Announcing "Leadership in a Cross-Cultural World 2.0"

After a few months on hiatus, “Leadership in a Cross-Cultural World: A Crowd-Sourced Blog” has been rebooted and now offers several new teaching/learning tools to help students in higher education classrooms connect with each other and with professionals in culturally diverse workplaces. 

The blog is now offered as a credit item in Northwestern University’s Spring 2016 course, “Global Leadership: Developing the Mindset That Matters.” Within the next few days, students will be posting their thoughts, and I invite you to join the conversation.   

While students’ questions related to leadership and cross-cultural challenges will remain the blog’s primary focus, new content will offer more ways to explore ideas and exchange perspectives on today’s culturally diverse workplaces. Here’s a preview of what you’ll find on the 2.0 edition of “Leadership in a Cross-Cultural World.”

Conversations with 21st Century Leaders explores the real-life experiences of today’s leaders.  In these videotaped interviews leaders recount the challenges they have faced and address a student’s question that is particularly relevant to their experience.
 

In the Spotlight features examples of classroom excellence, instances where students’ curiosity or emotional connection to the issues around leadership and diversity caused them to pursue a line of inquiry beyond the classroom that yielded important insights.

Letters from Leaders offers excerpts from the book, Letters from Leaders: Personal Advice for Tomorrow’s Leaders from the World’s Most Influential People, compiled by Henry O. Dormann, who says of leaders: “Some leave money, others leave inspiration.  Many leave both.  But all are anxious for young people to learn from their successes and even their failures.”

Talking About TED provides selected TED Talks that expand on the basic concepts of leadership and cross-cultural communication, touching on self-development, leadership behavior, integrative thinking, team-building and gender issues.  Students’ reactions to the presentations will be posted to the blog along with your comments.

Stories that Matter presents real-world stories shared by workplace professionals in a study that examined the meaning of intercultural competence and how it plays out in the workplace and in their lives.

I hope these new features will stimulate your thoughts and prompt you to share them with an engaged group of students who are eager to learn. Thank you in advance for your contributions and support for the project.

Note: To comment, click "Name/URL" on the dropdown menu.  Enter name or blog ID in the name field, and leave the URL field blank.

Posted on LinkedIn 4/8/16

   

Intercultural Competence: Assessing Culture in the Workplace Context

The dictionary defines context as the “circumstances surrounding an act or event.” Understanding context determines the contextual boundaries within which one operates: a classroom, workplace, community. Context situates us in our role, draws attention to the circumstances of the culturally diverse workplace, and provides an opportunity to approach, assess, and navigate the ways and means by which we are able to meet the cultural needs and challenges that arise.

While the term context equates to the circumstances of an environment, it is the understanding—the cultural insight—that establishes an environment for cultural competence to develop and flourish.  The role is one of cultural “strategy”—contextualizing strategies in terms of interventions, identifying missed cultural cues, validation, solving problems and developing trust.

Today’s workplaces use metrics to assess recruiting, training, performance, retention, succession and other important activities. Professionals from other countries and cultures are often misunderstood, mismanaged and misdirected because management often misunderstands the employee’s cultural values—intercultural competence is not considered important as there are no metrics to measure and manage it.

As a result, workplaces often resort to reactive rather than proactive initiatives concerning cultural context issues. For example, diversity training typically happens only after a performance deficit is identified as a result of a negative situation or a lawsuit. The goal of reactive initiatives is to ensure that whatever the issue was, it won’t happen again. But that approach fails to appreciate the full context and the need for holistic understanding.

As context represents condition, understanding is the pivotal word in developing insight into one’s audience. By assessing the patterns that surface in context, one establishes how to best achieve connection with an individual or among a group.

When I ask myself what it was that led me to connect my interest in culture with my pursuit of intercultural and adult education, I fondly recall my experience as an ESOL volunteer for a middle-aged Vietnamese man. Both puzzling and motivating, the incident led me to recognize the misunderstandings and wrong impressions that can result from culturally contrasting work ethics.

                                     ~ Mr. Huynh meets Robert Frost ~

My student, My Huynh (a pseudonym), was a graduate of the University of Saigon who had worked as a pharmacist before the Vietnam War. He was captured and held prisoner for many years, and during his captivity his family fled to the United States. Upon his arrival here, he found that his wife had no interest in learning English, and his children, who were brought up in the American school system and were fluent in English, were about to leave home for college. Considering his limited English, his only choice of employment was a factory job where all of his co-workers spoke Vietnamese. Diligent in his pursuit of learning English and determined to understand the ways of the U.S., Mr. Huynh sought out special tutoring. He and I connected and agreed to spend two hours together every Sunday at the local library, working on his English-speaking skills. First, we tackled his assigned course work; then, we worked with a program I designed to introduce him to Western history, music, and poetry—all interests he identified as important to him.

I smile whenever I think of Mr. Huynh’s first exposure to poetry of Robert Frost. I thought he would relate to a male poet’s perspective on friendship, tilling the soil on a farm, and so on. So I mailed Mr. Huynh a photo of Robert Frost along with a copy of the poem “A Time to Talk” and asked him to read the poem in preparation for our next meeting. This particular poem captures Frost’s thoughts (possibly his own experience) about a gardener who interrupts his gardening work for a friendly chat with his friend and neighbor who, in passing, waved to him from the road. Instead of just waving back, the gardener put his hoe in the ground and walked to the roadside to greet his friend. The following Sunday, when I met with Mr. Huynh he appeared disturbed. When I asked whether or not he enjoyed the poem, he replied, “Robert Frost is not a good man,” he declared. “He should have been working, not visiting with his friends,” he told me. I attempted to describe the rural areas of Frost’s New England, neighborly interaction, and the importance of taking time to socialize, but I could not convince Mr. Huynh of this poet’s merit. Nor did I introduce another Robert Frost poem during the remainder of my Sundays with Mr. Huynh.

Published on LinkedIn . . . Thursday, July 30
  

Your thoughts . . . ?

Intercultural Competence in the Workplace: Assessing Culture in Context . . .

"What are some of the key differences between the cultures of East and West, and how can we balance them without shaking the values and foundations these cultures are based upon?"