About the intercultural competence profiler

In today's fast changing world, we need to continually develop our intercultural competence to maintain the competitive edge in our performance. Even if you do not travel for your work, it is likely that you will meet and interact with people from different cultures as diversity in the workplace increases. This diversity may result from national and organizational culture as well as generational, gender and functional differences.

This report provides an assessment of your intercultural competence, based on your responses to the Intercultural Competence Profiler (ICP). It offers guidance on how to develop your intercultural competence in order to improve your effectiveness as a manager in a multi-cultural environment.

What is intercultural competence?

When we speak of intercultural competence we focus on your effective capacity to achieve certain outputs given the appropriate support and resources, based on Trompenaars Hampden-Turner’s 4R model:

The competence model addresses both competencies (the capability acquired through knowledge) and competences (the capability acquired through applying effective behaviors). What you are potentially capable of based on the appropriate knowledge you have may not be sufficient; it is also about your capacity to engage in effective behaviors. For example, you may be aware of the existence of world views different from your own. However, how do you show in your behavior to others that you are conscious of these world views? Or, you may know that planning is important and probably have the knowledge of planning methods, but the question is, how effectively do you actually plan in practice?

Using your profile

Consider your profile as a starting point for personal development and growth. Your profile is an indication of how you have described your knowledge and behaviors, based on how you perceive yourself at this moment in time compared to the people you work with. It is intended to stimulate reflection and encourage you to take positive action in order for you to improve your effectiveness in today's multi-cultural society. It is for you to apply this profile and feedback to your own context and culture, extracting the massages that are appropriate to you, and to take responsibility for your development. We recommend you look at the areas which demonstrate a relative strength and those which indicate room for development, although you mat prefer to consider other areas.

The more you have described yourself as having appropriate knowledge and adopting effective behaviors, the more your profile will show higher relative levels of intercultural competence. For this reason the profile is intended to be considered on its own and not to be compared with the personal profile of another person. Although you can consider each area separately, there is potential synergy between the different areas: the higher the competence in one area, the more it can help in other areas.

You may describe yourself as more competent on particular issues related to your expertise and experience. This could be because often there is an element of self-selection in the type of work that you do such as a management role, i.e., you tend to seek out the type of work where you can use and take advantage of the competences you already have. Areas where you have described yourself as less effective may have to do with not being exposed to working in a multi-cultural setting or with not having explicitly taken the time to reflect and, therefore, be aware of what you are already good at by intuition.