Start Here: Multicultural Competence for Employees

Multicultural Competence for Employees

Interpersonal interactions can be challenging. Everyone holds different cultural identities that influence their perspective and ideas. Therefore, it is common to conflicts with your peers in the work environment. This can be a frustrating experience for many workers. However, listening, understanding, and responding appropriately to others is beneficial when seeking to improve workplace culture.

Whether you’re working on a project or meeting new coworkers, being able to accept and value your coworkers cultural identities will provide you with basic skills to enhance interpersonal relationships and communication. Thus, having multicultural competence is essential in any workplace. Derald Wing Sue (2001) identified three goals of multicultural competence that will lead you to become a more multiculturally competent individual.

1. Beliefs and Attitudes– The understanding of your own cultural conditions that affects your personal beliefs.

Have you ever found yourself judging other people’s choices without really thinking about it? If you have, you are starting to recognize how your bias influences you. This competency focuses mainly on how you understand your own bias. By understanding your own bias, you discover how it influences your thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and behaviors. Thus, you may come to notice that you have limited knowledge of other cultures. By accepting this, you are on your first step to becoming culturally competent.

2.     Knowledge- Understanding the worldviews of culturally different individuals and groups.

This competency allows you to focus on educating yourself about your culture and other cultures. There are several ways to do this. You can simply research other cultures, but the best way to achieve this goal is to interact with people who hold different cultural identities. For example, your coworkers may live in a similar environment than you, but they were brought up in different households that may have emphasized different beliefs and values. By socializing with your coworkers who hold different cultural identities you gain awareness to their values. This knowledge can facilitate understanding and help build positive interpersonal relationships with coworkers.

3.     Skills- Seeking out educational resources and using culturally appropriate cross-cultural skills.

Have you noticed that you may only have lunch with the same few people every day? While it is true that we as individuals choose to surround ourselves with people who are like us, it is important to also expand your social circle. This competency requires you to socialize with people who may be different from you. It also demands you to apply your knowledge of multicultural competence while communicating with others. A way to do this is to be curious. Becoming curious about your coworkers is not a call to be intrusive, it is a way to seek understanding about their cultural identities and salient themes in their professional and personal development.

What can I do next?

Becoming culturally competent is not easy. Understanding the components of multicultural competence is only the first step of becoming a culturally competent individual. Deliberate practice and wanting to be more culturally competent is the next step. By following these steps, you may find yourself positively contributing to your workplace culture.

Andrea Dayal is a Psychology Research Intern at Legacy Consulting & Research Group who is majoring in Biochemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interest fall in the domains of Neuroscience, Resilience, Trauma, and Multicultural Competence.

References:

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. doi:10.2307/2666999.

Sue, D. W. (2001). Multidimensional facets of cultural competence. The Counseling Psychologist, 29(6), 790–821. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000001296002

Williams, C. (2018). Psychological Well-Being, Occupational Thriving, and Positive Interpersonal Relationships (Doctoral dissertation, Fuller Theological Seminary, School of Psychology).

Andrea Dayal

Researcher

Legacy Consulting & Research Group LLC