Your team has the talent. So why does everything take three times longer than it should? The answer isn’t solely about communication skills; it’s about cultural intelligence (CQ) . Let’s say you have a global project meeting over Zoom. The U.S. manager dives straight into business, while the Japan team stays quiet, waiting for cues from the hierarchy. The silence is deafening. The manager thinks there’s disengagement, while the Japanese team assumes she doesn’t value harmony.