Despite a successful international career at companies like HP and GE, Chika Miyamori spent many years feeling that something wasn’t quite working. Her ideas were often well received—yet not acted upon. Feedback sounded positive, but outcomes didn’t follow.

At the time, she assumed the issue was language. Like many global professionals, she invested heavily in improving her English, believing fluency would close the gap. But the friction remained. Over time, she began to notice a pattern: the misunderstandings were not random, and they were not personal.

The breakthrough came when Miyamori encountered Geert Hofstede’s cultural framework. It gave structure to what she had been sensing all along. “It wasn’t language,” she recalls. “It was culture.” That realization reframed years of frustration—not as individual failure, but as a clash of invisible assumptions. And it fundamentally changed how she understood leadership across borders.

Today, Miyamori is a CQ (Cultural Intelligence) Expert and Leadership Coach who has worked with over 50 nationalities.

"I started this work because I don't want anyone to go through the pain, confusion, self-doubt or unnecessary investment in language lessons that I experienced. I want people to see that differences are power."

The framework to understand inter-cultural differences

Hofstede's groundbreaking work began in the 1960s and 70s when, as an HR research manager at IBM Europe, he surveyed over 100,000 employees across multiple countries. Without computers, using only paper and pencil, he discovered something unexpected: the biggest differences came from national culture, surpassing gender or generation.

"He was one of the first people to quantify national cultural differences using scores from 0 to 100," Miyamori explains. He identified six dimensions to explain cultural differences, including how societies relate to power, individuality, uncertainty, gender, time orientation, and indulgence.

What makes the framework still relevant today, more than 50 years later? "The most important thing is the relative position of the countries," says Miyamori. "Even though we are changing toward more individualistic societies and less power distance, the distance between, for example, the Nordics and Japan remain. That's why this model is still valuable."

The four dimensions that matter most at work

While Hofstede identified six cultural dimensions, Miyamori emphasizes four that have the most significant impact in workplace settings:

• Individualism vs. collectivism shapes communication style fundamentally. In individualist societies like the US, UK, or Nordic countries, people are expected to speak directly and express their opinions clearly. In collectivist cultures, harmony takes precedence, and communication tends to be more indirect—even when people speak extensively, they may leave their point unstated.
• Power distance determines how hierarchy functions. In low power-distance countries like Germany or Scandinavia, employees expect to participate in decision-making and view power holders as equals who simply have different roles. In high power-distance cultures, hierarchy is more accepted, and employees may defer to authority figures.
• Uncertainty avoidance affects how organizations handle the unknown. "A few years ago, a Japanese train left 25 seconds early and the company issued a press release to apologize," Miyamori recounts. "I got inquiries from non-Japanese friends—why do you need to apologize? In my country, trains never start on time." This precision reflects Japan's high uncertainty avoidance—the emotional need to minimize unpredictability through rules and standardization. Low uncertainty avoidance countries like the UK are more comfortable with ambiguity and change.
• Achievement vs. quality of life reveals what truly motivates people. High achievement cultures—including the US, UK, China, India, and Japan—set goals and are driven to meet them, though they express this differently. Quality of life cultures, like the Netherlands, prioritize work-life balance. "Part-time worker numbers are very high in the Netherlands, and they don't care because it's really important for them to be with their beloved ones rather than having the highest position in the company," Miyamori notes.

When "great presentation" means something different

These cultural dimensions create misunderstandings even when everyone speaks the same language. Miyamori shares a common scenario that confuses non-Japanese executives: "When they presented something at the board or executive meeting, they were told it was a great presentation. Then when they came back to their own country, their proposal was declined and they got confused."

From a Japanese perspective, this reflects the need for internal alignment before making final decisions. "Maybe at the board meeting everybody thinks it was great. Then when they check the content with, for example, the financial department, they need to change their decision," she explains. "Meanwhile, non-Japanese executives get confused because they were told it was a great presentation—why was their idea declined?"

Similarly, Japanese teams often ask for information that others perceive as excessive. What feels like a small request in Japan, Miyamori explains, can come across very differently in the US where colleagues may think it’s simply too much information.

These are different cultural lenses interpreting the same behavior.

Three essential skills for global leaders

Miyamori recommends three priorities for leaders developing their cultural intelligence:

• Self-awareness: Understanding your own cultural assumptions and blind spots. "Each one of us has unconscious bias and cultural lenses. You need to really know your own cultural assumptions," she says.
• Other awareness: Using frameworks like Hofstede's to understand why people behave as they do. "What does 'good' mean to them? It's all invisible. Using the model to understand others is the second step."
• Perspective-taking: Seeing situations through others' eyes. "When I talk to people, I always try to put on their lenses," Miyamori explains. "When I talk to Americans, I really need to be more assertive because even though I'm very direct compared to other Japanese, I'm still indirect compared to American people." Perspective-taking, she argues, isn’t self-erasure. It’s choosing the right tool for the room while keeping your core intact.
• Building trust through predictability

In diverse teams, Miyamori looks for predictability: clear meeting norms, explicit decision points, and routines people can rely on. One practical tactic is brainwriting—having people write ideas before discussion—so quieter members and non-native speakers contribute without fighting for airtime.

Consider a common scenario: a team with four Americans and two Japanese members. The Americans speak quickly and dominate the conversation. The Japanese members stay quiet, even though they have valuable input.

"When it comes to Japanese fluency in English, they have good ideas. [The challenge] is how to express them," Miyamori notes. Good leaders give their employees a way to communicate even in an asymmetric discussion.

"People who are not fluent in English or people who are not direct communicators can also think and write it on paper, and each member can share their idea. Everybody can have a vehicle to say something,” she says.

Making DEI actually work

Miyamori sees cultural intelligence as the missing link in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. "CQ brings DEI to life, because policies and systems alone don't automatically enable people to work effectively across differences," she argues. "CQ can fill the gap, helping individuals understand themselves, understand others, manage assumptions, and adapt their behavior in real time."

She points to how global companies like Starbucks and Google have learned to localize their approaches. "CQ can help leaders localize DEI in a way that respects each culture while still building inclusion,” she notes.

When Google rolled out its “20% time” policy in Southeast Asia and Japan, many employees were unsure how to use the freedom it offered. The solution wasn’t changing the policy itself but adapting how it was implemented — providing clearer guidance that respected higher power-distance cultures while preserving Google’s core value of innovation.

The path forward

For years, Miyamori tried to solve misunderstandings as a communication problem. What experience eventually taught her was deeper and more uncomfortable: the real challenge was not how clearly she spoke, but how meaning is shaped by culture long before words are exchanged.

Today, her work is guided by a simple but demanding belief. Cultural intelligence is not about becoming someone else. It is about understanding your own lenses, recognizing those of others, and choosing—consciously—how to bridge the space between them.

Culture does not disappear in global organizations. It becomes more powerful. Leaders who learn to work with it—not around it—unlock trust, innovation, and inclusion that no language training alone can deliver.