Leading IP3

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The impact of Leadershift on cultural agility policy: The search for effective ways of mindfulness

Zeinab Shawky Younis Dina Assem Abelmounem Mohamed

The British University in Egypt Business Department, El Sherouk City, Egypt

Keywords Cultural Agility, Leadershift, Mindfulness, Organizational Behavior, Organizational Psychology, and Resilience in Leadership.

Abstract To achieve an agile business culture, leaders must match styles with situations (leadershift). Such a goal can be acquired by utilizing special abilities and skills, such as Mindfulness. We tested such a framework of research to identify the role of Mindfulness as a personality trait that any leader should effectively utilize to achieve an agile organizational culture successfully. The variance model was applied by a cross-sectional survey on a sample from the Egyptian Post Authority to evaluate their success using the proposed tools in their latest era of significant changes. Findings reveal that Mindfulness is a compelling personality trait that facilitates leadershift, identified as shifting leadership styles with high flexibility to fit the situation. Such a trait helped the management of the Egyptian Post Office to achieve a thriving agile culture as a state-owned enterprise. Moreover, further implications were highlighted for practitioners and academic researchers to investigate the relationship profoundly.

Corresponding author: Zeinab Shawky Younis Email addresses for the corresponding author: [email protected] The first submission received: 5th July 2022 Revised submission received: 9th September 2022 Accepted: 17th October 2022 Introduction

In a volatile business environment, leadershift is about coping with change in crucibles of international competition and deregulations of markets on both private entities and state-owned enterprises (Kotter, 2011). Cultural agility, in this sense, is crucial for businesses to compete in a complicated globalized world and is defined as the capacity to incorporate change in multiple scenarios and contexts (Caligiuri & Tarique, 2016). To successfully transform cultures towards agility, leaders need to use their abilities and skills in shifting between different styles to ensure maximum success. One hidden ability is Mindfulness which leaders can utilize to change the game's rules and enhance their flexibility of awareness in shifting between leadership styles (Smith, 2022). New updated forms of leaders' styles are the core force in redefining business models and even the meaning of business in public and private institutions. Employees' commitment to the transformation in leadership styles resulting from Mindfulness as a tool that creates social, collaborative, and virtual networking. Such new perspectives are clustered as mass participation, leading to new leadership models.

This study aims to emphasize the critical study of leadershift in styles of leading and its impact on cultural agility by exploring the essence of mindfulness as a tool in this direction. This study has both academic and practical contributions to literature. Academically, the study will introduce selected theoretical concepts and relevant research that serves as an academic and practical application to state- owned enterprises. Practically, it will serve to develop a typology for leadershift components using mindfulness as a moderator towards completing a smooth transition for change, paving the way to cultural agility achievement. Mindfulness will be explored practically as a guru behind problem-solving and decision-making when challenges pertain to the performance in any organization. Cultural agility is a crowning result of such efforts to smooth transition paths for organization members. The current research will test such typology in The Egyptian Post Authority, setting a context for the research. Therefore, the

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research aims to investigate the impact of leadershift on cultural agility policy, entailing the use of mindfulness to achieve the new normal phase for change. Two broad trends across the public sector have been previously observed by Boyne (2002): On the one hand, many organizations regard measures of engagement as the most significant measure of employee attitudes or experience reflected in the style of leading. While many organizations in the public sector include measures of engagement in annual surveys as a more general term to describe workplace approaches to improvement. In both cases, engagement initiatives are often linked to training and mentoring, having mindfulness as a tool for incorporating leadershift styles towards a more transformational culture. Leadershift style initiatives depend on senior management style, corporate strategy, and followership related to the levels of trust and credibility found in the leading style and encouraging more cultural agile transformation.

On the other hand, task structure, discussed in the Fiedler model, encompasses the work environment and motivation levels of an engaging leadership style. Managers in this context come together to discuss employee engagement and share ideas for improvement (Boyne, 2002). Thus, the researchers will divide the main aim into the following research objectives:

1. Determine the association between leadershift and cultural agility. 2. Test the moderating role of Mindfulness on the relationship between leadershift and cultural

agility. 3. Develop a guideline for state-owned enterprises on how their managers or leaders can use

Mindfulness to enhance their leadership style-shifting and lead a thriving agile culture.

Literature review The current research advocates a paradigm shift towards more application of the pillars of leadershift

towards creating more culturally agile state-owned enterprises able to capitalize on the strengths, values, and norms needed in times of crisis.

Global business enterprises are winning the future through their global leaders with the ability to match their leading style to the situation. In the light of the agile transformation worldwide in the concepts of leadership and the new Public Management strategic policies, this growth and shift in styles need mindfulness as a tool to deliver more culturally agile business units able to adapt and integrate into the new systems of global change and face adversities and crises. The importance of the research stems from the increasing number of employees working in the public sector in Egypt by "0.9%". Such an increase resulted from the government initiatives of several projects to decrease the unemployment rate to "7.4%" in 2021, which led to having "30" Million employees in 2018 (Daily News Egypt, 2022). According to Kiprop (2012), public organizations need oxygen tanks of leadershift in styles toward more cultural agility to enhance high levels of productivity, motivation, creativity, and innovation. The path is not relevant anymore, where employees perform tasks systematically with no supportive and adaptive leading styles (Kiprop, 2012). The current literature will be structured as cultural agility, Leadershift, and mindfulness to highlight previous studies that will help ground theories used to generate assumptions and develop hypotheses. Cultural agility

Literature defines Cultural Agility as the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to effectively lead in a diversified community (Traylor & Caligiuri, 2019). Whether state-owned enterprises or private institutions, restructuring companies entails a change curve in both leadership positions and leadership styles. Adapting to a new shift in style requires a change in norms and a new mind-set.

