Overcoming Ethnocentrism: Working Together in Intercultural Contexts

Please see the details of our second EDI seminar in November, delivered by Prof Katerina Strani, Professor and Head of Department, Languages and Intercultural Studies (LINCS), School of Social Sciences, Heriot-Watt University.

In increasingly globalised workplaces, there is an urgent necessity for good intercultural communication skills. The ability to work together harmoniously and successfully in a multicultural environment is challenging but vital to the success of a workplace and international research and teaching teams. Yet, ethnocentrism, the privileging of one’s own cultural norms and values, continues to pose significant barriers to mutual understanding and cooperation as it often hinders communication, trust, and teamwork.
At Heriot-Watt, we teach international students from all backgrounds in five campuses in the UK, Dubai, and Malaysia. The pandemic brought this global community closer together, as we had to co-develop material for RBL and teach more cross-campus live classes. But it also exposed how teaching international students requires us to reconsider some of our practices and premises because of cultural differences in our approaches to learning and education.
That silence in the class could show that the student is waiting for permission to speak to answer your question. The lack of critical engagement could mean that the student thinks that they are not allowed to challenge you, but they expect you to give all the correct answers. Their disappointment and lack of improvement might be because they have different understandings of feedback and its purpose. Sharing a common “negotiated culture” is of paramount importance. But how does this negotiated culture emerge, how is trust established, especially in a short timescale, and how do multicultural teams function, negotiate, and deal with conflict? How do we then overcome ethnocentrism and develop intercultural competence in the workplace?
This seminar addresses these questions by critically revisiting and challenging established models, moving beyond Anglo-Saxon understandings and frameworks. The discussion will highlight strategies for developing intercultural competence, fostering co-constructed intercultural partnerships and inclusive environments, and building trust among culturally diverse teams.