Leadership in a Global Context

Since you will be residing abroad, I thought it might be helpful to provide you with some insight on different cultures and the impact it has on various facets of leadership.

As Christopher Earley mentions, culture is so powerful that it can affect how even a lowly insect is perceived. So it should come as no surprise that the human actions, gestures and speech patterns a person encounters in a foreign business setting are subject to an even wider range of interpretations, including one that make misunderstandings likely and cooperation impossible. Therefore cultural intelligence or CQ becomes vitally important. Earley and Mosakowski suggests that CQ is distinguished by three core features: the head, or the ability to discover new information about a culture; the heart, or one’s motivation and confidence in dealing with a culture; and the body, or the capability to adapt actions and behavior so that they are appropriate in a new culture.

A manager with a high CQ can enter into new cultural settings—national, professional, organizational, regional—and immediately understand what is happening and why, confidently interact with people, and engage in the right actions.

Earley and Mosakowski conclude that anyone reasonably alert motivated and poised and can attain an acceptable CQ recommending a six step approach to cultivating your cultural intelligence:

 Examine ones strength and weaknesses in order to establish a starting point

 Select training that focuses on your weaknesses

 Apply this training

 Organize support in your organization

 Enter the cultural setting

 Reevaluation 360

I think that the key characteristic of a good global manager is to be able to appreciate the differences between countries and people, without getting overwhelmed by the complexity or losing sight of the fundamental challenge facing an organization that wants to be truly global: ensuring that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Experts agree that rote learning...