Coaching Across Cultures: Global Relationships

In her book, Cultural Agility, Paula Caligari suggests leaders are not born with cross-functional competencies.

that yield to agile leaders.

Global leaders, they must be developed, shaped, and refined through a blend of academia and hands-on exposure.

So this episode is buoyed by my firsthand experience during countless diplomatic engagements.

As I said earlier, during over three decades working in global maritime defense sector.

Now, since the sale of the Great White Fleet from December 16th, 1907 to February 22nd, 1909, The Navy has served as an extension of the US diplomatic arm.

And to that end, I was fortunate to serve in that capacity.

As a Navy surface welfare officer, I had the opportunity to perpetuate this model by making countless calls on foreign officials as a commanding officer of United States Navy warships, which is equivalent to a chief executive officer on the corporate side.

Global leadership hinges on cultural harmony.

It's the key and essential to connecting with diverse cultures.

This harmony is anchored in cultural intelligence, which is optimized by a blend of study and hands-on experience.

In being global, Angela Cabrera and Gregory Henry assert that difficulties escaping culture norms and limited mindsets and local practices and also the conservative nature of academic institutions, professors and students merely scratches the surface with study alone.

Culture intelligence requires boots on the ground to appreciate what each culture has to offer in order to explore the three layers of culture, which consists of the artifacts, their espoused values and beliefs, and the underlying assumptions.

We have to take an inside-out perspective of the globe.

Essentially, this suggests that global leaders must flatten social identities to create cultural harmony in order to facilitate global leadership development.

This state manifests through universal perspectives that flatten or zero out social norms and behaviors so everyone enjoys a common view.

This harmony allows disparate organizations to maximize capabilities For example, you know, it allows the United States Navy to share and delegate leadership roles with partner navies to enhance global readiness.

Then how does this really happen? One of the key social intelligence attributes is the empathy gene.

Once again, empathy is the catalyst to global leadership coaches' capacity to assess cultures from the lens of partnering countries, you know, rather than defaulting to preconceived behaviors of dominant cultural social identities.