Through the tool of Mindfulness, the leaders strive to learn to minimize differences and override diversity barriers to survive. The human resources department must embrace diversity and introduce change under the ceiling of the leadershift styles. They are enhancing more strategies of cultural agility by working on talent management and convincing the workforce of the necessity of change. A laissez-faire style with high trust and credibility can be a weapon for imitating global perspectives of change rather than day-to-day administrative tasks to foster employees' results and increase performance. If leaders can trade cultural agility as a commodity, it would be the name of the game for the highest purchased and the

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most expensive (Ibraiz & Caliguiri, 2016). Moreover, cultural agility has three dimensions that will be the focus of the current research:

Cultural Integration: Such change requires the collaboration of all employees and top management to create a new approach to leading where top management must introduce change in the procedures and the relative behaviors, which will help in fostering rules for task-related interaction, engagement, and participation, where every individual will feel that he or she is a part of this change. The essence here is to compromise in negotiating the change, not ruling it, integrating decisions into the changing environment (Ibraiz & Caliguiri, 2016).

Cultural Adaptation: The employees adapt to new norms and differences in diversity programs related to their work. These need to motivate and persuade subordinates of different cultures to accept and train different skill levels of their employees working on their competencies with a person-job fit. Cooperation is the essence of agility to adjust to people in different cultures (Ibraiz & Caliguiri, 2016).

Cultural Minimisation: Where the leader must act on leveraging differences for the benefit of change and control different skills and capacity backgrounds of employees into a melting pot, leaders can achieve this by listing the set of values expected from employees, codes of conduct, and minimizing autocratic style as only a ceiling of order. New norms overrule the expectations of others, and the employee here is needed to embrace his behavioral responses to change to face new cultural agility (Ibraiz & Caliguiri, 2016).

The effective use of these three dimensions above leads to cultural flexibility, according to Courtney (2016), where you avoid resistance to change. Advantages of cultural agility include widening the base for participation and engagement, having no more blind stagnation, and limiting stalling or postponing innovation to avoid risks where the team is on the wheel of creative assignments.

Additionally, it limits blind agreement in an autocratic style for advocating unilateral ideas and eliminates a lack of trust where transparency prevails in the new setting. Leadershift interferes here to provide fairness and equity benefits to promote the credibility of change, recognize team members, remove toxic employees, and engage the workforce in practice decisions. The leadershift in styles to induce change is the maestro of the game, where he must be the best player and the trainer while coaching melting differences in both cultural attitudes. Such attitudes may include unspoken opinions that could be changed and cultural values embedding the principles that are difficult to change (Courtney, 2016).

The new paradigm of Global leadership change towards cultural agility entails the use of the two following variables to advocate the agility policy needed along with culture:

Cultural competence is the ability to participate effectively in professional intercultural integration to adopt change. The sum of behavior and attitudes will come together in a cohesive pattern to ensure the dimension of cultural adaptation (Green-Moton & Minkler, 2019). This variable includes several measurements to consider, which are: Cultural curiosity, also called learning desire, occurs when organization members are interested in learning new skills, seeking updated information, and sharing knowledge with others to gain experience (Lee, et al., 2021). Tolerance of ambiguity occurs when organization members have high flexibility in adapting to ambiguous situations and contexts of high risk (Lee, et al., 2021). Relationship-building occurs when members share a strong relationship and have a high sense of engagement and commitment to the organization and its culture (Lee, et al., 2021). Perspective-taking occurs when leaders and employees can look at different points of view and make a sound decision (Lee, et al., 2021). Resilience occurs when an individual has a high self-efficacy and professional confidence in abilities and skills (Lee, et al., 2021). Cultural humility is the ability to maintain an interpersonal stand to a lifelong commitment to self- evaluation to address imbalances and be open to other aspects of cultural identity, which aligns with cultural integration (Green-Moton & Minkler, 2019).

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Leadershift Leadershift entails the ability and willingness to change the leader's style to enhance personal growth

positively and create a strong business culture. This concept aligns with the notion behind the Fiedler model for leadership (Hughes, et al., 2022), where leaders master the change of their style or the situational factors to enhance the change through several contingency dimensions:

Leader-member relations: degree of confidence, trust, and respect members have in their leaders. Task structure: whether the task is structured or unstructured, specific, or general, the goals are

achievable and clear or not. Position power: leader influence overpowers variables such as hiring, firing, and salary increase. The world is changing tremendously, which highly impacts the business environment rapidly.

According to Maxwell 2019, to embrace change, the leader must identify different circumstances to employ the power of proximate purpose and embrace conversation in a necessary form to brainstorm about circumstances pertaining. Working from the edge of competencies to engage and decentralize authority, get loose from a past hindering change, and dig in a blue ocean strategically where turbulent waters are not the danger but the calamity behind the storm (Maxwell, 2019). A historical shift in the '40s- '70s happened from business tycoons to leaders managing by results. In the '80-the '90s, another transition from these managerial perspectives to leadership perspectives started in 2000, a strategic agility movement towards understanding leadership core itself.

