First, you need to understand the value for developing your intercultural communications skills. Earlier on we talked about diversifying classrooms and workplaces. The ability to communicate effectively matters for the social cohesion and functioning of these spaces.

To do so, you should be open to learning about other cultures and how you relate to people from other cultures. According to Dr. Milton Bennet from the Intercultural Development Research Institute, the foundation of intercultural communications is the recognition and respect for cultural differences. Your possession of recognition and respect enables you to develop the attitude to learning more about the communication patterns of persons from the culture within your space of interaction.

So first of all, you develop your intercultural communication competence by gathering information that will become valuable knowledge on how people from different cultures communicate. Gaining knowledge does not imply that you will apply that knowledge when you come across intercultural encounters. So, you need to develop self-awareness on how to react to intercultural communication encounters. Self-awareness enables you to contextualize and know when to apply the knowledge you garnered when learning about the communication patterns of other cultures.

Gathering knowledge about communication encounters from other cultures and becoming self-aware is not enough if you do not practice what you learn. Here you develop an attitude of first consciously recognizing and respecting people from other cultures but also express this attitude in your intercultural communication encounters. One way of doing so is by treating every intercultural communication encounter as a learning process, where you ask questions to learn about communication patterns, rather than just foisting what you learned about people from that culture on them.

The more you develop in your attitude towards intercultural communication the more you garner intercultural communication skills. You become skillful in nonverbal communication, empathy, active listening, and conflict resolution, among others.

How do you develop the knowledge attitude and skills in Intercultural communications?

There are lots of materials that will help you develop your knowledge, skills, and attitude toward Intercultural communications. In the PISH project, we have developed a toolkit with tools for intercultural communication. We have also produced this e-learning course with accessible resources. The courses treat different intercultural communication challenges and how you can deal with them in your classroom. These solutions may apply to you as well, because in order to solve intercultural communication challenges in your classroom, you need to possess the knowledge, attitude and skills on intercultural communication yourself.