Many people may think that they do not need to work on their cultural competence or develop a cultural intelligence but the truth is that globalization has made the world a "smaller" place and dealing with people of different cultures happens basically each and every day, especially here in America.
I work with other groups at the Honors College, at Red Lobster and very often in the academic setting. That is why it is important to have a plan of action to ensure that miscommunication and ethnocentrism does not occur. I think that the first step is to always be aware of my surroundings as well as realize that my experiences are not universal nor central to reality of everyone. This means to be aware of stereotypes that I have as a part of others' denial and defense, since the ethnocentric belief is a default one. To do this, I will:
- Attend to facts instead of avoiding culture
- Not trivialize or romanticize other cultures
- Be sensitize to cultural differences
- Listen to the stories and experiences of others
- Ask questions
- Increase contact with others who are different than me
- Make the effort to experience other cultures and travel the world (CQ drive)
- Extend my cultural worldview while not assimilating (CQ strategy)
- Be empathetic to others and be able to take their perspective into consideration while communicating (CQ action)
- Research other cultures (CG knowledge)
Overall, it is important to realize that this is not easy and takes effort to complete. The CQ model (Livermore) needs to be practiced and to gain competence, it is especially important to change affect, behavior AND cognition to truly get to those higher levels of functioning- aka ethnorelativism as told by Bennett. Like the fishbowl example, this quote gets to the point that the first step and to me most important step of working together with others from different cultures is to take a step away from your own.
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