INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE

Culture is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, defined by everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts.

Intercultural competence is the overall capability of an individual to manage key challenging features of intercultural communication: namely, cultural differences and unfamiliarity, inter-group dynamics, and the tensions and conflicts that can accompany this process

Intercultural competence is the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately with people of other cultures.

The basic requirements for intercultural competence are empathy, an understanding of other people's behaviors and ways of thinking, and the ability to express one's own way of thinking. It is a balance, situation adapted, among four parts:

• Knowledge (about other cultures and other people's behaviors)
• Empathy (understanding the feelings 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)

 

(1) Individual intercultural competence

Despite the fact that intercultural competence of individuals has always been emphasized as a necessary skill for dealing with migrant's problems, there is no common agreement over the components parts inherit in it. These are categorized under the personal attributes of attitude, knowledge, communication, self-confidence and social relationships. These components of individual intercultural competence are not only attributed to the migrant living in a host society, they are also needed for those dealing with migrants and refugees in their everyday life. These skills have to be learned by both sides.

For our purposes we can state that individual intercultural competence is the result of the development of interpersonal skills that arise from the following:

• the motivation to communicate effectively with someone from a different culture;
• being prepared to learn the skills needed for effective communication;

The ability to put this knowledge into use.

(2) Intercultural competence of institutions

In addition to the intercultural competence of individuals we also talk of the intercultural competence of institutions. Intercultural competence of institutions refers to the capacity of the institutions concerned to adapt their structure and performance (rules & regulations governing the interaction between employees and members of the target group, mono-cultural or multi-cultural composition of the institution's workforce, etc.) to the demands of intercultural encounters.

In an attempt to offer solutions for developing cultural competence there are three cognitive components: (a) Awareness, (b) Attitude, (c) knowledge and (d) Skills.

Awareness. Awareness is consciousness of one's personal reactions to people who are different.

The attitude component in order to emphasize the difference between training that increases awareness of cultural bias and beliefs in general and training that has participants carefully examine their own beliefs and values about cultural differences.

.Skills. The Skills component focuses on practicing cultural competence to perfection. Communication is the fundamental tool by which people interact in organizations. This includes gestures and other non-verbal communication that tend to vary from culture to culture.

The set of four components of our cultural competence definition—awareness, attitude, knowledge, and skills— represents the key features of each of the popular definitions. The utility of the definition goes beyond the simple integration of previous definitions, however. It is the diagnostic and intervention development benefits that make the approach most appealing.

Knowledge. Social science research indicates that our values and beliefs about equality may be inconsistent with our behaviors, and we ironically may be unaware of it.