Cultural Humility:
Definition, Comparison & Related Terms

Cultural humility in the workplace is a lifelong process of self-reflection and self-critique where individuals examine their own cultural identity, biases, and power dynamics to create respectful, equitable relationships with colleagues from diverse backgrounds. Originally coined by healthcare professionals Dr. Melanie Tervalon and Dr. Jann Murray-García in 1998, cultural humility builds on cultural competence by emphasizing continuous learning rather than claiming expertise about other cultures. This approach acknowledges that no individual can fully understand the breadth of human diversity and encourages people to approach interactions with openness, curiosity, and respect for different cultural perspectives.

Cultural humility differs from cultural competence in that it rejects the notion that professionals need to become cultural "experts" to respect and incorporate others' backgrounds. Instead, it focuses on an ongoing internal self-examination process that promotes real partnerships within teams and with diverse communities. According to Mental Health America, employees who feel valued for their cultural identity report higher rates of emotional and mental safety in the workplace, with over 80% experiencing reduced work-related stress.

Related terms: cultural competence, cultural sensitivity, diversity equity and inclusion (DEI), psychological safety

Cultural humility differs from cultural competence in 3 fundamental ways: approach to learning, power dynamics, and endpoint expectations. Cultural competence provides a foundation of knowledge and awareness about various backgrounds and historical events, while cultural humility translates that knowledge into a process of accountability aimed at personal and systemic change.

Cultural competence implies achieving a fixed bar of proficiency and suggests an "endpoint" to being culturally competent, treating culture as rigid rather than fluid. This design can lead to practitioners stereotyping individuals based on what they learned in training sessions. Cultural humility, however, emphasizes a posture of forever learning by continuously reflecting on your own practices and how they impact interactions with people from different cultures.

The main distinguishing feature is that cultural humility encourages professionals to examine their own cultural identity through continuous self-reflection rather than claiming expert knowledge about other cultures. Cultural humility liberates practitioners from the burden of having to claim expert knowledge about other cultures, putting them in learning mode instead of a position of power, control, and authority. This approach acknowledges that cultural differences can lead to inequitable treatment when organizations and staff are not culturally humble, and recognizes that culture is affected by various structural, systematic, and personal elements.

Cultural humility creates 6 key benefits for workplace wellness and organizational success. Organizations with inclusive cultures are six times more likely to be innovative and agile, and eight times more likely to achieve better business outcomes according to Deloitte research.

The 6 key benefits include:

• Improved sense of belonging: When employees see their cultural identity appreciated and respected, they feel more welcome and free to be themselves
• Reduced interpersonal conflicts: Cultural humility encourages everyone to examine their perspectives and set aside implicit or unconscious biases
• Healthier colleague relationships: By promoting empathy and open-mindedness, humility allows coworkers to break down barriers and build stronger relationships
• Increased creativity and collaboration: Diverse perspectives coming together to solve problems leads to innovative, out-of-the-box thinking
• Continuous development: Cultural humility is founded on lifelong learning, encouraging continuous education and self-improvement
• Enhanced psychological safety: Research shows employees who feel valued for their cultural identity report higher rates of emotional and mental safety, with over 80% feeling less stressed by work

Beyond employee benefits, cultural humility enables businesses to foster greater innovation, gain new perspectives for decision-making, build stronger relationships with customers in diverse markets, and enhance corporate reputation. In fact, 42% of candidates highly prioritize diversity and inclusivity when looking for jobs, making cultural humility a strategic advantage for recruitment efforts.

Tervalon and Murray-García identified 3 essential criteria necessary to develop cultural humility in the workplace. These criteria provide the foundation for organizations to foster inclusive environments where all team members feel valued and respected.

The 3 criteria are:

1. A lifelong commitment to self-reflection: This involves nurturing a continuous commitment to learning about one's own and others' cultures, backgrounds, and experiences. It requires taking on an open and curious mindset that acknowledges we are never done learning and growing. Organizations can support this by encouraging team members to engage in dialogues about their experiences, creating opportunities to build interpersonal relationships, providing learning resources, and planning activities that celebrate cultures and provide learning engagements.
2. Understanding and addressing power imbalances: Power imbalances are evident in workplaces, particularly among those represented and not represented in leadership and decision-making processes. These imbalances are exacerbated when workplace culture is eurocentric and fails to value identities, backgrounds, and experiences of non-eurocentric cultures. Understanding and addressing power imbalances requires acknowledging complicity in unfair power structures and working to fix disparities by being respectful allies. Organizations can offer resources to understand discrimination history, provide opportunities for brave conversations about power and privilege, include team members in conversations about culturally relevant interventions, and offer leaders opportunities to reflect on their role in addressing power imbalances.
3. Institutional accountability: Holding the workplace and its systems accountable ensures that cultural humility creates truly equitable and inclusive spaces. This involves working at an institutional level to ensure systems nurture equity and inclusion. Organizations can offer team members opportunities to participate in DEI work, collect and analyze data about organizational practices through a DEI lens, develop goals and action plans incorporating cultural humility, and review policies for bias to make them reflective of various stakeholders' cultures, customs, behaviors, and needs.

