CUC107 Critical Reflection Assignment Sample
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Cultural self-awareness is important for Cultural Intelligence
Introduction
Culture is defined as the different pattern of thought and behavior of individuals. It is a combination of the ideas, beliefs, values, and the pattern of economic, social and legal business of the organization. The self-recognition and acceptance by people that they all are shaped by each one’s own distinctive and particular cultural backgrounds is referred to as cultural self-awareness.
Cultural intelligence is the ability of individuals to get an insight of the cultural and organizational differences and the interaction with people in the environment. The thesis statement of this essay is that “Cultural self-awareness is important for Cultural Intelligence”. The assignment will discuss about what cultural self-awareness is and what cultural intelligence is. The assignment further explains how and why cultural self-awareness assists individuals to be more culturally intelligent.
It is also explained that how these elements will fit into a broader context in relation to the theories. The scope of this assignment is to understand the importance of understanding cultural self-awareness and cultural intelligence. At the same time, it tells about why cultural self-awareness is important to develop cultural intelligence. Additionally, it helps to understand how these elements fit into the different theories given below.
Body paragraphs
Cultural self-awareness
Culture is the shared system which combines the meanings, values, beliefs, etc by which experience is carried out, shared and interpreted. Culture self-awareness refers to the consciousness of one’s own personal culture background. It means that an individual should become aware of its own cultural values, beliefs, thoughts, perceptions, etc. (Chiao, et al., 2010).
It has its own significance because of certain factors that are vital as they help an individual to explore, understand, value culture, and also the social background which includes race, social class, gender, age, religion, etc. By identifying these factors one can get an insight about the culture in a better way as well as it helps to use the strategies to implement in a certain culture. Culture self-awareness help individuals to get a better outlook in the context of their own culture, at the same time it helps to understand your own personal worldview (Baumeister, 2010).
Cultural intelligence
Cultural intelligence refers to the ability individual posses to understand the differences in the culture and organization. It helps an individual to have certain information about him as well as the culture (Reader, et al., 2011). It is also the capability to relate and also work effectively across cultures. Cultural intelligence is the capacity an individual holds to outperform effectively in a multi-cultural environment.
It has been applied by the employees in the organization as a way to foster and enhance the cross-culture interactions. Cultural intelligence provide various benefits at the same time such as, communication becomes more effective in different cultural settings, encouraging and motivating people to bring out their best, maximizing the team spirit in groups where people thin and react differently, these differences also helps to bring about innovative processes and in assessing the intercultural communications, and helps to provide the tools which will in return improve and enhance the sales, growth, performance of the workforce and the brand image of the company (Van Dyne, et al., 2010).
Why cultural self-awareness is important to develop cultural intelligence
Cultural self-awareness is important to develop the cultural intelligence as it is important that an individual firstly knows about his/her culture before developing an insight to understand the other distinctive cultures all over the globe. It is very difficult to understand different culture before one has a thorough knowledge of his own culture. So, it becomes important to understand your own culture for developing the culture intelligence.
As culture intelligence means that individual posses the ability to understand the differences that exist in the culture and organization (MacNab, et al., 2012). When people move global they face the distinctive cultures that exist. So it becomes impossible to move global without having the capacity to deal with the different various cultures. The global companies are engaged in cross-cultural practices, lead the multicultural teams with different working patterns, develop the intercultural competencies, etc.
People have to deal with different types of people from all over the world when they move global. So, they need to understand their own culture, values, beliefs, thoughts, etc as it becomes important when they have to interact with people from different and various cultural backgrounds. Our values, thoughts, beliefs define the way we see the world, they shape our perceptions. To gain the effective results it is the responsibility of the whole team to work in unity.
For this, it is vital that people have an in depth understanding of each other’s different culture and to work in a team (Ng, et al., 2012). People face different difficult circumstances in a dynamic environment so they should always try to figure out the Do’s and don’ts of other cultures so the behavior can be altered accordingly.
Cultural intelligence not only makes individual aware of its own culture but also the cultural differences in the way one behaves and think accordingly. If one is not aware about the own culture it will become very hard to understand the outlook of the other various cultures. People can learn to understand the different cultural differences by getting cultural training, developing the cross-cultural interactions, etc that will I return help to adapt to the new cultures effectively (Moon, 2010).
Explain how these elements fit into a broader context in relation to the theories
According to Spencer-Oatey, culture is a fuzzy set of assumptions, values, beliefs, policies, procedures, etc that are being shared by a group of people and which further influences the behavior of each member and also the interpretations of the meaning of other’s behavior as well. In support of this, Quappe and Cantatore (2005) state that Cultural awareness is the foundation of communication and it includes the ability to become aware of our own cultural beliefs, values, thoughts, perceptions, etc.
In the research of Brislin, et al., (2006), it is found out that to increase the ability of an individual to connect with the others outside their own culture is referred to as cultural intelligence. At the same time stated that cultural self-awareness is the foundation of cultural intelligence. People are not aware of their own culture. They often accept the things as they are irrespective of knowing what cultural aspect influences their behavior, values, thoughts or perception. Because of this when the person moves to a different culture faces cultural shock. Cultural shock occurs when there is a lack of knowledge, the lack of ability to adapt, etc.
Conclusion
It is concluded from the above assignment that culture play an important role in shaping our values, assumptions, thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, etc. At the same time, it is further concluded that it is vital to have a better insight of one’s own culture before you go and try to fit in different culture. Cultural intelligence is also important as it helps to possess an ability to understand the differences that exist in the culture and the organization. Hence, cultural self-awareness is important to develop the cultural intelligence.
References
Baumeister, R. F. (2010). The self. Advanced social psychology: The state of the science, 139-175.
Chiao, J. Y., Harada, T., Komeda, H., Li, Z., Mano, Y., Saito, D., … & Iidaka, T. (2010). Dynamic cultural influences on neural representations of the self. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22(1), 1-11.
Flanja, D. (2009). Culture shock in intercultural communication. Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai. Studia Europaea, 54(4), 107.
MacNab, B. R., & Worthley, R. (2012). Individual characteristics as predictors of cultural intelligence development: The relevance of self-efficacy. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 36(1), 62-71.
Moon, T. (2010). Emotional intelligence correlates of the four-factor model of cultural intelligence. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 25(8), 876-898.
Ng, K. Y., Van Dyne, L., Ang, S., & Ryan, A. M. (2012). Cultural intelligence: A review, reflections, and recommendations for future research. Conducting multinational research: Applying organizational psychology in the workplace, 29-58.
Quappe, S., & Cantatore, G. (2005). What is cultural awareness, anyway? How do I build it. Retrieved July, 17, 2008.
Reader, S. M., Hager, Y., & Laland, K. N. (2011). The evolution of primate general and cultural intelligence. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 366(1567), 1017-1027.
Spencer-Oatey, H., & FRANKLIN, P. (2012). What is culture. A compilation of quotations. GlobalPAD Core Concepts.
Van Dyne, L., Ang, S., & Livermore, D. (2010). Cultural intelligence: A pathway for leading in a rapidly globalizing world. Leading across differences, 131-138.
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