Cultural Awareness and Leadership Essay

Total Length: 678 words ( 2 double-spaced pages)

Total Sources: 3

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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….....

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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

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