Organizations can cultivate cultural humility through 10 strategic practices that create an environment where employees feel valued, respected, and included regardless of their cultural background. These practices require commitment from all organizational levels to deepen collective understanding and embrace differences without judgment.

The 10 strategies are:

1. Become a role model: Leaders set the tone by demonstrating commitment to self-reflection, openly discussing their learning journey, and showing genuine respect for diverse viewpoints. This sends a powerful message about organizational values and inspires teams to follow suit.
2. Encourage mindfulness and self-reflection: Employees should engage in practices that foster internal awareness, such as journaling, meditation, and guided self-reflection sessions. This self-awareness helps recognize unconscious biases and understand how they impact behavior and decisions.
3. Foster open communication: Create channels for open, honest, respectful communication. Encourage team members to share cultural experiences and perspectives while listening actively without judgment. Implement informal diversity talks or forums providing safe spaces for employees to learn about cultural issues and share insights.
4. Host discussions for deeper understanding: Facilitate regular diversity dialogues covering cultural topics to deepen understanding and appreciation. These discussions allow team members to explore various cultural backgrounds in respectful, educational settings, highlighting different traditions, beliefs, and lived experiences.
5. Offer training programs on cultural humility: Invest in training programs that educate employees about cultural differences and address implicit bias. These programs should equip employees with practical skills to cultivate cultural humility, sensitivity, and competency in daily lives.
6. Integrate policies into workplace framework: Implement clear policies and structures reinforcing cultural humility. These frameworks should actively promote DEI through policies respecting and providing flexibility for different cultural practices, protecting against discrimination, and ensuring inclusive hiring practices. Introduce regular audits to ensure policies are actively practiced.
7. Support employee resource groups: Form ERGs focusing on different aspects of cultural diversity. These groups provide social support systems and platforms for people of various cultural identities, uplifting underrepresented groups and educating others about different backgrounds and perspectives.
8. Provide flexibility for cultural practices: Accommodate cultural practices by offering flexible working hours for various cultural or religious practices or updating dress codes to be more inclusive of diverse attire. These flexibilities demonstrate respect for individual cultural identities.
9. Hold each other accountable: Create shared responsibility where employees at all levels can address insensitive behavior without fear of retaliation. Implement accountability mechanisms ensuring everyone maintains respectful, inclusive behavior.
10. Acknowledge mistakes and commit to continuous improvement: Create a culture encouraging people to learn from mistakes, recognizing everyone is on their own journey of developing cultural humility. The mindset of lifelong learning combined with constructive responses to cultural misunderstandings promotes an environment of forgiveness and understanding that educates and unifies.

Cultural humility enhances team cohesiveness through 5 specific practices that strengthen relationships and collaboration. The process starts with leadership demonstrating vulnerability, which leads to stronger team bonds and improved working relationships.

The 5 team cohesiveness practices include:

• Team bonding: Time for team members to know one another better through common activities. Cultural team bonding practices include eating different cuisines or learning about other languages.
• Coaching: Helps identify self-awareness and challenge expectations, enabling team members to recognize their biases and grow beyond them.
• Conversing: Allow others to lead conversations and share their experiences, creating space for diverse voices to be heard and valued.
• Using what you learn: When you identify something of concern within your institution, hold all partners involved accountable and advocate for change.
• Understanding limitations: Recognize that culture is evolving and people change, requiring ongoing adaptation and learning.

Research on clinical research coordinators in a large collaborative pediatric emergency medicine research network found that most felt their various races, ethnicities, and ability to speak languages other than English made them more successful in recruitment. This study highlights how cultural humility leads to discussions revealing diversity among teams and supports team members who may be struggling due to personal factors or characteristics. Cultural humility improves community engagement, increases community knowledge of research studies, and supports designing projects with focus on people, not just objectives.

Cultural humility transforms leadership from authority-based to allyship-based, creating 4 key leadership practices that enhance organizational effectiveness. This approach reframes leadership as a practice that centers listening, co-creation, and advocacy rather than top-down decision-making.

