Adapting Leadership Development Methods to Serve Different Cultures
How do you develop and adapt best practice leadership development techniques to serve diverse leaders? We undertook an initiative to design and deliver leadership development tools and activities, created primarily for leaders in a Western context, to use with leaders operating in non-Western contexts. This white paper shares some of the lessons we learned about how to effectively contextualize leadership development practices for those who lead in non-Western cultures.
Lesson 1: Build Cross-Cultural Competence
Using existing research on cultural differences, we demonstrate how to raise the awareness of those implementing leadership development trainings in non-Western cultures. We will share how having a broader understanding of cultural dimensions impacted our work with Ethiopian leaders.
Lesson 2: Understand the Local Context
We describe how working with local partners, conducting focus groups, and creating prototypes aids in the process of contextualizing leadership development tools and approaches.
Examples From the Field
Finally, we present how 2 leadership development tools and methods were “contextualized” to meet the needs of local leaders.
Reinforcing your knowledge of cross-cultural communication can help you reframe leadership to include the specific dynamics, behaviors, and cultural imperatives of diverse cultures. When leadership development reflects the local cultural dynamics, followers are more apt to recognize their leaders as credible.
Download White Paper
Download this paper to learn more about the authors’ experiences building cross-cultural competence and understanding local context when implementing leadership development trainings in non-Western countries.
