CHAPTER 6

Motivating and Leading across Cultures

CLASS CONDUCT

Kenichi Tokuzawa, a Japanese man of twenty-four, was a graduate in languages and was fluent in various languages, including English. Prior to his university study, he had trained as a schoolteacher, had taught for two years in a Japanese primary school, and had been acclaimed as an outstanding teacher. Kenichi put his success down to his clear structuring of lessons, meticulous preparation, effective use of language, and ability to make topics interesting. The results were impressive: when Kenichi taught, every student paid close attention.

In his final year at university, Kenichi won an international scholarship enabling him to spend a semester studying at a university in New England, including the opportunity to teach at a local school, conducting daily classes in conversational Japanese with a tenth-grade class.

Kenichi realized it would be a challenge to teach students from another culture who were older than those he had taught before but believed his thorough preparation and proven teaching techniques could transcend cultural boundaries. He had heard that American students take a more relaxed approach to their studies and expect to participate more in class than do Japanese, but as a the young Japanese well educated in U.S. culture, he thought he would be able to get on the same wavelength as American teenagers.

On his first day in his new class, Kenichi, immaculately dressed, walked to the front of the classroom, bowed, smiled, and said, “Good morning. I am Mr. Tokuzawa. I am here to teach you Japanese.” A few girls tittered, and several boys continued to talk among themselves. A little rattled, Kenichi tapped the desk loudly with his pen. “Please listen to me,” he said, more loudly, and repeated his greeting. This time there was more attention but also further suppressed giggles. A youth at the back of the class rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.

Recognizing the possibility of a challenge to his authority, Kenichi decided to impose it. Briskly, he asked a student to distribute his meticulous course notes. Clearly and methodically, he explained the syllabus and grading system. He asked if there were any questions. There were none. Rather than being eager to participate, the students seemed bored, listless. It was the same when he started teaching. He followed the schedule he had carefully prepared. He asked the students to repeat his words back and to translate, and a few did so. But they did so unwillingly, as if they were answering his questions only to break the silence. The atmosphere at the front of the class was leaden. At the back the students were restless. The boy who had rolled his eyes put his head down on his desk, apparently asleep.

Dismissing the students at the end of the class, Kenichi overheard a girl remark to her friend, “Is that guy uptight! He ought to chill out.” Chill out? He didn’t know the expression. But he did realize that his class had been a major step backward. The class was just not in a mood to listen, to learn, to be led by him. Why? Were they not interested in the subject? Were these simply the norms of the school, or the United States? Or was there something he himself had simply gotten wrong?

In this case, Kenichi’s problem is one of leadership. Leadership has been defined as “the ability to influence other people to strive willingly to reach common goals.”¹ As well as being the teacher of the class, he is its leader. It is his job to influence students to “strive willingly” toward the common goal of learning.

Why has he not succeeded? While we can’t say for sure, it seems likely that his style of leadership was too Japanese to fit with the culture and expectations of his American students. Japanese have higher power distance (see Chapter 2) than Americans; that is, they expect a leader to exercise authority as a right. In Japan leaders are respected because of their positions, whereas in the United States they must earn respect through their actions. In Japan, respect is shown partly by not participating, that is, by respecting what the leader says and does and not speaking until the leader invites you to do so. Japanese schoolchildren are therefore respectful of their teachers and ready to pay attention and accept the teacher’s instructions. The Americans in Kenichi’s class might have responded better if he had been less formal and had found out more about them—by being mindful—before launching into his own agenda. Kenichi may find it difficult to get his students to be receptive. Can Kenichi motivate this class? Is he a leader?

Motivation across Cultures

In order to lead, one must understand the motivation of those being led—their willingness to exert effort toward a goal. Patterns of motivation vary both between individuals and across cultures. For example, achievement motivation (striving for individual success) is higher in individualist cultures, and affiliation motivation (seeking good interpersonal relationships) is higher in collectivist cultures, but in both cases there may be exceptions.

It is the leader’s task to provide rewards appropriate to the cultural and individual characteristics of the situation. This task requires leaders to understand the motives of their followers, how these can be mobilized, and how effective action can be rewarded. An important aspect of motivation is individuals’ attitudes to the allocation of rewards, particularly the issue of equity (fair distribution of rewards) versus equality (equal distribution of rewards). Preference for equity (which leads to more unequal rewards) over equality tends to be related to power distance. Collectivist societies prefer more equally distributed rewards, whereas individualist societies believe that individual performance should be rewarded with benefits related to the level of performance of the individual.

