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Youth, Family, and Culture
Cultural Intelligence: Improving Your CQ to Engage Our Multicultural World
Twenty-first-century society is diverse, and Christians must be able to understand other cultures and communicate effectively between and among them. Following up on the bestselling Hurt: Inside the World of Today's Teenagers, this new addition to the Youth, Family, and Culture series explores the much-needed skill of Cultural Intelligence (CQ), the ability to work effectively across national, ethnic, and even organizational cultures. While rooted in sound, scholarly research, Cultural Intelligence is highly practical and accessible to general readers. It will benefit students as well as guide ministry leaders interested in increasing their cultural awareness and sensitivity. Packed with assessment tools, simulations, case studies, and exercises, Cultural Intelligence will help transform individuals and organizations into effective intercultural communicators of the gospel.
EXCERPT
What do you do when you encounter someone who isn't like you? How do you feel? What goes on inside you? How do you relate to him or her? These are the kinds of questions we want to explore in this book. Few things are more basic to life than expressing love and respect for people who look, think, believe, act, and see differently than we do. We want to adapt to the barrage of cultures around us while still remaining true to ourselves. We want to let the world change us so that we can be part of changing the world. And we want to move from the desire to love across the chasm of cultural difference to the ability to express our love for people of difference. Relating lovingly to our fellow human beings is central to what it means to be human. And when it comes down to it, Christian ministry at its core is interacting with all kinds of people in ways that give them glimpses of Jesus in us.
The billions of us sharing planet Earth together have so much in common. We're all born. We all die. We're all created in the image of God. We eat, sleep, persevere, and care for our young. We long for meaning and purpose, and we develop societies with those around us. But the way we go about the many things we have in common is deeply rooted in our unique personalities and cultures. So although we have so much in common, we have as much or more about us that's different.
EXCERPT
What do you do when you encounter someone who isn't like you? How do you feel? What goes on inside you? How do you relate to him or her? These are the kinds of questions we want to explore in this book. Few things are more basic to life than expressing love and respect for people who look, think, believe, act, and see differently than we do. We want to adapt to the barrage of cultures around us while still remaining true to ourselves. We want to let the world change us so that we can be part of changing the world. And we want to move from the desire to love across the chasm of cultural difference to the ability to express our love for people of difference. Relating lovingly to our fellow human beings is central to what it means to be human. And when it comes down to it, Christian ministry at its core is interacting with all kinds of people in ways that give them glimpses of Jesus in us.
The billions of us sharing planet Earth together have so much in common. We're all born. We all die. We're all created in the image of God. We eat, sleep, persevere, and care for our young. We long for meaning and purpose, and we develop societies with those around us. But the way we go about the many things we have in common is deeply rooted in our unique personalities and cultures. So although we have so much in common, we have as much or more about us that's different.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
85 people are currently reading
450 people want to read
About the author
David Livermore
28 books42 followersDAVID LIVERMORE, PH.D., is president and partner at the Cultural Intelligence Center and a visiting research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He has done consulting and training with leaders in 100 countries and is the author of Leading with Cultural Intelligence (978-0-8144-1487-3).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
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July 6, 2025Another solid read for class. Good theory and good application.
September 29, 2022
Incredible. Perceptive. Showed me ingrained ways of thinking due to my culture I didn’t even know I had. Balances the value of self with the gospel call to bridge the chasm to the “other” so well. Highly, highly recommend.
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October 6, 2021i had to read this for my first year seminar class!
May 4, 2020
like most books of this genre, it could be about 100 pages shorter. that being said, Livermore's discussion of bounded and centered sets succinctly verbalized content in a way that I had been struggling to verbalize for quite a long time now.
Livermore also challenges American readers to analyze their cultural context for what it is, a culture. This is a much-needed challenge that tends to be lacking from most books of this nature.
Livermore also challenges American readers to analyze their cultural context for what it is, a culture. This is a much-needed challenge that tends to be lacking from most books of this nature.
November 4, 2022
Fairly thorough overview of the process of developing cultural intelligence across global cultures, age cultures and sub-cultures. A strong focus on love for the ‘other’ as a motivation. One of the better books of its genre. The emphasis on understanding and valuing one’s own cultural background is often missing from the discussion on cultural intelligence, and this book handles it well. Chapter 10 on Herbert’s bounded and centered sets was extremely helpful to my thinking. Recommend.
