PART 2

WHO IS CULTURALLY AGILE?

In Chapter One, we discussed erroneous assumptions about cultural agility, clarifying what cultural agility isn’t and who doesn’t have it. We needed to start there as a diagnostic, a test of your own assumptions about cultural agility. Now it is time to delve more deeply into what cultural agility is. The competencies that make up cultural agility include those that enable professionals to (1) manage themselves in international or multicultural situations, (2) interact effectively with people from different cultures, and (3) make effective business decisions. As a mega-competency, cultural agility represents the ability to toggle successfully among three possible responses in cross-cultural contexts: minimization, adaptation, and integration. Let’s start here and discuss who culturally agile professionals are and how they do what they do.