Popular Ideas of Leadership

There is much public confusion about leadership. Many people believe in the “Great Man” theory of leadership and have people in mind who personify leadership to them—such as Gandhi, John F. Kennedy, Joan of Arc, or Sun Tzu. We think of such people as having the “gift” of leadership and being able to lead effectively regardless of situation, task, or culture. However, leading across cultures raises questions:

• What made these people leaders and others not?

• Would these people have been great leaders at another time, in another place, with different followers, or in an other culture?

A parallel to the Great Man theory is the “One Best Way” theory. Some people believe that there is a set of definable practices that will inevitably bring success in leadership.

Leadership would be easier if either theory were true. Unfortunately both are plain wrong.² Many people—both men and women—can be effective leaders in different situations and cultures, and those effective in one situation will not necessarily be so in another. Likewise, effective leaders influence their followers in different ways. A leader may capture the loyalty of some followers while being rejected and ridiculed by others. A style that works perfectly in one situation (such as with construction workers in Dubai) may fall flat in another (such as with software engineers in Silicon Valley).

Even within cultures, leaders need to display the mindfulness and adaptability skills discussed in Chapter 3 just to understand the special features of the situation and vary their leadership to fit the amount of power at their disposal, the characteristics of their followers, and the tasks to be accomplished. Becoming a culturally intelligent leader is a major challenge. Yet as more and more leaders find themselves, as Kenichi Tokuzawa did, dealing with followers who are culturally different from themselves (and often culturally different from each other) or leading in settings with different traditions and expectations for leadership, a culturally intelligent approach is vital.

Leadership Styles

Our understanding of culturally intelligent leadership begins with a look at leadership styles—a concept based on research conducted in the United States that has been assumed to be valid, and has often been applied, elsewhere. These studies attempted to relate organizational performance—as indicated by measures such as productivity, quality, and staff morale—to different styles of leadership behavior. Two dimensions that have shown up consistently are concern for tasks (getting things done) and concern for relationships (getting along well with people). Research indicates that relationship-oriented leaders tend to have more satisfied subordinates, and that this is true across a range of different cultures.³

However, most organizations are at least as interested in employees’ performance as in their satisfaction, and the evidence on the relationship of leadership style to performance is more complex. Task-oriented leadership, for example, can take different forms—such as detailed goal-directed planning or autocratic command. People from different cultures react to task-oriented leadership in different and often unpredictable ways. There are also numerous other factors, such as the structure of the task, the power of the leader, and the behavior of subordinates—who, of course, are frequently themselves trying to influence the leader—so that statements about leadership must often be hedged with the statement “it depends.” In short, researchers have not found one best way of leadership that works across all cultures. In the next section, examples of leadership from around the world are provided so that we can begin to understand the enormous complexity and subtlety of the cultural forces affecting leadership.

Leadership around the World

THE ARAB WORLD

Leadership in Arab societies demonstrates how history and culture can influence the traditions, practices, and expectations of leadership. Islamic religion and tribal traditions have always been strong and remain so, but Arabic countries are now touched by Western culture. Islam tends to think of leadership as a job for men. Tribal traditions oblige leaders to behave like fathers, protecting and nurturing followers (employees) as they would their children, and to take responsibility for the whole enterprise. Overlaying this system is bureaucracy, historically introduced by the Ottoman Empire and continued by Europeans in the twentieth century as a way of keeping control of their businesses and other institutions.

The resultant leadership style, which has been termed sheikhocracy,⁴ involves personal autocracy and conformity to rules and regulations based not on the rules’ rationality, but on respect for those who made them. This means that rules have symbolic importance but will not be implemented if they go against autocratic tribal traditions. For example, the rules may specify procedures for appointment on merit, but these are likely to be ignored in favor of appointments based on family relationships and friendships.

JAPAN

In Japan, a key factor influencing leadership is the cultural value of amae, meaning (loosely translated) indulgent love, the kind that parents have for their children. Whereas in some societies, children are taught to be independent of their parents, in Japan, amae affects all relationships, including manager-subordinate relationships. Japanese managers therefore tend to take a deep interest in employees’ personal lives. Subordinates often ask superiors for advice, including advice on personal matters such as choice of a spouse.

Amae in Japanese relationships also gives rise to other relevant cultural norms. Leader behavior is embedded in a network of reciprocal obligations (on and giri). On is a debt or obligation, and giri is the moral obligation to repay the debt, and every action creates both. A leader who neglects the obligation to reciprocate will lose followers’ trust and support. A Japanese leader’s effectiveness is thus based largely on the ability to understand and attract followers.⁵

THE OVERSE AS CHINESE

The leadership style of ethnic Chinese living outside mainland China reflects their modern organizations but is entrenched in Chinese culture and tradition, where a leader’s legitimacy is based on loyalty to the patriarch. Similarly, the word of the founder or CEO of modern Chinese organizations is law, and his authority resembles that of a head of the household. All the key people in the organization are related to the founder, and to each other, by blood or marriage, enabling the overseas Chinese to run their modern corporations as family businesses. Mutual trust among family members—basing decisions on what is best for the clan—underlies all leaderfollower relationships.⁶

FRANCE

Leadership in France is heavily influenced by the strong societal emphasis on hierarchy. At the top of French organizations is the CEO, who will have attended the “right” university, one of the “Grandes Écoles.” The style of these top managers is often paternalistic and charismatic in the style of the great field marshals of France.⁷ Between the top managers and the workers is a large group of middle managers or cadres, who deal with multiple rules and regulations. While seeming bewilderingly inefficient to the outsider, these organizations operate very reliably.

RUSSIA

The image of Russian leaders as powerful autocrats is based on the country’s long history of centralized authority and responsibility.⁸ In medieval Russia, village elders were entrusted to represent the common will of the people, and suggestions and criticisms were never credited to any one individual. It was the elders’ task to sort through the comments: their decisions went unchallenged and they bore full responsibility for the group’s welfare. Later, under state socialism, these same traditional attitudes were evident in communist organizations. Although advised by workers’ councils, the heads of enterprises wielded all the power and bore all the responsibility.

This centralization of power resulted in a top-heavy bureaucracy that some suggest was the fatal flaw in the socialist system. When things went wrong, as they often did, no one would take action without authorization from a superior. As Russian firms try to find their way in their new free-market environment, managers now struggle to push responsibility down the hierarchy and to delegate routine tasks. Consider the following case:

MANAGEMENT BY OBJECTIVES IN RUSSIA

Dahl Ekelund, a Norwegian with a good track record as a leader in various European engineering enterprises, has been appointed executive director of the Russian subsidiary of Motor Corporation. The directors want him to release some of the potential in a work-force that is well qualified, talented, and experienced, but knows little about modern management.

In his first week in his new job, Dahl conducts a seminar to introduce the concept of Management by Objectives (MBO)⁹ to his managers. He is amazed by the hostility directed not only at his message but also at himself. When he suggests that all employees should write their own objectives, his subordinates came out with comments such as: “We have lived without this kind of thing for some years and have made great strides. We don’t need a new bureaucracy.”

Dahl explains how MBO provides new opportunities for staff involvement and participation. The managers retort that others have tried to implement Western managerial methods in the company—nobody has succeeded. Irritated, Dahl answers brusquely, “Everybody working here is going to be using these modern methods. I expect a written outline from each of you of your next year’s goals within two weeks. And get the same information from your subordinates within three weeks. And for those who don’t—no bonus. That will be all.”

As he leaves, Dahl overhears the comments:

“Well, now, Petrovich, you’ll be writing goals rather than working.”

“Never, let him do it himself.”

“But, what about losing your bonus?”

“Yeah, we’ll see.”¹⁰

In this case, the leadership expectations of the Russians are shaped by both Russian culture and years of working in organizations still influenced by the remnants of state socialism. These Russian middle managers demonstrate an expectation for autocratic leadership and have great difficulty accepting, or trusting, their own participation or that of their subordinates in setting goals. Their reluctance is made worse by skepticism about their superior’s concern for, or control over, their futures. Under state socialism each autocratic boss was someone else’s puppet. Their beliefs persist long after the demise of the socialist policies that created them.

In seeking to help the company modernize, a higher-CQ Dahl Ekelund might have applied cultural intelligence by

• avoiding the Be Like Me approach to management that he had learned in his cultural background in Western Europe (knowledge)

• taking time to learn some of the special characteristics of the new culture that he was entering (knowledge)

• spending time observing and talking to his new subordinates for a few weeks after arrival, trying to understand their collective and individual areas of comfort and discomfort before trying to institute change (mindfulness)

• trying to understand from the Russian perspective why they might be acting the way they were (mindfulness)

• listening to what his staff is saying (and being aware of what they are not saying) rather than becoming irritated and closing the meeting abruptly (mindfulness and adaptive behavior)

• introducing a less ambitious form of MBO, for example, having leaders set goals for their subordinates, then making a gradual move toward participative methods (adaptive behavior)

These examples from different countries show the complexity of the cultural forces affecting leadership. Note the importance of historical factors and tradition, and the acceptance, under the right circumstances, of apparently autocratic leadership. Individuals with high cultural intelligence are mindfully attentive to such factors and work hard to develop the cross-cultural skills to be effective. An international manager known to one of the authors, whose job took him into leadership roles all around the globe, would voraciously read books on the history and customs of the countries he was due to visit in order to acquire background knowledge and sensitivity to the local situation. However, such knowledge is only the starting place for becoming a culturally intelligent leader. One of the most culturally intelligent leaders in business today may be Carlos Ghosn, CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance. Ghosn was born in Brazil to Lebanese parents and was educated in France. He is credited with turning around the fortunes of Nissan in Japan, a country he knew little about before going there. He attributes his success to his multicultural background, which gave him what we would call cultural intelligence.¹¹

Culture and Expectations of Followers

Culturally intelligent leadership involves focusing on followers. In some ways the idea of leadership is an invention of those who want to be in charge or who believe that their traditional or hierarchical position entitles them to be in charge. But in a sense, everyone is in charge; everyone has the potential to exercise leadership. We have defined leadership in terms of influence, and influence may be exercised by anyone, from the highest to the lowest member of an organization. In understanding how leadership works across cultures, we need to look at all participants—how they might understand a situation, whether they might expect a leader to tell them what to do, or whether and how they might exercise influence in their own right. Thus, even lower-level members of an organization working within their own culture may offer cultural understanding in a leadership process.

The designated leader needs to think not just about how he or she might exercise influence but about how that influence might usefully interact with the influence exercised by others. For example, a culturally intelligent Dahl Ekelund could use local formal and informal cultural processes to find out and consider the views of his subordinates before setting goals for them exactly as they want him to.

Here, it is useful to recap the key values dimensions outlined in Chapter 2.

• In individualist cultures, people are concerned about themselves, prefer activities to be conducted privately, and expect decisions to be made by the individual according to his or her judgment and the anticipated rewards.

• In collectivist cultures, people view themselves as members of groups and collectives, prefer group activities, and expect decisions to be made on a consensual or consultative basis, where the effects of the decision on everyone are taken into account.

In such cultures, two very different styles of leadership would be expected. Western countries tend to be individualist, so both leaders and followers attempt to involve themselves in influence processes to maximize their individual influence and get themselves a good result. Higher management frequently tries to utilize individualism to its advantage by offering leaders individual rewards for the accomplishments of the group or by holding the leader accountable for its performance. Collectivist societies rely more on the leader to involve the group—a shared expectation of both leader and group members.

Other cultural forces influence the expectations of leaders. Some cultures value formality and expect leaders to honor ceremonies and observances. In cultures where punctuality is important, there will be pressure on leaders to turn up on time, and in future-oriented societies, to focus on long-term strategy. Because of the special status of the position, the leader is often the most led member of the group—led, that is, by the cultural context.

In many societies, historical and cultural forces—such as high power distance, Confucianism, and feudalism—practices and expectations of leadership have developed that are best described as paternalistic.¹² Paternalism (literally “being fatherly”) involves creating a family atmosphere, having close relationships with followers to the extent of getting involved in their non-work lives, and expecting both deference and loyalty. Paternalism often leads to positive employee attitudes, and some Western organizations have tried to use paternalism as a means of having a contented, compliant workforce. In the wrong culture, though, such efforts can backfire.¹³

Leading in Multinational Organizations

Leading any culturally diverse organization or group requires cultural intelligence. But in large multinational organizations with subsidiaries in many countries, the problem is increased. Typically there are organizational requirements for central control and uniformity to ensure that the organization remains stable and that subsidiaries work toward a common goal. But when such organizations attempt to manage their own diverse communities of people in a uniform manner, major problems emerge, as the following case shows.

THE COMMON BOND

Jenny Gendall is a secretary employed by the New Zealand office of Technica, a U.S.-based multinational organization, which has offices in over seventy countries.¹⁴ In response to the cultural diversity of its multinational workforce, Technica has implemented many new policies and procedures, including a nondiscrimination policy for employment procedures.

Technica’s head office in the United States has recently developed a set of values designed to provide a framework that all Technica employees will use in their day-to-day actions. The values reflect Technica’s “critical success factors” and will offer shared values to all employees, thereby making Technica a better place to work. The statement of values is known as Our Common Bond, and a key value is respect for the individual: “We treat each other with respect and dignity, valuing individual and cultural differences. We communicate frequently and with candor, listening to each other regardless of level or position.”

Technica’s head office has disseminated an action plan for implementing Our Common Bond. To ensure conformity, each subsidiary, including New Zealand, has received directives, manuals, training programs, videos, and visits by international facilitators. To Jenny Gendall, who considers that the New Zealand office has always been a good place to work in terms of respect, valuing equity, and all the rest of it, it seems like a lot of fuss about nothing.

Indeed, Jenny notes that some of her colleagues are beginning to question the values, the language used, and the method of implementation. The values are being imposed without discussion, are in “American language,” and are inappropriate within New Zealand. According to Jenny, “The Common Bond is just about day-to-day courtesy. It doesn’t need to be spelled out. Why was it forced on the entire company? I hate that airy-fairy, warm-fuzzy stuff. I just want to get on with the job. We’re free and easy over here, and the Common Bond just doesn’t suit our Kiwi style. And we’re all different. The Common Bond says we need to ‘listen to each other regardless of level or position,’ but some of our Maori and Pacific Island employees still expect to show, and be shown, proper respect for status.”

In this case, Technica seeks to establish a corporate culture that will encompass all its international subsidiaries. But its “universal” values cannot easily be translated across cultural boundaries, even between apparently similar cultures like the United States and New Zealand, as the values may act as a touchstone for contradiction and cultural conflict. Although Technica is genuinely international and culturally diverse, a definite “home” culture still emanates from the U.S. head office; and, notwithstanding its talk of embracing diversity, in its global leadership and recognition of other cultures, Technica is not truly “walking the walk.” The effect, at least in New Zealand, is that instead of embracing diversity, employees tend to criticize, ignore, and subvert the changes.

“Managing diversity” is a positive goal for multinationals, but the means of achieving it need to be locally specific and probably locally devised. In international organizations a useful guide for managing diversity is the simple notion of “think global and act local.”

Also important in this case is the question, who is the leader? There is a difference between formal leadership (with a formally appointed leader who has an appropriate job title) and informal leadership (in which someone has leadership status because of the respect of others). Informal leaders arise because their ideas or behavior are well received by others and because of their good communication skills. Thus, in the case above, informal leaders in New Zealand may subvert the leadership of formal bosses in the United States. Ideally, the formal and informal leaders are the same person, but in a cross-cultural situation a formal leader from another culture may not be accepted because of cultural differences, particularly in expected methods of leadership, and an informal leader from the home culture representing the ideas of local employees may exercise countervailing influence. Formal leaders may therefore have to either exercise a leadership style that fits local expectations or be able to work with the informal leader.

Different cultures also have different prototypes of what a leader should be like. A leader who is able to meet followers’ expectations of a good leader can develop better trust and relationships.

Followership

From the foregoing, it is evident that anyone in a group, and not just the formal boss, has the potential to be a leader. In most groups, leadership is at least partially shared. Further, the exercise of leadership implies a duty of followers to follow. Therefore, in multicultural groups and organizations, becoming culturally intelligent is an advantage to the follower as well as to the leader. Being able to read one’s formal leader and colleagues, taking into account their national culture, is an advantage. Cultural intelligence is for everyone!

The Common Thread: Charismatic or Transformational Leadership

An idea that has dominated recent thinking about leadership is transformational leadership, which influences people to go beyond their own immediate interests and objectives and to work hard to achieve performance beyond expectations.¹⁵ To do this, the leader has to present a compelling vision of the future and inspire followers by demonstrating or modeling the behavior desired from followers. S/he must stimulate and challenge followers and show each one individual consideration. All of these tasks are easier if the leader has the cultural knowledge and mindfulness characteristic of high CQ.

Perhaps the easiest way to understand transformational leadership is to think of well-known leaders such as Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. However, Eastern leaders such as the Indian political and spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi also meet the criteria for a transformational leader, as does the great South African leader Nelson Mandela, even though they practiced it in a very different way, one that was in tune with the expectations and cultural values of their followers. Note the cultural variety of these examples. A leader with high cultural intelligence will be able to provide a vision, engage others’ motivation, and model behavior in ways consistent with the culture and values of followers.

There is research that supports the effectiveness of transformational leadership across a range of different countries.¹⁶ Yet people from different countries expect transformational leaders to behave very differently. Having a vision and engaging others may require very different behavior in different cultures. For example, being seen to have suffered might be important in Japan, while being seen as decisive would carry more weight in the United States.

Culturally Intelligent Leadership

Making sense of leadership is difficult enough, even without the complication of cultural differences. While there is no universally effective prescription for leading culturally diverse followers, there are some things we can say for certain that culturally intelligent leaders know and do.

• Leadership is largely in the minds of followers. If followers perceive a person as a leader, he or she will gain the power, authority, and respect afforded a leader.

• Followers expect leaders to have (a) a vision for the group or organization, (b) the ability to communicate this vision clearly, and (c) skill in organizing followers toward the vision. However, the behavior that indicates these characteristics differs among cultures.

• The leadership dimensions of task orientation and relationship orientation exist in every culture, but the behaviors that indicate these orientations are specific to different cultures.

• Some followers need more leading along each of these dimensions than others. Factors such as organizational norms and the education levels of followers can act as substitutes for leadership. For example, a group of research scientists typically needs very little task orientation from their leader: they already know what to do.

• Trying to mimic the behaviors of a leader belonging to the followers’ culture may lead to unintended consequences. Some adoption of these behaviors will gain a leader acceptance by followers, but too much may be interpreted as insincere or even offensive.¹⁷

In summary, if you want to be a culturally intelligent leader, you will need to use knowledge and mindfulness to develop a repertoire of behaviors that can be adapted to specific situations. Doing so involves knowledge of the likely expectations of culturally diverse followers based on generalizations from cultural values such as individualism and collectivism. Through mindful observation, you will gradually refine these expectations. You will also need knowledge of your own preferred style of leadership. What balance of task and relationship orientation feels normal to you? Will you have to work harder at being a relational leader if the situation calls for it? You will also need knowledge of the relevant organizational norms. Trying to be a participative boss in a culture that does not value participation can be counterproductive. Here, mindfulness includes paying attention to follower reactions to particular leadership behaviors and adjusting as necessary.

In cross-cultural situations, it is probably best not to model your leader behavior after a leader in the follower culture. You may look silly trying to behave like Sun Tzu (especially if you are not Chinese) and may find that follower expectations of indigenous leaders may be very different from their expectations of you. Also, in multicultural groups followers can have very different expectations. Therefore, a better role model is a leader like you (e.g., someone from your own culture) who has been particularly effective with these followers.

The needs of followers are extremely important in determining an individual’s perceptions of leadership. A culturally intelligent leader is able to find a leadership style that strikes a balance between his or her normal style, the expectations of followers, and the demands of the situation. This balance may well be imperfect, a work in progress. As with surfing or skiing or cycling, finding this balance is initially difficult but becomes easier and feels more natural over time.

Summary

In this chapter we introduced culturally intelligent leadership. Influencing others toward goals is difficult in itself, and the dynamics of cross-cultural interactions increase the challenge. Our understanding of leadership is influenced by individuals we envision as great leaders, who share an ability to communicate a vision and to organize followers. In addition, the idea that leaders can exhibit a task or relationship leadership style has a universal appeal. However, the variety of behaviors that leaders around the world exhibit raises questions about any universal approach. Understanding followers’ expectations is a key element in a culturally intelligent approach to leadership. This, plus an individual’s preferred style and the constraints imposed by the situation, provide the three dimensions among which the culturally intelligent leader must find balance. While initially difficult to achieve, this equilibrium becomes easier with the development of the knowledge, mindfulness, and behavioral skills of cultural intelligence.