What is intercultural communication?
Intercultural communication competence is the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately with people whose cultural expectations, experiences, or communication patterns differ from your own.
Explore how well you stay curious, adapt communication, and verify understanding across cultural differences.
Answer as you are today
Choose the answer that best describes your recent behaviour at work. No email required.
What does intercultural communication mean?
Intercultural communication competence is the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately with people whose cultural expectations, experiences, or communication patterns differ from your own.
Why it matters at work
Meaning is shaped by context, language, norms, power, and individual experience. Competence requires curiosity and adaptation without reducing a person to a cultural stereotype.
What this assessment measures
Curiosity & awareness
Noticing your assumptions and learning how the other person interprets the situation.
Communication adaptation
Adjusting language, pace, context, and channels while remaining authentic.
Understanding & repair
Checking shared meaning and repairing misunderstandings without blame.
How to interpret your score
Your overall result is normalised to a 0–100 scale. Use it to choose a practice area, not to compare your worth with somebody else.
Build your intercultural communication foundation
Your answers point to a few situations where a simple routine could make this behavior more reliable.
A developing intercultural communication pattern
You use this skill in some situations. Strengthen the dimension that becomes least dependable under pressure.
A strong intercultural communication pattern
Your answers suggest a reliable pattern. Keep testing it in harder situations and compare your view with outside evidence.
Designed for reflection, not diagnosis
The ten behaviour-based statements cover 3 practical dimensions. Responses run from “Never” to “Almost always”; negatively worded items are reverse-scored. Overall and dimension results are converted to a 0–100 scale. The assessment is educational and has not been psychometrically validated.
Read the full assessment methodology and editorial standards.
Research that informed this page
Lily A. Arasaratnam (2009), “The Development of a New Instrument of Intercultural Communication Competence”, Journal of Intercultural Communication.