Every encounter with difference is an exercise in awareness.
It is certainly a social and linguistic issue, but also a perceptual experience — a form of learning that pushes us to redefine who we are and how we see the world.
Milton J. Bennett, a scholar of intercultural communication, devoted more than thirty years to observing this process. His Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) describes how people and organizations evolve in their ability to relate to different cultures. It is, in every sense, a way of perceiving reality.
Those who develop more complex categories of “self” and “other” are able to build richer experiences, deeper relationships, and more inclusive systems.
Bennett observed that intercultural sensitivity develops along a continuum. In the initial stages, ethnocentrism prevails, when one’s own culture is perceived as the center of the world and the primary point of reference. Over time and through experience, one moves toward ethnorelativism, in which each culture is seen as a possible way of organizing reality. It is not about tolerating difference, but about understanding it as part of our own capacity for adaptation.
Bennett emphasizes that this path is developmental, not linear.
There is nothing rigid about it: it follows a continuous movement between perception, learning, and action. People and organizations can shift from one stage to another depending on situations and contexts. In the workplace, this evolution has tangible effects.
The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) highlights that leaders who are able to adopt an intercultural perspective develop a broader systemic vision, make more ethical decisions, and build more inclusive environments, with a direct impact on innovation and well-being. An organization that recognizes the value of differences develops more flexible structures, more trusting relationships, and more participatory decision-making systems. Diversity becomes a driver of collective learning, not a risk to be managed.
At Wyde we often encounter this dynamic in our leadership and training programs. Many international companies begin working on these topics starting right here: by recognizing that culture influences not only how we communicate, but how we think, make decisions, and collaborate. Every time a team learns to recognize its own cultural automatisms, a new space opens up—broader, more aware, and more capable of holding the complexity of the present.
Training this competence means shifting the center of gravity of growth. Leadership is not measured only by the ability to guide people, but by the ability to see how culture shapes our choices and behaviors. A leader who is attuned to the intercultural dimension builds bridges. They create shared languages, generate trust, and transform difference into creative energy.
In a global context where hybrid and multicultural teams have become the norm, psychological safety and intercultural sensitivity are two inseparable dimensions. One fosters the courage to speak up; the other makes mutual understanding possible. Data from the well-beINTeam project, in which we are collaborating as a partner, confirm that psychological safety increases in groups working with intercultural awareness tools. People feel freer to propose ideas, to acknowledge mistakes, and to learn from interaction.
Cultivating an intercultural outlook means learning to see the world from multiple angles. It is certainly an act of attention, a training in complexity, a form of responsibility. Every time we expand our perception of others, we also expand our perception of ourselves.
In Bennett’s words, the goal is not to “be more similar,” but to “become more complex.” And perhaps this is the most relevant challenge for today’s leaders and organizations: to evolve in order to understand, to enable dialogue across differences, to build systems capable of holding many centers, many truths, many perspectives.
