cultural capital – Success Across Cultures

Your success on the job often relies on the type of capital you possess.

We’ve been discussing social and cultural capital over the past few weeks, and these two types of capital are what matter at work.

To review, social capital is all about the strength of relationships and connections within a group, whereas cultural capital is the shared values and goals that bring a group together.

Social capital can help you achieve more or reach objectives more easily at work.

In this post, we’ll take a closer look at social capital and see how to assess and build upon it.

Assessing Your Social Capital

Maybe you don’t even know where you stand with your social capital.

After all, it’s not exactly something tangible that you can measure.

The following questions might help you identify where you’re at with your social capital:

Do I carry influence? What is my reputation like? Do others see me as strong or weak, reliable or flakey, positive or negative? Do they want to work with me?
How strong are my relationships within my team and without? Do I build connections with others across departments? Do I network?
Do I build strategic and enduring relationships or just transactional ones?
Do I have the energy and influence to mobilize resources and colleagues to support and achieve my goals?
Do I keep abreast of important news and developments within my workplace and industry?

Improving your social capital can enhance your job performance, satisfaction, and career prospects.

To do so, networking with peers and colleagues in your industry, cultivating relationships based on mutual interests and values, and offering help and support to others are paramount to banking more social capital.

Aggregate Benefits

Not only does social capital improve individual success and potential, but the entire workplace improves.

Successful workplaces cultivate social structures in which everyone benefits.

This happens through social intercourse, empathy, fellowship, compassion, consideration, and most importantly, trust.

If the social structure benefits only a small group within the workplace, the organization’s aggregate benefits from their social capital decrease.

It feeds into a negative company culture, in which trust is lost, along with the sense of community.

When none of these things are there, those in the social structure can’t rely on each other and cooperation and society collapses.

If you look at your workplace and you cannot identify its values, then that’s a problem.

It means you’ll have a hard time personally building social capital there…as will the workplace, itself.

Building your cultural capital, which relates to your knowledge, skills, and understanding of cultural norms and practices, is also important for career success.

We’ll talk more about that next week.

Imagine you are interviewing two candidates for a job.

They are equally qualified for the job, have the same work experience, and were both compelling in their interviews.

But one went to Harvard, is proficient in three languages, and was dressed in the finest clothes.

The other went to a state school, had no language proficiency, and was dressed well enough but his clothing was not quality.

Even though neither language proficiency nor wardrobe matters for this job, who would you be more likely to choose for the role?

Last week, we talked about social capital – i.e. networking amongst similar groups of people, either of the same social status, across socioeconomic groups, or through shared characteristics.

Similarly, cultural capital can either help an individual succeed in society…or if you have none, it can sometimes stand in the way of success.

Let’s take a closer look at what cultural capital is and how it works.

Cultural Capital

Cultural capital is often defined as “the social assets of a person.”

It refers to the cultural knowledge, skills, and experiences that a person possesses, which can be exploited to gain social status and power.

Think one’s education, language proficiency or speech patterns, artistic or musical abilities, dress, mannerisms, knowledge of literature, history, and social norms.

All of these characteristics are part of a person’s cultural capital, and they can provide opportunities for some that wouldn’t be open to others.

History of the Concept

The concept of cultural capital was developed by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who argued that cultural capital can be used to reproduce social inequality.

In his view, those who possess cultural capital are more likely to succeed in society because they are better equipped to navigate social situations and gain access to valuable resources such as education, jobs, and social connections.

In fact, Bordieu believed:

“cultural inheritance and personal biography attribute to individual success more than intelligence or talent.”

Cultural capital can be acquired through formal education or through exposure to various cultural experiences throughout one’s life…or it can be convincingly faked, as con artists like Anna “Delvey” Sorokin have demonstrated.

Sorokin famously conned her way into high society New York, stealing upwards of $200,000 from the friends she made and from banks.

How?

She knew the value of cultural capital, and she played the part well by convincing her social circle of her style, tastes, and intellect.

Next week, we’ll talk more about how cultural and social capital work together in different cultures around the world.