APG5471 Leadership in intercultural environments

Global interconnections, transnational flows, and fluid information require today's leaders to be equipped with specific skills hardly acquired through mere international experience. Traditionally, leadership effectiveness is grounded in embracing differences in order to transform challenges triggered by diversity in organisational strengths. More recently, global leadership has been defined as the process of influencing followers from multiple cultures to adopt a shared vision through structures and methods that facilitate positive change in a context characterized by significant levels of global complexity and connectivity.

While intercultural training is nowadays common in business environment, 21st-century graduates as future global leaders must be given opportunities to combine their experience of cultural diversity at home or abroad with targeted education. Addressing current needs of graduates in terms of intercultural competence, this unit focusses the ability to connect with people across similarities, as well as to adapt and adjust across differences. The unit will analyse hurdles to, and strategies towards inclusive leadership.