ABOUT QUINTON PRETORIUS AND Cultural Intelligence
HELPING BUSINESSES TO BE MORE ENGAGED & CONNECTED
Quinton’s expertise stretches across various areas including cultural intelligence, transformation, and leadership. He believes all people, races, and cultures – in spite of their apparent differences – are driven and inspired by common needs and values and that they will generally respond in similar ways, irrespective of the environment and context they may find themselves in.
As a youth leader in the 90s, Quinton travelled to schools, reformatories, and juvenile centres, discovering the depths of division and imbalance between different segments of society. He soon came to the realisation that when you love someone, something within them changes. It was this realisation that later became the foundation of his subject matter.
In 1995, Quinton became involved with a culturally diverse team of youths who produced and presented emotive drama productions around pressing issues at the time. As the team travelled the country, portraying the emotive reality of the dynamics of the South African society back then, Quinton began to develop a sense of his own South African identity. With this came an understanding of the local needs for holistic transformation and personal leadership. That was the beginning of his voyage into cultural intelligence and transformation.
From 1999, Quinton also served on an international team for youth, Team Ithemba. Their mandate was to convey the miraculous story of South Africa’s transition from Apartheid to freedom and reconciliation to the world through the medium of drama. He progressed from a production and acting role to become the deputy director of the entire programme, shouldering responsibility for the recruitment, training, and coordination of five creative arts teams that eventually travelled to Europe and the USA. He was also the coordinator of the Siyithemba Project, which sought to transform schools and equip students and teachers to achieve academic excellence.
In 2005, he gained exposure to various models of leadership from the MIT and Harvard Leadership programmes while touring the USA as a Fellow of the Clinton Democracy Fellowship Programme. He was afforded the opportunity to directly engage with some of the most influential leaders of our time such as Jeff Schwartz (CEO of Timberland), Greg Ricks (Sub-Sahara Africa Office Director of the Oprah Winfrey Foundation), and Bill Clinton (former US President). These experiences provided the springboard for his interest into adaptive leadership and reinforced his compulsion to bring about change in his community back home.
I PARTNER WITH CLIENTS TO:
Attract and retain the right people to achieve business goals
WHAT CAN WE DO TO IMPROVE EMPLOYEE MORALE AND BUILD A POSITIVE WORKPLACE CULTURE?
Enable leaders and teams to elevate engagement, performance, and resiliency
WHAT CAN WE DO TO IMPROVE EMPLOYEE MORALE AND BUILD A POSITIVE WORKPLACE CULTURE?
YEARS OF EXPERIENCE
Industries Served
COUNTRIES SERVED
Employees ENGAGED Annually
What is Cultural Intelligence?
People have long understood that success in today’s globalized economy requires an ability to adapt to different cultures. Cultural Intelligence is unique in that it focuses specifically on the skills needed for success in unfamiliar cultures. Leaders with the ability to Leverage Diversity have a good understanding as to how to encounter new cultural situations, judge what goes on in them and make appropriate adjustments, to understand and behave effectively in those otherwise disorienting circumstances.
Cultural Intelligence begins with four distinct capabilities namely:
Drive (motivation), the person’s interest confidence in functioning effectively in culturally diverse settings. Our studies have found that without eagerness to take on the challenges of multicultural work, leaders face a high rate of failure.
Knowledge (cognition), the person’s knowledge of how cultures are similar and different. The point is not to be an expert on every culture but to understand core cultural differences and their effects on everyday business.
Strategy (meta-cognition), how the person makes sense of culturally diverse experiences. This comes into play when making judgments about one’s own or others’ thought processes. It makes possible effective planning in the context of cultural differences.
Action (behavior), the person’s capability to adapt his or her behavior to different cultures. It requires having a flexiblemrepertoire of responses to suit various situations while still remaining true to one’s self.

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ADDRESS
Based in Johannesburg.
Serving Africa and beyond.