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Why Cultural Adaptation is critical part of Authentic Leadership style?

Cultural intelligence is the ability to work effectively across different cultures. For instance, how to work and motivate peers from Mexico and France given that both countries come from different cultures. In 1986 Sternberg elaborated a framework to understand the capabilities that enable cultural intelligence. Sternberg, (1986) found that cultural intelligence contains four specific features: metacognitive and cognitive CQ (cognition), motivational CQ (motivation), and behavioral CQ (action).

"Metacognition and cognition represent your ability to think, learn, and strategize. In CI, the principle of motivation refers to your self- efficacy and confidence, your ability to be persistent, and the alignment to your values. Behavior, in CI, is about your ability to have a repertoire of skills and your ability to adapt your behavior" (Cultural Intelligence for Leaders, 2012). Indirectly, cultural intelligence allows a person to be more open to others opinions and belief.

Cultural intelligence itself doesn't make a leader, but it gives the learner the tools needed to act effectively in uncertain scenarios through metacognition, and behave accordingly.

A manager's behavior and activities focus on controlling, planning, coordinating, and organizing. This differs from a leader, whose behaviors and tasks focus on innovation, vision, motivation, trust, and change (Bennis, 1985). There are multiple definitions of leadership. For instance, Northouse (2007) states: "Leadership is a process whereby an individual influence a group of individuals to achieve a common goal." Besides, "quality of the behavior of individuals whereby they guide people or their activities in an organized effort" (Novicevic, Davis, Dorn, Buckley, & Brown, 2005, p. 1400). Moreover, there are multiple types and styles of leadership like transformational, transactional, servant, autocratic, democratic, bureaucratic, charismatics and situational to name a few (The Executive Connection, n.d.).

Despite the leadership style, one thing is shared across the board: "Authentic." In other fields, authentic denote to be unique. Instead, in CQ refers to be true to yourself. "The idea of ‘being true to oneself' has manifested itself in of the form of authentic leadership, which focuses on those behaviors that indicate that leaders are self-aware and regulate the self accordingly" (Leroy, Palanski, & Simons, 2012, p. 255). In other words, authentic leadership means that the leader must adhere to its roots and display live that way all the time, even we people are not looking. Furthermore, leadership can be learned, on the contrary, authenticity cannot be learned.  Sarwar (2013) found that leaders that act ethically are more effective.

In a real-life scenario, authentic leadership and the four features of CQ interact as follows:

A multinational consultant company based in Argentina, that what to start a business in the USA, with employees in Argentina, Mexico, and India, most realize that each culture is different. Metacognition will help the leader to be open to learn new paradigms and discover what motivates the three countries in each specific area. For instance, the prospectus client may be motivated it to open a business with foreigners to reduce cost while maintaining quality, employees in Mexico could be motivated it for a high salary, and Indians maybe drive for more perks and travel opportunities. Without the use of CQ framework, the leader may not realize that the Mexicans ranks higher in power distance index, while Indians has an average score, lastly the Americans has a low power distance (Clearly Cultural, n.d.) or that the teams' Indian teams usually get motivated by involvement and empowerment (Miller, 2015), while Mexicans prefer families overwork (Grajeda, n.d.)

Furthermore, the importance of a CQ authentic leadership is the trust. George (2009) stated that people " know" when people are trustworthy and who is not. Moreover, employees working for leaders who are not genuine, they cannot deliver the very best of them.

On a final note, Cultural intelligence features can be used outside work but in the day to day basis. For example, to learn a new language or a unique ability such as carpentry or being a good neighbor.



References:



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

Bennis, W. (1985). On Becoming a Leader. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Clearly Cultural. (n.d.). Power Distance Index. Retrieved from http://clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensions/power-distance-index/

Cultural Intelligence for Leaders (2012). Saylor Academy. Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0. Retrieved September 6th, 2018, from https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_leading-with-cultural-intelligence/index.html

Grajeda, J. (2018, April 06). Understanding culture is key to motivating Mexican workers. Retrieved from https://www.tecma.com/understanding-cultural-differences-key-motivating-mexican-workers/

Miller, N. (2015, March 30). The True Secret to Motivating Indian Teams. Retrieved from http://learningindia.in/motivating-indian-teams/

Northouse, P. G. (2007). Leadership theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Novicevic, M. M., Davis, W., Dorn, F., Buckley, M. R., & Brown, J. A. (2005). Barnard on conflicts of responsibility: Implications for today's perspectives on transformational and authentic leadership. Management Decision, 43 (10), 1396–1409.

Sarwar, C. (2013). Future of Ethically Effective Leadership. Journal of Business Ethics, 113(1), 81-89. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23433876

Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A framework for understanding conceptions of intelligence.

In R. J. Sternberg & D. K.Detterman (Eds ), What is intelligence? Contemporary

viewpoints on its nature and definition (pp. 3-15). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

The Executive Connection. (n.d.). 9 common leadership styles: Which type of leader are you? Retrieved from https://tec.com.au/resource/9-common-leadership-styles-which-type-of-leader-are-you/

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