April 29, 2025
Livermore’s Cultural Intelligence is a brilliant book for those are looking to increase their “cultural intelligence”. I had a lot of fun reading this book. It makes this simple and easy to understand. It also gave me much insight of how to think when visiting other cultures. I plan on using some of these practices when I visit Poland this summer.
May 25, 2023
Not an easy read but it's a valuable resource for everyone who is engaged in crossing cultures, which today is almost all of us.
February 19, 2021
I read this book for a Cross Cultural Ministry class and benefitted from it. It has been interesting to be challenged to think more meaningfully about my own culture and the cultures of others. However, I think some of the theological underpinnings of the book were a bit weak at times, and he recommends writers like Richard Rohr. No thank you haha
March 14, 2013
This is a book on being "culturally intelligent" -- i.e. globally/culturally savvy -- which happens to be written by a Christian. A non-Christian could read this book and understand 99% of.
It's a fine book, but the author ends up coming across as rather judgmental of those without cultural intelligence. It's full of good examples, and yet I never really connected with the author. I think most people would learn a lot from this book, without loving it.
It's a fine book, but the author ends up coming across as rather judgmental of those without cultural intelligence. It's full of good examples, and yet I never really connected with the author. I think most people would learn a lot from this book, without loving it.
October 23, 2012
What do you do when you encounter someone who isn’t like you? This is the question that opens his book on cultural intelligence (CQ) by David A. Livermore. CQ is a multi disciplinary approach to contextualization that measures cultural awareness in the same way IQ measures the level of intelligence. CQ is necessary because there is a cultural divide that exists in all areas of our life in some fashion within an increasing global village. The book speaks formally to western culture, although it can apply to a broad audience. The essential motivation of CQ is to look inward towards authentic transformation, of which love plays a central role, in order to achieve the outward behavioral change necessary to reach across cultural divides. This process is theoretical and practical as it looks to develop us personally and relationally within a proper understanding of the core of the Gospel.
Livermore suggests that if we begin with the Gospel, what we discover is the process of God contextualizing in to our worldview, taking His language and expressing it within our own. He writes, “Christianity is the most multicultural faith in the world. It has its roots in Hebrew and Greek, and yet has managed to speak to our world” (p33). One of the clear challenges in approaching a discussion of CQ is that in Western culture we tend to be leery of culture for fear of cheapening this Gospel. At the same time, because of the seemingly relative and inclusive nature of contextualizing, we fail to see our own penchant for stripping culture from our own understanding of the Gospel, thus thinking that our ideas should apply in the same way to everyone everywhere. Livermore writes, “Some of the most volatile debates among Christians center around which aspects of Christianity are up for grabs and which are not” (p43). But unless we first discover a desire to grow in our CQ and challenge our own perceptions, we will remain severely limited not only in our understanding of how the Gospel and love works in our own lives, but also in being a faithful witness to the culture around us.
Livermore emphasizes our ability to ‘understand’ as an important indicator of CQ. “We have a universal tendency to think that other people do things for the same reasons we do them (p61).” Western Christianity however carries a different worldview than the majority of the world. It is set within a highly individualistic perspective that remains centered on freedom, equality and personal happiness through the pursuit of knowledge. Having broken from the old world monarchy, this culture mindset tends to function on the belief that every problem can be fixed, and that fairness is the highest virtue. These sets of values express themselves most readily through direct language and relationships that exist for the enjoyment of the individual and to increase self worth. This stands opposed to the sense of commitment and obligation within relationship and the communal perspective that guides the majority of cultures around us.
Livermore presents CQ as further defined as “a pattern of thinking, feeling, and reacting to various situations and actions” P80. He goes on to describe it is the shared understandings which people use within a society to organize their actions, these understandings and actions being divided in to surface/conscious and below the surface/subconscious categories. This plays in to the question of how much of our individual personality is truly shaped individually, a question that can challenge the western notion of freedom and individualism. The truth is that all beliefs and actions are affected to a great degree by culture. Livermore helps navigate this by exploring how human nature, that which is universal to being human across cultures, becomes differentiated and expressed within the cultural boundaries that distinguish groups of people within these universals. Our personalities then distinguish the individual within culture. We therefore can only truly come to know the individual within relationship by increasing our awareness of the culture the forms them, and we should do so primarily motivated by that which unifies us as being human.
