The world is becoming more and more interconnected and people from vastly different contexts and backgrounds now come into contact on a regular basis, whether at university, in their work or in other everyday situations. Most people assume that these intercultural situations are limited to when members of different national cultures meet, for example between a German and an Indian citizen. The reality is, however, that every situation is intercultural in which we encounter a person who comes from a different context to us and who does not share much of our understanding of normality. While we're confident of the rules and norms of behaviour in many usual situations, in many intercultural situations we feel insecure, this makes the intercultural encounter difficult because we don't interact and communicate in a natural way. In order to overcome this problem, more and more people are attending specialised intercultural training workshops. To enable the participants to become effective in intercultural situations, the desired objective is often said to be intercultural competence. But what is intercultural competence? Let's take a closer look. In fact, every intercultural situation is one in which two individuals meet. The prerequisite for mastering such a situation is the competence to act effectively, which is made up of several part competencies. These part aspects of effective action can be seen on three levels. Our knowledge, our attitudes, but also our behaviour. A pillar of these competencies is specialist competence. Here, on the level of knowledge, we need to possess specialist knowledge. However, it is equally important that we are capable of applying our specialist knowledge and also acting in an appropriate and motivated manner. A further aspect of acting effectively is methodical competence. While interacting, it is important to know methods that will serve as appropriate tools in each situation. However, it is not enough to know these methods. We must be capable of putting them into practice. There is also another important type of competence and that is the social competence. When we are socially competent, then we not only have knowledge of social rules, but are also capable of implementing these in social situations. Finally, we also have the appropriate motivation required in order to want to put our capabilities into practice within social interaction. Furthermore, we need to train self competence for which self-reflection is particularly important. On the attitude level, self competence can be seen through our motivation and willingness to learn. While on the behavioural level, it expresses itself through constructive criticism and responsibility. Once we have trained these part competencies, we can act effectively in most familiar situations. In an intercultural situation, however, this familiarity and confidence is lacking. In this case, people with differing backgrounds and assumptions need to communicate with each other. These backgrounds don't have to be completely different and can have similarities and overlaps. Therefore, a situation is not either intercultural or not intercultural, but simply possesses a particular degree of interculturality. In order to master an intercultural situation, one's usual ability to act effectively must be transferred to the unknown situation. So therefore, not only a general acting competence is important. In order to master intercultural situations, we need knowledge and capabilities that ensure the transfer to the unfamiliar context. To this end, we require knowledge about the cultural context of the other, but also the ability to reflect on our own relationship to our culture and also to the foreign culture. Thus, the training of intercultural competence cannot be seen as a competence that is gained once and then complete and finished. In contrast, it is a competence that is an ongoing process and in a constant state of flux. It attempts to combine a variety of key skills while transferring familiar competencies to unfamiliar contexts. This enables us to find a way to communicate and interact effectively, even in the most diverse and unfamiliar situations. Thus, through the negotiation process, normality, plausibility and routine can be reestablished while ensuring reciprocity and enabling confident and constructive interaction. This is the goal of intercultural competence. The understanding of intercultural competence presented here is of course only one way of viewing things. Theories of intercultural competence are as complex as the intercultural situations themselves.