2.2: Intercultural Competence Models

Figure 2.2.1: People standing on a globe.

What skills are essential for effective communication across cultures? Scholars from multiple disciplines have explored this question, developing frameworks to help individuals better understand and navigate intercultural interactions. Read on to discover popular models and consider which approach is meaningful to you.

Intercultural Awareness: Cross-cultural or intercultural awareness comprises sensitivity and respect towards other people’s culture, and having an understanding of people from different cultures. (According to Barrett, Byram, L´az´a, MompointGaillard, and Philippou, 2013).

Intercultural Sensitivity: From the field of intercultural communication, intercultural sensitivity is “an individual’s ability to develop emotion towards understanding and appreciating cultural differences that promotes appropriate and effective behavior in intercultural communication” (Chen & Starosta, 1997, p. 5).

Cultural Intelligence (CQ): Emerging from international business fields, cultural intelligence is “defined as an individual’s capability to function and manage effectively in culturally diverse settings” (Ng, Van Dyne, & Ang, 2012, p. 32).

Cultural Humility: From the medical field, “cultural humility incorporates a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and critique, to redressing the power imbalances in the physician-patient dynamic, and to developing mutually beneficial and non-paternalistic partnerships with communities on behalf of individuals and defined populations” (p. 123).

Flexible Intercultural Communication: Emphasizes the importance of integrating knowledge and an open-minded attitude and putting them into adaptive and creative practice in everyday communication (Ting-Toomey & Chung, 2012, p. 28)

Intercultural Competence: From the field of Communication Studies, intercultural competence is understood “as an impression that a behavior is appropriate and effective in a given context.” (Spitzberg, 2000, p. 279).

As we can see from above, key themes emerge from the different intercultural frameworks, including awareness, respect, sensitivity, appreciation, appropriateness, and effectiveness. While building any form of competence requires effort, building intercultural communication competence often requires us to take more risks. Some of these risks require us to leave our comfort zones and adapt to new and uncertain situations. What it means to be competent will vary depending on your physical location, your role (personal, professional, etc.), and your life stage, among other things. Sometimes we will know or be able to figure out what is expected of us in a given situation, but sometimes we may need to act in unexpected ways to meet the needs of a situation. Competence enables us to better cope with the unexpected, adapt to the non-routine, and connect to uncommon frameworks. How can intercultural communication competence be built and achieved? This is a key question we will address in this section.Intercultural communication competence is less about a list of rules and more about a box of tools. Three ways to cultivate intercultural communication competence are to foster attitudes that motivate us, discover knowledge that informs us, and develop skills that enable us (Bennett, 2009).

We are not just born with intercultural communication competence. As noted previously, intercultural competence consists of knowledge and skills that can be built over time. To better understand this process, let’s turn our attention to the Staircase Model of Competence.