I think really disconnection.
[:[00:40:38] Sarah: and so we were talking about the need for connection and the need for real human connection. And I'm conscious that the kind of wave of post COVID and growth of AI are kind of intersecting a little bit for a lot of people. And that what we do as humans feel brilliantly as connect.
[:[00:40:58] Trisha: And some people find it easier than others.
[:[00:41:07] Trisha: We're built to want to connect.
[:[00:41:10] Sarah: And. That's the thing when I think about the future of work is how do we build an increasingly technologicalized.
[:[00:41:22] Sarah: and how do we build in meaningful connection? I think I'm back to my cup of tea and taking the cattle to work here. But how do we do that? And that feels like a leadership skill and a management skill for the future.
[:[00:41:44] Sarah: Meaningful connection for people when people want community.
[:[00:42:09] Trisha: And so I think the need to step back and perhaps help people develop those skills is really critical. I mean, I think a lot about, you know, what we really are as people. This has made me think so much about who we are as people and how we come to work. And when we think about Theory of mind sort of the self determination basis you know, there are basically three characteristics and one is autonomy that sense of, you know, that, that I can do things and I can make decisions and I can choose to have a career.
[:[00:43:27] Sarah: And I think one of the things that I've been sort of reflecting on a little bit is certainly in parts of the world, not everywhere, but in parts of the world, we have a kind of a like the badge of busy-ness that you're successful if you're working hard, if you're busy, you know, it's a, it's a thing. I have a sort of a working theory.
[:[00:44:06] Sarah: And there's a lot of discussion in, in the industry particularly in PR agency, not all comms professionals are in PR agencies, but about hourly rates and a lot of how you measure and run businesses are to do with capacity and hourly rates and all that kind of thing. And If you are taking, if AI is able to take work away from people, so instead of, you know, in the bad old days, I would have spent an hour writing a contact report after a meeting.
[:[00:44:39] Sarah: but in theory, that's a lot of time saved.
[:[00:44:50] Trisha: I know we got very excited,
[:[00:45:06] Trisha: Oh goodness ,
[:[00:45:11] Sarah: I think there's a lot of deep reflection and thought about that. And I don't think it's all bad. I think it's all good, but I think it's a lot of change. And I think one of the core skills. I think I'm talking about suppose leaders and managers and people who are hopefully leading people through these is change management. And I think that how cultural intelligence helps us perspective take is really important for change management.
[:[00:45:38] Trisha: I'm aware of time and don't want to
[:[00:45:43] Trisha: yeah, no, we could, we could, we could go on for ages which is going to be your challenge as you work out your presentation for this. I'm wondering what advice you'd give to someone who wants to develop both their cultural intelligence and AI capabilities.
[:[00:46:04] Trisha: hmm. Yeah.
[:[00:46:49] Sarah: I think the other thing I would say that is a learning from both for me anyway, is. I think embrace learn and fail, learn and fail, learn and fail.
[:[00:47:04] Sarah: I'm not even sure what right is anymore.
[:[00:47:09] Trisha: I know. I know. And that can really hit your drive because it hits that, you know, self efficacy, but you can, you can regain it and reminding yourself you're not perfect.
[:[00:47:22] Sarah: yeah, and as we experiment with and embrace AI and build new things, sometimes it'll be brilliant.
[:[00:47:37] Sarah: And so that also, I think, speaks to the importance of psychological safety if you're in a workplace.
[:[00:47:43] Sarah: And the importance of that,
[:[00:47:54] Sarah: You're thinking about their perspectives and considering those.
[:[00:47:58] Trisha: And it's safe to express different perspectives. Yeah.
[:[00:48:02] Trisha: As you think about, you know, you, your life and the people you've worked with in your profession and your family and the community, and you think about the future of human AI interaction, what are you hoping for?
[:[00:48:25] Sarah: The potential to, I hope that AI makes us better humans
[:[00:48:32] Sarah: in the sense that I hope we have more time for each other.
[:[00:48:50] Sarah: And I, part of that is making knowledge more accessible to more people. You know, democratizing that I think potentially is very exciting. So that's, that's, the optimism. That's the hope.
[:[00:49:00] Trisha: that's lovely. I love it. Thank you Listeners, I will put in the show notes, Sarah's contact information, which includes her LinkedIn profile and on LinkedIn, she has a newsletter that you can opt in for. I'll also put a link to her quick dip, quick dip, whatever accent I say it with quick dip. Sorry, Kiwis who are listening to me and think I'm being very Aussie, podcast, and also when she has that white paper produced, I will be sharing that also on LinkedIn.
[:[00:49:48] Sarah: Yeah. Thank you for listening. What was really an extension of the, the, the WhatsApp conversation that Trisha and I have on a daily
[:[00:49:54] Trisha: yes, that's right.
[:[00:49:58] Trisha: And both the positives and the negatives that we often share with each other. thank you so much, Sarah. Really appreciate your time here.
[:[00:50:09] Sarah: the conversation with you on our next WhatsApp messages.
[:[00:50:12] Trisha: Thank you for being part of the shift today. These conversations become even more valuable when we share them with others. If today's discussion offered you practical insights, pass it along to someone in your network who's on their own cultural journey, and you can find us on your favorite podcast platform for more perspectives on cultural intelligence through the shift.
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