Cultural Competence – Part 3: How Do You Become More Culturally Competent?

Practice is required for competency in any subject. I took piano lessons for 14 years growing up and I am not proud to say that I do not play a note today. I do not play today because I did not practice. We think that we can send employees to a 1-hour, 2-hour, 3-hour or even 8-hour training session and expect behaviors to change. Some have even greater expectations that mindsets will be impacted in short event based training.

Cultural competence is like any other competency. It takes time, effort and practice to become proficient. Last week I mentioned that it requires ongoing learning that consists of exposure to difference, deep experience in culturally different situations and formal education to acquire a theoretical framework as pictured below, a model which was also highlighted in What is Inclusion? – Part 4.

The key points illustrated here is that there are three conditions necessary to advance in cultural competence.

1. Exposure-To carry my piano analogy further, if I do not have a piano or access to one then I will surely not be able to become competent. By the same token, if I have no exposure do difference, competence is not possible.
2. Experience-Just because I have a piano does not mean that I will “experience” it. Similarly, I can be all around difference but if I do not engage with it, I will not learn more about differences in meaningful ways. It is through experience that I am able to practice what I am learning.
3. Education-I can experience the piano on my own without guidance from a skilled teacher but it will likely take me much longer and I will not necessarily be developing good habits. Therefore, formal education, notice I did not say training, is needed to become culturally competent. Education is developmental (e.g. beginner, intermediate, advanced), while training as I have said before, is a one- time shot.

One last element is key to becoming more culturally competent: desire. I did not want to learn how to pay the piano (I do regret it now). I was not interested. I had no desire. How do we get leaders and others to have the desire to want to pursue cultural competence? We have to provide the compelling platform (business case) for how being more culturally competent will support them resolving business challenges and achieving goals.