Leader Development across Cultures

Too many school leader development products currently doing the rounds in East Asia are grounded in a set of cultural assumptions about what leadership means according to Anglo-American English speaking ideals. When such perspectives and programs are used presumptuously with leaders from other cultures, whose values may be quite different, their impact on understanding and practice can range from minimal to confounding. Leadership is constructed within a social milieu comprised of multiple, overlapping, and constantly shifting contextual factors. The meaning of the word leader across different societies therefore carries different historical, economic, cultural, and political connotations that influence both what leaders do and how they do it. In this article, the author discusses leader development across cultures and shares four interrelated implications of leader development. He concludes that when discussing anything to do with culture one must avoid the raw dichotomization of cultures and societies and one should not overlook the powerful effect of personality and other contextual variables.