Cultural competency Assignment PDF

Different culture has different histories and experiences. Cultural competency helps the
people to understand the culture in their social needs.Hence, cultural competence is an
important component. It also indicates the nature, behavior and social values of the society.
Whenever a person goes away from his/her native place to another place, he is likely to
experience culture shock due to just how different things are done from his native place. So
understanding other cultural diiference in advance helps to communicate and interact
efficiently and effectively amongst each other.
In this assignment ,we intend to discuss;
1) The importance of cultural competancy
2) Different elements of cultural competancy
3) How to practise them
Importance of cultural competence
Cultural competence is the potential of an individual to understand and interact efficiently
with people with people of different cultures. Cultural competence is a dominant factor in
today’s world as it will help individual to develop his/her personality. Through cultural
competence, one can understand and accept cultural background of different people. The
cultural background comprises of beliefs, attitude of people and tradition of various culture.
Respectful awareness and understanding of cultural differences are the characteristics of a
culturally competent person. The importance of cultural competence in a workplace is that, it
can enhance the productivity and performance of employee. By incorporating cultural
competence in a working environment, the company can function efficiently by sharing
different ideas of people belonging to different cultures. The cross cultural skills existing in a
workplace will result in developing progressive ideas and reduce the time for problem
solving. All the major companies are trying to build a working environment which comprises
of people from different cultures, thereby companies can implement their plans in various
regions effectively by understanding and considering the ideas of employees belonging to
different cultures. A culturally competent person has the advantage to work anywhere in the
world and communicate efficiently with others.

Cultural competency has five elements:
a)Awareness of others
b)Cultural Skills
c)Cultural knowledge
d)Open attitude
e)Self awareness
a)Awareness of others
Cultural awareness means the understanding of culture, how people think, work, their
lifestyle and attitude towards life. Every culture has their own values, protectives, festivals,
foods and way of living. Culture affects perceptions and perception drives behaviour. Values,
assumptions, behaviour and expectations are things which recognize one’s culture. So it is
imperative that you are aware of other people’s culture. Awareness about other cultures is
also important as awareness of our culture. People of various cultural backgrounds tend to

have various styles of physical and verbal communication. For instance, in several cultures,
simple bowing represents greeting as opposed to handshake.Also There are places where
direct eye contact is considered impolite, whereas in other places it represents trust and
honesty. Due to these different meaning of one thing in different cultures may be the reason
of conflict between people of different cultural backgrounds. So if the people have
awareness about other culture or culture of people with whom he or she dealing or
communicate can avoid these thinks or if by-mistake any problem occur then they can
easily understand that it is due to cultural difference. Nowadays, people from different
countries work at same work places. Different countries mean different culture. So to work
efficiently and effectively,it is imperative that everyone has a certain degree of awareness
about different cultures so that the conflict which are likely to occur can be rectified and
removed immediately.
How to practise it:
Interacting with people of different cultures: -We can learn about different
cultures by interacting with people from different backgrounds. We can celebrate
traditional holidays, festival and food together and increase our understanding about
other cultures and aware about their customs and rituals. Secondly, books are the
good source of knowledge.
With the help of books: -We can also take a help from books to understand the
other cultures. We can learn about different verbal and nonverbal communications
in different cultures. Every culture has different meaning of nonverbal