50 Activities for Achieving Cultural Competence

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Part II—Culture—General Activities

The term “culture – general” is used to indicate the area of professional study that assists us in

dealing with the dynamics of culture as they appear in all cultures. The purpose of cultural-

general activities is to raise awareness and promote understanding about how individuals from

one culture might experience working, visiting, or living with individuals who come from a dif-

ferent cultural background, and to provide a mental framework and useful tools for continuing

this learning.

While culture-general activities can present information about specific cultures by way of exam-

ples, their focus is about how cultures work, and how we can better manage our interactions by

knowing how and where to look for cultural differences, as well as how to analyze them from a

cultural perspective. Through self-reflection, dialogue, individual and small group work, and

self-study, participants in these culture-general activities gain deeper insight about their own

culture, as well as insight into the cultures of others.

While there are many dimensions to culture-general competence, we have chosen activities that

help us improve in three important areas:

a) Understanding basic cultural dynamics

b) Improving cross-cultural communication

c) Managing differences in how time is experienced by various cultures

Section A. Cultural Dynamics

This set of activities is particularly useful for introducing individuals and groups to how a culture

works—the things that tend to trip us up when we first begin to work in intercultural environ-

ments. The activities are about how we automatically perceive and deal with differences from an

ethnocentric perspective, leading us to fresh awareness of the true nature of these differences.

Finally, they tell us how we can engage one another successfully and use these differences to

mutual advantage.