Why is Cultural Awareness Important

When working across different cultures it's critical that you understand the rules and cultural expectations of others.

If you don't, you can make mistakes. These mistakes can be harmless, or, they can be very serious.

Cultural competence is valuable throughout life; whether you're traveling abroad for a holiday, or working across cultures in your professional life.

Working with people from different cultures has become more and more frequent for many of us and, as a result, more important.

Underestimating culture is the point at which things can start to go wrong. 

Although it may be easy to learn facts and do’s and don’ts about different cultures, this is not necessarily being culturally aware.

If you think of culture as an iceberg, what we see of a culture is tiny in comparison to what we cannot see. It is the unseen elements of culture such as values and beliefs, that are usually hardest for people to understand and deal with. When we interact in cross cultural situations, a lack of awareness can lead to bad or poor decisions.

Cultural awareness helps us reduce the chances of making bad decisions and increases the chance of us making more insightful, considered decisions.

These sorts of misunderstandings happen at all levels. The business world is full of examples of where companies have ventured into foreign countries and completely failed to understand the local culture.

What these sorts of examples clearly show us is how culture can and does get in the way when it comes to how we see others and the decisions we make.

Cultural awareness helps us move beyond this.

An important learning point, that we must stress, is that being culturally aware is not about compromising your own culture or sacrificing your values or identity for ‘another’s’.

It is simply about helping us understand how we can best adapt our approaches, thoughts and decisions to ensure we create positive outcomes in cross-cultural interactions.

It is about respecting others’ cultures as well as our own.

By Commisceo Global