SLP Leaders and Leadership

SLP Leaders and Leadership

Which quizzes did you take?

I took the cultural awareness quiz to assess my knowledge of the history, culture, etiquette, protocol, and norms in specific cultures or countries, and the cultural awareness quiz assessed general cultural awareness.

Were you surprised at your score?

I was surprised t my score on the Argentina quiz because I thought I would score 10 out of 10 based on the fact that I have lived there before and most of the people in that country are my friends. I was also surprised by my score in the quick-fire true or false because although I ran out of time before completing the quiz, I thought that the answers I had provided for what I had answered were correct, but this was not the case. I, however, felt that the score would have been higher if I had been given more time to answer the questions.

What strengths do you think you have in intercultural awareness?

One of the strengths that I have in intercultural awareness is that I always admit that I do not know everything about different cultures, and I am always willing to learn by asking the people of that culture about what I want to know to avoid offending while interacting with them. I also ensure that I approach them politely to create rapport before asking them about their culture to avoid being perceived as ignorant. My second strength is that I am aware of my own beliefs, views, and assumptions about other cultures and how they shape my interaction with people. I can therefore control them to peacefully coexist with people of other cultures and eliminate any bias that may have a negative impact on our interactions. Another strength is that I always express empathy when interacting with people from other cultures hence enabling me to put myself in their shoes in different scenarios to understand their behavior.

What weaknesses are you able to identify?

The main weakness that I was able to identify from the quizzes is that I have a negative attitude towards cultural practices that degrade people from a specific gender. For instance, I could not find anything positive in the Arab culture because it discriminates against women and has consistently placed women in a lower position in society.

If there were gaps between your assessment results and your own thoughts about your level of cultural awareness, why do these gaps exist?

The main gap between the results of the cultural awareness quizzes and my thoughts about cultural awareness level was my beliefs and assumptions about a specific culture and the actual beliefs of that culture. For instance, I assumed that maintaining face is important when doing business with the Chinese, but the assessment results placed more value on etiquette. Is gap may exist because as the business environment continues to evolve, people change their behavior to adapt to the changes.

Create a plan of specific, concrete actions you can take to build on your strengths and improve areas of weakness so that you improve your cultural awareness.

One of the things that I intend to do to build on my strengths and improve my areas of weakness to have better cultural awareness is to read more articles and books providing information on the beliefs, values, and traditions of different cultures. Bérešová (2018) argues that this is one of the most effective strategies for gaining a wide range of information about a culture. I also intend to review different case studies reviewing the behavior of different cultures in the business environment. This helps in gaining knowledge on the required conduct when conducting business with people from different cultures (Baltes et al., 2015; Parks, 2020). The third action will be interacting with people from different cultures and asking them about important practices, values, and beliefs.

Why is it important for managers to increase their levels of cultural awareness?

In the modern business environment, businesses are being forced to venture into new markets to gain a competitive advantage (Rozkwitalska et al., 2016). Most of these markets include people from different cultures whose needs need to be met to increase the businesses’ customer base. People are also moving from one country to another to look for greener pastures hence creating multicultural work environments (Kim et al., 2020). The Center for Creative Leadership et al. (2011) argue that it is important for managers to increase their level of cultural awareness to adopt the right measures to reach customers from different cultures and effectively manage employees in multicultural work environments.

References

Baltes, B., Hernandez, D., & Collins, C. (2015). Increasing cultural awareness through a cultural awareness program. Journal of Educational Research and Practice, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.5590/jerap.2015.05.1.01

Bérešová, J. (2018). Developing language and cultural awareness through reading contemporary literary prose. INTED2018 Proceedings. https://doi.org/10.21125/inted.2018.1007

Center for Creative Leadership, Deal, J. J., & Prince, D. W. (2011). Developing cultural adaptability: How to work across differences. John Wiley & Sons.

Kim, H. N., Hsu, Y. H., Chen, C., & Lin, K. (2020). How are migrants viewed in the eyes of employers? Double exclusion among immigrants in Taiwan. OMNES: The Journal of Multicultural Society, 10(2), 102-125. https://doi.org/10.14431/omnes.2020.07.10.2.102

Parks, E. (2020). The development of intercultural competence and critical cultural awareness. Developing Critical Cultural Awareness in Modern Languages, 181-204. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429341236-8

Rozkwitalska, M., Sułkowski, Ł., & Magala, S. (2016). Intercultural interactions in the multicultural workplace: Traditional and positive organizational scholarship. Springer.

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Module 3 – SLP
LEADERS AND LEADERSHIP
Most of what is written about leadership has been written by Western scholars and practitioners—mostly from the United States. Thus, what we have studied in this module so far reflects Western assumptions and values about how to improve leadership performance.

SLP Leaders and Leadership

But leadership quality, we know, is mostly about perception. If the followers perceive that a person is a leader, that person will be treated with respect and the followers will grant him the power and authority to guide their actions. These perceptions can vary across cultures, and successful global leaders know that leadership is viewed differently in different cultures and modify their behaviors to align with culturally diverse expectations. This is what is called Cultural Intelligence.

Required Reading

The following reading discusses the importance of cultural awareness in increasing organizational effectiveness:

O’Reilly, C. (2013). Why is cultural intelligence important? Retrieved from http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/topic/soft-skills/why-cultuiral-intelligence-important/181942
Assignment

In this exercise, there are two sets of quizzes (A & B) that you will participate in.

Select either the Cross-Cultural Work Scenarios or Working Globally Across Cultures quiz from http://www.commisceo-global.com/quizzes/cultural-awareness-quizzes?view=qcategory&cat_id=39
Choose any one of the country quizzes at http://www.commisceo-global.com/quizzes/cultural-awareness-quizzes?view=qcategory&cat_id=41 that looks interesting to you.
After completing the quizzes, address the following questions in a 2-page essay:

Which quizzes did you take?
Include your actual results in an Appendix at the end of your paper.
Were you surprised at your score?
What strengths do you think you have in intercultural awareness?
What weaknesses are you able to identify?
If there were gaps between your assessment results and your own thoughts about your level of cultural awareness, why do these gaps exist?
Create a plan of specific, concrete actions you can take to build on your strengths and improve areas of weakness so that you improve your cultural awareness.
Why is it important for managers to increase their levels of cultural awareness?
SLP Assignment Expectations
Your paper will be evaluated using the criteria on the SLP rubric (see the rubric for more detail): Assignment-Driven, Critical Thinking, Business Writing, Effective Use of Information, Citing Sources, and Timeliness.