Whether we are looking at perceptions of time, means of communication, or levels of power and risk inherent in a given culture, the degree to which our worldview governs how we organize the things around us is massive. For as much as we might think we are free of this influence, a part of learning how to move towards an increased CQ is to recognize our own worldview in relation to that which daily shapes it beneath the surface. We must accept the degree to which we inherit ways of thinking and assumptions. As Livermore writes, he emphasizes the importance of spending time thinking and observing those components of our worldview. Here he writes, “In understanding these values we gain the ability to think and listen first and speak second” P140. The is a challenging notion for the best of us. It is clear though that observing and understanding are two distinct parts of this journey. CQ is measured more so by our level of true understanding, which brings us back to a necessary inward transformation within the idea of empathy as what we observe genuinely changes us and humbles us. Livermore writes, “Empathy is the ability to imagine ourselves in someone else’s position and to intuit what that person is feeling” p159. By employing empathy we gain a sense of praxis, defined as the process in which we move from simple observation to a critical and expressive understanding within active experience. If we are able to move effectively from empathy and empathic response as we face obstacles such as fear and self-efficacy, we can then gain a clearer sense of our capacity to truly love from within a developed CQ. True empathy both embraces and expects the components of culture shock as that which can help us grow in our understanding of ourselves purely for the sake of being able to love others more effectively. A powerful notion indeed.
Livermore suggests that if we begin with the Gospel, what we discover is the process of God contextualizing in to our worldview, taking His language and expressing it within our own. He writes, “Christianity is the most multicultural faith in the world. It has its roots in Hebrew and Greek, and yet has managed to speak to our world” (p33). One of the clear challenges in approaching a discussion of CQ is that in Western culture we tend to be leery of culture for fear of cheapening this Gospel. At the same time, because of the seemingly relative and inclusive nature of contextualizing, we fail to see our own penchant for stripping culture from our own understanding of the Gospel, thus thinking that our ideas should apply in the same way to everyone everywhere. Livermore writes, “Some of the most volatile debates among Christians center around which aspects of Christianity are up for grabs and which are not” (p43). But unless we first discover a desire to grow in our CQ and challenge our own perceptions, we will remain severely limited not only in our understanding of how the Gospel and love works in our own lives, but also in being a faithful witness to the culture around us.
Livermore emphasizes our ability to ‘understand’ as an important indicator of CQ. “We have a universal tendency to think that other people do things for the same reasons we do them (p61).” Western Christianity however carries a different worldview than the majority of the world. It is set within a highly individualistic perspective that remains centered on freedom, equality and personal happiness through the pursuit of knowledge. Having broken from the old world monarchy, this culture mindset tends to function on the belief that every problem can be fixed, and that fairness is the highest virtue. These sets of values express themselves most readily through direct language and relationships that exist for the enjoyment of the individual and to increase self worth. This stands opposed to the sense of commitment and obligation within relationship and the communal perspective that guides the majority of cultures around us.
Livermore presents CQ as further defined as “a pattern of thinking, feeling, and reacting to various situations and actions” P80. He goes on to describe it is the shared understandings which people use within a society to organize their actions, these understandings and actions being divided in to surface/conscious and below the surface/subconscious categories. This plays in to the question of how much of our individual personality is truly shaped individually, a question that can challenge the western notion of freedom and individualism. The truth is that all beliefs and actions are affected to a great degree by culture. Livermore helps navigate this by exploring how human nature, that which is universal to being human across cultures, becomes differentiated and expressed within the cultural boundaries that distinguish groups of people within these universals. Our personalities then distinguish the individual within culture. We therefore can only truly come to know the individual within relationship by increasing our awareness of the culture the forms them, and we should do so primarily motivated by that which unifies us as being human.
