Intercultural Competence: Interpersonal Communication Across Cultures

Scholars vary in their definition of intercultural competence (IC) depending on the contexts. Cultural intelligence (CQ), cross-cultural awareness, multicultural competence, intercultural sensitivity, global competence, and transcultural skills all are intercultural competence. Intercultural competence is “the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately in intercultural situations based on one’s intercultural knowledge, skills, and attitudes” (Deardorff, 2006, p. 248). Some have termed intercultural competence as a developmental process of

Communication competence is choosing the type of communication that is appropriate for any situation. It is possible to teach and learn competence; we do that every day in schools, work, and sports. No, people aren’t born competent communicators, we learn throughout our lives to become competent communicators by the people around us. Yes, people with extrovert personalities have the characteristic more people with introvert personalities. If you’re outgoing and outspoken you’re more successful with communicating than a shy and reserved person. Yes, communication competence is defined or perceived differently in other cultures. All cultures are different; we do not communicate the same. The culture in boxing is not identical to the culture in

In my previous professional role, it was imperative that I obtained an effective level of intercultural communication competence. I managed U.S. employee communications for unplanned system issues which often had a downstream global impact within the organization. As a result, many of my communications were tailored for a global audience which consisted of the United States, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions. Prior to a sending an employee communication for a system issue, there was always a global business call with all stakeholders to discuss the details and determine which region would lead the communications. The region designated to lead the communication had a challenging task of tailoring the message

Interpersonal cross-cultural competencies and capabilities are critical to the US Army’s strategic objective in the future operating environment. The operational environment requires a holistic view of political, military, economic, social, information, and infrastructure systems. A country’s culture can be defined as a programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of a region or nation from another. South Africa has a rich and complex culture and history of its own since its independence from Britain nearly a century ago. This essay will go on to discuss in depth the culture and history, as well as geography and military history and concluding with an understanding of how the people of South Africa live.

It is imperative that these same principles are utilized when communicating to cultural groups other than our own because people from different cultures encode and decode messages and meaning differently. Because of this, what is acceptable to one is not necessarily acceptable by the other especially if they base their practices on their own judgments and ideas and communicate disregarding the judgments and ideas of any other culture. Ignorance can lead to devastating and damaging assumptions in terms of building intercultural relationships when one enters communication using the same old ethnocentric approach. It is a lot like the Nazis viewing the world according to their standards and beliefs without regards to the rights and beliefs of any other group. It is also the same as extreme

Lets look at some of the reasons why we look at another’s culture, or perceived culture sometimes in a negative way, and why this perception could be wrong. We do decide what we perceive others to be by listening to other people talk negatively about another from a culture that is not their own. We then believe it to be true without really finding out for our selves anything about that culture. Cultures can be perceived because of the dogmatic way the media portrays people by pushing their doctorial opinions, to better suit there needs, forming what they think would make for better stories. What they produce is false assumptions in how other people live.

The organization I have chosen is NEA (National Education Association) that deals with communicating cross-cultural and what teachers should know about diversity. The Website address is http://iteslj.org/Articles/Pratt-Johnson-CrossCultural.html which is found in the NEA link. The article explains the need for educators in terms of culturally responsive and competent as schools and classrooms become increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse. The article highlights five important points of cultural difference with which all teachers should be aware when teaching students of diverse backgrounds. These five points are ways of knowing, ways of solving problems, ways of communicating nonverbally, ways of learning, and ways of dealing

The ability to grow and be successful in any society depends on its ability to transcend limitations of intercultural communication. The chief aim of social groupings is to harness the capacity of the human mind. The ability to channel this process information during communication impacts our social connections to one another, especially in intercultural communication.

With the growing of globalization, opportunities of intercultural communication become more common to individuals’ everyday life. Thus, it is of vital importance that people understand linguistic relativity and language ideologies in order to avoid misunderstandings and achieve effective intercultural communication.

Individuals who are raised in a certain culture share certain values and assumptions. That does not mean they all share the same values to the same magnitude, nor does it mean that most of them, most of the time, agree with each other 's ideas about what is correct and incorrect,

Avoidance of interpreting other people's behavior according to our own culture can be quite useful. Openness and plain speaking is the norm in Western Europe and North America but not in the Far East - where it may be considered extremely impolite to disagree with a stranger -.

4. Understanding intercultural communication in interpersonal communication, greatly influence the way one delivers a message. For example, before one delivers a message, they have to take into consideration the receivers culture and whether it is high- or low- context. Knowing the difference between high- and low- context cultures is important. High-context cultures are collectivist cultures, and low-context cultures are individualistic cultures. Collectivist cultures believe that the group’s goals are more important, an individual’s success is determined by the amount of cooperation and contribution towards the group. Individualistic cultures believe that the individual’s goals are more important, and that person’s success is determined on exceeding others.

I feel the ability to communicate with people across different cultural backgrounds is a strength that I have developed over time. Intercultural communication is the term given to communication that takes place between people whose cultural beliefs values and behaviours differ from one another (Buchanan 2015, p. 44). Cultural knowledge that is developed through socialisation and transferred from one generation to the next, shapes the way people communicate both verbally and nonverbally. It influences an individual’s perception of the world which in turn impacts intrapersonal communication; self-talk, and interpersonal communication; expressing meaning in a variety of settings (Buchanan 2015, p. 34; Kreunus et al. 2011, p. 48). When a person constructs meaning from a message, they attempt to understand what is spoken, how it is spoken and the context of the communication (Kreunus et al. 2011, p. 48). Semantic barriers can occur during when people interpret a messages by associating the meaning to their own cultural understanding and knowledge in order for it to make sense to them (ibid; Tylor, Kossen & Charmaine 2005, p. 271). The following principles can be applied to improve intercultural communication and increase cultural sensitivity; remove cultural barriers; decrease ethnocentrism, challenge biases and stereotypes, avoiding over-attribution bias, be aware of cultural differences to adjust communication (Buchanan 2015, p. 43; Tylor, Kossen & Charmaine 2005, p. 269).

In today’s world, globalization is rapidly dominating and mobilizing multicultural interactions among leaders (Bücker & Poutsma, 2010). The Eurocentric Germanizing authoritative leadership approach is no longer dominating in a colorful society of people (NewsBlaze, 2007). As globalization comes into realization, more and more people of various gender, race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, and even disability will continue to change the course of leadership (Nahavandi, 2014; NewsBlaze, 2007). Successful leaders are challenged to adapt new methods to seek out effective communication and address every human being with compassion and empathy (Harvard Business Review, 2011).

The world today is characterized by an ever growing number of contacts resulting in communication between people with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In the process of globalization, the relationship between people differ racially, ethnically, nationally, and regionally. These groups become such a normative thing and seen as a good sign of a process of integration and social diversity. It is important for one to experience intercultural communication. It can help society grow in knowing different elements of different cultures. It can help create a positive awareness of our own and others cultures, by being able to observe similarities and differences in cultural behaviors, attitudes, and experiences. I have recently been able to experience intercultural communication with Central Washington University’s AUAP students. Once a week I would go into an AUAP classroom and help them with the classroom activities. This experience allowed me to get over my uncertainty avoidance and self- disclose information with the AUAP students in order to connect with them more. Before going into the classroom, I was very anxious and uncertain of what might happen during my time with the students. After I met them I felt more reassured that they were very nice and it was going to be a good experience for me to volunteer in their classroom. This then led to self- disclosed information being exchanged between the AUAP students and myself. After some information was disclosed