The 4 key leadership practices are:

• Leading by example and modeling learning: Leaders demonstrate empathy and respect by engaging in self-reflection themselves, showing the team that continuous learning is valued.
• Engaging in difficult conversations: Leaders create space for open dialogue about assumptions and cultural differences, facing challenges head-on rather than avoiding them.
• Practicing inclusive leadership: Leaders advocate for diversity and staff development, ensuring all voices are heard in decision-making processes.
• Shifting from authority to allyship: Humble leaders recognize they are learners who must elevate underrepresented voices. For example, managers shift from making top-down decisions to holding regular listening sessions with teams, demonstrating willingness to be led.

Leadership grounded in humility cultivates deeper belonging, promotes transparency, and invites dissenting views that often catalyst meaningful change. Cultural humility challenges leaders to recognize systemic inequities and actively redistribute power within teams. This might involve inviting junior employees to co-lead meetings, rotating speaking opportunities, or implementing 360-degree feedback mechanisms. Accountability means being open to critique and using it to improve, leaders practicing cultural humility do not fear being wrong, they fear not growing.

Cultural humility drives 5 measurable business advantages that extend beyond employee satisfaction to organizational performance and market success. Organizations that foster cultural humility create environments where psychological safety and innovation thrive.

The 5 business advantages are:

1. Creates psychologically safe work environments: By fostering cultural humility, organizations create environments where employees feel secure and valued, free to voice ideas and concerns without fear of reprisal or ridicule. This creates more open and inclusive workplaces.
2. Fosters greater innovation and creativity: Teams comfortable expressing their true ideas brainstorm more freely and think outside conventional frameworks. Employers can harness this collective creativity to develop groundbreaking ideas and solutions that keep products and services relevant across different cultures, allowing businesses to stay competitive and dynamic.
3. Gains new perspectives for decision-making: Input from diverse populations empowers better decisions, allowing decision-makers to consider multiple facets of situations. This minimizes blind spots and potential biases, encouraging everyone to think differently and consider other perspectives. This approach helps companies navigate complex global challenges more effectively and adapt to changing market demands.
4. Builds stronger customer relationships in diverse markets: Beyond cultural encounters within the workforce, humility is key to building trust and rapport with customers and clients from diverse backgrounds. Understanding and respecting cultural nuances allows businesses to tailor interactions and offerings to meet unique needs. This personalized approach enhances customer satisfaction, boosts loyalty, and expands market reach.
5. Enhances corporate reputation and recruitment: Today's employees want more than cultural diversity, they want employers that value inclusivity. In fact, 42% of candidates highly prioritize diversity and inclusivity when looking for jobs. Practicing cultural humility significantly improves company reputation and loyalty among existing employees, making it an employer of choice for top talent across different backgrounds.

Research examining local spillover effects discovered that on average, every additional publication reduces local mortality from a disease by 0.35%, demonstrating how research mirroring its community through cultural humility creates tangible impact. Organizations with inclusive cultures are six times more likely to be innovative and agile, and eight times more likely to achieve better business outcomes according to Deloitte.

Cultural humility is often compared to 2 closely related concepts in workplace diversity and inclusion:

Cultural Humility vs. Cultural Competence

Cultural humility builds on the foundation of cultural competence but addresses its critical limitations. Cultural competence emerged during the 1960s and 70s when healthcare providers recognized the need for cultural knowledge to provide effective care. However, cultural competence is flawed in that it implies a need to be "all-knowing" about different cultures and assumes people of one culture are a monolith. This can lead to biases and stereotypes that falsely imply one set of ideas applies to all in a group, overlooking nuances within a culture.

Cultural humility rejects the notion that people need to become cultural "experts" and instead emphasizes a lifelong commitment to self-reflection and learning to understand and address personal and systemic biases and power imbalances. While a culturally competent leader might know holidays observed by different cultural groups, a culturally humble leader would ask how those holidays affect team members' experiences and adjust project timelines accordingly. This subtle but powerful shift reduces performative DEI and builds genuine inclusion.

Cultural Humility vs. Cultural Sensitivity

Cultural sensitivity and cultural humility are interconnected concepts that work together to enhance inclusivity and cultural knowledge, leading to better interpersonal relationships. However, there are important distinctions between them. Cultural sensitivity is the external quality of being aware and respectful of each other's backgrounds, it focuses on recognizing and honoring differences in interactions with others.

Cultural humility goes deeper by requiring ongoing internal self-examination. While sensitivity helps you recognize when cultural differences exist, humility pushes you to examine your own cultural identity, biases, and assumptions continuously. Cultural competence puts both sensitivity and humility into practice, those who demonstrate cultural competence are able to set aside their own bias to understand and consider the values, beliefs, and perspectives of diverse populations. Together, these three concepts form a trinity of workplace inclusivity.