The ability to interact with people from different cultures through effective communication and understanding is necessary for the cultural competency in a work environment. Cultural competence within a workplace is essential as it determines the success or failure of the organization. Career trends, training as well as learning dramatically determine the level of success, and inability to change or learn may translate to business failure. Cultural diversities also assist in ensuring that the objectives of the business are achieved. The paper will address successfully culturally diverse environment, skills and abilities for the culturally competent person and describe how gender, personality, memory, cognition, emotions, and development influence cultural competence in the workplace. The paper further discusses the five models of personality which include; openness to experience, agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism.
Success in a culturally diverse workplace is substantially determined by an individual’s ability to comprehend, communicate, and efficiently interact with various people from different cultural backgrounds. Also, the person should effectively work with diverse cultural opinions and schedules. These essentials include communication, team building, time and plans. Giving information accurately and timely is critical in a successful workplace and enhancing teamwork (McFarland & Wehbe-Alamah, 2014). This information is important when an immediate response is required when there is a problem in a project. For instance, Asian cultures are reluctant when reporting bad news to supervisors while other cultures overstate the problem.
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Additionally, team building by establishing effective cross-cultural workforce is important in benefitting in the prospective advantages accrued from cultural diversity in the workplace. Similarly, different perception of time can result in a misunderstanding in the workplace when defining deadlines and schedules. Time perception necessitates cultural diversity in the work environment and how it can affect every day work (McFarland & Wehbe-Alamah, 2014). Also, the different schedules in various cultures lead to diversity in the workplace. Different cultures have different calendars, holidays, and different celebrations. The managerial should outline how these differences should be addressed to promote effective workplace environment.
A culturally competent person must portray unique skill and abilities. Skills such as the ability to assess needs, building capacity, planning, implementation, and evaluation are important for a culturally competent person. The person must have the ability to assess his/her influence on perceptions, values, opinions, social position, and knowledge while interacting with others (Greene, 2017). Also, the person must build capacity by being an ally to population experiencing discrimination and prejudice and at the same time facilitating others to be an ally to their cultural group.
Also, a culturally competent person should have planning skills to learn to embrace current, ambiguous, and changeable situations and have persistent in allowing communications when misunderstanding arise. Also, the individual should implement the skills by encouraging and accommodating various learning and participation styles to build community strengths among members (Greene, 2017). Consequently, the individual should evaluate the validity of analytical tools applied to people who are culturally diverse and those who its normal for them.
Gender affects cultural competence in the workplace where different cultures have diverse perception regarding women in the workplace. Many men are not likely to follow the rules delegated by women, and also people believe that a unique gender must do certain work. Different personality affects cultural competence in the workplace. The two broad categories of character are introvert and extrovert. Introvert people like to work exclusively alone and in a closed cubicle. The personality is likely to affect advantageous cultural diversity and also hamper teamwork (Ting-Toomey & Dorjee, 2018). Additionally, memory and cognition affect cultural competence due to different learning and developmental abilities. Language differences result in different understanding since most people work in places where they use the second language in communication.
Additionally, emotions affect cultural competence in communication, cultural adaptability, and interpersonal skills. The ability to control emotions plays a vital role in the value of social interaction (Ashkanasy, Zerbe & Hartel, 2016). Similarly, the difference in development capacities among various nations where workers interact is likely to affect cross-cultural competence (Ting-Toomey & Dorjee, 2018). Colleagues in some cultures are regarded as a minority, and their voices are not to be heard as they would expect.
The five-factor model of personality can be used to evaluate the cultural competence. The five models of personality include; openness to experience, agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. The five models of personality have characteristics that identify which abilities and skills a person has. By identifying the competency skills, it will help know the development required on personal basis.
Openness can be defined as how willing a person can be in accepting new ideas and changing accordingly. This factor can effectively be applied measuring cultural competence such as cultural empathy, openness, and dissimilarity. The second factor is agreeableness. These factors evaluate how people trust others, get along with others, and their communication skills (Prue et al., 2015) . Similarly, this factor can be applied in cultural competence in measuring how people are likely to be in good terms, teamwork, and how they will share their information.
