Picture source: Kompas
Globalization has had a huge impact on expanding business operations around the world. Therefore, organizations must exercise their intelligence to be more culturally aware in managing diversity in order to foster a more comfortable environment. Cultural awareness encourages people to build successful professional relationships across a variety of platforms, and can help a company create a unique culture that benefits the diversity of its workforce while also benefiting the company's employees. Although you may not be very familiar with other cultures, at least if you understand your own culture and how it affects you, you can take the first step towards developing cultural awareness as it arises.
Cultural awareness is important for many reasons that affect society as a whole. Therefore, it is essential to increase your cultural awareness. The following points explain why cultural awareness is important.
1. Effective communication
The great thing about cultural awareness is that it allows us to communicate effectively with people from different cultures. Lack of cultural awareness can cause us to misjudge people from other cultures. However, a lack of cultural awareness can lead to countless problems in communicating and understanding other people's intentions. As a result, cultural awareness helps us communicate and build strong relationships with others.
2. Respect for cultures
Not only should you strive to communicate with people from different cultures is not enough, cultural awareness is about respecting diverse cultures. We must try to embrace cultural differences and adopt new ways of integrating into society. It helps people overcome cultural barriers and integrate respectfully into diverse communities. In short, cultural awareness teaches us to respect and appreciate others as fellow humans.
3. Promotes leadership
Cultural awareness benefits everyone in leadership and management roles. For such roles, developing cultural awareness will yield better results. This helps them make appropriate decisions and motivate employees. This way, leaders and managers can make decisions with a global mindset. Employees feel recognized and valued within the organization.
4. Better workplace
While cultural awareness drives leadership, leaders promote a diverse work culture. Promoting diversity means allowing employees from different cultures to work together as a team on an equal basis. This leads to making the organization a better place to work. As a result, employees feel more motivated. Thanks to that, work is done more effectively.
5. Self-awareness
Cultural awareness allows us to recognize our worldview and heritage. We better understand the differences in other people's customs and beliefs. Exploring and educating ourselves with different cultures strengthens us.
6. Successful globalization
As we begin to explore the world, we begin to build relationships with people who have cultural differences. As a result, cultural cohesion becomes stronger and reduces the risk of cultural conflict. When we are culturally aware, we can think about what might not be appropriate for people from different backgrounds. Indirectly, this helps us globalize more easily and effectively and reduce barriers.
Source: Impactly, Evolve Communities