There is an agreement among scholars that we need to prepare students to be ready-for-life, as well as the agreement that the future might be characterized by, broadly defined, diversity. Although the benefits of diversity are numerous and praised, there is also an understanding that diversity on its own does not necessarily mean that these benefits will be realized. Working (and living) in a culturally diverse environment poses a challenge and requires skills and mindset to overcome obstacles and reap the benefits. It is no surprise that the global contemporary business world induces discussion on globally competent employees. But employees of tomorrow are today’s students, and therefore, to prepare them for culturally diverse workspaces, the question of intercultural competence and its development during studies becomes relevant. Future employees are to work with a diverse group of stakeholders outside the organization (customers, clients, intermediaries, partners) and to work in a diverse team of colleagues inside their organizations. The internationalization of HEI created an environment that offers opportunities to engage in cross-cultural contacts and advance cross-cultural competence. 

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate about advancing and measuring intercultural competence by presenting findings from a pilot study. We conducted 45 interviews on internationalization and diversity in a HEI from the multistakeholder perspective (management, teachers, staff, students) across four schools belonging to a university in southern Sweden. Parallelly, we assessed the intercultural competence of different student groups using Ang’s Cultural Intelligence Scale collecting 177 responses in the process. We will present our experience from the project, initial findings and share a suggestion for a practice that can serve as an alternative to measuring intercultural competence.