Studying the Relationship between Cultural Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence among Outgoing Tour Leaders in Tehran

Extended Abstract : In order to study the relationship between Tehran’s outgoing tour leaders’ cultural intelligence (CQ) and their emotional intelligence (EI)¡ data were collected from 330 outgoing tour leaders. The correlation analysis was used to test the relationship between CQ and EI and the construct validity was confirmed by using confirmatory factor analysis. The results showed that CQ had a positive effect on EI. Besides¡ the hypothesis testing showed that there is a causal relationship between CQ and EI. The results of the study showed 31% of the outgoing tour leaders’ EI can be defined through CQ. By improving the tour leaders’ CQ¡ their EI could be improved subsequently. An outgoing tour leader with high CQ and EI¡ as a representative of a group of tourists¡ can improve the relationship between the tourists and the host community.
With the globalizing trend and highlighting the international interactions¡ personal relations with different cultural backgrounds become more and more important. One of the important factors that give rise to understanding and tolerance in multicultural environments is cultural intelligence. Today¡ psychologists consider emotional intelligence as an important characteristic difference along with scientific intelligence and contend that these differences can directly influence people’s ability of communication and thus their whole lives. Emotional intelligence is the people’s ability y to express their individual emotions and to understand other people’s emotions (Law et al.¡ 2004). With the increasing interest of politicians in non-oil revenue¡ tourism industry has received much more attention in the recent years. Considering the industry’s great potential to increase income¡ employment and foreign exchange earnings¡ and due to the little economic leakage¡ many of the policy makers try to replace the oil income with what the lucrative tourism industry can offer. This project aims to study the relationship between cultural intelligence and emotional intelligence among outgoing tour guides of city of Tehran¡ Iran. This research project aims to offer solutions and clues to tour guides in general and outgoing tour guides of Tehran in particular so that they would successfully control the challenges of cultural differences.
Earley and Ang (2003) are believed to be the first who introduced the concept of cultural intelligence. They defined cultural intelligence (CQ) as the ability to learn new patterns in cultural interactions and provide correct behavioral responses to these patterns. Cultural intelligence is¡ in fact¡ the ability to produce interactive and effective reactions to those people who are from various cultural backgrounds. Cultural intelligence enables people to recognize cultural differences through knowledge and understanding and behave appropriately in the face of different cultures (Van Dyne & Ang¡ 2005). Salovey and Mayer (1990) first introduced emotional intelligence and defined emotional intelligence as a kind of social intelligence¡ which enables an individual to observe others’ actions¡ differentiates between different emotions and channels one’s thoughts and actions using this information (Salovey & Mayer¡ 1990). This research is an applied one based on the aim of the study and the data were collected through questionnaires. The normality of data was achieved with the help of Kolmogorov-Smirnov¡ to investigate a significant relationship between variables¡ Pearson correlation coefficient was used and to test the causal relationship between variables¡ modeling structural equation was used.
Discussion and To test the normality of data distribution¡ Kolmogorov–Smirnov test was used. The level of significance for cultural intelligence variable is 0.329 which is bigger than 0.05 and therefore this variable is normal. The results of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test for Emotional Intelligence was 0.384 which is bigger than 0.05 and therefore this variable is normal. As the results indicate¡ there is a positive and significant relation between cultural intelligence and Emotional Intelligence (SigStructural equation modeling was used to test hypothesis and study the causal relation between variables. The results show that tour leaders'' cultural intelligence has a significant relation with their emotional intelligence. According to t statistical figure¡ cultural intelligence variable in the certainty level of 99% has a positive and significant effect on emotional intelligence. The relation between these two variables is a linear and direct one. Therefore¡ when tour leaders'' cultural intelligence improves and changes¡ their emotional intelligence increases. R equals 0.31. Thus¡ cultural intelligence variable could predict 31% of changes of tour leaders'' emotional intelligence.
The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationships between cultural intelligence and emotional intelligence. According to the results¡ outgoing tour leaders’ cultural intelligence has a significant relationship with their emotional intelligence. Besides¡ the Structural equation modeling shows that cultural intelligence variable could predict 31% of changes of tour leaders'' emotional intelligence. The results of this study confirm the findings of the previous research by Moon (2010). The results of this study show by improving cultural intelligence¡ a tour leader’s emotional intelligence will be improved and these leaders can understand other cultures better and make a better communication with the host community. Therefore such leaders can understand their own feelings and others’ feelings better and manage them in a better way which leads to the improvement of the relationship between a tour leader and the host community. So it is predicted to pay more attention to the factors which affect the quality of relationships in an industry¡ in which inter-cultural relations are of much importance