The next factor is extraversion which can be defined as social adaptability where a person has interest in external events and other people. This could measure effectiveness of cultural competence in social interaction with others. Additionally, neuroticism measures the adjustment capability. People with low neuroticism have volatility and a lot of anxiety while those with high neuroticism have low anxiety and stable personality (Novikova et al., 2017) . Neuroticism can measure cultural competence in determining how people manages conflict and emotions. Also, conscientiousness involves the practice of being vigilant and careful. Conscientiousness is applicable in cultural competence when people take responsibility of others seriously.
Yes. There are no theoretical foundations as FFM models are derived from personality questionnaires, a flawed method of data collection. Also, some factors are related to each other such as conscientiousness and neuroticism. Additionally, factor such as neuroticism is broad and not reliable in psychiatry (Seibert & DeGeest, 2017) . Finally, the choice of the five factors was chose arbitrary.
Using the FFM models, I will portray openness, respect, and curiosity to show my willingness in others peoples concern. Also, through agreeableness I will ensure there is teamwork, good relations and carefully listen to other people ideas (Shang, Chao, & Lirn, 2016) . Furthermore, I will employ high neuroticism to manage my emotions when dealing with others. Also, I will employ extraversion by showing social concerns on my colleagues. Finally, I will employ conscientiousness by being vigilant and taking obligation of others seriously.
Currently, different organizations request for people with talents as a result of the stiff competition and the rapidly growing economy. It has turned advantageous for organizations to seek for personal attributes as an added advantage on the personal skills as well as work experiences when giving job vacancies. These trends have significantly increased due to performance demand and the rate of competition in the labor market. Corporate managements body understands the importance of openness to experience, agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism as well as the leadership traits in work performance as a reflection of the organization’s objectives. However, there are set laws set to protect employees against discriminations due to their personal attributes. Organizations also should consider personal traits without bias and use them as a baseline for workers specialization and labor divisions within the company. Also, during the recruitment process, the supervisors should consider training based on personal attributes of the employees.
In conclusion, the ability to interact with people from different cultures through effective communication and understanding is necessary for the culturally competent work environment. To be successful in a culturally diverse workplace, an individual must have the ability to comprehend, communicate, and efficiently interact with various people from different cultures. A culturally competent person must portray unique skill and abilities. Cultural competence is necessary for a productive workplace environment. Gender affects cultural competence in the workplace where many cultures have a different perception of women in the workplace. In a culturally diverse workplace, the essential tools include effective communication, team building, time and preparing schedules. Additionally, skills such as the ability to assess needs, building capacity, planning, implementation, and evaluation are essential for a culturally competent person. Consequently, factors such as gender, personality, memory, cognition, emotions, and development affect cultural competence in the work environment. The five models of personality include; openness to experience, agreeableness, extroversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. Application of FFM is crucial in cultural competence although FFM portrays some drawback, it still a major psychological tool in determining cultural competence.
References
Ashkanasy, N. M., Zerbe, W. J., & Hartel, C. E. (2016). Managing emotions in the workplace. Routledge.
Greene, R. R. (2017). Human Behavior Theory and Professional Social Work Practice. In Human Behavior Theory and Social Work Practice (pp. 31-62). Routledge.
McFarland, M. R., & Wehbe-Alamah, H. B. (2014). Leininger's culture care diversity and universality. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Novikova, I. A., Novikov, A. L., Gridunova, M. V., & Zamaldinova, G. N. (2017). Intercultural Competence Profiles in Russian University Students. The RUDN Journal of Psychology and Pedagogics , 14 (3), 326-338.
Prue, B., Stern, L. D., Hurley, P., Catto, G., Young, D., & Pfautz, J. (2015). Application of personality theories for design and the development of cross-cultural decision-making tools. Procedia Manufacturing , 3 , 4006-4013.
Seibert, S. E., & DeGeest, D. S. (2017). The Five Factor Model of Personality in Business and Industry. The Oxford Handbook of the Five Factor Model , 381.
Shang, K. C., Chao, C. C., & Lirn, T. C. (2016). Application of personality traits model on freight forwarding service industry. Maritime Business Review , 1 (3), 231-252.
Ting-Toomey, S., & Dorjee, T. (2018). Communicating across cultures. Guilford Publications.
