Understanding Cultural Competence: Elements and Practical Application

This essay explores the multifaceted concept of cultural competence, emphasizing its critical role in today's interconnected world. It begins by defining cultural competence as the ability to understand and effectively interact with people from diverse cultural backgrounds. The essay highlights the significance of cultural competence in personal and professional settings, particularly in the workplace, where it enhances productivity, fosters innovation, and promotes effective communication. The core elements of cultural competence are then examined, including cultural awareness, cultural skills, cultural knowledge, an open attitude, and self-awareness. Each element is discussed in detail, with practical examples and strategies for development. The essay provides actionable insights into how to practice and cultivate these elements, such as interacting with people from different cultures, developing self-awareness, practicing active listening, and embracing diverse perspectives. Ultimately, the essay underscores the importance of cultural competence for individuals seeking to thrive in a globalized society, fostering understanding, respect, and effective collaboration across cultural boundaries.

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

communication as explain in above paragraph so we can learn about different
physical communication and their meanings from books.
 Training: -Another way to increase awareness about other culture is to take
trainings. There are many institutes who provides training about different cultures.
At these institutes people can learn with practical and also practice their
understanding.
b)Cultural Skills
Cultural Skills are sum of all abilities, knowledge, qualities, and competencies that an
individual requires to be fully competent in his role. This section discusses the significance of
developing cultural competency, especially nonverbal communication, in order to be
effective when working across cultures. People of many cultures work together in many
organization in different part of the world so having cultural skill makes the work place better
through fresh views, ideas, and tactics, increases problem-solving creativity and reduces the
likelihood of unpleasant shocks, which might reduce quality of work.
Few Cultural Skills are
Self-knowledge: learning about your own cultural values and how they influence your
thoughts and behaviors.
Global thinking: keeping up with world news and happenings.
Cultural Curiosity: nonjudgmental observation of cultural behaviors.

Flexibility: smoothly adjusting to a diverse range of operational procedures, business styles,
and social settings.
Inclusivity: making people from all origins feel welcome, understood, and respected for their
unique perspectives.
Managing diversity: bringing together people from various backgrounds to function as a
cohesive team.
Interpersonal communication: Persuasively expressing yourself while actively listening to
what others have to say.
Motivational leadership: managing in such a way that encourages people to take charge and
initiative, collaborate, and add their unique originality.
Patience: Working with other people's demands and schedules, focusing on long-term
objectives, and not squandering your goodwill capital on quick wins.
How to practice cultural skills;
 Self-Awareness:
The foundation of practicing cultural skills and cultural competence lies in being aware of
his/her own cultural and ethnic background and having the mindset to accept every other
culture with an open mindset. This ability comes with the non- judgmental attitude; a mindset
to accept everyone and the willingness to learn new things.
 Listening:
It also takes some effort to practice these skills while relating the new aspects to one’s
cultural and ethnic roots. Listening skills and positive mindset helps one to accept and
appreciate newness with a better frame of mind.
 Learning New Cultures:
This might take some time and effort if one is from a unilingual background and brought up
in a uniform cultural and anthropological setup. But for a person being from a bi linguistic
and multi linguistic background, it becomes easy to learn a new culture as language enables a
speaker to connect to cultural roots very deeply. Hence learning a new language helps
develop cultural temperament over the period.

c)Cultural knowledge
Cultural knowledge from an employees’ perspective means to not only understand the
difference between different cultures, but also be aware of the values, beliefs and perceptions
of different culture.
Knowledge of culture is very important at work place as it helps to improve communication
skills. For improving communication skills, a person has to learn different languages and its
impossible without knowing about different culture because each culture has its specific
language. If a person has got good communication skills, then there are minimum chances of
misinterpretation among the colleagues. Apart from this, cultural awareness is helpful to keep
unity among the colleagues at workplace as an employee with cultural knowledge always pay
respect to other culture. This activity helps employees to work in harmony and it also affects
the overall success of a company directly.There is no doubt that there is productive
employees behind every successful business but this productiveness is difficult to get without
unity.

