The Role Of Cross-Cultural Competencies In Leadership

The purpose of this paper is to address the effects of the cultural competencies on the leadership process. I’ll review the major barriers of current global leadership by using the sources of peer reviewed scholarly journals. Today, many companies and organizations are operating internationally and becoming more complex and competitive. Due to the globalization, the needs of globally competent business leaders who can successfully produce organizational performance across borders have been increased and demanded. Understanding of cultural differences is critical for leaders to communicate effectively with individuals from a different cultural background. To conclude, the development of cross-cultural competencies and self-concept, and self-awareness will positively impact on future global leadership.

Introduction

Over the years, globalization has grown dramatically due to advances in transportation and telecommunication systems and technologies throughout the world. As a result, there is increased the interaction between people, cooperation, organizations, and governments worldwide. Additionally, globalization significantly increased economic, social, technical, and political interdependence between nations. People are becoming more globally interconnected and able to communicate across cultures through Internet and apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snachat. As globalization increased, the need of global leaders who is able to understand cultural differences and to practice cross-cultural competencies is also increased. Cross-cultural competencies is the essential skill which promotes effective communication, interaction, engagement, and leadership to working with a diverse workplace. Today’s leaders need to focus on developing and acquiring cross-cultural competencies in order to them to be are able to understand global business, politics, and cultures. Additionally, learning and adopting the perspectives, trends, communication, and technologies of other cultures would help leaders to work with people from different cultures successfully and effectively. The purpose of paper is to discuss major barriers on global leadership. Lack of cross-cultural competencies is one of the biggest barriers in globalization leadership. Additionally, both ethnocentrism and prejudice become additional barriers that can impact the global leadership process. In fact, global leadership can be challenging without adopting or understanding others’ different cultures, as well as understand their own cultures, biases, and prejudices.

Review of the Literature

In the 21st century, many companies and organizations are operating internationally and becoming more complex and competitive. There are growing numbers of globally competent business leaders who can successfully produce organizational performance across borders. Caligiuri and Tarique study that 62% of organizations have a global leadership program worldwide. Many global leadership programs support “involvement in global teams, global travel that encourages learning from colleagues in different countries, in-country training or coaching, cross-national mentors, global rotational programs, formal instructional programs, and international assignments”. Their research emphasizes that even though there are many global development programs exist, only 50 percent of organizations surveyed in the American Management Association Study and agreed that their global leadership programs improved leadership skills in the participants. Many businesses and organizations know the importance of developing future leaders to achieve their global projects, but not many of them are successfully providing global leaders as they planned due to lacking training program of cross-cultural competencies. Moreover, many global development programs continually developing and distributing world widely, but it is important to help individuals to focus on acquiring the concept of global leadership competencies before the develop program developed. As globalization has rapidly increased, corporations and organizations keep seeking for opportunities to exchange their new resources, ideas, products, and materials in globally.

Cross-cultural competencies defined as “the ability of individuals function effectively in another culture” that is the most salient skill that needs to be considered and developed as become a global leader. However, the research shows that many international businesses has been failed due to lack of cross-cultural competencies. In their study, they find that lack of cross-cultural competencies is a major factor in global business failure that many of corporations and organizations are unable to interact with people effectively from other countries due to the inability of understands the local culture, rather than a lack of ability in the technical aspects of their services. Cross-cultural competencies is a necessary element to succeed in today’s global business markets. In comparison, lower level of cross cultural competence more likely leading corporations and organization to struggle with cultural issues as result. Johnson et al. state the definition of cross-cultural competence in specific term of global or international businesses which is “the ability to function effectively in another culture’, consisting of three interdependent dimensions: an affective dimension (personality traits and attitudes), a cognitive dimension (how individuals acquire and categorize cultural knowledge), and a communicative, behavioral dimension (being an effective communicator)”.

Understanding of cultural dimensions is important for today’s global leadership. Culture becomes an important topic over the years and many studies have focused on to classify the various dimensions of culture. Understanding the dimensions of different cultures enable to determine a primary characteristic of world cultures that Hofstede (1980, 2001) identified five major dimensions such as power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism and collectivism, masculinity and femininity, and long-term and short-term orientation in broadly. Over the decades, many researches have studied the relationship between culture and leadership and identified the cultural dimensions. For instance, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) research program was initiated by Robert House in 1991 and the studies have found the relationship between culture and leadership. The GLOBE researchers developed and defined the specific classification of nine cultural dimensions including “uncertainty avoidance, poser distance, institutional collectivism, in-group collectivism, gender egalitarians, assertiveness, future orientation, performance orientation, and humane orientation”. Overall, GLOBE researchers found that most effective leaders are high in integrity, charismatic, and have interpersonal skills through the study.

