Leadership
The author of this report has been asked to look at the Kwintessential website and take some of the quizzes that exist on the page. Upon taking the quizzes, the author of this report will explain whether there was surprise as to the score garnered, what strengths the author has relative to culture, what weaknesses the author may have, a plan of steps to take to improve cultural awareness and why it is important for leaders and managers to have strong cultural awareness. While there is certainly nothing wrong with the way that Americans do business, any good American leaders has to and must understand that other countries things somewhat or very differently depending on the social and business context.
Analysis
The author of this report took two of the cross-cultural quizzes. The questions were about theoretical situations in which people of different cultures interact. For each situation, the reactions of the people involved are catalogued and the author of this report was to have interpreted why the people reacted the way they did. For example, one question asked about a meeting between American and Japanese businesspeople. The Americans offered the Japanese men a drink and then took off their coats and rolled up their sleeves, among other things. The meeting did not go well and the author was asked to explain why in the form of a single answer from a larger group of answers. In the case of that question, the answer...
The author of this report guessed it was the offering of the drinks and that this should only happen after the meeting. The author only got about a third of the questions right overall and a lot of the correct answers were just good guesses rather than being from real and recalled knowledge.
An obvious strength that the author of this report has is that a lot of cultural awareness and sensitivity is about common sense and the like. For example, there was a question about a woman who met a French person in the lobby as she waited for a meeting. She asked personal questions for this person she had just met. In just about any culture, that is fairly forward and improper as many people tend to be private. However, this pattern is apparently much more entrenched in French culture. In terms of weaknesses, the author of this report has to admit that there are a lot of gaps in the author's knowledge about other cultures and their trends. The author knows things here and there but nothing extensive.
In terms of a plan to address this lack of cultural awareness, the author will begin to explore and read up on the cultural trends of certain countries. The author will focus first on the countries and regions of the world that are most likely to be encountered as part of a job or school endeavor. Obviously, western Europe would be a popular area of the world to hit but even…
