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Cultural awareness quiz
A cultural quiz is an online test that asses ones understanding and awareness of a given culture. They mainly base their questions on business, work, working in multicultural situations and other cultural questions pertaining to a specific country. A culture is a complex institution of a specific place that encompasses knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, customs and any other capabilities and habits acquired by the inhabitants of the place.
I took a Bolivian culture test offered by the kwint essential site. Various queries about the Bolivian culture were tested. My score was a real surprise. As I countered the quiz, I experienced some real brain teasers. Nonetheless I managed to score an equivalent of seventy percent in the test. This proved my speculations wrong. I was of the opinion that I was devoid of the multicultural knowledge.
I found out that I was well conversant with the economic issues. I could perfectly and without much strain respond to quizzes based on these perspectives. The issues on business were mainly about how the Bolivians conduct their businesses. My knowledge on the social interaction in business was notable. Socio-economic aspects of businesses are very vital. Business etiquette is also a field that I was conversant with. It dealt with the expected behavior. Time consciousness and punctuality was also a booster in my performance. On the other hand I found out that I was weak on the social cultural aspects of the Bolivians. The social culture of the Bolivians is much complex and is much dissimilar to other cultures in the world. My understanding of the social aspects was shallow and hence I flopped on this part.
How to improve my inter-cultural knowledge
Inter-cultural knowledge is very vital especially in the contemporary world. In the current world, people are bound to work or set business within areas of diversified cultures (Barry, 2012, 278). Cultures in different settings are not always similar. For a successful career or a flourishing business in any setting, good mastery of cultures is highly essential. For peaceful coexistence between professionals despite their areas of study or their native countries intercultural knowledge is vital. This is the steps that I or any other person can take to improve on the inter-cultural knowledge.
Cultures can be different not only between continents and nations but also within the same company or family. The company or family may experience differences in ethics, ethnicity, geography, and history, moral, political and religious aspects. The basic requirement to enhance on one’s intercultural knowledge is empathy. Empathy is the ability to recognize the emotions in a situation (Christine, 2011, 156). The other important aspect is the proper understanding of other peoples’ behavior and their thinking traits. For proper results four important things have to be put into consideration.
Enhancing on the Knowledge on other peoples culture is very vital. The knowledge capacity improvement can be done by studying the various cultures from books and other sources. With this interaction with different cultures is made smooth. Language is part and parcel of culture. Therefore, it is also important to learn various multi-cultural languages (Mirela, 2012, 343). One of the widely used languages is French and English languages. The languages are spoken by about three quarters of the world’s population.
Self-confidence is also important in achievement of cultural competence. One has to believe in ones abilities in the bid to acquire inter-cultural competence. One should also be competent in one’s culture. This is called cultural identity. As the English men said, charity begins at home. A good mastery of one’s culture sparks the insight to gather knowledge of other cultures. If all these steps are followed then, intercultural competence is inevitable.
Importance of improvement on cultural awareness by managers
Managers are vital in the running of the firm. They offer insight and guidance on various matters in the firm. With the current global situation, firms consist of persons from different cultures. To ensure they achieve the company’s goals they have to be conscious of the different cultural origins of their work force.
The most critical and common challenge today in different companies are management of people who executes the businesses’ strategies. Therefore it’s important for all managers to recognizing the cultural discrepancies in their companies and hence knows how to handle the various workers under their watch. It also enables the human resources managers to make the rightful decisions on hiring workers (Barry, 2012, 145). This ensures that the hired workers are all in line with the core values of the business despite their cultural diversity. The managers with multicultural awareness are able to coordinate their workers and hence prevent occurrence of conflicts in the company. Inter-cultural knowledge also facilitates smooth interaction between the company and its customers.
A case example is in the tourism industry. This is a global industry which experiences stiff competition. The clients in this industry are from numerous cultural diversities. For a company to ensure that they maintain a large customer base they have to put in mind the existence of cultural miscellany.
References
Barry, T. (2012). Promoting concepts of cultural awareness. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Pearson.
Christine, H. (2011). Cultural awareness in healthcare. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Mirela, V. (2012). Raising cultural awareness. London: Routledge.