CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE

Something that I learn about cultural intelligence and cultural responsiveness is to first have cultural openness and cultural awareness. From what I understood one has to be open to learn about other people's culture with an open mind. However, this doesn't mean to be invasive or assume somebody's cultural background. 

I like the definition of Business professors P. Christopher Earley and Elaine Mosakowski about cultural intelligence. They define it as “an outsider’s seemingly natural ability to interpret someone’s unfamiliar and ambiguous gestures the way that person’s compatriots would.”  This means to have the ability to relate to people from other cultures by empathizing and actively working to understand customs and norms of other cultures besides our own (What Is Cultural Intelligence and Why Is It Key to Business? – Nationwide, n.d.).

Now, according to the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCREST), “cultural responsiveness is the ability to learn from and relate respectfully with people of your own culture as well as those from other cultures" (What Does It Mean to Be Culturally Responsive?, 2018). This means to be respectful, recognize potential biases and look beyond the differences of people's and communities' whose cultural contexts are different from one's own. 

A more simple definition of these two concepts its to empathetic, respectful, and have the willingness to learn more and to be open minded. Some strategies that I learn to increase my cultural responsiveness is by just talking to people in a respectful way. This mean being willing to listen to people instead of assuming (and just talking over them). The best way to learn is by listening and observing. 

There are other strategies like:

• Understand one's cultural history, so one can identify one's own biases (cultural biases).
• Traveling and talking to people. This way one can experience cultures outside of one's culture. This can be even to another city or places within the city.
• Another one is just to read more books about this topic. This also means reading, researching and learning about other cultures. 

Here are links about how to become more culturally intelligent: 

 

(https://blog.talaera.com/cultural-intelligence) This provides 10 ways to become more culturally intelligent.

(https://alanweiss.com/five-ways-to-build-cultural-intelligence/)

References:

What is Cultural Intelligence and Why is it Key to Business? – Nationwide. (n.d.). https://www.nationwide.com/business/solutions-center/management/what-is-cultural-intelligence

What Does It Mean to be Culturally Responsive? (2018). The Latino Family Literacy Project. https://www.latinoliteracy.com/mean-culturally-responsive/