Intercultural Competence Development

Intercultural competence has been identified with a bewildering set of terms, including intercultural sensitivity, cross-cultural effectiveness, intercultural skills, cross-cultural adaptation, global competence, multicultural competence, cross-cultural relations, cultural proficiency, intercultural agility, and even the misnomer cultural intelligence. In spite of this lack of conceptual agreement, there exists a widespread consensus among researchers and practitioners that intercultural competence is a key capability for working and living effectively with people from different cultures, critical in achieving diversity and inclusion goals within organizations, essential for reducing ethnocentrism and bias among people, and central to building productive and positive relations both within one’s own culture/country and internationally. Additionally, intercultural competence is identified in workplace surveys as one of the top 10 skills needed for leaders and employees in the 21st ...