Cultural diversity in workplaces and customer bases is higher than ever before. The level is expected to grow higher in the US and the world for the foreseeable future. Major corporations throughout the US have come to accept Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts as a business imperative. Culturally fluent leaders and culturally proficient organizations sustain DEI efforts in their organizations.
Culturally fluent leaders represent the pinnacle of individual cultural competence and culturally proficient organizations represent the pinnacle of organizational cultural competence.
My former partner, Roger Husbands, and I created these terms as part of our work to turn cultural competence into a fully measurable concept. In working with the MD Anderson Cancer Center, we determined that individual cultural competence and organizational cultural competence are measurable, and that their measurement scales are different from those created by Cross, et al. when they coined the term cultural competence.
Further, the measurements of individual and organizational cultural competence are different from each other.
Finally, we determined that complex organizations possess both department or unit level cultures that operate within the overall organizational culture. Culturally Fluent Leaders and Culturally Proficient Organizations use this knowledge to improve the performance of their workforce in serving the needs and wants of their customers.
Culturally Competent Individuals
It is my assertion that all individuals have a degree of cultural competence based on their Cultural Awareness, Skills, Knowledge, Encounters and Desire (ASKED), which is the Campinha-Bacote model of individual cultural competence. Culturally Competent individuals are characterized by high levels of these traits.
| Cultural Competent Individual | |
| Awareness | Cultural awareness [self-awareness] is the examination and in-depth exploration of one’s own cultural background. |
| Skills | Cultural skills include cross-cultural communication, leading cross-cultural teams, and the ability to communicate in more than one language |
| Knowledge | Cultural knowledge is the process of seeking and obtaining a sound educational foundation about diverse cultural groups. |
| Encounters | Respectful engagements with persons from cultures different from one’s own; demonstrating a willingness to resolve conflicts. |
| Desire | The “want to” become culturally competent vs. the “have to” be culturally competent based on external pressure. |
Culturally Fluent Leaders
Culturally fluent leaders progress from ASKED to BASKED. These leaders build on their foundations as culturally competent individuals. They use their Behaviors, Awareness, Skills and Knowledge to earn the trust and loyalty of diverse followers. They demonstrate their commitment to cultural competence and lead by example: examining and addressing their own cultural biases, forming and leading diverse teams, and continually learning about the cultures of their colleagues and customers. Further, these leaders expect and reward such behaviors in their followers. Culturally fluent leaders embrace both cultural humility and servant leadership as central to their work. Put another way, culturally fluent leaders demonstrate two sets of behaviors to leading culturally diverse teams and organizations:
- Behaviors they demonstrate (Leading by example)
- Behaviors they expect and reward (Leading through incentives)
Culturally fluent leaders exist on the shop floor and the C-Suite and everywhere in between, from the store manager’s office to the check-out line. These leaders effectively lead culturally diverse teams towards a shared vision.
“The most important definition of a leader is one who has followers.” – Peter Drucker
Culturally Proficient Organizations
Culturally proficient organizations use feedback loops to continually identify and respond to cultural changes in their customer base and workforce. Many theatres, museums, and other arts institutions are very aware that their customer base does not reflect the communities they intend to serve. Urban arts institutions are especially likely to have customers that are “too pale, too stale, and too female,” when compared to the surrounding areas. The same demographics are often present in the workforce and governance of these institutions.
Culturally proficient arts organizations are working to diversity their customer base, their workforce, and their governance structures. Multiple strategies are being employed now such as Young Professionals’ Nights, edgier programming that draws a younger and more diverse crowd, and enhanced recruiting and onboarding processes for new board members. Each organization must design its own Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategies to complement the organization’s existing culture and respond to the unique needs of its potential audience.
To make progress measurable, an organizational cultural competency scale was created by the Cultural Imperative (CI). The CI Scale (shown below) uses some of the same terminology as the Cross, et al., cultural competence spectrum, however, terms such as incapacity and pre-competency have been redefined. Further, the CI scale is to be read upside down: cultural incapacity, the lowest level of the scale, is at the top; cultural proficiency, the highest attainable level, is now at the bottom.
Cultural Imperative Cultural Competency Scale
| Title | Definition |
| Incapacity | Where an organization has no awareness of, capacity for, or structures in place to support cultural competence. |
| Pre-Competency | Organization shows awareness of, and is in the process of, creating culturally competent capacity |
| Competency | Organization is fully aware of and demonstrates culturally competent behaviors |
| Pre-Proficiency | Organization shows awareness of, and is in the process of, creating culturally fluent capacity |
| Proficiency | Organization actively integrates the customer [patient], family, staff, and the community into daily performance of organizational activities e.g. manufacturing cars, selling insurance, patient care, teaching |
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