Training Industry Magazine - November/December 2019 - 53

ADAPTING CROSS-CULTURAL
COMPETENCE
Understanding other cultures and being
sensitive to differences is vital in today's
global business environment. It entails
moving away from acting out of habit and
toward making conscious decisions in a
sustained manner.
Requisites of adapting
competence include:

cross-cultural

* Awareness of one's own cultural
worldview: It is imperative to understand
and accept what we think and how we
act before we can understand others.
* Positive attitudes toward cultural
differences: Are we open to
differences? For example, in another
culture, when employees address
their boss by their first name, are
they being disrespectful, or is this
form of address normal?
* Knowledge of other cultures: Attend
to dominant values, business practices,
hierarchy, gift-giving customs and
humor with sharp focus.
Different
cultures
encode
and
decode messages differently. Filters
like assumptions, implied values and
meanings, emotions, prejudices, and
stereotypes can mar communication
and cross-cultural interactions by
distorting the intended message.
Adapting cross-cultural competence is
also impacted by differences in:

* Value systems.
* Attitudes toward the completion
of tasks.
* Ethnocentrism (the inability to accept
the worldview of other cultures).
* Cultural imposition (the belief
that everyone should conform to
the majority).
Cross-cultural competence is about
striking the right balance among:
* Knowledge: Understanding other
cultures, their people and their
behaviors.
* Empathy: Understanding and responding
in accordance to the needs of people
from other cultural groups.
* Self-confidence: Striving to acquire
the ability to express one's point
in an effective and transparent
way, aiming to be understood and
respected, and remaining flexible
when possible.
HINDRANCES TO CROSS-CULTURAL
COMPETENCE
Different cultural contexts bring
challenges to the workplace, even if
employees speak the same language.
Communication
between
English
speakers in the U.S. and English
speakers in the U.K. often go awry
because of cultural differences that
impact language. When non-nativeEnglish-speaking partners communicate
with native English speakers, it can lead

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to miscommunication and perceived
incompatibility.
Hinderances
to
cross-cultural
competence often arise due to the
following reasons:
* Language barriers: Linguistic variances
have a major impact on cross-cultural
competencies. Idioms, tone and
sentence structure can all adversely
affect communication fluencies.
* Psychological and attitudinal barriers:
One's own cultural background,
values and experiences often give
way to the emergence of stereotypes
- fixed ideas about a cultural group
where no effort is made to ascertain
whether they are appropriate or
applicable to individuals. Interactions
with people from stereotyped cultures
or backgrounds are often inaccurately
informed by these mindsets.
* Physical
barriers:
Geographical
distance forces individuals to rely
heavily on technology to communicate,
but
technical
disruptions
can
impact communication and adversely
affect outcomes.
* Cultural barriers: The value systems
ingrained in cultures often cause
conflict. In the late 1970s, psychologist
Dr. Geert Hofstede published his
cultural dimensions model to explain
how
value
differentials
impact
interactions between cultures. Since
then, it has become an internationally
recognized standard for understanding

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Training Industry Magazine - November/December 2019

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