The essence of leadershift is to preserve core values and purpose while changing cultural and operational practices to align specific goals and strategies and engage in operational agility. According to Boyatzis, a leader shifts from autocracy to democracy to reach a Laissez-faire style leading by command and motivating patterns to embrace change. Hence, the leader requires high emotional intelligence to have high self-management and self-awareness, social awareness, and relationship management. Such intelligence will help leaders achieve positive emotional connectivity with him/herself and with employees (Goleman, et al., 2004).

On the other hand, the Resonant leadershift reflects a smooth transition from one status to another. Engaging others in shared meaning creates a distinctive, compelling voice and acts with adaptive capacity. Furthermore, this is the most sensitive and crucial of all as it is called applied creativity. This concept is defined, according to Bennis, 2018 as consisting of two essential qualities: the ability to grasp the context and the ability to face hardiness. The first has to do with perspective, and the second has to do with stamina, perseverance, and toughness. Leadershift plays a role of emotional vitality, emotional, compelling character for its leaders in the movement from shifting from one state to the other in the organization and emotional empathy to the followers. Leaders in shifting positions depend on the emotional bank account to enhance followers to be ready for change. They also depend on developing a bucket of interpersonal relationships needed for the shift. They develop what McKee called resonance, where a leader brings the best in everyone by stressing positive emotions (Bennis & Thomas, 2018).

The factors that play with leadershift impact include external systems around the organization, the internal system of the organization, and the internal system team. A leader must have the power to go to work and express the absolute best to do that. No one needs a title to do it and inspire and influence, giving a great example, and no title is needed for that to drive a position to change in the face of unfavourable conditions. Finally, a leader can level up in the organization, treat stakeholders with respect, and raise a positive organizational culture (Sharma, 2010).

If it is assumed in some reviews that the essence of leadership is made of crude substance, "90%" of leaders in an institution might produce cruddy results. The role of a transformational leader is finding the "10%" by investigating the reasons for declining productivity in the business. Philosophically these types of leaders search for simple solutions for complex situations. Their problem-solving technique is a critical analysis of all steps of the problem by flipping the coin towards more understanding of the true essence of their employees' motivation levels.

The type of leaders needed for leadershift is exponential leaders formed of entrepreneurial or social leaders. These interact with the four properties of leader shift envisioned in 4Is: Involvement, Initiative, Innovation, and Ingenuity (Woodward & Demille, 2013). In practical application, leaders can view the 4Is as follows: Stick to the strategy but shift in the right time to capitalize on the connecting points. Widening

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the scope of vision to see what others do not see and act decisively and give direction to take accountability. Finally, leaders should lead in their sphere of influence to persuade employees to perform to the utmost, creating responsive followership (Weir, 2015).

However, Leadershift fails if a leader fails to master the active constructive pattern of resilience training, missing the authentic, enthusiastic support turning into passivity, which is the lack of iconic support of behavior. A degree of dissonance results from an abnormal rhythm of change in the organization where emotions are invested negatively towards a dark side of the leadershift. The followers will turn into resentment, rage, and frustration, and the leadership cabinet will feel off-balance and discord. Dissonance in the leadershift process is the failure to anticipate change and embrace it positively. It impairs hope, happiness, and peace about that change in the organization. Leaders in this shifting loop yield manipulation and authority, which followers usually resist. Such resistance results in dismantled workplaces with no cohesiveness and a lack of empathy (Seligman, 2018).

The culture of leadershift in the organization is the support tool and weapon a leader creates to accomplish the change mission. The behavioral environment leads a strategy to live, creating a combination of objectives aligned with strategy achieved by teams sealed by values of motivation to yield action. Action is the forward movement for leadershift to succeed, and nothing without the action will make a difference in the movement. According to Ibad 2013, such action occurs through the IPA agenda, defined as ideas, people, and action. The idea implies setting the direction, crafting ideas, creating a perfect vision for the future, creating a team that believes in change, and managing performance before stating the actual performance tasks. People come in the loop of followership to make network work, good coaching, and manage difficult conversations. Then on top importance comes the action of realizing a dream to happen of more involvement with the community. The action is to manage the change process, master the craft, find help, be clear about the goals, and set up the change to succeed with a value creation (Ibad, 2013).

Leadershift is a transformational change of leadership patterns that helps identify and solve any decline in productivity, searching for simple solutions for complex situations. The different solutions to implement those stages, according to Flint (2019), are to keep the focus on the micro monitor without micromanaging and advocating the fact that change is inevitable while embracing loyalty from followers to embrace it. Bravery and courage to face the unknown future by acting proactively, decisively, and connecting the dots for a stable direction towards the pace of change. Involvement, initiation, and innovation are the inevitable properties that a leader must advocate at this stage (Flint & Hearn, 2019).

Moreover, Yukl Taxonomy also offered other attributes for leadershift by creating a more comprehensive model. It includes three meta categories: task orientation, relations orientation, and change orientation. In addition, highlighting some specific leadership behaviors include planning, clarifying, monitoring, supporting, developing, recognizing, and influencing organizational culture (Yukl, 2002).

