Want to Develop Your Cultural Intelligence?

My Curated List of Must-Have Resources for expats and multicultural professionals Navigating Life Between Cultures

Mar 01, 2026

Welcome to The Inclusion Room — a space where literature, science, and storytelling meet to unlock the power of diversity, inspiring both personal and professional growth.

Dear Readers,

Living abroad often starts with curiosity — the thrill of meeting the Other. But living abroad intentionally means taking that curiosity further: wanting to deeply understand what makes the other different from us, and what makes us different from them.

Cultural intelligence is the ability to recognize the lens you're wearing, understand the one your interlocutor is using, and switch intentionally between the two.

This is an essential skill for those of us building a whole, satisfying life between cultures and I find this absolutely fascinating.

As a multipotentialite, I go through phases of deep obsession, and right now I’m in full “cultural dimensions researcher mode.”

Books piled on my desk, ten Google tabs open, earbuds in, notes spread across multiple Moleskines. Full immersion.

Part of this research feeds directly into my Cultural Bridge Series — my monthly deep-dives into cultural intelligence in the workplace, based on the best resources available on the topic.

But today I’m taking you behind the scenes of my personal intercultural journey, sharing what’s actually on my table right now.

Grab something warm — if you’re even a little curious about interculturality, I think you’ll find something here for you.

Here’s what I’ve gathered this time:

📚 Four books sitting on my (very crowded) desk

🎧 Three podcasts - my best commute companions

💌 Two Substacks to understand our complex world

📚 Books

Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind — Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede & Michael Minkov

This is the foundational text on cultural dimensions — the one you keep referencing when you realize that what you thought was a personality conflict is actually a deeply ingrained cultural value at play. Hofstede’s research spans decades and dozens of countries.

Once you start seeing culture as software running silently in the background of every interaction, you can’t unsee it.

Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands — Terri Morrison & Wayne A. Conaway

Where Hofstede gives you the theory, this book gives you the field guide. Practical, country-by-country, almost encyclopedic — it answers the “but how should I actually behave?” questions. I reach for it when I’m preparing to work with a new culture and need to move quickly from awareness to action.

Each chapter focuses on a country through several angles:

What is your Cultural knowledge
Tips on doing business
Country History
Know before you go
Business practice
Protocol (greetings, gift, dress…)

Every chapter is a reminder: The most universal quality is diversity. (Michel de Montaigne)

Coaching across Cultures - Philippe Rosinski

What I love about this book is the shift in perspective it creates: cultural differences are not obstacles to manage — they are forces to leverage. Rosinski’s Cultural Orientations Framework gives you a concrete set of dimensions that apply in any workplace, from how people handle time, to communication styles, to power dynamics.

But what makes it truly unique is the scope: it goes beyond your culture of origin to include organizational and professional cultures as well. Engineers, nurses, business managers, every group carries its own cultural programming.

A game changer for any intercultural coach or professional, but also for expats looking for answers (and questions!) about their own integration in a new context.

I have already shared how I came across this book and how reading it changed my trajectory. And I have exciting news: I’ll be attending his training in April! A milestone I’ve been looking forward to for a long time, and one that will deepen everything I bring to my intercultural coaching work. Stay tuned!

The Culture Map — Erin Meyer

It’s the one I leaf through the most at the moment. Meyer takes Hofstede’s dimensions and makes them immediately applicable, especially in professional contexts. Her eight scales (communication, feedback, leadership, trust…) give you a map to navigate differences starting from your own cultural frame.

Because don’t forget: culture is always relative.

If you're looking for the foundational framework on cultural dimensions, start with Hofstede. If you want to apply cultural theory directly to workplace dynamics, The Culture Map is your starting point.

A small but important note before you dive in:

The books I recommend here trace tendencies and patterns — not absolute truths. Individual variation is enormous, and no framework can capture the full complexity of a human being. Think of them as maps, not territories. Use them to build awareness, not assumptions. The goal is always to stay curious about the other, and about yourself.

🎧 Podcast

The Intercultural Toolbox

This podcast is exactly what it sounds like, and so much more than you'd expect. Each episode, a guest shares their personal intercultural journey and brings concrete tools and resources to go deeper. It's a goldmine for intercultural coaches and professionals: part lived experience, part curated knowledge, all substance. The kind of podcast where you finish one episode and immediately open a new Moleskine page (or a Notion table).

This episode, in particular, caught my attention for the richness of the resources it offers.

Inclure - Le podcast qui connecte les cultures

A French-language podcast I discovered at the end of last year and haven't stopped listening to since. What drew me in is the variety — of guests, of angles, of entry points into the same big question: how do we learn to understand each other across cultures? And behind it all, a truly noble mission: making intercultural learning accessible to society at large.

This is an inspiring episode: Coopérer pour survivre

Surprises Interculturelles - Charlotte Courtois

Another French-language podcast that takes you on a world tour: customs, traditions, encounters with the Other and with yourself. The host brings a wonderful mix of warmth and honesty — because navigating cultures takes curiosity, yes, but also vulnerability.

💌 Substacks

Cultural Perspective by Way Yuhl

What I love about this newsletter it is the angle: not what happened, but why, and what the deeper cultural and historical patterns behind it tell us about what comes next. For those of us living between cultures in an increasingly complex world, having a tool to interpret rather than just react feels like having the key to finally make sense of it all.

Cultural Currents by André Darmanin

André writes about transformation and intergovernmental relations through a cultural intelligence lens — and what I love about his work is how he dissects institutions and the way they function when different cultural logics sit around the same table. His perspective on Brussels dynamics is particularly sharp and rare. Recently, I had the chance to co-write a post with him on cultural self-awareness, the first important step of cultural intelligence.

📣 Join the Conversation

Understanding cultures is the practice of staying curious, transforming friction into awareness.

This is just a slice of what’s keeping me intellectually alive right now. I’ll keep sharing as the journey unfolds — because everything I discover feeds directly into my work helping turn cultural complexity into clarity.

I’d love to hear your recommendations: What’s the best book or resource you’ve come across about Culture?

The Inclusion Room

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