Essay On Cultural Competence

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Meaning of cultural competence:
According to Wikipedia cultural competence is the requirement of organizations to have defined rules of behaviours and attitudes to be used so that they can work effectively across cultures. The reason to rising need of cultural competence is globalization. Globalization is where the businesses/organizations expand to work internationally and hence working with more people from different societies and hence different cultures. The main objective of cultural competence is erasing or reducing the biases some employees might have on a particular culture. Biases towards another culture comes are as a result of ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is where you judge another culture on the basis of your own culture (Yelnick). …show more content…

As an example, I will be comparing the American culture with my own culture (Rwandan culture). In comparison of these two cultures, American culture is more time sensitive compared to the Rwandan culture. As the result, when communicating the person who is used to American culture we have to find all means to summarize all we want to say for it to take the shortest time. However, when talking to person used to Rwandan culture, it is okay to include all the relevant stories you have on that topic so that they understand irrespective of the time you will …show more content…

However, there are some practices which have been found in many cultures and have been taken to be standard universally. When communicating to people from other cultures there are very many things which you should pay attention to. These are mostly grouped into verbal and non-verbal ones. The verbal cues are mostly about what you say and all that accompanies your words i.e. the choice of words, language, facial expressions, and gestures. The non-verbal are mostly means of communication which does not involve speaking e.g. how you dress. Basing on my general universal view of cultures I consider the three basic cues to consider when talking to people from other cultures is the choice of language, body language (gestures) and eye