Cultural Self-Awareness Essay

The purpose of this paper is to give a critical reflection on how cultural self-awareness is an important component of cultural intelligence.Firstly we will look at defining what exactly cultural self awareness and cultural intelligence is and then we will critically discuss how and why cultural self-awareness assists people to become more culturally intelligent through knowledge, experience and behaviour.Russell (2011) discusses her life growing up as a Third Culture Kid and having to relocate every few years due to the nature of her parents’ jobs.

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To follow, we will define the term cultural self-awareness and cultural intelligence and then we will critically discuss how cultural self-awareness is associated with cultural intelligence and how knowledge, experience and behaviour can act as a mediator of cultural self-awareness and cultural intelligence.

According to Quappe and Cantatore (2005), cultural awareness is the basis of communication, which involves the observation of ourselves from a distance and being able to recognise our cultural values, beliefs and perceptions.

This critical reflection will analyse the importance of understanding and demonstrating how cultural self awareness is important to developing cultural intelligence in multicultural societies.

A critical reflection is reflecting on own personal thoughts, feelings and beliefs in depth with analysation of social and cultural contexts.

It’s a measure of a person’s capacity to function effectively in a multi-cultural environment (Brislin, Worthley & Macnab, 2006).

Employers apply cultural intelligence as a way to help develop tolerance and improve cross-cultural interactions.

We should think of Cultural Intelligence as being something which we can continuously improve and develop over the length of time of our lives.

We do this through our experiences, but also with knowledge communicated by other people.

Having an understanding of how others view us helps to be aware of how they may misunderstand our intentions.

Cultural awareness, such as understanding that behaviour is influenced by culture and that each culture is unique, helps us to avoid making assumptions about people when they are ‘different’.