In contrast, the DISC model also offers a simple solution with profound results to learning how to identify the behavioral styles of others. Such identification helps leaders adapt their communication approaches to increase sales, assemble teams, target new hires, develop "rock star" leaders, and respond to problems and challenges.

D - Dominance: Direct and Guarded, Fast-paced and Task-oriented, Focuses on Problems & Challenges, Assertive.

I - Influence: Direct and Open, Fast-paced, and People-oriented, Focuses on People & Contacts, Persuasive.

S - Steadiness: Indirect and Open, Slow-paced, and People-oriented, Focuses on Pace & Consistency, Supportive.

C- Conscientious. Indirect and Guarded, Slow-paced and Task-oriented, Focuses on Procedures & Constraints, Analytical (Yukl, 2002).

This tool for assessing behavior carries a background of several driving forces embedded with values, such as knowledge expressed in cognitive and intellectual behaviors. This utility is parallel to the use of resources, the power which is the essence of commanding the shifting styles of leaders, and the various structured methodologies to assess behaviors. In assessing the behaviors of leaders in the process of shifting a style of management, several personal skills must be looked at, such as the core competencies of

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appreciating others, emotional intelligence, continuous learning, conceptual thinking, coaching, negotiation, teamwork, time and priority management in crisis, personal accountability, futuristic thinking and exponential capacity building, and resilience (Yukl, 2002).

One of the recent attempts to touch on the basics of leadershift is the DEAD model by Gobillot in 2009, and it is considered the death symbol for traditional leadership. This model reflects more participation as the new trend where an adaptive form of leadership and an authentic one is the basis for assessing the shift from Mindfulness to more cultural adaptation and integration. The new model calls for securing engagement, alignment with organizational goals and employees' needs, accountability, and commitment. The DEAD model is a crucial insight explaining that the need for a shift in the way managers lead is based on four vital societal trends or challenges.

The D stands for demographic trend for experiencing a variety of socio-cultural backgrounds, individual shared experiences and beliefs, and a mirror to engagement. The E stands for expertise which is the core of the combination of knowledge and a nest of relationships. Suppose a leader wants the company to succeed. In that case, it must gain control over knowledge by technology and expert power— a stand for attention where a social and informational network group replaces the old organizational structure. Finally, the D stands for democratic trend where the leader must align and engage with no more rigid hierarchies with direct reporting.

The organization that Gobillot advocated through the DEAD leadership model is a matrix that involves all members from top to bottom to share in the decision-making process to ensure inclusion and fairness. The motivation patterns are shifting towards avoiding the carrot and the stick famous motivation framework to invest more in human resources focusing on skills (Gobillot, 2009). Additionally, in Smith (2020), traditional leadership is disappearing in the new turn of the century, and high levels of emotionally intelligent that put wisdom before knowledge and expertise and put interpersonal relations above initiating the tasks are highly needed (Smith, 2020). Further, according to Ibad, 2013 the leadershift movement must move from directed plans to narration where participants are more aware of the social process demands. Hence, the responsibility for change is faster and more efficient. Moreover, the employee must move from a defined role to a specific task of self-fulfillment, matching his capacities and skills to flourish in his career. The core lies in shifting to more simplicity to present coherence and encourage interdependence and commitment (Ibad, 2013). Mindfulness

Shifting styles lead to shifting procedures and modes of leading under the umbrella of several components: the ideal self, the authentic self; the learning agenda; mastering Mindfulness as a moderating tool, and finally, developing trusted leadership in a renewed form of cultural agility a result driving for change. The new shifting leadership model calls for more secure engagement, alignment, accountability, and commitment. In this sense, the notion of Mindfulness entails a loosening control mechanism and an influential interdependent leader together with a self-aware community of employees. Such skills entail a mind shift from a polarized attitude to fostering a climate of innovation where appreciating that things can be done differently in multi-cultural contexts. The movement from mutual distrust and unwillingness to reach out and cooperate to collaboration and mutual understanding for discovering new ideas and brainstorming common interests is crucial at this stage. According to late professor Mark T. Jones, 2020 the leader is moving from the "us" mentality to the "them" mentality (Jones, 2020). The idea advocated by Jones is moving from passiveness in reactions to proactivity in actions. Such perspective paves the way for more cooperation and adaptation moderated by Mindfulness. When Mindfulness as a policy or moderating tool is used towards achieving more cultural agility, leaders must shift their mental construct and followers to accept the change and understand that collaboration does not mean capitulation. Exponential types of leaders who venture outside their box of a comfort zone to survive are the same ones who get out of their silos using the policy of Mindfulness to reach the results.

Leadershift here will be the independent factor that works as a fast forward to future change. Only at that time will deficits be mended. Not only will strengths participate, but skills along this side of Mindfulness will also shift from a capacity-building of knowledge and expertise to a more comprehensive shift for more entrepreneurship, agility, and accountable self-aware employees (Carter, et al., 2021).

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Leadershift in this context aligned with Mindfulness falls in managing the meaning of situations, conflict resolutions offering a novel way to interpret and react emotionally. The mirroring effect occurs here when the psychological impact is the same as the leader connecting to followers. Their actions start to be parallel, their reactions as well. They develop a magnet of a sphere of attraction as if they are floating in an orbital circle but harmonious.

