Excerpts Series: Cultural Competency in the Workplace

Cultural Competency in the Workplace is a training we offer at CDP. Below is a brief overview - an excerpt - from this training. Find out more about this important training by clicking on the image below or the button at the bottom of your screen.

Let’s give a definition to Cultural Competency. This is certainly not the only definition. If you Google you can find lots of different ideas about how to define competency, but for our purposes of moving forward with this subject matter, I want to give some definition around Cultural Competency. It’s really the idea of being proficient or having excellence in this area of addressing another’s culture or customs, needs and expectations when they’re different from our own. When we talk about the idea of competency, we’re really talking about building awareness, knowledge and skills in a way that we can appreciate and address others who are different from ourselves. We want do this in ways that are respectful and allow them to fully realize their culture and their customs within our organizational structure.

Cultural Competency in an organization really starts with the individuals within the organization. We can’t have a good conversation around Cultural Competency if we aren’t reflecting on where we are individually, as well as where the individuals are within the organization, as it relates to competency.

Culturally competent individuals are people who value diversity, who are regularly conducting assessment of self, to see where we are in terms of our own cultural competence and learning how to manage the dynamics of difference. I love that term - dynamics of difference - because we are not moving toward sameness, rather, we are looking at -  how do we manage the dynamics that present when we are different from each other?

Culturally competent individuals also acquire and institutionalize, making cultural knowledge a part of the structure of their institutions and organizations. Culturally competent individuals are able to adapt to diversity. As our communities become more diverse we need to have the skills that will adapt to the diversifying culture in our communities. We need to put some skills behind this. One really important aspect that we will hit on several times through our time together is that we’re not looking at this being a “checked box”. We aren’t ever going to arrive in terms of us being culturally competent individuals.

This is a journey and it’s a process. It’s a continuum that we’re moving down. As our communities become more diverse, this is a process that we’re going to constantly be changing and evolving. As we look at different cultures that are moving into our communities and we recognize that people have differences, we will want to put some processes in place. We want education and awareness infrastructure in place so that we are constantly adapting to the diverse culture that’s presenting in our community and hopefully in our organizations.

Culturally competent individuals are able to adapt to diversity of all kinds and the cultural context of the communities they serve. This what we’re really trying to get a handle on and understand. We’re moving down the continuum, we’re moving into a process and committing to a journey to constantly look at how we can continue to evolve into culturally competent individuals.

When we have individuals that have an awareness, have a skill set, have a knowledge about all the issues of difference and how to integrate those into our personal journeys, we are going to create, as a by-product, culturally competent organizations. We’re looking to create and foster an organizational environment, where everyone is free to express their own culture. That’s what we’re moving toward as organizations - creating and fostering, maintaining, developing and retaining an organizational environment - where everyone is free to express their own culture.

That’s where we’re putting some definition around culturally competent organizations, which is the context by which we at CDP are really committed to helping you as nonprofit organizations grow in this area. It’s really important that we put some attention to this area of creating culturally competent organizations.

In order to develop or even look at this issue of Cultural Competency there are a couple of core beliefs that are really important. If you do not have these beliefs, you’re not going to make a lot of headway in moving the organization forward or in moving yourself forward in individual Cultural Competency.

Two things I believe are critically important to understand, that are core beliefs to being able to have good conversation and to move in the direction of cultural proficiency:

1) One of the tenets that we have a CDP is that your nonprofit organization should reflect the communities that you’re in and serving. When we do Board trainings we talk about this issue a lot  - that your Board should be reflective of the community that you serve and in the context of Culture Competency your organization, as a whole, should reflect the community that you are in and serving. When we talk about 501(c)(3)s and nonprofit organizations one of the basic understandings of nonprofit organizations is that they are to provide public benefit. You are given tax exemption because your organization is providing public benefits. In order for you to provide public benefits, you need to be reflective of the organizational community that you’re serving.

If you are located in a particular community you need to be understanding the demographics of that community and your organization should reflect that. So in the context of looking at cultural differences, we need to be very cognizant of the different cultures that make up our community and our organization should reflect that. You have to accept that as a core belief before any conversation around Cultural Competency will make sense. The first core belief is that organizations, nonprofits, should reflect the communities that they are in and serving.

2) Secondly, organizational culture should respect people as individuals. If we can get those two beliefs clear and we can say, “Yes, those are important to me and I value them,” then we can move forward into the larger conversation of Cultural Competency.

So, we should reflect the community that we’re serving and we should respect people as individuals within our organization. Those two things are key to even move forward into this conversation of Cultural Competency.