1. Learn about your culture and values. Focus on how your culture and values affect your verbal and non-verbal communication and how you think and feel about people, places and things.
   
   
2. Understand and work to accept that there are different cultures and values and that those differences can be valid and can be learned.
   
   
3. Learn to compare and contrast other’s culture and values to your own.
   
   
4. Practice the Platinum Rule concept:

   Don’t rely exclusively on your perception of what is being said or communicated non-verbally.

   This is especially important in times of stress, conflict and pronounced cultural differences.
   
   
5. Question your cultural assumptions and check their reality rather than immediately taking action on them.
   
   
6. Develop a wide variety of “cultural resources”; people that can provide you with additional insight into their culture.
   
   
7. Expand your cultural experience. Visit different places and experience different people.
   
   
8. Continue to read more about others different than yourself. Ask yourself: What color is my library?
   
   
9. Understand that any new learning venture can be stressful, challenging, and tiresome. Allow for mistakes. No one is perfect; remember to give yourself and others a break.
   
   
10. Invite a neighbor or work colleague to lunch and/or dinner and break bread with that person. Come to know people who are different from you through sharing a meal.
    
    

What are some additional ways that you can think of that should be added to this Beginner’s Guide?

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