Cultural Competence

Cultural competence is the ability to communicate and understand people from different cultures effectively. You will need to know what to do and not do during cross-cultural interactions. You should be sure to study cultural differences before traveling to other countries or attempting to do business abroad. Read this chapter and reflect on how you can use the advice it presents to improve your skills.

Cross-Cultural Assignments

What steps can you take to be better prepared for cross-cultural assignments?

At some point in your career, you are very likely to be asked to be involved in cross-cultural operations. You may encounter employees from other countries in the local company you work for, or your company may send you to another country to run international operations. When these situations arise, you will need to be prepared to manage cultural differences. In this section, we discuss some of the things companies and individuals can do to better prepare for cross-national differences.

One of the goals of any cross-cultural training is to increase an employee's cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence refers to "individuals' capabilities to function and manage effectively in culturally diverse settings".

The culturally intelligent manager is someone who can operate without difficulty in cross-national settings. Recent research suggests that cultural intelligence is made up of four dimensions:

a cognitive dimension, focusing on the individual's knowledge of values and practices inherent in the new culture acquired through education and personal experiences
a meta-cognitive dimension, which reflects an individual's ability to use cross-cultural knowledge to understand and adapt to the cultural environment they are exposed to
a motivational dimension, which reflects the ability and desire to continuously learn new aspects of cultures and adapt to them
a behavioral dimension, based on the ability of the individual to exhibit the appropriate forms of verbal and nonverbal behaviors when interacting with people from another culture

To give you more insights into the cultural intelligence measure, (Figure) provides some representative statements used to gauge a person's understanding of these four dimensions of cultural intelligence and various aspects of cross-cultural interactions.

Cultural Intelligence Statements
Metacognitive	I am conscious of the cultural knowledge I use when interacting with people with different cultural backgrounds. I am conscious of the cultural knowledge I apply to cross-cultural interactions.
Cognitive	I know the legal and economic systems of other cultures. I know the cultural values and religious beliefs of other cultures.
Motivational	I enjoy interacting with people from different cultures. I enjoy living in cultures that are unfamiliar to me.
Behavioral	I change my non-verbal behavior when a cross-cultural interaction requires it. I alter my facial expressions when a cross-cultural interaction requires it.

Source: OpenStax, https://opentextbc.ca/principlesofmanagementopenstax/chapter/cross-cultural-assignments/
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