Intercultural Competence Workshop #4

What does it mean to be interculturally competent? What skills, knowledge and attitudes do you need to have? Inspired by years of training- and consulting practice within different working areas (education, student-exchange programmes, international business, civil society and international cooperation), a "Frame of Reference for Intercultural Competence" was developed, visualized in a circle which gives us concrete insight into nine relevant components of intercultural competence.

During the three 2022 sessions of this workshop series, we explored the framework, not only on a theoretical level, but also discussing it’s practical implications and manifestations. In each workshop, we started from interactive learning experiences or triggering cases, thus setting up a lively dialogue in which all group members could participate. In the debriefing of these exercises, we doubled back on the circle-frame and it’s underlying concepts drawn from intercultural studies.

In the last workshop of the series, we will highlight those parts of the circle that were not yet extensively explored in 2022, amongst others ‘self-knowledge’ (1), ‘receptiveness’ (4), and ‘relational competence’ (6). Additionally, we will reflect back on one of the starting points of this series, namely that the development of intercultural competence is a dynamic, lifelong process of transformation.

Language of the workshop: English

The workshop is planned for Saturday May 13th, from 10-13 h.

Although the topics of each of the 4 workshops are connected, it is not necessary to join all 4 to join the workshops.

Registration is required via Eventbrite.

Practical information for the Workshop series

- In English

- Free

- Location: International House Leuven

- Registration required, via Eventbrite

- Speaker: Professor Gunilla de Graef

Workshop 3 recap:

For this workshop, if you've experienced culture shock before then we ask that you email us with details about this experience so we can dive into a reflection and discussion based on the experiences of the participants. To help you put your experiences into words you can look at this handout (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1smiWd4co4yoxheFHbP_umdmAlw_hMk6LMv6Sf4H547I/edit?usp=sharing) and then formulate a response. Feel free to send your responses to anna.tripp@leuven.be.

Workshop 1 & 2 recap:

In the first workshop we covered the overview the whole model, thus understanding that the development of intercultural competence is a dynamic, lifelong process of transformation. All different components are connected and affected by one another. It is actually a bit like 'chemistry': bringing together the right, often already known components, in the right time, produces a functional process, a qualitative reaction. In the second workshop we discussed the components surrounding conflict management, multi-perspectiveness, and communication skills.

Overview of the 9 components:

· Cultural self-knowledge: knowing your own frame of reference and roots

- Cultural flexibility: willingness to adapt and explore alternatives

· Cultural resilience: ability to overcome stress and negative feelings caused by difficult intercultural encounter

· Cultural receptiveness: openness to listen to other views and capacity to correctly position own views and ideas

· Cultural knowledge: interest in exploring factual knowledge on cultural differences and capacity to use this knowledge in an appropriate manner

· Cultural relational competence: willingness to invest time and energy in the building of trust and willingness to connect

· Cultural communicative competence: ability to explore the particularities of own communication style and approaches, to remediate if necessary and to explore the communication style and approach of counterparts

· Cultural conflict management: consciousness of potential positive forces of intercultural conflict and knowledge of own conflict management style

· Multiperspectiveness: able to view a single issue from different perspectives and appreciating this various perspectives