Cultural competence is everywhere when interacting with cross-cultural communities with different beliefs, ethics, and norms. Cultural competence could be efficiently achieved by entertaining individuals of different cultures with actions that would not be considered offensive or too incapable for the respondent. Many cultural practices could help make the environment more friendly and acceptable.
Cultural awareness is considered one of the primary elements of cultural competence and is one of the most important and necessary elements in understanding the different cultures of the community. I have experience working in a cross-cultural community where I had Chinese, Hispanic, American and English working together. We all were working in a team and had to complete the tasks with continuous discussions and necessary interaction as required daily and hourly. The paper’s main aim is to discuss my reflection on interacting with community members from different communities, cultures, and origins.
All four members of the team including me were working on projects that had strict deadlines and the management had explained that we might interact with each other as required or we could even work in the same environment but because of our cultural differences, we were unable to complete occupy each other’s personnel space which could be a reason of offence. Some similarities and differences could be counted as the major conflicts and factors that made us close to coming together. Since I was American my Chinese colleague had a great issue sharing the room with the team when work started. He needed loneliness and after any meeting or discussion, he was used to standing up for his office and expecting calls from us for any assistance required.
This was one of the biggest differences between us and the Chinese, which made it difficult to submit orders and tasks daily. Since the Chinese were also from different and completely separate cultures, he had to go out for lunch and used exceptional time, mostly ordering complicated meals, which took more time than a fast food service normally took. The Hispanic and the English had also some similarities and differences. According to him, the Hispanic was fresh from Mexico and was used to working in teams while being completely engaged with the support and assistance providers. People from all over the world have difficulties handling and interacting with the cross-cultural environment and handling cultural competencies.
I am from North America and have lived in Los Angeles since childhood. My primary culture is Western, but has a good influence on the Native Americans, English as well as Latin Americans and some other minorities. The diversity of the country has a great influence in creating a mixture of different cultures. According to my team and the level of my culture according to their cultures, I would rank my culture as on the stage of cultural incapacity. My cultural competence initially was unable to accept the different cultures and the individuals practising with some different and conflicting routines. The American culture is mostly compromising and can find ways and paths to help adapt to different cultures.
There is great diversity in the foods and dresses we eat. The fashion is currently very good and highly adaptive. The people are good at starting the discussions as well while because of the intrusion of the English and the other European cultures, there is a new factor added in our culture which is creating difficulty in compromising many situations like the personnel space is increased and individuals are mostly and sometimes only speak on the behalf of the specially personnel populations and the communities from which we belong because in the past America have higher problems with the racism as well as classism. Eye contact is normally appreciated, but breaking it after several lapses is necessary. The people we interact with have good relationships, but they are from different cultures, like the Chinese, Hispanic, and English, who work with me and our behaviour with each other.
I have a good grip on understanding the beliefs of different cultures quickly and always try my best to understand the personal issues that are due to the different cultures. In my team the English was supposed to have disciplined working habits and his room was always tidy. On the days when we were supposed to sit in his room and work there on some orders our existence made it difficult to carry on his work, which was a problem as a team for all of us so we tried not to disturb him. The Chinese had silence issues and during the discussions, he could not work so we could not handle that situation. My American and Hispanic team members had to adjust to this situation and were also confused about managing this hindrance. The Hispanic was adaptive to different environments and felt no objection to working alone or with the team, so we had to explain to him that if he wished to work alone, I would prefer to give him some space. As an individual, I would highly appreciate personal freedom and would definitely like to have a less bounded environment in which I have the least possible dependence upon anyone, including my parents and other family members.
According to the bias test, I would consider my situation in the interaction of the team with whom I am interacting, who currently have different races. The Hispanics could be included in the bias test which includes the black and white people. In this test, the results would be similar as they are stated in the bias test which concludes that the European American or what we call an American including me and my American colleague as well as the English man could be separated from the category of the blacks and the black Hispanic would be separated differently. The concepts of the Hispanic and the whites are completely different. The Hispanics have experienced a hard time in the past so they have a built nature to handle themselves according to the environment. We Americans cannot handle ourselves in different situations in which the level of authority and judgment are described differently.
The second test was on the preference between straight people and gay people. It can be explained that the factors I should take care of include discrimination in interacting, eating, and proper interactions. The gay people will find discriminative behaviour in the hiring as well as in making friendships so they will be supposed to be found alone while straight people will be found in all categories of the social levels including introverts, extroverts, communicating, helping one another and having good relationships. It should be noted that while considering the test there must be no ambiguity that the individual is gay or straight. In my scenario there is no team member in our team who is supposed to be gay so we are all straight so the interactional and preference difference could not be found at all.
In the third test, it is discussed that the individuals are testing upon the strong automatic preference for the thin people over the fat people. The test evaluates that fat people are considered less likely to get some jobs that involve thin people. Thin people are expected to work efficiently and they have the least possibility of being lazy and uncomfortable in specific situations as well they also rarely have any serious medical issues.
In a nutshell, it can be explained that if I had considered myself in cultural pre-competence, I definitely would have had to manage the visual representation of all genders and ethnicities. In the current scenario, we are all men and meet mostly in the office environment so visual representation is not considered at all and we are all equally dressed in the western office styles. It is recognized that the staff have very high cultural limitations for which we have tried our best practices to give them a room to survive in the western and very fast working style. It is included in the example as we have given separate space to the Chinese individual because of his requirement for a calm and peaceful environment. The individual with an English background is also given personal space in which he can work according to his disciplined and non-disturbing environment.
References
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