Cultural Self-Awareness

Introduction

Culture is an important aspect of life since it has a great influence on individuals. Some of the factors that are influenced by people’s cultures include; their values, desires, worries and views. Besides, cultures give people a sense of belonging and identity. There are different cultures some of which are mixed while others are not. Cultural self-awareness is important for a person because it plays a role in many factors of such a person’s life. Cultural self-awareness is important when people have to interact with others of different cultures. Different people have different cultures based on their backgrounds. Also, some cultures are developed through others’ influence. For instance, people in a given institution are likely to develop a common culture that is unique to such an institution. In such a situation cultural awareness plays an important role in maintaining the values that people believe in and respect.

Thesis: Cultural self-awareness is related to cultural intelligence. There are many factors about cultural self-awareness as they will be discussed in the essay that show the relationship with cultural intelligence.

In order to discuss the subject well, definitions will be important, cultural self-awareness and cultural integrity will be defined. After the definitions, the discussion on why and how cultural self-awareness is important in the development of cultural intelligence will follow.

Definitions

Cultural self-awareness is an understanding of a person’s culturally determined identity, preferences and rules (Aschieri, 2016). As people develop their cultural self-awareness, they not only understand their identity preferences and rules but also learn to accommodate other people’s cultures. This aspect is important in the normal development of a person. There are several advantages for people understanding their cultural beliefs. Foremost, there are values that people strictly uphold. Secondly, in leadership, when a person understands his or her cultural beliefs, there is an opportunity of them applying the beliefs in their leadership styles. Therefore, if a leader knows that there is a feature ion his or her culture that may affect the way they lead negatively they will tend to mitigate the effects of that particular feature in leadership. This is because the cultural feature may end up irritating people who they may not be sharing a common culture. Finally, in business, cultural awareness is important in the sense that one may be engaging in a business that his or her culture considers immoral or unethical. This will affect the performance of such a person and they can control such effects through avoiding the business that may lead to such effects.

Cultural intelligence on the other hand is the ability of an individual to thrive in a multi-cultured environment (Al-Jarrah, 2016). This is the ability that relates to the evolution from the naturally established notions of intelligence quotient and emotional intelligence. In leadership, these factors are needed by leaders for effective leadership. Cultural intelligence has been vital in different events and happening in the day to day life of human beings (Miriam, et al., 2013). Simply being the ability to interact freely with people from different cultures offers a great opportunity to people to share widely and develop an understanding of what each individual wants. Cultural intelligence requires that a person be aware of own culture and others’ culture in how they think and behave. The three steps involved in the development of cultural intelligence are thinking about culture, having a motivation to change behavior and acting appropriately(Al-Jarrah, 2016

How Cultural Self-Awareness helps People to be more Culturally Intelligent

Cultural self-awareness builds ones values and beliefs. For instance, Islam is a religion that has a number of values that it imparts on the followers. Religions form part of the cultural divides across the globe. Therefore it is a cultural grouping just like any other religious denomination. The religion’s teachings give an understanding that there is more to life than just the religion and that it is important to consider other life aspects other than Islam. There are other religious and cultural groupings that may not share the same values as Muslims (Stepin, 2015). The religion allows members of the Muslim community to embrace all others as their brothers and sisters. Being a Muslim, I understand that there are many other religions and cultures that I need to understand how they operate and how different they are from my religion in order for us to create an understanding for peaceful and mutual coexistence. This is an important aspect of cultural self-awareness that plays a critical role in the development of cultural intelligence. Now that I know what my religion stands for, I tend to avoid instances that may make me uncomfortable and therefore I handle the situations as they come because of the understanding that there are cultural differences in the society (Lee, 2015).

Secondly, cultural self-awareness develops novelty and normality. When a people have unique characters, they are easily recognized. Recognition makes a person feel important and cared for. This is the other factor that is important in the development of cultural intelligence. When a person is unique and sees everything as being normal or avoiding stereotyping, he or she becomes culturally intelligent. This are factors that help a person to recognize others’ uniqueness and assuming that the uniqueness is normal and does not exist. Therefore, this person will be handled in a manner that he or she will not recognize the cultural differences between them (Magnusson, et al., 2013). Finally, being confident about one’s culture promotes confidence and therefore they are not easily intimidated by other cultures and that is an important aspect in the development of cultural intelligence.

Why Cultural Self-Awareness Helps people to be more Culturally Intelligent

People uphold their cultural values highly in the society. When people believe that their cultures are good, they tend to study other cultures for comparison purposes. Human beings are naturally social and they easily connect with each other (Pappamihiel&Pappamihiel, 2013). It is important for these people to understand their cultures and other people’s cultures so that such a relationship can continue. Having high moral ethical standards requires that those who interact with each other have such common factors. Ethics and morals are important in the society since they form the basis of peaceful interactions. The main reason why cultural self-awareness influences cultural intelligence is the social nature of human beings and the interactions that they have in their day to day lives (Ramsey, et al., 2016).

To conclude, having stated the various factors on how cultural self-awareness influences cultural intelligence, it is evident that cultural self-awareness has an impact on cultural intelligence. Culture plays an important role in the day to life of humans and some of the cultures have shaped the society. There are different cultural beliefs in the world and it is important to develop the necessary interaction skills through cultural intelligence.

References

Al-Jarrah, A. (2016). The Cultural Intelligence Level Among International Students In Jordanian Universities. Educational Research Quarterly, 39(3), 23-39.

Aschieri, F. (2016). Shame as a Cultural Artifact: A Call for Self-Awareness and Reflexivity in Personality Assessment. Journal Of Personality Assessment, 1-9.

Lee, J. (2015). Social and cultural self-awareness in spiritual direction: reflections of Korean male spiritual director. Presence, 21(4), 40-46.

Magnusson, P., Westjohn, S. A., Semenov, A. V., Randrianasolo, A. A., &Zdravkovic, S. (2013). The Role of Cultural Intelligence in Marketing Adaptation and Export Performance. Journal Of International Marketing, 21(4), 44-61.

Miriam, E., Alon, L., Raveh, H., Ella, G., Rikki, N., &Efrat, S. (2013). Going Global: Developing Management Students' Cultural Intelligence and Global Identity in Culturally Diverse Virtual Teams. Academy Of Management Learning & Education, 12(3), 330-355. doi:10.5465/amle.2012.0200

Pappamihiel, C. J., &Pappamihiel, E. (2013). Cultural self-awareness as a crucial component of military cross-cultural competence. Journal Of Special Operations Medicine: A Peer Reviewed Journal For SOF Medical Professionals, 13(3), 62-69.

Ramsey, J. R., AbiAad, A., Jiang, C., Barakat, L., & Drummond, V. (2016). Emergence of cultural intelligence and global mindset capital: a multilevel model. Multinational Business Review (Emerald Group Publishing Limited), 24(2), 106. doi:10.1108/MBR-12-2015-0062

Stepin, V. S. (2015). Philosophy as Cultural Self-Awareness. Russian Studies In Philosophy, 53(2), 151-158.