How a person can get knowledge of different culture:
 By getting some trainings :
Every employer should hold training classes to teach employees about different cultural
practices. By these trainings Employees can know about global culture from these
trainings so that if company get a chance to work in foreign employees will not face any
difficulty. trainers either may hire from foreign or a local trainer who have enough
knowledge about that foreign culture.
 Celebrate traditional holidays and festivals:
Celebration of traditional holidays and festivals play a vital role to learn about any culture
because every culture has its own specific festival from which a person can learn deeply
about the culture as each festival comes with history and different activities.

 By observing and listening to others:
If we listen to customers and then follow their activities, in that we may learn more about
the foreign culture. And by observing their attitude and behaviour of foreign colleague
and customer will also help to learn about their culture.
d)Open Attitude
Open attitude has a pivotal role in the arena of cultural competance.Open attitude simply
means to be open minded towards cultural differences in the workplace.It is about
empathising with your peers of different culture. There are situations where one lose
motivation due to stress or over work.It would mean the world to him if others understand
and empathise with his situation.Rather than sticking to the same old idea it is always better
to learn from others who have a different perspective on things which will inturn make one
improve himself.It is important that the employees feel comfortable in the workplace.If they
don’t find their colleagues and employers approachable, they might not tell them what is
actually going on which could have a detrimental effect on companies’ success directly.Also
at times when people from different cultures have different opinions around the same
topic,they should be given an opportunity to express themselves freely which can possibly
solve the issues.

How to practice open attitude:
 Forgive others mistakes:
At times when employees make mistakes because of their lack of knowledge or experience,it
would mean a world to them if their peers and employers are ready to forgive their small
mistakes.Besides,forgiving their little errors can only help them improve themselves and
make you more likeable.
 Greeting and complimenting others:
Greeting others with a little smile on your face willnot hurt anybody.It will only make you
more likeable and approachable.Encouraging and complimenting others to do things that help
companies’ success directly or indirectly could be a good practise among peers.
 Treat everyone equally
It is possible that some people are smarter and more hardworking than others.Employers
sometimes tend to have their favorites because of this.It is imperative that others don’t feel
the bias .It could directly affect their confidence and dedication if they know that they are not
being treated equally with their peers.It will also create professional jealousy which will
inturn stimulate conflict among them.
e)Self Awareness
More elaborated understanding of one’s own ethnic and racial background can help you to
build self-awareness, which can create culturally competent practice.
Self-awareness can be considered as one of the basic and most required elements in cultural
competence and it is the foundation of cultural competency. Self-awareness as an element in
cultural competence can be considered as one’s understanding about their own background
and culture. Self-awareness helps to gain insights of one’s identity such as race, ethnicity etc.
An idea about own culture and belief is necessary when we interact with other people from
different cultural background. It helps to recognize the differences between own culture and
other’s culture, and it helps to understand the difference in gestures that have been using in
different regions.

There are several ways to get an awareness about own culture.
They are,
a)By learning history
b)Learn from others.
c)Visit the places that are closer to own culture.
How to practice self-awareness:
 Way of living
The best way to practise self-awareness is through the way of living. Different category
of people lives in different style. One’s identity of culture is way that person is living.
 Food
Food is another important aspect. In different parts of world people belongs to different
culture have a vivid range of foods. In India, people mostly eats rice and curry whereas
in some other regions rice and curry is not common.
 Language
People of same culture speaks the same language which distinguish them from others.It is
also seen that people who speaks in their native language are more comfortable and
confident amongst each other

Conclusion
Cultural competency is a comprehensive process that starts with awareness, progresses via
sensitivity and knowledge, and culminates in intelligent behavior. The fascinating aspect of
cultural competence is how it may now be overlaid and integrated with social identity
learning to produce social identity competence, awareness, sensitivity, knowledge, and
intelligence. It all comes down to finding the appropriate phrase to make the unseen apparent.
Building cultural competence is a never-ending process that leads to improved results for
both organizations and workers.