Cultural Fusion

A Further Definition of Cultural Competency

  As I often do, I was searching Google for the terms "cultural competency."  Number one in the rankings was this wonderful site about cultural competency and education from the Center for Effectiive Collaboration and Practice.

If you'd like to go further into the definition of cultural competency than I've provided here, the following is their more academic definition:

The word culture is used because it implies the integrated patterns of human behavior that includes thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions of racial, ethnic, religious, or social groups. 

The word competence is used because it implies having the capacity to function in a particular way: the capacity to function within the context of culturally integrated patterns of human behavior defined by a group.  

Being competent in cross–cultural functioning means learning new patterns of behavior and effectively applying them in the appropriate settings.  For example, a teacher with a class of African–American children may find that a certain look sufficiently quiets most of the class.  Often African–American adults use eye contact and facial expression to discipline their children. 

However, this is not effective with all African–Americans.  Intra–group differences, such as geographic location or socioeconomic background, require practitioners to avoid overgeneralizing.  With other students, one might have to use loud demanding tones, quiet non–threatening language, or whatever is appropriate for those students.  The unknowing teacher might offend some students and upset others by using the wrong words, tone, or body language.  Being culturally competent means having the capacity to function effectively in other cultural contexts.

This thoughtful definition is just the tip of the iceberg of what lies beneath at this great resource.  So check it out at:  http://cecp.air.org/cultural/default.htm.

All-Latina Programs Attract Diverse Clients

Several years ago, I had the pleasure of working with The Women's Wilderness Institute when they led backpacking and rock climbing programs for the girls at the Girl Scouts' Flying 'G' Ranch camp.  Here's the general scoop on their organization:

The Women's Wilderness Institute offers high quality outdoor adventures and backcountry trips for women and teen girls in the Rocky Mountains and southwestern deserts and rivers. With more than 50 courses per year for women of all ages and fitness levels, we probably have an adventure for you.

One thing that really struck me about their organization those many years ago was that they offered all-Latina programs for the girls.  I asked the then director, Laura Tyson, about their enrollment in those programs when camps nationwide are struggling to increase Latino enrollment.  She said that TWWI found that when they added the all-Latina programs to their course line-up, the enrollment of ethnic minorities in all of their open courses increased.

By offering a program that was sensitive to the needs of one community, TWWI was also passively advertising their organization's desire to be competent in all cultures.

Dress Code - Tattoos and Piercings

Many of my clients are summer camps and Girl Scout councils.  Many camps include dress code policies in their application packet.  Dress code policies at camp not only include requirements for proper attire, but also guidelines for body piercings, tattoos, and hair color and length.  It's wise that these camps let applicants know up front whether or not they will be able to follow the organization's policies -- and whether or not they want to work there.

A Wall Street Journal Online article documented that:

one in every ten Americans have tattoos, up from one out of every hundred three decades ago, according to the Alliance of Professional Tattooists based in Annapolis, Maryland.  A growing acceptance in corporate America of Upper-middle-class women between the ages of twenty and forty, especially those that dread mutating later in life into Soccer Moms, fuel most of the growth, according to tattoo parlors.

While Boeing and Ford Motor allow "non-offensive" tattoos and piercings that are not a safety-risk, Wal-Mart and Subway ban facial jewelry.  Restrictions on tattoos and piercings are most commonly found in health-care fields, fast-food service industries and mass-market retailers.  But as the New York Times reported last month, tattoos are gaining visibility in all manner of professions.  And the customer pushback has been minimal.

Parents are a special market.  Will tattooed camp staff keep them from sending their children to camp?  Or will prohibition of tattoos keep tattooed parents from sending their children?  The topic is definitely controversial, as evidenced by the heated discussion taking place on The Wall Street Journal's blog "The Juggle."

In today's rapidly changing world, choosing to keep a possibly outmoded dress code needs careful consideration, rather than "that's the way we've always done it."  Tattoos and piercings are common in many ethnic cultures, including some we might not think of as ethnic (think Ed Bradley and his earring).

Businesses that are looking to increase diversity in their workforce, and consequently in their customer base, might have to rethink policies that clearly eliminate expression of certain ethnicities and religion, other than mainstream (whatever that is anymore in most countries).

