When I went abroad the spring of my junior year with Semester at Sea, I took a course called Global Studies (IE 300). This course was designed to teach us about emerging ourselves into different cultures and the history and current events happening in each country we were visiting. One of the things we learned about was the cultural iceberg. The cultural iceberg explains what you can learn about someone with just a glance, and what is beneath someone’s surface that you wouldn’t know about them just by looking at them. As you can see in the model to the right, the largest category of traits are the things such as beliefs, income, and social status, you can’t see, and there are a lot of things that you won’t notice about someone unless you gained a better understanding of their background and who they are. Some traits that are in this category are skills and worldview. These elements are difficult to see in someone because it’s not something most people talk about when you first meet them, or something that is visible to us with just looking at someone. Getting to know these traits about people helps build relationships, and also helps avoid offending someone. This is an important model for people to know who want to pursue a successful role in leadership, or better work with people from different backgrounds, or really be able to diverge themselves into a new country/culture. Since I am pursuing a pathway in professional and civic engagement, this model will better help me communicate and work with different kinds of people.
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