Assignment

An interest in other lands and people is part of the human experience The evolution of new technologies, means of transportation and communication, and public education have brought awareness of multiple societies, cultures, and peoples. Fighting wars in other lands, business endeavors, and sports competitions are just a few of the ways we have come to realize that there is diversity among those who share this planet. Should we hope to become “global citizens,” where we see ourselves predominantly as citizens of one world? Should we protect the notion of “nationality” with a focus on “America first?” Is it possible to strike a balance of appreciating a “one world order” while prioritizing attention and resources on the United States? Minimum length of paper: 3-4 pages, typed double-spaced. Include relevant from texts, mini-lectures, etc clear introduction, thesis and supporting paragraphs Due Feb 26

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Mini Lecture :

Week 6: Mini-Lecture on Diversity Leadership and Globalism

Twenty years ago, one book looking at the future of leadership emphasized that the next generation of leaders would need to be “global explorers,” individuals comfortable with working beyond existing national boundaries, in emerging international or global companies. In the entire book, there is only one reference to “diversity.” The target audience for the book included individuals who might be interested in leading in those international organizations/companies. It was based on interviews with 130 senior and human resource executives in 50 companies in Europe, North America, and Asia. The interviewees discussed the importance of being inquisitive, savvy, of good character and people-focused, and possessing a perspective that is based on balancing dualisms or creative tensions, e.g. knowing when to push employees and when to back off; how to focus on prior beliefs and yet make decisions based on insights and intuition. The major developmental experiences needed by global leaders, they stated, were travel, teams, training and transfers. In other words, much of the book focused on the importance of international travel as preparation for global leadership; serving on intercultural/transnational teams, and taking advantage of training in a variety of potential executive activities, including finance, management, legal issues, communication across cultures, etc. Finally, the interviewees focused on the importance of transferring into positions in multiple cultures, again, as preparation for becoming a global/international leader.

Chin & Trimble discuss the difference between diversity and global leadership, emphasizing that diverse leadership refers to different types of leadership related to group differences of citizens within countries (pg.17). Global leadership, they write, is “worldwide, international, and intercultural; it includes cross-culture differences between societies and cultures. While power, privilege, and equity may apply, its use has been associated with an examination of differences based on economic, political, and cultural forces worldwide and across governmental entities. A global perspective involves looking beyond geographic boundaries of one’s country” (p. 18).

Here’s the key point: the 1999 book focused on what Americans can do to become leaders in international organizations. There was no discussion of understanding globalism from the inside; in other words, focusing on an appreciation of cultures and their components throughout the world, and recognizing that leaders of American global/international organizations may not be individuals born in this country, but employees from other countries who went to work for the American company. The increase of global organizations translates into an increase of diverse leadership styles—and an appreciation of different cultures and how they may affect work organizations with locations in more than one country. Global organizations may reflect diverse perspectives and approaches in conflict management, decision-making, information acquisition and use, public relations, and other leadership processes. Twenty years ago, in this country, a text was trying to teach one individual how to advance in an international company. Hopefully, it is now evident we are trying to teach people the value of the multiple cultures that contribute to an organization, and that leadership must appreciate the differences among cultures that a global organization may represent.

Thompson, Forde and Otieno (2018) have written about culturally competent leadership in academic settings. However, their discussion is quite relevant to other settings, including global corporate, non-profit and governmental organizations. Because leaders in such organizations work with multiple national and societal cultures, it is important that they be culturally competent. The authors have created a continuum of progressive levels which include five levels of extreme resistance to diversity: genocide, discrimination, prejudice, stereotyping, and bias. There are six levels of increasing awareness/practice of valuing different cultures, including cultural sensitivity and cultural awareness, moving to:

Cultural acceptance: valuing cultural differences and similarities and viewing the differences as positive;

Cultural action: recognizing differences and responding to them in a positive manner; an advanced step in the process of becoming cultural competent; and finally,

Cultural competence: moving beyond mere acceptance or tolerance of diversity to a deeper and genuine appreciation of people from diverse cultures.

Cultural competent leaders also are proactive, facilitating cultural acceptance by employees/organizational members by offering information, training, committee appointments from different cultures, selection of managers from different cultures, and development of programs/rewards that foster, not just tolerate, cultural competence.

Thompson, Forde and Otieno also discuss three types of skills that culturally competent leaders should possess, and these skills are needed by global/international culturally competent leaders in organizations beyond those in education or academia.

Process skills: strategies developed that help one successfully interpret environments and situations. An example would be the processes developed to manage conflicts between individuals from different cultures that might emerge during financial decision-making, or hiring processes that should involve a committee or team whose members are from different nations..

Conceptualization skills: understanding contextualized meanings, nuances, and nonverbal cues, as well as engaging in innovative thinking. These skills are important when chairing meetings of diverse organizational members to create new products, solve production problems, or work on public relations efforts for a global organization.

Personalization skills: learning the behaviors of diverse people, encouraging multiple perspectives and taking responsibility for acquiring specialized knowledge and skills. These skills are important in creating positive relationships within teams and with individuals, as well as knowing the information acquisition processes needed to collect sufficient information for decision-making.

Obviously, over time, culturally competent individuals begin to exhibit patterns of behavior, or styles, of leadership. These styles are also described when discussing follower-focused leadership, and one assumes that an individual focused on followers is going to value the variety of cultures from which they come. The five styles mentioned by Thompson, Forde, and Otieno are styles one would anticipate from culturally competent leaders.

-Servant leadership: Robert Greenleaf, a retired AT&T executive coined this term in his 1970 book. He wrote that good leaders serve others first, including helping them achieve personal and professional goals; he or she does not focus on self-interest. This follower-focused style obviously values the identity components of followers, e.g. their race, ethnicity, culture, etc. Individuals from various cultures/nations/societies are appreciated, as are their places of origin and cultural practices.

-Collaborative leadership: Leaders facilitate bringing people together, for their mutual interest, satisfaction and productivity. Leaders focus on people working together, coming together to achieve organizational goals, with a focus on community and collective experiences. Such leadership understands the important contributions that people from different cultures can contribute to a global organizational vision.

-Transformational leadership: This style of leadership brings about substantive change in the organization and the accomplishment of an individual’s goals and advancement. When this type of leadership was first discussed by James McGregor Burns in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Leadership, he wrote that such leadership created major change, e.g. Mao Tse Tung in China’s revolution. Using this conceptualization, 21st century culturally competent leaders use a transformational style to bring people together to make changes in a nation, a group of nations, or parts of nations…all with different cultures involved.

-Visionary leadership: A vision is not a hallucination. It is a view of the future with one’s feet firmly planted on solid ground, after assessing a variety of variables observed in the past and the present. A visionary leader can communicate a view about a desired state, attaining a commitment to that articulated view. He or she understands the components and worth of different cultures outside of a given organization or nation.

In an age of globalism, where many of us consider ourselves citizens of the world, and care about hunger, war, earthquakes and their effects on peoples of other nations and societies, some of us may want to be part of international organizations, to work in other countries, to interact with people of other nations, to live in other societies. This does not make such individuals traitors or unpatriotic. Indeed, global leaders can create opportunities in the future for organizational, and societal, members and fulfill a nation’s, as well as a global organization’s, goals.