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Intercultural Communication Paper

By: Maritza Denman

HRMN 302 6980 Organizational Communication

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Introduction:

The wonderful thing about our country is that we are a massive melting pot. No two

persons are alike, and neither are their cultures. In a workforce we are learning the value of

diversity and the importance of uniqueness to be successful, that different people can bring

different perspectives and value to a position and task. However though a company may be open

to diversity and culture awareness, a person may not be or they may not understand their own

biases, these biases maybe unaware to them, and they may not realize they can unintentionally

offend or affect someone. So how do we attack intercultural competence? I would say it is by

testing and evaluating our own biases. There are so many tools and ways to do this and one is

known as the INCA survey. It gives you a perspective of how well you handle intercultural

situations, how you may seem something v. what someone else may see it as. This particular tool

actually opened my eyes, and I always find it so interesting how after I do an exercise like this

how surprise I still am with my responses.

Abstract:

If you have never completed an INCA survey, it can be eye opening; it has 6 cultural

competence dimensions. They include behavioral flexibility, knowledge discovery,

communicative awareness, respect for otherness, tolerance for ambiguity, and empathy. Some of

these may make sense right away such as empathy, but it is good to know what it really means.

Behavioral flexibility is about our ability to adapt to others and situations, we all have that friend

or person we know that somehow take son sometimes and accent or has the ability to fit right in

regardless of the color of their skin they make everyone comfortable around them. Knowledge
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discovery is all about the person who researches prepares before visiting a new country or

culture and environment, they are prepared and engulf themselves in others culture. Respect for

otherness is about respecting someone else ability to disagree with you, that you realize people is

different and may have different values, but understand that and respect it. Tolerances for

ambiguity are those who find uncertainty a welcome challenge and are open to solving problems.

So after that brief description I want to share what I found for myself after taking the survey.

INCA Survey Result:

Now like any survey or quiz you take there is most likely a scale or a score, and you

bet INCA survey has one; Full-Level 3, Intermediate Level 2, Basic- Level 1. I thought for sure

to be honest I was going to be Full- Level 3 on all competencies, the reason I say this is because

as far as interacting with others and embracing cultures, and peoples uniqueness, I thought I did

everything by the book. What I discovered from my results which you will see from Appendix

A, is I was 50/50, 50% Full and 50% intermediate. This makes sense though now, because we

are constantly improving and learning, most importantly becoming wiser. Areas I was

intermediate included, Communicative Awareness, Tolerance for Ambiguity, and Empathy. Of

the three I was surprised by the most was tolerance for ambiguity, the reason I feel this way is

because I always saw myself as a person who was ok with someone having different values or

viewpoints, that I did not let it bother me, so it made me go back to what I answered. It made me

look at question 5, it asked if I was comfortable not understanding if I am in a strange place or

foreign country?, I put never. Which is true, I know that person who is knowledge discovery, I

gulf myself in other culture I like knowing and understanding people cultures and differences, so

I dont offend anyone, of course because I have this type of thought and reasoning I was full for

that category. The other Category that got me was empathy, empathy is the experience of be
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understanding of anothers feelings experiences trying to picture yourself as them. I find myself

to be empathetic, but when it comes to business, years of service in the military, have made me a

little hard in the workforce. It is something I am working on, but it brings a good point, how do I

relate to what my employees are going thru, how can I show concern yet maintain a professional

behavior. I feel that many must struggle with this.

Analysis of Critical Incidents:

To know your own frame mind is one thing to understand another, does can get

confusing, we may think we know and understand how someone is raised but we dont. Things

such as culture and language barriers can be the very wall preventing us from being successful.

That is why we need to evaluate critical incidents so we can understand why people do what hey

do, we need to use it as a tool

Lets take an incident in a school setting, imagine a teacher who notices a group of

students looking at photos, curiosity gets the best of them and they decide to be polite and

interact with the student showing the photo. However the photo is of a young child in a casket.

The teacher is startled but does not say anything, as they begin their lesson the subject of an

undertaker comes up; the teacher explains what it means. From here the student then explains

how her child was prepared for burial, and this additional incident startled the teacher once more.

So we ask ourselves with this incident, how should the teacher handle the situation, how would

handle the situation. Take in mind that the student is of a different culture then the teacher, so

death and bereavement may be handled differently. Even in our own country death is managed

differently, partly because we are a melting pot and in part could be because of structure or land.

