We may not travel around the world but we are still constantly affected by global issues and continuously deal with people from different cultures. People who possess cultural competency can gain tremendous advantage in the competitive global environment.

Knowledge about different cultures helps us to understand what makes people unique in terms of customs, tradition, values and beliefs. The important step to developing cultural awareness is to understand the main characteristics of our culture. For example, American businesspeople are impatient to get down to business relationships. However, in Middle Eastern and Asian countries, people invest considerable amounts of time in friendly conversation and friendship before going into their business agenda.

Cultural competency covers three elements:

• Cultural awareness. This involves understanding one’s culture and how it impacts the thinking and attitude of the people.
• Cultural sensitivity. This is the ability to respect cultural differences.
• Developing the right attitude to respond to different situations.

We need to see both the differences and similarities in each culture to collaborate better with others.

Main Pillars of World Confidence

We needworld confidence to develop our global skills and qualities. Here are main pillars of world confidence:

• Believe and your power and resources to make difference.
• Don’t think yourself to capture knowledge and information. By exploring outside of your own self, you can start creative projects and find new solutions to the problems.
• Don’t be afraid to fail. Keep practicing your world skills until you get comfortable with being around different cultures, values and traditions.
• Start small and recognize your wins along the way.

Developing world confidence enables you to take larger view of the world; it teaches us to think and interpret worldwide developments and events in a flexible and informed way, and it helps us to become actors/actresses rather than spectators in the global game.