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Why Cultural Adaptation is important?

  • Being involved in the global economy puts managers at a unique challenge of catering to multiple cultures. As a manager, one must be able to equally motivate suppliers from China and Mexico while keeping in mind the cultural differences between the two.
What has grown in popularity for leadership style is authentic leadership. Being an authentic leader involves being true to one’s self and realizing one’s morals and values as it relates to others. One of the challenges that an authentic leader has to face when dealing with different cultures is the conflict of staying true to their personal values while at the same time catering to the values of the differing cultures.  According to William Bishop, authentic leaders continue to evolve with their interactions with different people (2013). Naturally, authentic leaders will have high cultural intelligence because of their ability to adapt. So the question is: Can an authentic leader remain true to themselves and while being culturally intelligent? From an objectivist perspective, elements of an authentic leader can work in conjunction with cultural intelligence to ultimately come up with morally grounded cultural adaptation. Both cultural intelligence and authentic leaders require the same three mental processes of cognition, motivation, and action. Authentic leaders practice balanced processing and self- awareness, which can work for hand and hand with metacognition and cognition. This can be illustrated by a leader who is aware of their values but is accepting and open to differing cultures. Moral perspective and relational transparency work hand in hand with motivation and behavior. The individual  positively engages with the different culture while still being true to themselves (Vogelgesang, Clapp-Smith, & Palmer,2009)
Leaders equipped with high cultural intelligence, allows them to assess situations appropriately and respond accordingly. A proper response according to Leadership Across the Globe, is for the leader to adopt behaviors, attitudes, and values similar to its followers (Gupta & Van Wart, 2016). They have also found that leadership desired styles are culturally influenced, so leaders should be attuned to many different cultures and try to adjust accordingly. Certain cultures are more similar to each other like for instance, UK  US can be clustered as Anglo. There are literature and tools that are available in that group and classify multiple cultures to help leaders understand cultures. Using these tools can be helpful, but there can also be many pitfalls according to Meyer, such as overgeneralizations or simplifications of cultures (2014). It will still be very important to practice being mindful when interacting with differing cultures.

References

Bishop, William H. (2013) "Defining the Authenticity in Authentic Leadership," The Journal of Values-Based Leadership: 6(10). Available at: http://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1077&context=jvbl

Meyer, E. (2014, May 7). Leading Across Cultures: Learn to Adapt Your Style. INSEAD Blog.  Retrieved from: http://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/leading-across-cultures-learn-to-adapt-your-style-3342
Vogelgesang, G., Clapp-Smith, R. Palmer, N. (2009). The Role of Authentic Leadership and Cultural Intelligence in Cross-Cultural Contexts: An Objectivist Perspective. International Journal of Leadership Studies, 5(2), 102-117. Retrieved from: http://www.regent.edu/acad/global/publications/ijls/new/vol5iss2/IJLS_vol5_iss2_vogelgesang_authentic_leadership.pdf

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