Wondering about the legalities of your dress code and visible tattoos and piercings?  Check out this intelligent post at the Pennsylvania Labor and Employment Blog. And over at the HR Capitalist is a discussion about the economic impact that tattoos may or may not be having on your business.

Dress Codes - IT and Jeans

My husband is a software engineer.  If you've hung around any IT folks in the U.S. for very long, you know that they make business casual look fancy.

I once asked my husband what the presenters at a "No Fluff, Just Stuff" conference wore.  I was surprised to learn that most of them wore jeans, and probably wouldn't be respected if they had shown up in a tie.  For engineers, it really is a matter of what you know being primary.

Software engineers are the folks that have to work overnight the day a product goes live.  How neat your code is trumps how neat your clothes are.

The corporation where my husband works has recently decided that the quality of dress might be more important than the quality of work.  They can't quite make up their mind if the IT department is allowed to wear jeans or not and considering taking disciplinary action against those who don't show up in khakis. 

Imagine the time that was wasted in meetings on this inane topic when the IT department was coming upon a major product launch.  Yikes!

I'm all for presenting yourself in dressy clothes when it matters.  If I give a presentation, even at the weekly Toastmasters meeting, you guarantee I'll be in a blazer.  If you're departments such as sales, human resources or you sell fine jewelry, dressing to the nines is probably appropriate.  There's also plenty of legal precedent for having different dress codes for different departments or regions.  (See this post on the Human Resource Blog about when it's okay to have variations in dress code.)

To be culturally competent, there's going to be mixed standards if you have a combination of fields in one company.  Gone are the days where one size fits all and everyone wears a tie.

Cultural Fusion Trends in the U.S.

I have always argued that the United States is not so much a melting pot, but a mosaic.  The boundary lines between cultures have always been blurred, however, fusing into something new and unique.  Some of the trends affecting the U.S. were pointed out by Michael Shelton in his article "Camps in a World of Change" in the Sept/Oct 2006 issue of Camping Magazine:

An increasingly diversified world is already occurring, will not abate, and is changing the entire fabric of the United States. Some of the factors affecting diversity include immigration, intermarriages (of third-generation immigrants, 41 percent of all Asians and 65 percent of Hispanics marry across group lines), the breakdown of traditional classifications (the strict delineation of black/white/Asian/Hispanic categorization is a relic of the past), and a widespread movement of voluntarily seeking out and celebrating ancestral "roots."

Cultural Fusion is occurring not just on the pop culture level, but in terms of the modern American family as well.

Shelton wrote a series of five articles on Managing Diversity in Camping Magazine.  Although the intended audience of these articles is camp professionals, the information holds valid across a spectrum of industries.  Check it out starting with the first issue:  http://www.acacamps.org/campmag/0609.php and then move forward through the archives.

Cultural competency in benefits

Are your benefits programs in your workplace culturally competent?  Do they meet a variety of needs and backgrounds?  For seasonal, temporary and permanent year-round employees, which of the following do you have?

• College-credit internship programs in a wide variety of fields
• Health insurance that includes mental health coverage and domestic partner benefits
• Diversity trainings
• International festivals and other ways the organization celebrates diversity
• Floating holiday leave that allows employees one to two days to celebrate the holidays of their choosing
• Acceptance of modern variations in professional appearance across the organization (e.g. the IT department gets to wear jeans)
• Child care assistance and maternity and paternity leave
• Sabbatical leave for long-time employees

Even if some of these benefits do not apply to a particular employee (i.e., a temporary or seasonal employee), knowing that the organization has considered the cultural needs of its staff overall may assure employeees that they have found a great place for them to work.

Is your organization culturally blind?

Previously, I asked you to figure out where you might lie along the Cultural Competence Continuum.  Chances are, in the United States or not, your organization is suffering from "cultural blindness."  You make sure there's no overt discrimination and the language is free of racial epithets, but culture isn't freely discussed.

The political correctness movement of the early nineties scared many Americans into a state of "don't ask, don't tell" for anything obviously cultural.  For instance, one camp I worked at forbids the wearing of any T-shirts by the staff that state any sort of religious belief (i.e., "WWJD" on the shirt pocket).  Instead of celebrating the diversity of spiritual traditions represented on the staff, the camp instead chose to completely eliminate all mention of religion.  For staff, campers and parents with strong beliefs and cultural ties, such policies can be terribly alienating.