Furthermore, cross-cultural skill development training is necessary to gain cross-cultural competence. Cross-cultural skill development training enables leaders to increase effective cross-cultural interactions which reduce misinterpretation and inappropriate behaviors. Johnson et al. find that becoming cultural competent is an ongoing process that needs to be developed consistently. Cultural competence enhances the ability to work in cross-cultural environment effectively. Many global leaders continually need to learn cultural competence to gain skills, knowledge, abilities, and personal attributes through training in order to work successfully with people from different cultures. Cross-cultural training allows people to adjust new cultures and societies and to increase intercultural interactions successfully. Essentially, interpersonal skills training enables the ability to increase culturally appropriate interpersonal skills such as personal attributes, behaviors, and cognition on cultural values and systems. Studies have found that only 30 percent of employees who were assigned foreign assignments received cross-cultural training that many organizations are unwilling to provide cross-cultural competence training for their employees. The main purpose of supporting cross-cultural training is to individuals to adopting ad adjusting new cultures rapidly and to become effective in their new roles.

Black and Mendenhall research that many corporate leaders are not providing cross-cultural competence training due to doubting of the training’s effectiveness (1990). In their research, they support those individuals who participated cross-cultural training more likely to perceive other cultures and their members correctly. Moreover, they study that cross-cultural development training has positive impact on the developing of individuals’ interpersonal skills, on their abilities to adjusting the cross-cultural environments and situations, as well as their job performance in the cross-cultural environments and situations. As a result, individuals with lack of cross-cultural training are more likely to decrease the confidence to a new culture and role and therefore they are unable to perform their job successfully within different cultures. Overall, researchers continually support that cross-cultural training is critically important that increase cross-cultural skills and promotes cross-cultural adjustment, and enhance job performance. Furthermore, researches show that understanding of individuals’ self-concept and recognizing their strengths and weaknesses is critically important because it reduces negative impact of cross-cultural competencies. The development of positive self-concept allows expatriate managers to gain effective cross-cultural competencies. Since cultural competencies need to be renewed and developed constantly over time, the development of a self-concept with self-evaluation will be able to help understanding the complexity of cross-cultural competencies. Lack of the self-confidence, expatriate managers will more likely fail on global projects due to lack of self-assurance.

The concept of ethnocentrism and prejudice are closely interrelated to culture and leadership. Ethnocentrism is “the tendency for individuals to place their own group at the center of their observations of others and the world. People tend to think their culture is superior to others and believe their beliefs are better than others. Ethnocentrism and prejudice often become to the major barriers to perform effective global leadership because they prevent people from understanding the others’ cultures and values. Thomas supports that ethnocentrism is a result of privilege and people tend to use their own cultural background to judge people from other cultures. When individuals are highly ethnocentric, they see other cultures as inferior, reject their values, and try to maintain social distance from people who have different cultural background (1996). Pocovnicu & Vasilache’s study support that ethnocentrism discourages the acceptance of diversity such as other people’s perspectives, values, and behaviors. Ethnocentrism can lead to discrimination, hostility, and prejudice and to effects negatively on global leadership, as well as the performance on global tasks (2012). As a global leader, learning and acknowledging the importance of cultural differences will promote positive interactions between people from different cultures in a multicultural environment. As a result, cultural awareness is the key to eliminate ethnocentrism in order to better understanding of different background of individuals. Many researches support that the development of cross-cultural competencies will increase global leaders’ ability to interacting with people from different countries and improve their performance on the tasks. Therefore, cross-cultural competencies need to be continually developed through training in order to increase the skills of global leaders. In addition, reducing ethnocentrism and increasing cultural flexibilities are the most important cross-cultural competencies for global leadership.

Discussion

Since globalization has increased, many corporations and organizations are seeking for leaders who are culturally competent and enable to promote positive cultural interactions between people from different cultures. Cross-cultural skill is the most important tool to increase effective cross-cultural interactions and prevent individuals from misunderstanding and inappropriate behaviors for today’s leaders. Therefore, cross-cultural skills needs to be developed consistently to be able to work in a multicultural environment. Many researchers support that the needs of cross-cultural training to produce successful global leaders. The training will increase the abilities to gain cultural interpersonal skills to interact effectively with people from different cultures. As a result, the skill of cross-cultural competence promotes the individuals’ ability to work in cross-cultural environment successfully. Also, the development of self-concept and self-evaluation is critically important which enables individuals to recognize their strengths and weaknesses. As a result, positive self-concept will reduce negative impact of cross-cultural competencies, as well as increase cultural flexibilities and decrease ethnocentrism.

According to the review, I noticed that more research should be done to develop cross-cultural competencies. Leadership is the important topic world widely that cross-cultural competencies will promote future global leaders’ abilities to interacting with people from different cultures and to successfully perform on their global jobs. Finally, more researches on developing cross-cultural competencies will help increasing the skills of future global leadership. Designing of effective cross-cultural competence models would promote positive global leadership process.

Conclusion

Understanding various cultures assists in better interaction with individuals who have different cultural backgrounds, as well as different personal histories. Most importantly, global leaders need to know their own culture, background, leadership style, biases, and prejudices in order to become cross-culturally competent. Cross-cultural competencies is ongoing process that needs to be developed consistently to understand global business, politics, and cultures. Globalization leadership continually needs to be focused on developing cross-cultural competencies so that more global leaders work with people from different cultures successfully.