Intercultural Competence for Global Leadership

I recently ran into an article from the IDRInstitue, that was passed to me by Elisabeth Weingraber, our intercultural expert, a person you should totally turn to for insights on intercultural sensitivity among individuals and within organizations.

The article was clear and it brilliantly enlisted how to prepare managers to adapt and improve their productivity in cross-cultural situations. I thought of summarizing the major points but do refer to the link above for in-depth insights.

The main message in the article was that cross-contact alone is not sufficient to be constructive – otherwise individual from neighboring countries or minority groups inside a country would be the best cultural experts. Instead, three elements are essential to be developed.

Intercultural Mindset

"When in Rome, do as the Romans" doesn't take into account that in global organizations "everywhere is Rome". The best way to leverage on diversity and transform it into a source of creativity is to create a climate of respect for each individual cultural, creating a third, virtual cultural which becomes dominant in the working life of that particular group. In this, cultural generalizations are fundamental, as opposed to cultural stereotypes. Even if labels are a dangerous way to put an individual into a bucket, describing cultural groups at varying levels of abstractions can be useful as a starting point from which learning to learn how to interact with individuals.

Intercultural Skillset

Cultural-general frameworks support us to create a broad picture of the other culture and how it differs from our own, such as:

• Language Use. Such as verbal greeting rituals. The reason why an American man would tend to verbalize short greetings in passing and American women would likely engage in longer greetings, potentially bringing to a mutual misunderstanding (the man could be considered as brusque and unfriendly and the woman as intimate and flirtatious).
• Nonverbal Behaviour. Eye-contact length, conversational turn-taking. For instance, foreigners often are nervous and disturbed by the seven seconds of silence that may pass between when you ask a question to a Finnish person and when the reply comes, but such silence is completely normal in my beloved second Home Country.
• Communication Style. Or the use of abstraction VS concrete explanations of one's perspectives.
• Cultural Values. The tendency of a group of people to assign goodness to certain ways of being in the world. For instance: individualism VS collectivism, time orientation, proactivity, social roles, tolerance of ambiguity etc.

Acknowledging that these differences exist is not sufficient, but managers have to use these frameworks to identify relevant differences and to analyze potential misunderstanding, keeping in mind that "everywhere is Rome".

Intercultural Sensitivity

The third factor in acquiring intercultural competence focuses on experiencing the cultural difference. The Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) defines six stages where people may be in relation to a second culture:

1. Denial. People of other cultures may not be perceived at all, or if they are, they are seen as less human, lacking the "real" feelings and thoughts like their own.
2. Defense. After casual contact, people from other countries have become a reality but only as stereotypes that must be dealt with. Them VS us.
3. Minimization. People in minimization acknowledge cultural variations in institutions and customs but minimize those believing that beneath these differences that person is pretty much like them. They still compare everything to their beliefs and experiences thinking this is the only correct one.
4. Acceptance. Managers at this stage can identify how cultural differences operate in general in a wide range of human interactions but are not expert in any of them.
5. Adaptation. Being able to shift one's cultural frames of reference; looking at the world “through different eyes” and intentionally changing one's behavior to communicate more effectively in another culture.
6. Integration. The final stage: the process of shifting cultural perspective becomes a normal part of self, and so self-identification becomes a more fluid notion. Read more from Elisabeth' article of driving a Vespa VS driving a car, as a metaphor of integrating into a new culture: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/riding-vespa-power-intercultural-training-weingraber-pircher/

Conclusion

Intercultural competence is a long process that requires awareness and practice. Even if an intercultural training session may not provide a quick magic fix, it can be an excellent starting point to move participants on the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale and to maximize the creativity benefits of corporate diversity.