Exploring Culturally Diverse Leadership Styles: A Mindset and Multicultural Journey.
To prepare ourselves, our communities and our institutions to live and work in this global world of the future require a hard look at existing leadership models that ignore ethnic andracial diversity. These entrenched models are overwhelmingly ethnocentric and gender-biased. They draw on narrow, cultural-specific knowledge and practices that simply are not relevant for a diverse and global population, nor applicable in varying contexts and changing social environments. By failing to explore the deep core of culturally unique leadership styles among non-white populations, researchers too often have overlooked leadership styles that have endured for centuries through sheer effectiveness in leading and governing their people.
How, then, are diverse and contextually relevant leadership styles to gain the respect and action they deserve? It is not simply about the representation of diverse leaders in the ranks of leadership, nor about affirmative action. Rather, it requires paradigm shifts in our theories of leadership that examine and incorporate the ways diversity shapes our understanding of leadership and its effects.
To avoid the mirroring effect, attention to a more culturally sensitive perspective is highly important. A transformative multicultural style might reframe “empathy” into “inclusive relational empathy” to emphasize a more relationship-centered perspective, for example. A transformative style places emphasis on connecting the follower’s sense of identity and self to the mission
and collective identity of the group or organization.
Becoming culturally competent and sensitive does not imply that one discard the many contributions of past and present social and behavioral scientists and scholars. The challenge is to
recognize that we cannot fully understand the human condition without viewing it from a cross-cultural perspective. What has been learned about the human condition in the past.
Soc Behav Res Pract Open J. 2019; 4(1): e1-e2. doi: 10.17140/SBRPOJ-4-e005
