Understanding The Importance Of Cultural Capabilities In Creating Safe Spaces

Analysis of Seven Pounds movie scene

Background

The report is focused towards understanding the essential implications of the cultural capabilities of people as per various scenarios. The report considers safe or unsafe spaces with regards to cultural interaction. Safe spaces facilitate the better interaction of cultures, whereas unsafe spaces may result in people from minority cultures to feel subjugated. The report has considered a video in order to understand the messages and deep cultural projections that can be observed. The effective analysis of video helps in the critical evaluation of various cultural aspects that can determine individual development and progress.

Aim

The aim of the report is to gain essential insights concerning the importance of cultural capabilities across work places and other social settings. It is much important to understand how individuals working in an organizational environment or any other setting can be optimally culturally intelligent. However, the report also focuses on the creation of safe spaces for ensuring better cultural communications that can be beneficial for all the interacting individuals. The study will further evaluate the given situation on the basis of creation of safe spaces. 

Scope

The application of cultural and behavioral concepts to analyze the chosen video will help in the better understanding of how safe social and work places can be created to enhance positive cultural integration. The report focuses towards providing effective discussion in regards to the crucial aspects in regards to cultural capabilities.

Summary of the Video Clip

The video being considered for the study is from the movie seven pounds (Styles of Expressing Conflict, 2018). The scene of the video is the conversation of an Internal Revenue Service collection officer and a woman who owes debt to the government. The woman is suffering from a heart condition and needs a heart transplant soon. However, she does not have the means to support her treatment and at the same time she in debt. The highlighted context of the video is the expression of conflicts. Conflicts arise due to lack of cultural intelligence leading to unfair use of words, assumptions and judgments. The woman replies that she earns tips as the nature of her work facilitates the same. The most important factor being highlighted through the video is the way in which the IRS officer sometimes even goes to the extent of getting personal with the woman. The expression of conflict is sometimes very harsh. According to Holley & Steiner (2005) creation of safe spaces are important when cross cultural communications are taking place. The safe places in such context do not refer to physically safe environments but rather spaces in which individuals can be free from psychological or emotional harm. The writers have used it in the context of a classroom but the concept can be used equally well in other scenarios. The woman is shown to be of Hispanic origin and the perceptions of the society about the Hispanics are that they engage in illegal activities. This can be seen in the same way in which black Americans that often fall victims of police are shown in bad light my the media (Jackson, 2016). Moreover, while expressing conflict the officer’s expression related to the dominant cultural perspectives of the Hispanics. Moving forward the officer asks details of the kind of heart ailment the woman is suffering from. He admits to have found that due to her heart problem she is listed in a specific category the government’s register for persons with special medical requirements. The list places her in a group where she is sick enough to be recognized as a person in line to seek medical attention but as of yet cannot be admitted to the hospital under the expense of the government. In trying to judge the woman on the basis of her cultural identity the officer unnecessarily causes tensions and conflict of ideas resulting in significant altercations in the process. 

Cultural competencies

Observation

Cross cultural competency is a major aspect of cultural capability and it depends on the various goals oriented behaviors of the culturally intelligent public (Brislin Worthley & Macnab, 2006). Cultural intelligence can thus, be goal oriented in order to realize personal or collective goals through establishing effective cultural communications. In the video the goal of the male actor is to help the woman. However, he finds difficulty due to the cultural gap between the two. Here, the male person does not show significant levels of cultural competency as he is often shown to assume certain things based on the socio-economic and cultural background of the woman (Livermore & Soon, 2015). Hence, it can be said that he definitely lacks skills pertaining to cultural intelligence. The setting is apparently safe as the conversations is taking place in the safety of home where the actor being questioned having coffee but emotional safety is the priority when a culturally safe space is being considered (Bird & Mendenhall, 2016. The character at times displays good cultural communication but the fact that he is affected by dominant stereotypical perspectives point towards his overall inability as an optimal communicator. Cultural awareness a required trait when trying to establish optimal communication levels with people of different cultures. It becomes important that cultural aspects of a different culture are not inappropriately judged (Quappe & Cantatore, 2005). The acceptance of various ways of different cultures are definitely lacking in the male actor.

According to Holley & Steiner (2005) safe spaces are not exactly physically safe environments but places where an individual from a particular culture feels psychologically and emotionally safe. The concept was used in case of students from various cultures. The officer was seen to ask personal questions to the woman. Moreover, the officer presented information that was otherwise very personal concerning the woman actor of the video. Hence it can be said that to some extent the safe space was hampered despite the woman being at the comfort of her home. The hospital records were reaffirmed with the woman to whom she asked whether the officer had stalked her in the hospital. A positive aspect that was witnessed in the officer was the way in which despite not maintaining proper cultural interactions he was speaking in an appropriate tone (Chao, Takeuchi & Farh, 2017). It is much important in the context of significantly effective cultural communication that the culture of a person is well respected and acknowledged (Quappe & Cantatore, 2005). Moreover, the concept of safe space concerns the creation of such environments where judgmental attitudes are not present to jeopardize the cross cultural interactions. Judgmental environments arise from the pre conceived notions about race and culture. According to Jackson (2016) when a black youth was unfairly killed by the police. The media portrayed an image of the youth in which he was looking like a gangster and making suggestive hand gestures despite the fact that he was a normal college graduate. Similarly in the context of the video an image of the woman was stressed by the other actor that depicted pre conceived judgmental notions about her cultural inclinations. 