At this stage, Mindfulness interferes to make the following equation as a help and support tool for this leadershift action to happen: the vision + need + capacity to change + first steps are more prominent than the risks and costs of change. According to Goleman, Leadershift commands fall into four discoveries involving Mindfulness in an emotional context: (Hirst, 2019).

Individual authentic self = these match self-awareness and self-management. Individual learning agenda = relationship management. Leaders are practicing feelings to the point of mastery = self-awareness. We are developing supportive and trusting leadership = social awareness. Mindfulness is also an interplay between biology and psychology, where research must touch on the

neuroscience of leadership. It depends on how the brain works, starting with the cortex, the outer layer, and the neural tissue responsible for cognitive understanding. Then comes the limbic system, which handles emotions and behavioral responses, and finally, the reptilian brain part. This limbic system must control the body's vital functions, such as heart rate, breathing, body temperature, and balance. It is concerned with decision-making based on old experience stored if the problem is structured. The gift in prudent management is in the heal-reboot and the reset steps, where the employee starts to ask questions like what is in it for him/her and why, and then what should the leader do differently to get it done for us? The leader interferes with inducing the culture of trust, which impacts performance and productivity to increase retention. A smooth path of change reflects the mixture of the reptilian brain, the experience, and the limbic system that handles emotions. The reptilian brain is crucial in decision making where survival is most important using the cortex, and the limbic, on the other hand, helps in reviving the sub- conscious. The leader must heal the heart, reboot the head, and reset the hand (Nour, 2020).

The discussion above relates feedback with the impact model called BIFF. It investigates employees' behaviors and how it impacts their feelings after the feedback and the future action that needs to be advocated. The complexity lies within the success of a leader to give feedback and alter actions towards the behavior of change; otherwise, gaps will be created. The role of HR is crucial here to create regular meetings, a constructive feedback agenda, a code of ethics, and flatten the organization structure to enhance engagement. The break of the taboo for destructive feedback in a critical way is the sealed result of the success of the transformation by the top management.

Another model to look at Mindfulness is the SCARF model: where the S stands for status, looking at the relative importance of people, the C for certainty, which looks at the ability to predict the future, and the A for autonomy which looks at our perception of having control over our environment, the R for relatedness that looks to the relationships and the sense of fitting in high cultural awareness of belongingness, and the F which looks at the perception of being treated fairly in a standard way.

The two frameworks of mindfulness act as brokerage channels to connect employees within the loop of shifting leadership styles towards more cultural agility to enable access to novel information and structural change in the organization (Smith & Mannucci, 2017). Failure in achieving mindfulness results in a lack of neurodiversity strategies where career-killing for both a leader and an employee becomes a definite result instead of creating culturally agile organizations.

Leaders unaware of Mindfulness discard the neurodivergent thinkers as outcasts and bury their talents for decades. They might fall into the trap of dark leadership where disorder, disease, and dysfunction happen to the organization (Fitzell, 2021). The Broaden and build theory presented by Frederickson, 2013 in the context of positive psychology can help manage the challenges of mindfulness failure. Leaders must balance positive to negative emotions appropriately to generate novelty for change advocacy. The positive emotions broaden awareness and build structural support by developing competencies rather than correcting weaknesses. The theory created an emotional label aligned with the mindfulness growth in recent studies inside the organization where motivation goes in parallel with what

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each need at his or her own pace. Therefore, an appreciative leadership style should align with the appraisal theme through benefits if one is motivated by gratitude.

As a result, this will be the neurological motor sensor that motivates his or her work. Employee engagement resulting from the correct motivational program is meaningful work and a positive energy state (Frederickson, 2013). In this direction, employees must avoid overusing strengths in various areas. They must focus on the necessary change administered by the leader to integrate efforts towards achieving the transformation needed (Kaplan & Kaiser, 2009).

Cultural agility and Mindfulness Cultural agility depends on a leader who walks the talk of change in parallel with his employees. It is

not a simple speech to declare novelty and leave them in the grey area of communication where the path for change is unclear and does not align with their personal self-development goals. Mindfulness interferes here in the context of the emotional intelligence traits of a leader, which are crucial for change. Therefore, the talk that the leader is expected to issue highlights. There are three awareness competencies to win the agility needed: Self-Management, relationship management, and task management. The result will be a workforce expected to tolerate ambiguity, build relationships with co-workers from different backgrounds, and respond to changes in task structures. Mindfulness is a tool used by top management to pick the suitable mode for change. According to Arinya, 2020 the three awareness factors mentioned above must be allocated at the correct timing for change. Employees are in the high activation mode, learning skills, integrating ideas, and setting priorities. The high mode offers a person ready to widen the scope and endures personal resistance based on the motivational plan chosen by the leader through on- site training based on experiential learning. The peak performance results from the convincing power of the leader to convince the employee to work on his or her energizing skills in integrating organizational goals with knowledge acquired through training and building experience (Arinya, 2020).

Based on the previous literature, two alternative hypotheses were derived to test the relationship between leadershift and cultural agility through the effective utilization of mindfulness as follows:

H1: There is a significant relationship between leadershift and cultural agility. H2: Mindfulness moderated the relationship between leadershift and cultural agility.