Take New Orleans and Key West, two cities who bury their dead above ground because of water
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level, to many this maybe a culture thing but in reality it is about keeping the casket and body

from floating in water, and the funerals are beautiful and celebrated by what is known as a Jazz

Funeral in which dancing and music is played to help celebrate life and help the deceased find

his way to heaven, once known as an African American tradition in the south, New Orleans has

now made it their custom as well (Coclains, 2005). Some may find it odd to dance and sing

during a precession, they may find it distasteful, early 20th century in New Orleans Catholics

opposed it because they did not understand it (Coclains, 2005). Take wakes, some may find it

odd, that people would attend a service to say good bye to an open casket with a corpse, yet it

can be part of the grieving process and can provide comfort tin the grieving process. So what is

to say that New Orleans, or Catholic wakes are the right way to grieve. Who is to say that the

student is not supposed to be ashamed of her photos of her dead child? Maybe in her culture or

her country they celebrate the passing of life, maybe this was her way of grieving, there is not

right or wrong way to honor death. So for this teacher who may want to speak to this student,

she may end up biting more then she can chew, and should perhaps get to know more about her

student, get to know more about her beliefs.

Incidents dont just happen in schools they can also take place in a community setting. People

can take a situation or a setting and can form their own opinions they can misconstrued or

assume the wrong thing. Take two women walking hand in hand, we live in a world now where

it is ok to be gay. It has become the norm, so of course seeing two women holding hands, a

person can assume that they must be gay, and not just be friends, in this case lets say a man

sees them a screams at them calling them Lesbos which is derogatory. The women take offense

to it because they are friends and dont understand how by holding hands can make them

lesbians. Many cultures find hand holding as a sign of friendship, especially in many Middle
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Eastern cultures. An article caught my eye it was in regards to President Bush and Saudi Arabia's

Crown Prince Abdullah was seen holding hands during his visit in Texas. It brought confusion

and questions as to why would to grown men walk around holding hands. Sometimes ignorance

can bring about the biggest questions, which in both these incidents did, but it brought clarity and

education to a different cultural norm (Richard, 2017). In Arab hand-holding is an expression of

friendship, respect and trust, this gesture could have appeared that these two men were being

romantic but in reality the symbolic gesture showed the world two leaders trusted one another

(Richard, 2017). This goes back to what we were taught as children and that is to, not judge a

book by its cover.

Now to be clear just because youre in a work environment or a business setting does not

mean you will not come across cultural differences, or moments of knowing how to handle

certain situations. It is actually in work setting that can sometimes makes things even worse or

uncomfortable. We also may have to remind ourselves that people we work with are here

because they bring something special to the table, they may be new to our own community or

country. We also have to be careful with assuming everyone who comes to the USA wants to be

here, as Americans we can be overly patriotic and prideful when it comes to our country. Last

incident was observe in a work setting, a new immigrant has been struggling with wanting to

learn English, as well as embracing the American culture, for him he never wanted to be in this

country but had to due to safety reasons for himself and his family. In his country he was a well-

educated mathematician, all he wants to do is teach math again but because he does not know the

language he is lost and feels stupid. This can be common for many immigrants trying to

understand the new culture they live in while also trying to hold on to their old culture. This is

known as an identity issue, many immigrants go thru it by trying to find a sense of belonging.
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Learning English is not so easy, many immigrants can become discouraged by the contradictory

pressures to become English speaking and the many struggles they come by to learn the language

(Olson, 2000). Also to become English fluent can lease to a loss of home language use, fluency,

and development (Olson, 2000). The longer immigrants are in the country and trying to learn and

adapt they realize there is a power struggle over the use of English and their primary language

(Olson, 2000). So when trying to understand someone it is best to realize everyone is going thru

something and struggling and being in a new environment and work place can be scary.

Conclusion:

This exercise was eye opening, I got a chance to learn a little about myself but most

importantly, saw a different side of intercultural communication. It made me realize that we have

to be aware of stereotypes and try not to place people in categories we assume they should be in.

I also think it is good to know how we handle situations, by taking the INCA survey we were

able to see how we may interact with someone who is different. Most importantly in a business

environment, and why not we are a melting pot in the US. We should want to hire people who

are diverse and who come from different backgrounds and cultures, but when we do it we should

be able to know also how to communicate without offending people. I recommend for anyone

who has not had a chance to take the survey to attempt. Also take some time to get to know the

people you work with and learn something about their culture and background.
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References

Coclanis, A. P., & Coclanis, P. A. (2005). Jazz Funeral. Southern Cultures, 11(2), 86-92.

Richard, B. (n.d). Friendly gesture is political message. USA Today.

Olsen, L. (2000). Learning English and Learning America: Immigrants in the Center of a Storm.

Theory Into Practice, 39(4), 196.

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Appendix A

INCA Survey Scorecard

Six INCA Survey Add the Total Enter Level:

Cultural Questions Points for the 3-4 pts=Basic
Competence for Each Three INCA 5-7 pts=Intermediate
Dimensions Dimension Survey Questions 8-9 pts=Full

Behavioral Questions
Flexibility 1, 7, 17 8 Full

Knowledge Questions 8
Discovery 2, 8, 14 Full

Communicative Questions
Awareness 3, 12, 18 6 Intermediate

Respect Questions
for Otherness 4, 9, 16 9 Full

Tolerance for Questions Intermediate

Ambiguity 5, 11, 15 7
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Empathy Questions 6 Intermediate

6, 10, 13