Leadership in Multinational, Cross-Cultural Teams

Whether you are currently a manager or not, you should now be ready to learn to play a leadership role in a multinational team. Leadership is more than management, and culture greatly affects what is expected of leaders. For instance, some cultures expect their leaders to give directives; others expect them to facilitate so that everyone on the team has a chance for their voice to be heard. No matter which way they lean, you are likely to hear “that’s just the way it’s done” if you try to shake things up. Leadership requires adapting your style to build comfort from team members with different backgrounds than yours while also helping change the narrative for people who don’t want to adapt to your strengths. You need to help others find the levers to pull that work for them to adjust to a cross-cultural environment. As leaders you also need to be constantly learning to prepare for the inevitable changes of the future? By looking into the future, how will different cultures grow, and how will climate change and technology fundamentally alter the line between physical and virtual space. What will all this mean for multinational team leadership in the future?