Germany is undergoing profound change. Skills shortages, demographic shifts and the increasing internationalization of the working world are transforming organizations for the long term. Teams are becoming more diverse, career paths more varied and expectations of collaboration more complex.
At the same time, companies report difficulties in attracting skilled workers, retaining employees over the long term and successfully shaping collaboration across different backgrounds, generations and ways of working.
In this context, a competence that was long regarded as a nice-to-have or a “soft skill” is gaining importance: cultural competence. Yet its relevance often begins not in spectacular conflicts or obvious misunderstandings, but in the small situations of everyday working life.
A trainer gives a new apprentice feedback after the first few weeks. She wants to provide orientation, foster development and offer support. The apprentice, however, leaves the conversation unsettled and reserved. Both sides had good intentions. Both experienced the same conversation. And yet they perceive the situation differently. Such moments are part of everyday life in organizations. They rarely arise from a lack of professional competence or commitment. Often they are based on the fact that people interpret situations differently, bring different expectations and attribute different meanings to the same words. This is exactly where cultural competence begins.
When people talk about culture, many first think of origin, nationality or language. But culture is far more than that. It shows in the things we take for granted in our everyday lives: in how we communicate, make decisions, give feedback, perceive conflict or shape collaboration. Our experiences, social contexts, professional backgrounds and lifeworlds influence how we understand and evaluate situations. That is why misunderstandings can just as easily arise between two colleagues from the same city as between people from different countries.
The real challenge is not that people are different. Difference is part of being human. It only becomes problematic when we assume that other people automatically perceive the same situation the way we do. What is a constructive hint for one person feels like criticism to another. What means initiative to one appears to another as a lack of coordination. What is self-evident to one person remains invisible to another.
Ethnology has long dealt with exactly such situations. One of its most important insights is that people rarely act without reason. Behaviors that irritate us or seem incomprehensible at first glance often make perfect sense from the perspective of the person acting. Ethnologists therefore learn to ask a simple but far-reaching question:
Why does this behavior seem meaningful to the other person?
This question fundamentally changes the way we look at collaboration. It shifts attention away from hasty judgments and toward the experiences, expectations and contexts that influence human action.
Cultural competence therefore does not mean knowing as much as possible about other people. Nor does it mean being able to share every perspective or avoid every conflict. Rather, it is about the ability to recognize your own point of view as one of many possible perspectives. It is about the willingness to question what you take for granted, to stay curious and to regard other interpretations as plausible rather than wrong at first. Especially in a working world increasingly shaped by diversity, this ability is becoming ever more important. Numerous studies show that diverse teams can be more creative, develop more innovative solutions and tackle complex problems better. At the same time, however, the demands on communication, coordination and mutual understanding increase. Diversity alone does not yet create added value. What matters is whether organizations create conditions under which different perspectives can actually become visible, audible and usable.
This is where the real value of cultural competence lies. It helps to recognize misunderstandings early, to make feedback more effective, to build trust and to strengthen collaboration in the long term. Above all, it supports people in dealing with complexity without oversimplifying too quickly. In a world that is becoming ever more connected, diverse and dynamic, expertise alone is no longer enough. The ability to make sense of other perspectives is increasingly becoming a key competence of successful collaboration. Cultural competence is therefore not a “soft skill”. It is the ability to make understanding possible. And perhaps that is exactly what will become one of the most important competences of the future: not finding answers as quickly as possible, but developing the willingness to take other people’s perspectives seriously and to learn from them.
Text: Dr. Lisa Johnson