Exploring my Cultural Competence: The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI)
by Magda Wojtara
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Introduction
The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) is a 50 item-self reported questionnaire that measures development of one’s attitude towards another culture along the six stages of ethnocentrism to ethnorelativism. Ethnocentrism means using your own culture as a reference for judging others. Ethnorelativism is an acquired ability to see many values and behaviors as cultural rather than universal. The Trotter Multicultural Center Intercultural Learning Program encourages global and inclusive mindsets or growth mindsets around difference. The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) experience is an opportunity for individuals and groups to learn a sense of current levels of intercultural competence, develop a plan to understand difference with greater complexity, and more effectively navigate across difference.
I first heard about this inventory through the Leadership Certificate program offered to UM undergraduates. The premise sounded interesting to me and I thought about how many of my experiences in the Global Scholars Program have centered around culture. Therefore, I was very curious to see what my attitudes were towards my own culture and other cultures. My program, as well as many others at UM, offer students the ability to take the IDI for free and meet with consultants to discuss how to improve in understanding and navigating culture. The IDI is used by many organizations and has strong validity and reliability across diverse cultural groups. It has been rigorously tested and has cross-cultural generalizability which is something that I found to be very reassuring.
Intercultural Development Continuum
Intercultural competence is the capability to shift perspective and adapt behavior to cultural difference and commonality. Intercultural competence reflects the degree to which cultural differences and commonalities in values, expectations, beliefs, and practices are effectively bridged, an inclusive environment is achieved, and specific differences that exist in your organization or institution are addressed from a “mutual adaptation” perspective. The Intercultural Development Continuum® (IDC®) (modified from the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity originally proposed by Dr. Milton Bennett), identifies five orientations in terms of approaches to culture.
Figure 1: Intercultural Development Continuum ranging from Denial to Polarization to Minimization to Acceptance and finally to Adaptation
Denial: A Denial mindset reflects a more limited capability for understanding and appropriately responding to cultural differences in values, beliefs, perceptions, emotional responses, and behaviors.
Polarization: Polarization is an evaluative mindset that views cultural differences from an “us versus them” perspective. Polarization can take the form of Defense (“My cultural practices are superior to other cultural practices”) or Reversal (“Other cultures are better than mine”).
Minimization: Minimization is a transitional mindset. Minimization can take one of two forms: (a) the highlighting of commonalities due to limited cultural self-understanding, which is more commonly experienced by dominant group members within a cultural community; or (b) the highlighting of commonalities as a strategy for navigating the values and practices largely determined by the dominant culture group, which is more often experienced by non-dominant group members within a larger cultural community.
Acceptance: Acceptance is an intercultural/global mindset. With an Acceptance orientation, individuals recognize and appreciate patterns of cultural difference and commonality in their own and other cultures. An Acceptance orientation is curious to learn how a cultural pattern of behavior makes sense within different cultural communities.
Adaptation: An Adaptation orientation consists of both Cognitive Frame-Shifting (shifting one’s cultural perspective) and Behavioral Code-Shifting (changing behavior in authentic and culturally appropriate ways). Adaptation enables deep cultural bridging across diverse communities using an increased repertoire of cultural frameworks and practices in navigating cultural commonalities and differences.
Navigating the Results
Completing the Intercultural Development Inventory® (IDI®) and reviewing your own IDI Individual Profile Report provides key insights into how you make sense of cultural differences and commonalities. The next step is to systematically increase your intercultural competence—from where you are to where you want to be—by designing and implementing your own Intercultural Development Plan® (IDP®). After you take the IDI you can sign up for an individualized coaching session for an hour. During the session, an IDI certified consultant will run through your personalized score report and discuss how you navigate culture and how to implement your own IDP.
An example question discussed could be something like, “Consider how the values and leadership practices (i.e., how things are done here) in your organization or school may be consistent with your own cultural group—or the practices of the dominant culture. Summarize your thoughts here.” These are high level discussions that really make you reflect on your experiences and how you use your experiences to inform your approaches.
Overall, if you have the opportunity to complete the IDI for a program or even to take some time to evaluate your cultural competence: do it. It is a great learning experience and one that really helped me reflect on my early life experiences and my growth over the past four years as a student at UM.
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