2.4: Criteria for Intercultural Competence

Figure 2.4.1: Cartoon image of friends greeting one another while speaking different languages.

Overview

Now that you've explored Howell’s staircase model of intercultural communication competence, you’ve seen how individuals progress from unaware and sometimes ineffective communication to intuitive, adaptive interactions across cultures. But competence isn’t just a personal achievement, it’s a dynamic process shaped by real-world encounters, cultural expectations, and moments of misunderstanding.

In this next section, we’ll examine how intercultural communication unfolds in everyday situations. You’ll explore how people interpret and respond to cultural differences, how assumptions and biases can influence interactions, and how awareness and empathy can transform even the most challenging exchanges. This section invites you to reflect on your own experiences, recognize patterns in communication across cultures, and begin building the skills to engage more thoughtfully and respectfully in diverse settings.

Specifically, we’ll focus on three foundational components of intercultural competence:

• Motivation – cultivating curiosity, openness, and a genuine desire to connect
• Knowledge – understanding cultural norms, values, and communication styles

• Skills – applying strategies for effective and respectful interaction
  

Motivation

To foster attitudes that motivate us, we must develop a sense of wonder about culture. This sense of wonder can lead to feeling overwhelmed, humbled, or awed (Opdal, 2001). This sense of wonder may correlate to a high tolerance for uncertainty, which can help us turn potentially frustrating experiences we have into teachable moments. Initially, a person’s motivation for communicating with people from other cultures must be considered. Motivation refers to the root of a person’s desire to foster intercultural relationships. (Martin & Nakayama, 2010). Put simply, if a person isn’t motivated to communicate with people from different cultures, then the components of intercultural communication competence discussed next don’t really matter. If a person has a healthy curiosity that drives him or her toward intercultural encounters in order to learn more about self and others, then there is a foundation from which to build additional competence-relevant attitudes and skills. This intrinsic motivation makes intercultural communication a voluntary, rewarding, and lifelong learning process. While intrinsic motivation captures an idealistic view of intercultural communication as rewarding in its own right, many contexts create extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation for intercultural communication is driven by the desire for an outside reward, like money, power, or recognition. While both types of motivation can contribute to intercultural communication competence, tolerance for uncertainty may further enhance or impede a person’s motivation to communicate across cultures.

Let’s return to Maya to explore these concepts further. As she prepares to travel to new countries, she realizes that both intrinsic and extrinsic factors drive her motivation. For example, as a longtime fan of Korean dramas, she is thrilled to visit South Korea, excited to experience the cuisine, explore the architecture, and stock up on skincare products. At the same time, her professional responsibilities also motivate her. Learning about Korean culture is essential for excelling in her job, supporting her e-sports colleagues, ensuring a successful trip, and managing uncertainty.

Pause for Reflection:

1. Reflecting on Motivation: What factors in your own life shape your motivation to engage in intercultural communication?

2. Do you find that intrinsic or extrinsic motivation plays a stronger role in your interactions with people from different cultural backgrounds?
   

Understanding your motivation is important, as is recognizing that your tolerance for uncertainty can shape your willingness to explore and engage with new cultures.

Your tolerance for uncertainty can shape your motivation. Tolerance for uncertainty refers to an individual’s attitude about and level of comfort in uncertain situations (Martin & Nakayama, 2010). Some people perform better in uncertain situations than others, and intercultural encounters often bring up uncertainty. Whether communicating with someone of a different gender, race, or nationality, we are often wondering what we should or shouldn’t do or say. Situations of uncertainty most often become clearer as they progress, but the anxiety that an individual with a low tolerance for uncertainty feels may lead them to leave the situation or otherwise communicate in a less competent manner. Individuals with a high tolerance for uncertainty may exhibit more patience, waiting for new information to become available or seeking out information, which may then increase the understanding of the situation and lead to a more successful outcome (Pusch, 2009). Individuals who are intrinsically motivated toward intercultural communication may have a higher tolerance for uncertainty, in that their curiosity leads them to engage with others who are different because they find the self and other-knowledge gained rewarding.

Think back to your first days as a college student. Many students feel overwhelmed by unfamiliar expectations—new schedules, campus norms, and the newfound independence of college life. At first, things may seem confusing, but over time, students who embrace the uncertainty begin to navigate their environment more confidently. Much like adjusting to college, adapting to intercultural interactions requires patience, curiosity, and a willingness to embrace what is new and unknown.