Research Methodology The current research will combine two data collection tools: a business case study and a

questionnaire. The case study will provide a context of a public state-owned enterprise-facing rapid changes in leadership styles, processes, and activities. Hence, the chosen business is the Egypt Post Authority because a leadership change occurred. The Chairman, Dr. Sherif Farouk, made a massive change in the business' organizational structure, business strategy, operational activities, and services. One crucial aspect of change was a culture change, including cross-culture factors, requiring special skills and abilities to adapt to such changes. Such context serves to investigate how shifting leader styles can impact the agility of culture using Mindfulness as a vital skill for adaptability. However, to overcome the limitations of case studies, another tool will be used to determine the association between variables (Dossick, et al., 2011).

Moreover, the additional tool is a questionnaire that includes items related to the three variables of the study. The questionnaire was created and provided to the Egypt Post management for approval, and it was conducted physically inside the Cairo branch. Thus, the sample was randomly selected to reach a diversified group of managers and employees. The sample size was determined to be (n=110) for the current research. After determining the participants, out of the 110 employees, 43 were females, and 67 were males from different departments and holding different positions. At the same time, 68% of employees and managers are aged 44 and above, while 31% are aged 31 and 43.

On the other hand, only 1% of employees in the sample are aged between 18 and 30. Such results might indicate a challenge in adapting to the agile culture resulting from leadership change. Thus, this study used simple random sampling to give all individuals in the population an equal chance to participate. This sampling technique will decrease bias and increase the reliability and validity of data (Li, et al., 2017). On the other hand, the sample size was chosen based on past researchers that recommended having a minimum of 25 participants per variable (Elston, 2018). The questionnaire was a 5-point scale

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that depended on self-evaluation. It included a page where the research idea, aim, and questions to explain the research. It also explained that the data collected will be 100% confidential. The CEO will not have access to any data, managers, or other employees (Deary, et al., 2005).

Findings and Results

Table 1: Construct Reliability and Validity The previous table shows that all convergent validity criteria are met. It is clear from the value of

Composite Reliability, which was within the acceptable limits, greater than or equal to 0.70 for all axes of the model. We also find that the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) value ranged from 0.562 to 0.592, which is around the acceptable limits. It is greater than or equal to 0.50, which clarifies the model's axes.

• Discriminant Validity: The Fornell-Larcker Cross Loadings criterion was used to identify the degree of overlap to measure

the differential validity of the model axes. Cross Loadings is used to find out the degree of loading the ferry on the axis, or in other words, is the ferry related to the axis it represents or not. It is also that the degree of loading the ferry on its axis must be more significant, and the degree of its bearing on the other axes is weak. When the degree of the ferry is loaded on more than Axes, there is an error in the scale.

Fornell-Larcker Criterion Cultural Agility Leadershift Mindfulness

Cultural Agility 0.750

Leadershift -0.204 0.770

Mindfulness 0.519 -0.260 0.752

Table 2: Discriminant Validity: Fornell-Larcker Criterion

The previous table for testing shows that the value of the study axes' overlap with themselves is more significant than their overlap with other axes. Thus the model scale has discriminatory honesty.

Table 3: R-Square and R-Square Adjusted

This scale is used to measure the explanatory power of the independent variables. When the value of R Square is less than 0.1, the model is not fit; from 0.1 to 0.25, the explanatory power is small. In contrast, when it is 0.25 to 0.36, the explanatory power is medium, and the explanatory power of a model is high when it is more significant than 0.36.

Fit Summary

Model_Fit Saturated Model Estimated Model

SRMR 0.117 0.117

d_ULS 0.620 0.620

d_G 0.193 0.193

Chi-Square 131.321 131.321

NFI 0.407 0.407

Table 4: Model Fit

Construct Reliability and Validity

Cronbach's Alpha

rho_A Composite Reliability

Average Variance Extracted (AVE)

Cultural Agility 0.649 0.836 0.787 0.562

Leadershift 0.671 0.718 0.811 0.592

Mindfulness 0.624 0.630 0.796 0.565

R Square R Square Adjusted

Cultural Agility 0.274 0.261

Mindfulness 0.067 0.059

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The last criterion shows the model's goodness of fit. The most important of these criteria is NFI, where there are limits to accepting and judging the overall quality of a model. When its top is more significant than 0.20, the model has a reasonable degree of acceptance.

Path Coefficients

Original Sample (O)

Sample Mean (M)

Standard Deviation

T Statistics P Values

Leadershift -> Cultural Agility

-0.074 -0.086 0.117 0.630 0.529

Leadershift -> Mindfulness

-0.260 -0.284 0.092 2.819 0.529

Mindfulness -> Cultural Agility

0.499 0.512 0.068 7.332 0.000

Table 5: Results The previous table shows the effect of both the independent and the mediator variable on the

dependent variable, where we find that the effect of Leadershift -> Cultural Agility is inverse but not significant, and this appears from the value of P-values where it was more significant than 0.05 at a confidence degree of 95%. In contrast, we find that the effect of Leadershift -> Mindfulness had a Significant adverse effect. The value of P Values was 0.005, which is significant at a significant level less than 0.05. Researchers also find that the effect of Mindfulness -> Cultural Agility has a significant positive effect, with a p-value of 0.005, which is less than the significance level of 0.05.

