Critical Skills: Intercultural Awareness

Intercultural awareness refers to the ability to identify, understand, and work with different cultures and the people within them. Forces such as globalization and immigration that have helped to shape the modern world have made cultures more widespread and varied. They have also vastly increased the situations in which people representing different cultures interact. In those situations, intercultural awareness becomes an important ability.

The fundamental idea of intercultural awareness is that of culture itself. Although an important factor of humankind, culture may be challenging to define. In general, culture is a way of life shared by a certain group of people at a given time. This way of life includes beliefs and behaviors that are common to the group. In a broader sense, a culture may also include people’s attitudes, opinions, interests, desires, and means of expression. Culture may be tied into many other factors that help to define people, including their national origin, current nation, religion, race, ethnicity, or sexual identities.

Cultures help to influence the ideas and actions of their people, creating traditions, perspectives, and expectations that impact everyday life as well as long-term events. At the same time, cultures develop over time and adapt to changes both internal and external. Interactions between cultures may lead to any number of results, from apathy or hostility through cooperation and mutual benefit. Sometimes cultures blend together and, over time, form unique new cultures.

People with a shared culture often feel they have a common background, sometimes deeply rooted in history. This background may include struggles or accomplishments shared by the people. Cultures may identify with particular symbols, elevate certain people to the status of hero, or adopt shared activities such as rituals. Cultures generally also form and embrace certain values about what is right and wrong. Often, these values are not explicitly spoken, but are only discernible through a person’s actions. All of these provide manifestations of a culture and help it define itself as distinct.

Cultures may vary greatly between countries and regions. Sometimes, cultures may even differ significantly within smaller areas. Major cities, for example, are often highly multicultural places. A few blocks of a big city may be home to people from dozens of different lands and backgrounds. Many large companies also bring in employees from different cultures who must find common ground and learn to cooperate effectively. At all of these levels, intercultural awareness can be extremely helpful in building links and understanding between people that can enhance society, education, industry, and personal lives.

Core Skills & Competencies

Intercultural awareness is an important ability, particularly in the increasingly globalized modern world. However, for most people, it may take time and effort to develop. That is because intercultural awareness requires a wide range of skills and competencies.

The first step to achieving intercultural awareness begins within a person. That first step is to identify and recognize one’s own culture and how it affects one’s life and perceptions. Most people are born into a culture and grow up naturally absorbing various aspects of it. Although that ultimately makes them experts in their own culture, it may also make them feel as though their culture is the norm and other cultures deviate from that norm. Familiarity with one’s own culture may also make it hard for people to see how their cultural actions and behaviors—often performed unintentionally or even unconsciously—may affect other people, positively or negatively. For that reason, the first ability necessary for intercultural awareness is self-awareness.

People must understand their own backgrounds and the features of their own cultures before they can effectively interact with other cultures. For example, in American culture, people may be inclined to stand at a slight distance, shake hands, and speak informally as a sign of friendship. In other cultures, people may prefer to stand very close, nod their heads, and speak with elevated politeness to show their esteem. Recognizing one’s own cultural behaviors can help one see potential concerns in dealing with different cultures. This process leads to the skill of self-management, in which a person with self-awareness learns to control and sometimes modify her or his behaviors, especially when they may prove problematic.

The process of understanding other cultures stems largely from social awareness, an ability that lets people see, interpret, and understand how and why other people act as they do. A person who is socially aware is likely to carefully observe social situations. He or she may note where other people are gathered, whether they are sitting or standing, how they are talking and what they are saying, whether they are using nonverbal communication, and so on. The information gathered at this stage may combine with prior knowledge about people and cultures to help the person develop a better understanding of what is taking place.

Perceptions of other people and cultures stems from, and helps to develop, relationship skills. This is another crucial feature of intercultural awareness. Relationship skills refers to the approach a person takes to dealing with other people. In general, people with well-developed relationship skills try to approach other people with an open mind. They tend to be thoughtful, tolerant, and kind, even in situations where cultural differences are major. Relationship skills promote people treating others as equals and being sensitive to their needs, as well as seeking ways to best work with their cultural backgrounds.

The capstone skill is responsible decision-making. This puts the other aptitudes to work, drawing information and other input in them as a person chooses the best course of action to take. In the intercultural context, a person may decide to enter a new situation in a respectful and open-minded way. Even if there is a significant cultural difference, the person may decide to show kindness and understanding. He or she may weigh many factors when making a choice that involves people of different cultures. The best choice will generally find common ground between cultural differences or find a way to balance them that satisfies all parties.

Research & Theory

Many experts and studies have focused on the importance of culture and intercultural awareness, primarily in light of the globalizing trends of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Researcher Margalit Cohen-Emerique further highlighted the importance of intercultural awareness in her studies of cultural shock. Cultural shock is one possible outcome when people encounter new cultures. It is usually a negative outcome and results through a lack of intercultural awareness, whether on the part of the person experiencing the shock or the culture into which that person has entered. A cultural shock refers to a situation in which a person feels highly out of place in a different culture, leading to disorientation, negative feelings, uneasiness, and even anger.

Cohen-Emerique identified many situations that may result in cultural shock, known as sensitive zones. These include how different cultures organize their societies, how they present themselves physically, how they work, how they perceive time, and how they communicate. For example, a person who grows up in a culture that stresses work ethic may travel to a place with a much looser approach to work. That person may feel disdain for the people of that culture and think they are lazy, or may not know how to adjust to a less work-oriented lifestyle. Even seemingly small aspects of a culture and its people, such as their approach to hygiene and physical contact, may lead to negative reactions in situations in which intercultural awareness is lacking. Other times, the discomfort may come from much larger social mores, such as observations of common gender or family roles in an unfamiliar culture. Cohen-Emerique notes that sometimes cultural shock may have a positive effect, in which a person experiencing a new culture feels a rush of amazement, joy, or admiration for how a different culture lives, or revels in the beauty of a formerly unfamiliar society.

Theorist Milton Bennett has worked on outlining stages of progress by which people may develop greater intercultural awareness and sensitivity, which can greatly diminish occurrences and negative effects of cultural shocks. Bennett posited that most people grow up ensconced within their own cultures, feeling that they are the only true culture, and being unable to easily perceive qualities of their culture that may make them incompatible with other cultures. This may lead to negative and sometimes harmful reactions such as stereotyping of different cultures or feelings of contentiousness or hostility. People must move beyond these stages and build, if in slow stages, greater intercultural awareness. In time, people may find more commonalities in new cultures, as well as accept aspects of new cultures that may in ways be preferable to one’s own.

Bennett believes that this long process may result in improved communication with other cultures, empathy, and understanding of their perspectives. Finally, at its highest level, a person may achieve cultural integration, meaning that person can understand and accept multiple cultures and move in and out of her or his own culture. People at this level may become highly skilled at promoting unity and helping to settle disagreements.

Bibliography

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