Cultural Audits: Assessing a Challenging Year

In performing a cultural audit, the most difficult task we will encounter is overcoming our desire to make ourselves look good.

It is easy to sit back in a comfy chair and recall all our achievements; far harder to take blame for conversations that went awry. Painful as it is, if we don't own up to our mistakes and identify our biases, we can not improve our skill sets or empower corporations to compete effectively in global markets and create more jobs.

Be brave and remember: People who end up with glowing reviews either have not dug deeply enough or have limited their world to people who think, act and talk like them.

An annual cultural audit helps identify opportunities for developing social skills that promote creativity, productivity and efficiency. It covers four major areas: Intercultural relationships, information gathering and assessment, cultural skill sets and personal growth.

Cultural Audits - Intercultural Relationships (Yes or No)
• Are you able to tolerate and accept different views or do you tend to believe your view is right and others are simply misinformed?
• If you had the need to hire an employee, would you select the applicant you feel is likely to agree with you or the one who is likely to challenge you to grow?
• Face to face with an instance of racism, sexism, or bigotry, did you teach and lead by example?
• Were you able to apologize to all the people to whom you were not willing to listen? Did you make a second effort to try to understand their feelings and beliefs?
• Did you place yourself in situations where you were a minority by age, religion, ethnic group or racial group? If so, did you learn gain from this experience?

Information Gathering - Answers: (Never, Often, Frequently)
• I read articles and listen to programs that reflect the perspectives of other races, ethnicities and religions.
• I am aware of the stereotypes I hold of different racial, religious and ethnic groups.
• I can identify how those stereotypes affect the way in which I view and treat people.
• I am as likely to believe information provided by a member of another social or cultural group as I am to believe information provided by someone who is of my age, religion, race, or ethnicity.

Cultural Competency - Were you (Never, Often, Frequently)
• Emotionally aware-Able to recognize the cultural situations, events or words that serve as triggers and distort your judgment or ability to communicate? Were you able to control and manage your reactions in these situations?
• Reflective-Able to study your techniques and strategies so you can improve your effectiveness in relationships with people who are of different ages, races, religions and ethnic groups?
• Culturally agile-Able to view situations through the cultural filters of other people or special populations?
• Patient-Able to forgive people who are slow or resistant learners?
• A skillful communicator-Able to facilitate productive conversations that allow a variety of beliefs and or insights to emerge and be fully debated?

I prefer to evaluate people by the amount they grow in a year, rather than by how much they already know.

With a cultural self-assessment, you can not sit down and add up your score. The goal is to identify and correct self-defeating and limiting behavior-in my case, a lack of willingness to talk to angry people and a temptation to label strangers rather than making an effort to see their complexities.

Share your audit results with an associate who will collaborate with you throughout 2005 and provide a cultural mirror. You can adjust the image at will when you are armed with the right attitude and information.