Knowledge

Motivation alone cannot create intercultural communication competence. Discovering knowledge that informs us is another step that can build on our motivation and is an important part of building intercultural communication competence. Knowledge includes self- and other-awareness, mindfulness, and cognitive flexibility. Building knowledge of our own cultures, identities, and communication patterns takes more than passive experience (Martin & Nakayama, 2010).

Before moving on, let’s return to Maya, who, in order to be successful in her work travels (and enjoy some sightseeing as well), will need to foster self-awareness by recognizing how her cultural background shapes her communication style. For example, she may be used to a more direct US communication style, while South Korean business culture tends to favor indirect, formal interactions. Likewise, her other-awareness is crucial. In order for Maya to be successful in work settings, she needs to understand that South Korean business interactions are rooted in Confucian values, where hierarchy and seniority play a major role in communication exchanges.

Developing cultural self-awareness often requires us to get out of our comfort zones. Listening to people who are different from us is a key component of developing self-knowledge. The most effective way to develop other-awareness is by direct and thoughtful encounters with other cultures. However, people may not readily have these opportunities for a variety of reasons.

Despite the overall diversity in the United States, many people still only interact with people who are similar to them. Even in a racially diverse educational setting, for example, people often group off with people of their own race. While a heterosexual person may have a gay or lesbian friend or relative, they likely spend most of their time with other heterosexuals. Able-bodied people, unless they interact with people with disabilities as part of their job or have a person with a disability in their family, likely spend most of their time interacting with able-bodied people. Living in a rural area may limit one's ability to interact with a range of cultures, and most people do not travel internationally regularly. Because of this, we may have to make a determined effort to interact with people from other cultures or rely on educational sources like college classes, books, or documentaries. Learning another language is also a good way to learn about a culture, because you can then read the news or watch movies in the native language, which can offer insights that are lost in translation. It is important to note, though, that we must evaluate the credibility of the source of our knowledge, whether it is a book, a person, or another source. Also, knowledge of another language does not automatically equate to intercultural communication competence.

Developing knowledge through self- and other-awareness is an ongoing process that will continue to adapt and grow as we encounter new experiences. Mindfulness and cognitive complexity will help as we continue to build our intercultural communication competence (Pusch, 2009). Mindfulness is a state of self- and other-monitoring that informs later reflection on communication interactions. To put it simply, mindfulness is a process of being aware of our communication in the moment. As mindful communicators, we should ask questions that focus on the interactive process, like “How is our communication going? What are my reactions? What are their reactions?” Being able to adapt our communication in the moment based on our answers to these questions is a skill that comes with a high level of intercultural communication competence. Reflecting on the communication encounter later to see what can be learned is also a way to build intercultural communication competence. We should then be able to incorporate what we learned into our communication frameworks. One tool to increase mindfulness involves learning more about our cognitive style, or how we learn. Our cognitive style consists of our preferred patterns for “gathering information, constructing meaning, and organizing and applying knowledge” (Bennett, 2009). As we explore cognitive styles, we discover that there are differences in how people attend to and perceive the world, explain events, and use rules of logic (Nisbett, 2003). Some cultures have a cognitive style that focuses more on tasks, analytic and objective thinking, details and precision, inner direction, and independence, while others focus on relationships and people over tasks and things, concrete and metaphorical thinking, and a group consciousness and harmony. This awareness can lead to cognitive flexibility, which refers to the ability to continually supplement and revise existing knowledge to create new categories rather than forcing new knowledge into old categories. Cognitive flexibility helps prevent our knowledge from becoming stale and also prevents the formation of stereotypes, and can help us avoid prejudging an encounter or jumping to conclusions. In summary, to be better intercultural communicators, we should know much about others and ourselves and be able to reflect on and adapt our knowledge as we gain new experiences.

