Culture and Leadership
Agenda
• What is leadership?
• What are cultural differences in
leadership?
• How to be an effective leader across
different cultures?– Cultural Intelligence
• Assess CQ based on experiences in
BafaBafa
How to study leadership
• Subordinates have expectations of what
a leader should be like
• People who meet these expectations
are more likely to be judged a s leaders
• People from different cultures can have
different and similar expectations
Research on subordinate
expectations
• Universally “desirable” and
“undesirable” expectations
• Culturally contingent expectations
• Together form SIX universally common
conceptions
• Cultures vary in degree to which they
are expected
Dimensions that subordinates
judge leaders on
• Charisma
– Inspire, motivate, high performance
expectations, have firm, core beliefs
•
•
•
•
•
Team oriented
Participative
Humane
Autonomous
Self-protective
Globe Study
Dimensions of leadership
• Universal
– Task concern
– Relationship concern
• Culture-specific
– Fairness?
Other reserach
Process of leadership
Image of a
leader
How
subordinate
responds to a
leader
Culture
Acceptable
substitute
for a leader
Individual &
Team
Effectiveness
Leader success in different
cultures
• Expatriate adjustment
• Overcome culture shock,
• Ability to meet physical needs and social
demands
• Turnover
• Task performance/Success
Cultural Intelligence: A ‘predictor’
of expatriate adaptation
• Ability to gather, interpret, act upon
different cues to behave in novel and
effective ways in different cultural
settings or in a multicultural setting
– Persist & believe in one self efficacy in
spite of obstacles
CQ and other frameworks
• IQ theories:
– Ability to adapt to others and situations
• Leadership education :
– Integrates knowledge, behavior, motivation
– Customized to individual strengths and
weaknesses
What CQ is not-- SI
• Social intelligence
– Ability to empathize, work, direct, interact
with others
– Capacity to perform actions with and
through others (social problem solving)
– Manage people
– Assumes others are not culturally different
from target individual
What CQ is not-- EI
• EI
– Understand and convey affect
– Self regulate emotion
– Assumes individual is familiar with culture
and context (where the affect has a
particular meaning)
– Assumes interacting with culturally similar
others
Summary of Dimensions of CQ
• Meta cognition
– Strategize about how to learn/interpret
cultural differences
• Cognition
– Knowing the content of cultural differences
• Motivation
– Confidence to persist & exert effort in
cultural situations
• Behavior
– Ability to imitate social behaviors, acquire
e.g., kissing in cultures
new behavioral repertoire
Types of meta cognition
• Meta-cognitive knowledge
– Knowing how to ‘learn’ (critical thinking) ,
what to learn, how to deal with knowledge
about cultural differences
• Meta-cognitive experience
– What experiences to incorporate, how to
do that, to learn for future interactions
Class Activity
• Go over your answers in the self
reflection paper and highlight where you
have obtained meta cognitive
knowledge and meta cognitive
experience
• If you don’t have it, what should you do
to obtain such knowledge and
experience
Cognitive CQ
• Knowledge of cultural universals and
differences
– Not just values, but also economic, legal
systems etc
• Knowing oneself
• Being flexible in understanding why people
function as they do, and changing
perception of oneself
Motivational CQ
• Motivated (direct attention & energy) to
use knowledge of cultural difference
and behave appropriate to culture
Motivational CQ--II
• Believing in one’s ability to be able to
deal with people from novel cultures,
• Not disengaging after initial failure,
• Not needing rewards to persist even
under personal threat
• Have a problem-solving/strategic
approach to overcome obstacles
Motivational CQ--II
• Set goals to master cultural interactions
• Flexibility –
– Strongly held norms and values (which form self)
focus what one attends to behavioral choices, may
lead to difficulty
Class Activity
• Go over your answers in the self
reflection paper and highlight where you
have displayed motivational cq
– Self efficacy, persistence, goal setting,
flexibility
Behavioral CQ
• Able to acquire and display behaviors
for new culture (despite reservations)
• Needs persistence to acquire skills
• Needs aptitude to determine what new
behaviors are needed and how to
execute them effectively
• Observe other’s behaviors to mimic,
observe their reactions and modify to
put them at ease
Dimensions are inter-related
and can affect each other
• Meta-cognition  cognition
• Self-efficacy  Strategic thinking (meta
cognition)  behavior –> motivation
• Meta cognition + cognition behavior
Using features of CQ to
design inter-cultural training
Meta-cognitive Training- I
• Planning
– Generate cognitive structures
– Higher level thinking strategies
– After observing relationships, generate
strategies for evaluating validity of
relationships across situations
– Use conditional knowledge to adjust
hypotheses
e.g., asking how are you
Meta-cognitive Training-II
• Monitoring
– Reason inductively
– Deliberate, formulate hypo concerning
actions
– Monitory internal and external cues
– Focus on culturally discrepant information
and adjust schema
Meta-cognitive Training --III
• Monitoring (cont’d)
– Evaluate surroundings
– Learn about one’s own learning
– Critically reflect on own performance in
cultural interactions
Meta-cognitive Training --IV
• Evaluating
– Ability to learn about one’s own learning
– Think critically and reflexively on one’s own
performance in cultural intelligence
– Focus on tools for generalization
• E.g., general cultural assimilator vs. specific
one
– Emphasize inductive logic and reasoning
– Introspect about learning styles
Training in Cognitive CQ
• Who, what why and how
– E.g., Cultural assimilators, documentaries
or experiential learning with a specific
culture
• Examine schemas about the self, social
interactions, culture
– How personal goals affect info processing
& behavior
Training in Motivational CQ
• Use cultural experiences to build and
enhance self efficacy
– Short, simple, controlled, successful and
incremental experiences (e.g., focus on
simple and salient rituals)
• Efficacy  persistence
• Generate curiosity – tendency to
experiment and observe
Behavioral CQ
• Use drama to help individual adopt an
integrative, multisensory approach to
experience learning and improve self
knowledge and cognition, improve
understanding of feelings and
motivation of others, bolster self
efficacy, learn nuances of behavior and
action
– E.g., role plays, performance, visual arts
Behavioral CQ- II
• Behaviors that are sanctioned are
identified and transferred to learner,
• Reinforcement and punishment are
used to guide behavior change in role
plays and simulations.
– Break out of old habits and gain a new
repertoire of culturally appropriate
behaviors
Why are previous approaches ineffective
• Focus on culture specific training
• Identify cultural value frameworks for
trainees that can degrade into stereotyping
• Do not adjust for individual differences in
CQ
• Do not consider intensity, duration, nature
of expat assignments
• Do not teach for generalization in other
cultures
Additional notes not used in
lecture
CQ
• Focus on individual strengths and
weaknesses
• Knowledge, learning, motivation,
behaviors
Training in CQ
• Moves away from culture specific
knowledge
• Values orientation vs direct
knowledge/experience
Individual factors predicting
expatriate adjustment
• Self Efficacy
• Relational Skills
• Perception Skills
Individual factors predicting
Expatriate Success
• Ability to manage stress
• Communicate effectively
• Establish interpersonal relationships