MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT CULTURAL COMPETENCIES

Phuoc D. Nguyen

Before a consultant demonstrates his/her values and cultural competencies to his/her clients he/she should implement his/her cultural competencies self-assessment to know his/her current cultural competencies. Next, his/her consulting organization based on his/her self-assessment results to assess his/her actual current cultural competencies. Cross et al. (1989) based on James Mason’s 5 Stages of Cultural Competence to develop the 6-Stage Cultural Competence Continuum, including stages of cultural destructiveness, cultural incapacity, cultural blindness, cultural pre-competence, cultural competence, and cultural proficiency. That is a prerequisite that an independent consultant who should self-assess his/her cultural competencies which his/her self-assessment results are should at the Cultural Competence scale and improve continually his/her cultural competencies to deliver his/her consulting services to clients. If he/she works for a consulting firm the consulting partner should assess his/her cultural competencies with a result of the Cultural Competence scale to assign him/her to deliver consulting services to clients.

Mason (1995) proposed a Cultural Competence Self-Assessment Questionnaire, he classified questionnaires into Cultural Competence Self-Assessment Questionnaire: Service Provider Version, Cultural Competence Self-Assessment Questionnaire: Administration Version, Cultural Competence Self-Assessment Scale: Demographic Information, and Subscale Analysis. These questionnaire designs are wonderful. However, these questionnaires have not instructed consultants and consulting firms based on results to rank individual cultural competencies into one of the cultural competencies stages.

BEMWG (2010) proposed the 4-Dimension Model for Assessing Cultural Competence, including four elements – awareness, knowledge, skills, and practices. It uses a spidergram to measure cultural competency. Additionally, it established the scoring criteria to self-assess Cultural Competence including a mark scale from 1 to 5 for every four elements of awareness, knowledge, skills, and practices. If the consultant has lower marks, (1, 2, or 3) then he/she must complete an action plan to fill cultural competencies gaps. It is suggested that after the consultant fills his/her gaps he/she should self-assess his/her cultural competencies and his/her supervisor should assess his/her cultural competencies periodically too. Furthermore, BEMWG (2010) proposed cultural competency tools for individuals, including tools of Practitioner Quiz and Cultural Diversity Barriers for awareness element, tools of Quality and Culture Quiz and Improving communication, improving Care for knowledge element, tools of Cross-cultural communication skills and Working with interpreters for skills element, and tools of Self-assessment checklist for practitioners and Checklist for facilitating the development of cultural competency policies for practice element aim to improve continually cultural competencies.

The consultant specifically demonstrates his/her values and cultural competencies to his/her clients through training on cultural competencies, BEMWG’s (2010) 4-Dimension Model for Assessing Cultural Competence, and Cultural Competence tools for individuals and organizations. When clients are familiar with the model and tools they will assess the consultant and consulting firm’s cultural competencies and aim to learn and understand about that. This is one of the most effective ways to demonstrate a consultant and consulting firm’s cultural competence.