Whether we are looking at perceptions of time, means of communication, or levels of power and risk inherent in a given culture, the degree to which our worldview governs how we organize the things around us is massive. For as much as we might think we are free of this influence, a part of learning how to move towards an increased CQ is to recognize our own worldview in relation to that which daily shapes it beneath the surface. We must accept the degree to which we inherit ways of thinking and assumptions. As Livermore writes, he emphasizes the importance of spending time thinking and observing those components of our worldview. Here he writes, “In understanding these values we gain the ability to think and listen first and speak second” P140. The is a challenging notion for the best of us. It is clear though that observing and understanding are two distinct parts of this journey. CQ is measured more so by our level of true understanding, which brings us back to a necessary inward transformation within the idea of empathy as what we observe genuinely changes us and humbles us. Livermore writes, “Empathy is the ability to imagine ourselves in someone else’s position and to intuit what that person is feeling” p159. By employing empathy we gain a sense of praxis, defined as the process in which we move from simple observation to a critical and expressive understanding within active experience. If we are able to move effectively from empathy and empathic response as we face obstacles such as fear and self-efficacy, we can then gain a clearer sense of our capacity to truly love from within a developed CQ. True empathy both embraces and expects the components of culture shock as that which can help us grow in our understanding of ourselves purely for the sake of being able to love others more effectively. A powerful notion indeed.
December 17, 2023
IQ
EQ - how we handle emotions
CQ - capability to interact effectively across culture
Knowledge, mindfulness, and skills
Knowledge - understand cross cultural phenomena
Mindfulness - continually observing and understanding cultural meanings and using that understanding for immediate action and long term learning, to interpret particular situations, paying attention to the present situation and disregarding our own rigid mental programming.
Skills - adapt behaviour to act appropriately
Need to break our cultural cruise control (assumption)
Leadership - the ability to influence other ppl to strive willingly to reach common goals. One must understand the motivation of those being led - their willingness to exert effort toward a goal.
1 Concern for tasks
2 Concern for relationships
3 Leaders own style
4 Expectations of followers
5 Demand of situation
Task - directed towards the groups goal
Process - directed at examining and improving how the group goes about this task
EQ - how we handle emotions
CQ - capability to interact effectively across culture
Knowledge, mindfulness, and skills
Knowledge - understand cross cultural phenomena
Mindfulness - continually observing and understanding cultural meanings and using that understanding for immediate action and long term learning, to interpret particular situations, paying attention to the present situation and disregarding our own rigid mental programming.
Skills - adapt behaviour to act appropriately
Need to break our cultural cruise control (assumption)
Leadership - the ability to influence other ppl to strive willingly to reach common goals. One must understand the motivation of those being led - their willingness to exert effort toward a goal.
1 Concern for tasks
2 Concern for relationships
3 Leaders own style
4 Expectations of followers
5 Demand of situation
Task - directed towards the groups goal
Process - directed at examining and improving how the group goes about this task
December 12, 2025
Cultural Intelligence provides a practical framework for understanding how cultural backgrounds shape communication, expectations, and behavior in a multicultural world. I found value in the emphasis on awareness and adaptability, especially for leadership and ministry contexts where misunderstanding can hinder engagement. However, the book places a heavy focus on effectiveness and cultural accommodation, which at times feels disconnected from the need for clear moral and biblical grounding. Cultural understanding is helpful, but it should never supersede truth or require compromise of biblical convictions. Overall, the book is a useful tool for learning how to navigate cultural differences, but it must be applied carefully through a Scripture-first lens.
October 25, 2025
Although this book is directed towards those in youth ministry it is helpful to anyone wanting to grow in their cross cultural interactions. Almost any book that seeks to help the reader with cross cultural experiences will focus on understanding the other culture. This book does that too but it also goes deeper by encouraging the reader to also understand what’s beneath our own behavior and the behavior of the other culture and to be motivated by love for the other. The book is realistic about the challenges, and the details in this book can be overwhelming, but it strikes me as a valuable work.
June 28, 2022
This book provided so much to think about in terms to relating properly to other people. I would highly recommend it for any Christian who wants to learn how to relate better to people from different cultures. I appreciated the refreshing challenges provided to more fundamentalist forms of Christianity. However, I would have preferred a work without a decidedly Christian message. Also, I thought the work could have been better without as many stories about the author's personal experiences.
October 11, 2017
If you love Jesus and want to talk and interact with people of another culture whether this is teenagers, the elderly, someone from another country or just someone who does not share your beliefs, assumptions, or background; this books explains how you can so do with some ideas of what can trip up your attempts to reach them.