A shift in attitude is necessitated by today's world.  Instead of following the "Golden Rule" (i.e. treat others as you would wish to be treated), the twenty-first century necessitates the "Platinum Rules" (i.e., treat others as they wish to be treated). 

If we indeed treat everybody equally (the equivalent of everyone wearing a plain navy blue T-shirt everyday), we're doing them a disservice.  Where diversity is masked and not celebrated, we feel depressed.  How sad to deny expression of so much of ourselves, that is, our culture.

Attracting culturally competent employees

Culturally competent individuals (those from both minority and dominant cultures) will be most attracted to organizations that value the contributions of a diverse array of individuals from all cultural backgrounds.  If one cultural group is openly rejected from your organization (i.e., making sure "homosexuals" or "retards" know they are unwelcome), others may fear that their culture may be the next target, or they are simply unwilling to work for or donate to such an intolerant organization.

Who might your organization be purposely excluding?  Who is not welcome in your organization?  Think you're welcoming everybody?

Think again.  There may be subtle ways you're making sure that not everyone is welcome.  Watch the next few posts for details.

Diversity leads to more conflict. And then to less conflict!

A study at the University of California found that while "greater diversity in groups produced more conflict and subsequently more idea generation, these groups unexpectedly experienced less emotional conflict." (Rasmussen, T.  The ASTD Trainer's Sourcebook: Diversity.)

Now to me this makes perfect sense.  Any group has a tremendous diversity within it, as we're all individuals.  However, if the group seems to be homogeneous in some obvious types of characteristics (i.e. a group that's similar in race, age and educational background), a lot of the more subtle differences that make up each person are going to get ignored.  We all make assumptions when we meet someone, but the beauty of someone different from us, who challenges us, is that we can't make as many assumptions.

I've often seen, as I'm sure you have, too, that in diverse groups there's more conflict early on as everything gets out on the table.  "What in the world are you thinking?" might be the question most commonly posed (if we weren't being so polite).  Ultimately, this leads to more understanding and less emotional drama down the road.

Kathryn, the Dress Code and the Rumor

In my last post, I highlighted the amazing blog The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin and her very useful tool: "Eleven tips for broaching difficult subjects."

Part of understanding cultural competency is understanding what to do when those inevitably difficult conversations arise.  How do you confront somebody who offended you?  How do you tell an employee that their dress isn't appropriate in your workplace when it could be considered ethnic dress? 

To give an example from one of my previous workplaces:  Kathryn, who is black, had cut her hair very short earlier in the summer.  As fall approached and her hair grew back in, it started to become a somewhat unruly fro.  One morning, she decided just not to mess with it and wore a blue, nylon do-rag to work.  She wore a slouchy sweater and a khaki skirt, just as she did most days to meet the "professional dress" dress code.  She met with her supervisor that day for their monthly meeting.  The supervisor didn't comment on anything about her dress. 

Over the next couple of weeks, Kathryn wore do-rags each day she went to work.  She found she could get in earlier to work without having to worry about her hair.  Each day her supervisor saw her and there was no comment, so Kathryn figured it was okay.  There was nothing mentioned in the workplace dress code about do-rags, and everything else she wore was technically in the guidelines.

All of a sudden one day, Sylvia, a manager two levels above Kathryn stopped by her cubicle and politely asked her to stop wearing the do-rags to work.  Perhaps if they were "more ethnic" in style, it would be acceptable.  Kathryn found the comment mildly offensive but agreed to stop wearing the do-rags to work. 

The next day, Kathryn wore a cute baby blue cabled cashmere stocking cap that exactly matched her sweater.  The manager gave her a wink of approval as she walked in the door.  "You look very nice today, Kathryn."

And then, Elaine came into the doorway of Kathryn's cube.  "I can't believe what Sylvia said yesterday.  There's so ridiculous about the dress code here.  As if what you wore on your head had anything to do with how good a work you do."  And then she whispered, "And that's not the worst of it."

"What are you talking about?" asked Kathryn.  She could feel her heart pounding.  Elaine knew all the gossip in the office.  What was someone saying about her?

Elaine, with an almost delighted look on her face, continued:  "Well, a few people who sit in the cubes outside your supervisor's office heard another supervisor come in and complain that because you were black that you thought you could get away with wearing anything that you wanted to."

What a mess.  How could the do-rag 'incident' been handled in a better way?  What do you think, dear reader?