Imagine you’re joining a program where you’ll be meeting an interacting to a lot of people from another countries. You’re thinking that they are from Japan, Thailand, German, and Turkey or maybe from a place that you’ve never heard before. You can’t stop questioning yourself ‘How are we going to understand each other in this very diverse situation? Or ‘What if I say or do something and it will offend them?’. Now you realized speaking in English the main issue anymore and interaction between individuals is more than just a language skill.
Interacting with people from another country means you’ll be facing different concepts of perceptions, acting, feelings and thinking ahead of you. In this situation you should learn the whole process not just limiting yourself to the languages they use by understanding the intercultural competence.
Intercultural competence or cross-cultural competence is the ability to communicate with people of other cultures appropriately and effectively. It can be the strong foundation or preparation that will guide you when you’re placed in a very diverse environment and can be described as having these components:
Awareness
Start yourself by realizing that diversity is actually exists and understand that everyone has reasons behind their actions. Having awareness is important because it will be difficult to know the point of view of others unless you have the consciousness of wanting to understand the cultures and their backgrounds.
Knowledge
Learning in order to gain more knowledge means that you’re one-step further and move beyond judgments. You’re not just wondering why do some people say or act in a certain way, but you’re actually having the urge to learn more about other’s cultures and behaviors. Knowledge can lead you to ‘see something from someone else’s lens and it’ll help you to accept, adapt and finally be comfortable in a global environment.
Skills
Synthesizing knowledge and awareness becomes a skill on valuing diversity. It will support you on reacting towards differences. You’ll be improving your intercultural competences and have the ability on behaving with an appropriate manner.
Developing awareness, knowledge and skill is an ongoing process and it won’t be successful over a night especially because it requires practices in real life. But the more you learn the more you’ll know how to prevent yourself from having to misinterpret the multicultural differences. It’ll make your task easier and increase each one’s satisfaction while interacting with people from different backgrounds. That way each one of you’ll manage embrace and celebrates the differences.
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