4.16 Engaging in Culturally Mindful Interactions

Admittedly, being culturally competent takes a lot of work and a lot of practice. Even if you’re not completely culturally competent, you can engage with people from other cultures in a mindful way. Shapiro and Carlson (2017) introduce us to the three-component model of mindfulness: attention, intention, and attitude.

First, when it comes to engaging with people from other cultures, we need to be fully in the moment and not think about previous interactions with people from a culture or possible future interactions with people from a culture. Instead, it is essential to focus on the person you are interacting with. You also need to be aware of the stereotypes and prejudices that you may have of people from a different culture. Do not try to find evidence to support or negate these stereotypes or prejudices. If you focus on evidence-finding, you are just trying to satisfy your thoughts and feelings and not mindfully engaging with this other person. Also, if you find that your mind is shifting, recognize the shift and allow yourself to re-center your interaction with the other person.

Second, go into an intercultural interaction knowing your intention. If your goal is to learn more about that person’s culture, that is a great intention. However, that may not be the only intention we have when interacting with someone from another culture. For example, you may be interacting with someone from another culture because you are trying to sell them a product you represent. If your main intention is sales, then be aware of your intention and do not try to deceive yourself into thinking it is something more altruistic.

Lastly, go into all intercultural interactions with the right attitude. Remember, the goal of being mindful is to be open, kind, and curious. Although we often discuss mindful in terms of how we can be open, kind, and curious with ourselves, it is also important to extend that same framework when we are interacting with people from other cultures. So much of mindful relationships is embodying the right attitude during our interactions with others.

Overall, the goal of mindful intercultural interactions is to be present in the moment in a nonjudgmental way. When you face judgments, recognize them, and ask yourself where they have come from. Interrogate those judgments. At the same time, do not judge yourself for having these ideas. If we have stereotypes about another specific culture, it is important to recognize those stereotypes, call them out, understand where they came from in the first place, and examine them for factualness.

For example, imagine you are talking to someone from the Republic of Kiribati. Chances are, you have probably never heard of the Republic of Kiribati, but it is a real country in Oceania. But let’s say all you know about the people from the Republic of Kiribati is that they like European-style football. During your interaction, you say, “So, what’s your favorite football team?” In this moment, you have taken the one stereotype you had and used it to help engage in an interaction. However, if the person comes back and says, “I really don’t care. Sports just aren’t my thing.” How do you respond?

First, recognize that you attempted to use a stereotype that you had and call it out for what it was. That does not make you a bad person, but we must learn from these encounters and broaden our world views. Second, call out the stereotype in your mind. Before that moment, you may not have even realized that you had a stereotype of people from the Republic of Kiribati. Labeling our stereotypes of other people is important because it helps us recognize them faster, the more we engage in this type of mindful behavior. Third, figure out where that stereotype came from. Maybe you had been in New Zealand and saw a match on the television and saw the Kiribati national football team. In that one moment, you learned a tiny bit about an entire country and pocketed it away for future use. Sometimes it is easy to figure out where our stereotypes evolved from, but sometimes these stereotypes are so ingrained in us through our own culture that it is hard to really figure out their origin. Lastly, it is time to realize that your stereotype may not be that factual. At the same time, you may have found the one resident of the Republic of Kiribati who does not like football. We can often make these determinations by talking to the other person.

At the same time, it is important also to be mindfully open to the other person’s stereotypes of people within your own culture. For example, someone from the Republic of Kiribati may have a stereotype that Americans know nothing about football (other than American football). If you are a fan of what we in the U.S. call soccer, then you correct that stereotype or at least provide that person a more nuanced understanding of your own culture. Sure, American football still is the king of sports in the U.S., but media trends for watching football (soccer) are growing, and more and more Americans are becoming fans.

This section is adapted from Improving Intercultural Communication Skills in Interpersonal Communication Copyright © by Jason S. Wrench; Narissra M. Punyanunt-Carter; and Katherine S. Thweatt available at Interpersonal Communication – Simple Book Publishing licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.