December 11, 2017
In this book Livermore comprehensively explores the concept of CQ (Cultural intelligence) which he interprets as the ability to be sensitive to and interpret cultural differences. Though coming from a christian worldview, Livermore uses a socialogical model and draws from his extensive experience travelling and teaching on this topic.
February 5, 2023
Interesting concepts, but not very Biblical.
There is value to learning how to navigate culture in order to demonstrate the love of Christ to others. But many of the concepts here equate to psycho-babel and the author makes only feeble attempts to associate his teaching to Scripture.
There is value to learning how to navigate culture in order to demonstrate the love of Christ to others. But many of the concepts here equate to psycho-babel and the author makes only feeble attempts to associate his teaching to Scripture.
October 30, 2018
Read this for a class. Livermore often comes across as hypocritical - he is very judgmental of the people who don't have a cultural intelligence like him, which is exactly what he's trying to caution against.
November 6, 2018
Honestly I think anyone thinking critically about ministry should read this book and be able to identify certain aspects of this in their real life. Very helpful, but it needs to be read in concordance with a teacher of some sort.
October 18, 2022
Overall it was well written and thoughtful. It really helped me learn to be more culturally aware. This translates into many different areas of my life. We live in such a multi-cultural world, it would be a shame to miss the beauty of it because we don't see others ethnicity as valuable.
April 20, 2024
This was a wonderful book about being more open, sensitive, and understanding of different cultures and backgrounds. I would recommend this book to anyone pursuing any type of cross cultural mission work.
Read
September 8, 2019Helpful self-evaluation in how we relate to the world and communities around us.
Want to read
January 5, 2022This is the require book for the first year of my seminary course, Missions in Global Perspectives
January 12, 2022
Lots of good info about cultural intelligence but wrapped in religion which is not my thing.
April 14, 2023
Great book! Loved learning more about others perspective on culture and how to recognize that we can’t base others experience with our background, religion or mind set.
May 4, 2023
An interesting foray into cultural anthropology.
December 5, 2024
I guess traveling just makes this book feel kinda redundant
June 23, 2025
Really good introduction to cultural intelligence. It’s personable and digestible. I’d recommend to every American ever? Lol.
September 11, 2014
The author argues that CQ builds upon EQ (emotional intelligence). Another set of skills are called for when we're in a cross-cultural situation. And such situations now take place every day - not just when we travel. In fact, as I was reading the last chapter of the book at the doctor's office today each of the patient's in the waiting room was speaking a different language! We need to navigate generational differences, ethno-social differences, and organizational differences.
The other key concept Livermore emphasizes is moving beyond an idea of CQ that only involves more training and education. That is a superficial intelligence rooted in behavior modification. The essence of real CQ is love learning to express itself via self-awareness, understanding, and action.
In terms of IQ, Livermore clearly has a high one. Yet he writes in a very accessible style. He explains several high-level and academic models in a simple manner. A definite plus in this book.
The other key concept Livermore emphasizes is moving beyond an idea of CQ that only involves more training and education. That is a superficial intelligence rooted in behavior modification. The essence of real CQ is love learning to express itself via self-awareness, understanding, and action.
In terms of IQ, Livermore clearly has a high one. Yet he writes in a very accessible style. He explains several high-level and academic models in a simple manner. A definite plus in this book.
November 28, 2014
By the time I was done I had decided I knew little about how to interact with people from other cultures. Though I think that's not entirely true, I was certainly helped to see new ways to evaluate. Livermore's term is "go deep." I'm anxious to spend time with some folks in Kenya this week and see if I can develop more Cultural Intelligence.
A bit on the academic side with lots of theory, this has plenty of real life examples to make it very readable and understandable. No one should shy away from this book. In fact, because we all cross cultures of one kind or another (generational, organizational, ethnic, etc), we can all use the information and challenges in the book.
The final list of suggestions for developing Cultural Intelligence is worthy of note in itself.
A bit on the academic side with lots of theory, this has plenty of real life examples to make it very readable and understandable. No one should shy away from this book. In fact, because we all cross cultures of one kind or another (generational, organizational, ethnic, etc), we can all use the information and challenges in the book.
The final list of suggestions for developing Cultural Intelligence is worthy of note in itself.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews