Learning-Oriented Leadership

Having described the generic characteristics of a learning culture and the implications in general for the learning leader, it remains to examine briefly whether learning-oriented leadership varies as a function of the different stages of organizational evolution. 1. Learning Leadership in Culture Creation In a rapidly changing world, the learning leader/founder must not only

1 Comments

Implications for the Selection and Development of Leaders

What, then, is really needed to exercise learning leadership that will stimu­late cultural learning? 1. Perception and Insight The learning leader must be able to perceive the problem, to have insight into the culture and its dysfunctional elements. Such boundary-spanning perception can be difficult because it requires leaders to see their own weak­nesses, to

1 Comments

Cultural islands: managing multicultural groups

In the previous chapter, I outlined what a learning culture and learning leadership must be. It is easy to specify these requirements; it is very hard to fulfill them. In particular, it is not at all clear how cultural insight and mutual understanding can be achieved in multicultural settings, groups, and organizations when several

1 Comments

Cultural Intelligence

One approach to solving multicultural issues of this sort is to educate each member about the norms and assumptions of each of the cultures involved. I have already indicated that this approach would not only be cumbersome because of the number of different cultures involved but also would have to be so abstract that

5 Comments

The Concept of a Temporary Cultural Island

A cultural island is a situation in which the rules of having to maintain face are temporarily suspended so that we can explore our self-concepts and thereby our values and tacit assumptions, especially around authority and inti­macy. The first use of this term in the organizational domain was in Bethel, Maine where Human Relations

1 Comments

Dialogue as a Cultural Island for Multicultural Exploration

The norms created in a dialogue group lend themselves to the explorations of critical cultural differences. The dialogue process allows the articulation of macrocultural differences at a personal level so that the participants not only learn how macrocultures differ at a general level but can experience those differences immediately in the room. This learning