In several countries a growing number of companies have at its service employees of different nationalities. It is important that their leaders denote cultural sensitivity because only then the professional relationship can be positive and fruitful. This means (Rego & Cunha, 2009):
To have cultural sensitivity is to learn not to judge prejudicially the other country's premises, uses, values and idiosyncrasies. Only then a leader can better manage their employees and at least not raise them dislike or repulse reactions with ethnocentric and/or ethnophobic behaviours or attitudes.
High cultural intelligence implies that "an outsider has a seemingly natural ability to interpret someone's unfamiliar and ambiguous gestures in just a way that person's compatriots and colleagues would" (Earley & Mosakowski, 2004, p. 139).
If cultural intelligence is important when interacting with foreigners, it is particularly important when a manager simultaneously works with individuals of various different cultural backgrounds, that is, when the manager is someone who must get results from people who are very different from him/herself, and from each other as well (Schneider & Barsoux, 1997).
Managers with cross-cultural training, denoting certain personal characteristics (e.g., open-minded, high communication skills, cosmopolitan attitude, diplomatic sensitivity) and knowing the cultural peculiarities of their actual context, are better able to manage in an international context, whether in his/her country or in a host country (Rego & Cunha, 2009).