Skills

Motivation and knowledge provide the foundation necessary to identify the skills necessary for meaningful and effective communication exchange. Intercultural communication skills are the specific communication behaviors and abilities needed to interact with individuals from different cultures. Some of the skills important to intercultural communication competence are the ability to empathize, accumulate cultural information, listen, resolve conflict, and manage anxiety (Bennett, 2009). Again, you are already developing a foundation for these skills by reading this book, but you can expand those skills to intercultural settings with the motivation and knowledge already described. Contact with culturally different others alone does not increase intercultural skills; there must be more deliberate measures taken to fully capitalize on those encounters. While research now shows that intercultural contact does decrease prejudices, this is not enough to become interculturally competent. The ability to empathize and manage anxiety enhances prejudice reduction, and these two skills have been shown to enhance the overall impact of intercultural contact even more than acquiring cultural knowledge. There is intercultural training available for people who are interested. If you can’t access training, you may choose to research intercultural training on your own, as there are many books, articles, and manuals written on the subject.

Throughout this book, we will explore key intercultural communication skills that help individuals navigate diverse cultural interactions. These include:

• Mindfulness
• Managing uncertainty and anxiety
• Cultural empathy
• Behavioral flexibility
• Language acquisition
• Empathetic Listening
• Paraphrasing
• Confirming messages
• Responding to intercultural barriers
• Conflict negotiation
• Perception checking
• Nonverbal communication adaptability
• Conversational skills

Cultural Close Up: Intercultural Competence and Career Readiness in 2025

As you prepare for your future career, it’s important to recognize that communication is not just a classroom skill—it’s a professional asset. Employers in 2025 are facing a serious skills crisis. According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report and a recent Forbes analysis, the rise of AI, automation, and global collaboration has created a widening talent gap (Wells, 2025). Employers are no longer just looking for degrees—they’re looking for adaptable, emotionally intelligent communicators who can lead, listen, and learn across cultures and technologies.

Top 17 Skills Employers Want in 2026

Based on U.S. employer data from Forbes, here are the most in-demand skills this year:

Skills Employers Want in 2026

Skill	Employer Demand (%)
Analytical thinking	80%
Resilience, flexibility, and agility	73%
Leadership and social influence	66%
Creative thinking	63%
Motivation and self-awareness	56%
Empathy and active listening	56%
Curiosity and lifelong learning	54%
Technological literacy	52%
AI and big data	51%
Talent management	49%
Service orientation and customer service	49%

These skills reflect a shift toward interdisciplinary thinking, emotional intelligence, and digital fluency—all of which intersect with intercultural competence.

Reflection

1. Compare and Connect
   Review the intercultural skills discussed in this chapter (e.g., empathy, adaptability, perspective-taking, cultural self-awareness). How do they align with the top 17 skills employers are seeking? Which ones overlap? Which ones are missing?
   

2. Explore the NCA Guidelines
   The National Communication Association (NCA) outlines key components of competent communication, including ethics, adaptability, empathy, and effectiveness. Choose two NCA guidelines and explain how they relate to the Forbes skills list. How might these guidelines help you stand out in a professional setting?
   

3. Career Mapping
   Think about your intended career path. Which of the 17 skills do you already possess? Which ones do you need to strengthen? How might intercultural competence help you develop these skills in real-world contexts—such as internships, group projects, or campus leadership?

Why This Matters

Intercultural competence isn’t just about navigating cultural differences—it’s about becoming a flexible, thoughtful, and inclusive communicator in a rapidly changing world. Whether you're working in healthcare, business, education, or tech, your ability to listen actively, adapt respectfully, and lead with empathy will set you apart.

As you move forward in your academic and professional journey, remember: communication is not just a soft skill—it’s a strategic one.

To frame this more clearly, we can consider the skills Maya needs to prepare for her travels. Maya has already explored motivation and knowledge acquisition—key foundations for intercultural competence. Now, she must focus on developing the communication skills necessary to interact effectively in South Korea.

From the list above, Maya may need to refine her nonverbal communication adaptability by adjusting her greetings, facial expressions, and body language to conform to South Korean norms. She will also benefit from language acquisition, learning key Korean phrases to demonstrate respect and bridge communication gaps. Additionally, understanding facework negotiation—the way dignity and social harmony are maintained in interactions—will help her navigate professional settings where indirect communication and hierarchy are significant. Finally, Maya will need behavioral flexibility to adjust to the new culture.