Safe spaces and cross-cultural interactions

In the video it can be said that many times the male actor jeopardizes the safe place that is supposed to help in making the conversation effective. The person he is speaking to is Hispanic and he seems to relatively enjoy the conversation (Ott & Michailova, 2018). The speaker at times speaks with the woman with good confidence levels but creates conflict through the use of notions that denote cultural stereotyping. Knowledge of cultural aspects and putting human values before any forms of cultural perceptions is important towards developing safe spaces. In context of the video the views of Matsumoto (2007) can be essentially considered. He proposed that culture is determined through basic human nature, culture and individual roles. Cultural intelligence thus depends on how far a person is able to understand the cultural point of views of the other person given that the three basic elements of culture have positively enabled the person to accept different cultures. A safe space can only be created through proper cultural knowledge. This is definitely lacking in the video, as the male actor is unaware of some of the basic aspects of cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence and its effective implementations can develop essential trust between people of various cultural inclinations (Ng & Rockstuhl, 2015). This could have helped towards the creation of a safe space in the scenario. However, at times cultural capabilities are significantly present. In the scenario lack of cultural intelligence of the male actor ends up in greatly jeopardizing the idea of a safe space in terms of cultural interactions. The creation of environments where people can feel emotionally and culturally secure can contribute to the creation of safe places where interactions can be more fruitful and essential cross cultural relations can be established(Holley & Steiner, 2005). 

The setting of the video can be perceived to be apparently safe as the conversation is taking place at the comfort of the home. However, the situations are made unsafe due to the improper judgments that are made. The end outcome of the conversation did result in a positive way. The first things that need to be kept in mind is to develop better levels of cultural intelligence. Since, the conversation is formal it would have been better if the personal questions were skipped. Moreover, the scenario is highly inconsistent with regards to the cultural capabilities. Creation of safe interactive spaces is the main idea about cultural competencies (Ang, Rockstuhl & Tan, 2015). The environment depicted in the scenario is relatively safer as it provides the woman being questioned home comfort. An important aspect to change will be the ways in which certain assumptions or judgments are made in regards to the suffering woman. Initially, her socio-economic position is blamed for her non-registered income source. Thus, it would have been important at this point in time to establish empathetic communication with the other person. The officer could have gone about the conversation in lesser offensive manner. Cultural strategies like awareness about cultural aspects, effective interaction planning and cultural adjustments are very much required for the scenario.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it can be said that the major aspects of cultural capabilities that were identified through the work were cultural drive, knowledge, strategy and action. The male actor significantly displayed cultural drive as he wants to establish a positive outcome to the interrogation process. The actor however lacks significant knowledge and applies many irrelevant assumptions to judge the woman. There is a lack of strategy as the actor has to apologize many tomes for saying inappropriate things. The action is not optimal as the scenarios does not depict proper flow of cultural interaction. In all the scenario shows some effective areas of cultural capabilities but falls short of depicting optimal levels of cultural capabilities. 

References

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Bird, A., & Mendenhall, M. E. (2016). From cross-cultural management to global leadership: Evolution and adaptation. Journal of World Business, 51(1), 115-126.

Brislin, R., Worthley, R., & Macnab, B. (2006). Cultural intelligence: Understanding behaviors that serve people’s goals. Group & Organization Management, 31(1), 40-55.

Chao, M. M., Takeuchi, R., & Farh, J. L. (2017). Enhancing cultural intelligence: The roles of implicit culture beliefs and adjustment. Personnel Psychology, 70(1), 257-292.

Holley, L. C., & Steiner, S. (2005). Safe space: Student perspectives on classroom environment. Journal of Social Work Education, 41(1), 49-64.

Jackson, R. (2016). If they gunned me down and criming while White: An examination of Twitter campaigns through the lens of citizens’ media. Cultural Studies? Critical Methodologies, 16(3), 313-319.

Livermore, D., & Soon, A. N. G. (2015). Leading with cultural intelligence: The real secret to success. Amacom.

Matsumoto, D. (2007). Culture, context, and behavior. Journal of personality, 75(6), 1285-1320.

Ng, K. Y., & Rockstuhl, T. (2015). The Effects of Cultural Intelligence on Interpersonal Trust in Multicultural Teams. In Handbook of Cultural Intelligence (pp. 224-238). Routledge.

Ott, D. L., & Michailova, S. (2018). Cultural intelligence: A review and new research avenues. International Journal of Management Reviews, 20(1), 99-119.

Quappe, S., & Cantatore, G. (2005). What is Cultural Awareness, anyway? How do I build it. Retrieved July, 17, 2008.

Styles of Expressing Conflict. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UbE-coFuqU