Cultural Awareness and Leadership

Leadership Quality
The two quizzes I took were the Working Globally Across Cultures quiz and the India country quiz. The results can be seen in the Appendix. I was a bit surprised at my score, as I felt I understood other cultures a bit better than the results of the quiz indicated. I did not pass either one. On the first I scored a 6 out of 10 and on the second I scored a 5 out of 7.
My strengths in intercultural awareness are that I have a good sense that other cultures are indeed different and that it is important to understand them, as Hofstede (1980, 1984) shows; however, when it comes to specific customs and practices, I am not so knowledgeable—and the quizzes show that. It is essential that a leader actually have a good deal of knowledge about other cultures. O’Reilly (2013) points out, one must “commit to increasing your knowledge of facts about different people and places, their political and economic systems, their traditions, diet, fashion and the like.” The little bit of knowledge I had about India and about some other Asian customs showed in the quizzes, but it was still insufficient and my knowledge about customs in other parts of the world such as Latin America was not very robust either.
I was fairly confident I knew a bit more about Indian culture than the test showed. I scored 5 out of 7 but missed two questions—one about the meaning of tugging on one’s ear. I did think the questions could have been a bit better, but overall I saw that the main gaps in my knowledge and what I thought I knew were based on specific social practices. I was more familiar with general customs and practices—so my knowledge gap was particularly evident in the area of precise information. These gaps no doubt exist because I have not studied the countries’ customs in minute detail and am still only generally familiar with their practices.
A plan with concrete actions that I could take to build on my strengths and improve my areas of weaknesses to improve my cultural awareness would be to start spending more time reading and thinking about different cultures. A good practice would be to talk to people from other countries on Internet forums where diverse people hang out and communicate for the purpose of learning languages and customs of people from other countries. There are a variety of chat room sites on the Internet that are for this purpose, so I should spend at least 3 hours per week on these chat sites to become familiar with other people from other countries, ask them questions, and gain more of an understanding about exact social customs.
I can also research them by doing research online about social customs and practices in specific countries and dedicate each week per year to learning about another country. I could keep a database of what I learn and over the course of the year I would have developed a database of more than 50 different countries. This would be a great way to start becoming more knowledgeable about other parts of the world and the cultures they have.
It important for managers to increase their levels of cultural awareness because it facilitates better communication, trust, accountability, and the development of relationships: leaders are in a position to make connections with groups of people all over the world, and they have to know how to interpret the actions of others appropriately so as not to be offended when an accepted social practice in another country differs from accepted social practices in the West. It is also important to be able to adjust one’s own practices so as not to give offense.

References
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related
values.Beverly Hills, CA: Sage
Hofstede, G. (1984). Cultural dimensions in management and planning. Asia Pacific
Journal of Management, 1(2), 81-99.
O’Reilly, C. (2013). Why is cultural intelligence important? Retrieved from
http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/topic/soft-skills/why-cultuiral-intelligence-important/181942






Appendix
1: Working Globally Across Cultures


2: India Quiz