Reflective practices can also help us process through rewards and challenges associated with developing intercultural communication competence. As we open ourselves to new experiences, we are likely to have both positive and negative reactions. It can be very useful to take note of negative or defensive reactions you have. This can help you identify certain triggers that may create barriers to effective intercultural interaction. Noting positive experiences can also help you identify triggers for learning that you could seek out or recreate to enhance the positive (Bednarz, 2010). A more complex method of reflection is called intersectional reflexivity. Intersectional reflexivity is a reflective practice by which we acknowledge intersecting identities, both privileged and disadvantaged, and implicate ourselves in social hierarchies and inequalities (Jones Jr., 2010). This method brings in the concepts of dominant and nondominant groups and the privileges/disadvantages dialectic we discussed earlier in Chapter 2.

While formal intercultural experiences like studying abroad or volunteering for the Special Olympics or a shelter for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth can result in learning, informal experiences are also important. We may be less likely to include informal experiences in our reflection if we don’t see them as legitimate. Reflection should also include “critical incidents” or what I call “a-ha! moments.” Think of reflection as a tool for meta-competence that can be useful in bringing the formal and informal together (Bednarz, 2010).

Spotlight on Social Media: The Digital Divide in 2025--Access, Equity, and Intercultural Competence

The Digital Divide in 2025: Access, Equity, and Intercultural Competence

Many college-aged individuals in 2025 have never known a world without smartphones, social media, or AI-powered search engines. As “digital natives,” it may be surprising to realize how many people—both globally and within the United States—still lack access to essential technologies. The term digital divide originally referred to disparities in access to computers, but it has since evolved to encompass high-speed Internet access, digital literacy, and equitable participation in the digital economy (van Deursen & van Dijk, 2010).

While over 93% of Americans now use the Internet, nearly 24 million people remain offline. Globally, billions still lack reliable broadband, and those who do not have access face significant disadvantages in education, employment, healthcare, and civic engagement. In 2025, the digital divide is no longer just about physical access—it includes the skills divide, the economic opportunity divide, and the democratic divide.

This issue is especially urgent in the United States, where rural communities, low-income households, and historically marginalized groups remain disproportionately disconnected. For example, in Oklahoma, families like the Granstaffs waited over a decade for high-speed Internet until recent broadband grants finally reached their farm. New Mexico and Missouri are investing millions to expand public Wi-Fi and fiber infrastructure, but funding uncertainty and political shifts have disrupted progress in states like Virginia.

Intercultural competence, the ability to communicate effectively and respectfully across diverse cultural contexts, is increasingly shaped by digital access. When certain communities lack reliable Internet or digital literacy, their voices are underrepresented in online spaces where global dialogue, collaboration, and cultural exchange occur. This limits opportunities to engage with diverse perspectives, share lived experiences, and participate in intercultural learning. For example, students in underconnected regions may struggle to access virtual exchange programs, global news, or multilingual resources that foster empathy and understanding. Scholars warn that without intentional digital inclusion efforts, these gaps will reinforce existing social inequalities and hinder the development of intercultural competence across educational, professional, and civic domains (Sylvester & McGlynn, 2010).

From an international perspective, the U.S. still lags behind countries like South Korea, Sweden, and Finland in broadband speed and policy innovation. In 2021, Switzerland enforced net neutrality principles, reinforcing equal access and nondiscrimination in Internet services (Borg, 2024).

In today’s world, being offline means missing out on critical aspects of daily life—from paying bills and accessing telehealth, to applying for jobs, attending college classes, and participating in political movements. The Internet is no longer a luxury—it’s a lifeline.

Discussion Questions

1. How does the digital divide challenge the idea of a “global village”?
   Reflect on who gets to participate in global conversations and how limited access affects intercultural understanding and collaboration.
   

2. In what ways might limited access to technology hinder the development of intercultural competence?
   Think about how digital exclusion affects students’ ability to engage with diverse perspectives, build empathy, and navigate cross-cultural interactions.

Adapted from: This section: This page titled 8.3: Intercultural Communication is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Anonymous via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.

Contributors and Attributions

Intercultural Learning: Critical Preparation for International Student Travel, by James Cook University, Provided by UTS ePress.

License: CC-BY-NC-SA

Intercultural Communication for the Community College, by Karen Krumrey-Fulks. Provided by LibreTexts. License: CC-BY-NC-

SA

Exploring Intercultural Communication, by Tom Grothe. Provided by LibreTexts. License: CC By-NC-SA