Original Sample (O)

Sample Mean (M)

Standard Deviation (STDEV)

T Statistics (|O/STDEV|)

P Value s

Leadershift -> Mindfulness -> Cultural Agility

-0.130 -0.145 0.051 2.557 0

.01

Table 6: Specific Indirect Effects The previous table shows the indirect effect of leadershift on Cultural Agility through Mindfulness.

We find that the value of this effect is inverse and significant, as the value of this effect is (0.145).

Discussion and Conclusion Previous statistical analysis approves the literature and the theoretical background of this research.

Therefore, data collected indicates that research findings fail to reject H2 while rejecting H1. In other words, gathered data shows an insignificant relationship between leadershift and cultural agility. In contrast, data shows a significant moderation between leadershift and cultural agility. Such results prove the literature by concluding that shifting leadership styles in each context alone does not lead to a thriving agile culture in the business. However, leaders must search for unique characteristics or traits to facilitate the change in styles. One trendy trait that research is concerned about is Mindfulness. Such relationships are shown in Figure 1 of the theoretical framework for this research.

Figure 1: Research Theoretical Framework

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The model indicates that a leader must have high self-awareness and social awareness to achieve a thriving agile culture. While shifting leadership styles, leaders should consider the context or situation to choose the right hat to wear. Each situation's chosen style and power usage may help or hinder employees' positive feelings and experiences. Such results indicate that leaders need to use Mindfulness to have both emotional and cognitive ability to reach high awareness of their own and other peoples' feelings. This act will help employees adapt to the change of style and culture, ensuring the success of agile culture in the business. The leader formulates the mission to lead an agile organization with dynamic organizational structure and relationship changes in this position. Given the research context of The Egyptian National Post Authority, they are facing a transformation of the rigid organizational structure to a flatter organizational chart that facilitates communication and the decision-making process. They also shifted significant tasks in each department to become more group-oriented to diversify ideas and roles. Such changes influence leaders in conducting a daily self-reflection on attitudes and behaviors and how they impact their employees. Such reflection will increase self-awareness and facilitate the shifting of leadership styles, which will lead to cross-cultural awareness (France, et al., 2019).

Further, the leader will have a people-oriented style that is participative and keen on understanding followers' expectations. Moreover, the literature supports the findings by suggesting a value-based leadership style and a charismatic style with a mentorship-based relationship with followers. Other literature indicated the importance of having a servant leadership style to facilitate the agility of the business. Such servant style will help leaders become more resilient with high intelligence and provide subordinates with needed career-oriented support. Outcomes will be an agile business with high organizational knowledge that will stand as a competitive advantage for the firm that would be hard to imitate. Based on findings, such a relationship between leadershift and cultural agility can only be achieved by Mindfulness as an effective tool. It leads to awareness of self and others' emotions and abilities, leading to high control and stability of the agile culture. Therefore, leaders will understand followers' performance, behaviors, and well-being. Such understanding will lead to solid interpersonal relationships based on high job satisfaction and loyalty (Johnstone & Wilson-Prangley, 2021).

To sum up, findings show that the relationship is not direct between leadershift and Cultural agility. However, when leaders utilize the ability of mindfulness, there is a direct relationship between mindfulness and cultural agility. Henceforth, the impact breeds a relationship between Leadershift and Cultural Agility only through the impact of building leadership skills. Therefore, other leadership skills could be an area of developing the research in leadership that leadership can help create a compelling and capable team to lead future opportunities in an impactful way by practicing both environment of the organization and the ecosystem (Pugh, 2020). Reflections on the Egyptian National Post Authority

The National Postal Authority, established in 1865, is considered the oldest and most important national institution in Egypt, providing financial and Postal services. In the past, the postman was the ultimate delivery news portal for every Egyptian family for more than 150 years in history. Today, witnessing a global transformation in both theory and practical implications in management studies, the public sector institution is reviving to a new dawn of innovation in most products and service delivery. The idea of a one-stop-shop has prevailed in the National Postal Authority activities since 2018, with a new shift in leadership tactics and vision. The digital transformation progress with an added value of services, innovative solutions, and products portfolio that hit the edge in a competitive market of younger generations and global endeavors of other competitors in delivery such as Jumia and Amazon. The National post authority aligned with these competitors when it signed a protocol of collaboration with Jumia marketing company to encourage digital marketing platforms to deliver goods and services and a joint training program to exchange knowledge and innovations (Mansour, 2022).

As change is a constant fact of life, the post authority is now providing a variety of service delivery administered with new practices and platforms for agile transformation with an added value, of course, to the powerful and unique geographical spread. As a customer-first choice, the National Postal Authority has now become a one-stop-shop with a wide range of activities: international and domestic Express mail service, parcel service, tailored postcards services, registered mail services, cash on delivery services,

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saving accounts, and the civil status service, delivered through an excellent state of art retail with one- stop-shop by the teller services window. The National post authority is also extending to be the arm of the government through an E-administration service as state-owned to offer many services to its citizens such as Pension and traffic violation Payments, utility bills, and many other bill services Payments (Mansour, 2022).

The list of services since 2022 provides an insightful future of change where the IPA agenda (Idea; People and Action) of leadershift was defined as a tool to ensure the input of all soft skills of leaders in all departments of the institution into hard results.

The continuity of launching new products and services opens avenues for the customers to use their Egypt Post debit cards by developing a new Portal of Egypt post and mobile application. Hence, customers enjoy a new list of digitalized services, for example, Wassalha, a delivery service, to develop the receipt of shipments (Mansour, 2022).

