Intercultural Competences

Intercultural competence

Definition:

Intercultural competence is the ability to communicate successfully with people of other cultures. We say that a person is intercultural competent, if he/she understands the culture-specific concepts of perception, thinking, feeling and acting.. Intercultural competence it is also called cross-cultural competence.

Why and what for Intercultural Competence:
Intercultural competence is needed as the basic ability for any interaction!
It is not only necessary to have social skills, but also to improve the sensitivity and understanding for other values, views, ways of living and thinking, as well as being self- conscious in transferring one’s own values and views in a clear, but appropriate way. Intercultural competence helps understanding others and achieving goals
Some of the skills that a cross cultural manager needs for achieving intercultural competence are: Flexibility,Humor,
Patience,
Openness,
Interest,
Curiosity,
Empathy,
Tolerance for ambiguity and Suspending judgment.
To achieve a good intercultural competence results, a person needs to control 4 areas:
Knowledge (about other cultures and other people’s behaviors).
Empathy (understanding the feeling and needs of other people).
Self-confidence (knowledge of one’s own desires, strengths, weaknesses and emotional stability).
Cultural identity (knowledge of one’s own culture).
As we can see, Intercultural Competence it is very based in empathy, understanding people’s behaviors and ways of thinking, and the ability to express your own opinions and way of thinking.
For many people, Intercultural competence is more an issue of common sense than understanding and interacting well with other cultures. That’s false, ‘common sense’ is very subjective. Furthermore, having a very good level of another language doesn’t certify that you can understand a culture and the way of living, but it is true that they are very linked. In addition, Intercultural competence it is mostly based on the individual's experiences someone is communicating with different cultures. Such experience may motivate the individual to acquire skills that can help him to communicate his point of view to an audience belonging to a different cultural ethnicity and background.
A very important issue for people living in countries other than their native country. They should try to fit in and adapt to the culture surrounding them, or should they hold on to their native culture and try to avoid interacting with the culture surrounding them?
This issue is increasingly common today thanks to globalization. People studying or working abroad should modify their cultural boundaries and adapt to the culture around them.
If they interact and modify themselves, they can have bicultural identities.
If they don’t interact and hold on their native culture, they experience culture shocks, which can be very frustrating.
Intercultural competence assessment:
Many exercises and tests can help and assess you and a company to be successful: The quantitative assessment tools such as the Multi-Cultural Personality questionnaire. The qualitative assessment tools like scenario-based assessments or the ICCA (Intercultural Communication and Collaboration Appraisal) provide guidance for personal improvement based upon the identification of personal traits, strengths, and weaknesses.

Criticisms:

We can fall into stereotypes for learning quickly.
Many people discuss the idea of learn how to interact with other cultures by tests and classes. You need to live the experience.