What is Cultural Competence?

Working with employees from different cultural backgrounds requires a high degree of cultural competence.  An employee’s success in a certain area does not mean they will be successful in the same area in another culture.  Cultural competence involves the necessary skill sets to be successful in business across cultures or in multicultural operations.

Being culturally competent means that a person understands and is highly aware of the process of adaptation.  When working with employees from other cultures, a person has to determine how much they might need to adapt their behaviors around different business functions.  For example, when managing Chinese subordinates, should a U.S. manager maintain a participative oriented style that encourages self-empowerment, or shift more to a hierarchical, directive approach more common to Chinese business.

Knowledge of intercultural dimensions is also a crucial part of cultural competence.  For professionals to adapt their behavior, they have to have the knowledge of the dimensions that tend to motivate the behaviors of the culture they are working with.  This is also true for themselves, as without self-knowledge of cultural approaches to business, it is impossible to adapt.

Cultural competence also involves skills and attitudes that can be measured and benchmarked.  Personality traits like flexibility and openness are a part of this skill set that becomes a unique aspect of the expatriate experience.  Cultural competence can also be developed through frequent interaction with employees from other cultures.  Workers with these skills become valuable assets to their companies and the global marketplace as the world continues to grow smaller.