The Egyptian post authority uses a plan of innovative vision that is an actual application for the "I" letter in the DISC framework of leadershift: where leadership style is geared towards a fast-paced impact and people-oriented one. Such implementation is shown in numerous activities by top management in the Post authority. There is an encouragement and engagement for employees by setting a ceremony for employee of the month for delivery success. Moreover, it was highlighted in the interpersonal style of leading when the CEO of the post authority visited a worker who did an accident while delivering mail. Such style added a positive reflection on the interpersonal style of leading. Both cultural competence and humility reflect the professional integration of all aspects of the workforce force and the interpersonal commitment toward the employees (Mansour, 2022).

In addition, when it comes to Mindfulness as a moderator in the theoretical framework, the "R" in the scarf model is geared towards relatedness of communities benefit and added value in the services provided. A proper application of this is through the financial inclusion plan for pension payments. According to Dr. Sharif Farouk, they are following the state's plan that pensions accounts provided by Egypt Post will benefit pensioners, as in the ease of dealing with all ATMs, electronic shopping, bills payment, and issuing direct debit card "Meeza" (Farouk, 2022).

When cultural agility is studied through its three dimensions, the combination of the cultural integration CI +cultural adaptation, CA+ cultural minimization CM adds to creating an agile environment where numerous services are directed for inclusion, collaboration, and embracing the change of new norms. The initiative of the National Post Authority in this direction aligned with the signing of cooperation with DHL Egypt to empower E-commerce Businesses in Egypt and African countries in 2017.

The innovations along this agreement were crowned by the opening of the logistical hub for international delivery in August 2020 for the Mena region, Africa, and other international hubs. Along with signing a protocol in September 2020 with Abu Dhabi Bank to ease the money transfer process for the Egyptians working abroad in UAE. In addition to signing a protocol of collaboration with Misr Insurance Company in October 2020 to ensure the delivery of rights to workers, signing a training protocol between the Egyptian Banking Institute and the Egyptian Post Authority on hybrid work and artificial intelligence, and finally, sponsoring the world cup of handball male sports competition word broad achieved visibility and international exposure of the port authority as an inclusive, leading body. The DEAD model, in this context, is found to be employed by the top Management of the National Post Authority, where all members from top to bottom are involved in sharing in the decision-making process to ensure inclusion and fairness. The state-owned public enterprise is an accurate model of a typical mechanistic structure on the surface to meet governmental expectations of the authority chain of command. However, an inner organic structure governs the day-to-day operations within the formalistic structure to ensure engagement and participation (Farouk, 2022). Conclusion

This research has a context of the Egyptian Post Authority facing changes in leadership, organizational structure, and business processes. Therefore, leaders need to use effective traits such as Mindfulness to facilitate change to a more agile culture. Such context created an aim for the research to determine the association between leadershift and cultural agility while testing the moderating role of

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Mindfulness on the relationship between leadershift and cultural agility. The main contribution will be a developed guideline for state-owned enterprises on how their managers or leaders can use Mindfulness to enhance their leadership style-shifting and lead a thriving agile culture. Moreover, this research added theoretical and practical literature by introducing a new theoretical framework to trendy topics within Egyptian public organizations. Findings contributed by proving that Leadershift is both an art and a Science entailing a set of solid leadership skills in engaging and enhancing followership. The leader is a Maestro organizing the orchestra into peaceful change advocacy. There is no single recipe or clear-cut edge as to what defines leadershift, but many tools help explain effective leadership within a dynamic context of global trends.

Mindfulness is a scientific tool based on cognitive and affective components that interfere with paving the way for implementing an agile change in culture. Therefore, the influence in defining new relationships could be explained through the five Cs of changing leadership style. They entail the following factors to ensure a smooth transition towards cultural agility:

- Consciousness of every single intake. - Converting and measuring to keep track of the change. - Comparing results in relationship to the original plan. - Cutting on excess luggage when the change process is precise, concise, and to the point. - Cleaning as a last stage where people try to maintain the organization's survival (Nasr, 2021).

Research Implications The previous research findings can work as implications for future researchers and managers. The

paper contributed to literature by theorizing the concept of leadershift as the ability to shift between styles of leadership smoothly depending on the situation. Thus, the findings provide a developmental base for papers to test such relationships in different contexts and with different moderating variables. Additionally, future researchers can test the same relationship while comparing the public and the private sector in Egypt. Not to mention that researchers can study the impact of national culture on the agile business culture to be highly generalized to different societies. Other factors to be considered could be the age element or the gender element in reaching the relationship between leadershift and cultural agility. In contrast, this research has a practical implication for business practitioners. Hence, the paper adds knowledge by setting an example to various public sector enterprises in Egypt on achieving this framework in their business. It works as a practical guideline for business leaders on utilizing mindfulness, which will help achieve leadershift and leads a sustained agile culture. References Arinya, T., 2020. The Challenges of Agility , Bangkok: Bangkok Post. Bennis, W. G. & Thomas, R. J., 2018. Crucibles of leadership: , Boston: Harvard Business Review Press. Boyne, G. A., 2002. Public and Private Management: What's the Difference. Journal of Management Studies , 39(1), pp.

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