Intercultural Competence: Assessing Culture in the Workplace Context

The dictionary defines context as the “circumstances surrounding an act or event.” Understanding context determines the contextual boundaries within which one operates: a classroom, workplace, community. Context situates us in our role, draws attention to the circumstances of the culturally diverse workplace, and provides an opportunity to approach, assess, and navigate the ways and means by which we are able to meet the cultural needs and challenges that arise.

While the term context equates to the circumstances of an environment, it is the understanding—the cultural insight—that establishes an environment for cultural competence to develop and flourish.  The role is one of cultural “strategy”—contextualizing strategies in terms of interventions, identifying missed cultural cues, validation, solving problems and developing trust.

Today’s workplaces use metrics to assess recruiting, training, performance, retention, succession and other important activities. Professionals from other countries and cultures are often misunderstood, mismanaged and misdirected because management often misunderstands the employee’s cultural values—intercultural competence is not considered important as there are no metrics to measure and manage it.

As a result, workplaces often resort to reactive rather than proactive initiatives concerning cultural context issues. For example, diversity training typically happens only after a performance deficit is identified as a result of a negative situation or a lawsuit. The goal of reactive initiatives is to ensure that whatever the issue was, it won’t happen again. But that approach fails to appreciate the full context and the need for holistic understanding.

As context represents condition, understanding is the pivotal word in developing insight into one’s audience. By assessing the patterns that surface in context, one establishes how to best achieve connection with an individual or among a group.

When I ask myself what it was that led me to connect my interest in culture with my pursuit of intercultural and adult education, I fondly recall my experience as an ESOL volunteer for a middle-aged Vietnamese man. Both puzzling and motivating, the incident led me to recognize the misunderstandings and wrong impressions that can result from culturally contrasting work ethics.

                                     ~ Mr. Huynh meets Robert Frost ~

My student, My Huynh (a pseudonym), was a graduate of the University of Saigon who had worked as a pharmacist before the Vietnam War. He was captured and held prisoner for many years, and during his captivity his family fled to the United States. Upon his arrival here, he found that his wife had no interest in learning English, and his children, who were brought up in the American school system and were fluent in English, were about to leave home for college. Considering his limited English, his only choice of employment was a factory job where all of his co-workers spoke Vietnamese. Diligent in his pursuit of learning English and determined to understand the ways of the U.S., Mr. Huynh sought out special tutoring. He and I connected and agreed to spend two hours together every Sunday at the local library, working on his English-speaking skills. First, we tackled his assigned course work; then, we worked with a program I designed to introduce him to Western history, music, and poetry—all interests he identified as important to him.

I smile whenever I think of Mr. Huynh’s first exposure to poetry of Robert Frost. I thought he would relate to a male poet’s perspective on friendship, tilling the soil on a farm, and so on. So I mailed Mr. Huynh a photo of Robert Frost along with a copy of the poem “A Time to Talk” and asked him to read the poem in preparation for our next meeting. This particular poem captures Frost’s thoughts (possibly his own experience) about a gardener who interrupts his gardening work for a friendly chat with his friend and neighbor who, in passing, waved to him from the road. Instead of just waving back, the gardener put his hoe in the ground and walked to the roadside to greet his friend. The following Sunday, when I met with Mr. Huynh he appeared disturbed. When I asked whether or not he enjoyed the poem, he replied, “Robert Frost is not a good man,” he declared. “He should have been working, not visiting with his friends,” he told me. I attempted to describe the rural areas of Frost’s New England, neighborly interaction, and the importance of taking time to socialize, but I could not convince Mr. Huynh of this poet’s merit. Nor did I introduce another Robert Frost poem during the remainder of my Sundays with Mr. Huynh.

Published on LinkedIn . . . Thursday, July 30