Beyond Borders and Boardrooms: Transforming Leaders for the World
Disciplinary Grounding
The globalization of business has created unprecedented opportunities and challenges for leaders operating across cultural boundaries. The richness and complexity of culture flow freely into places where business is done, calling on leaders to thoughtfully navigate potential chasms in understanding and expectation. To meet the needs of an increasingly interconnected global workforce, leaders must prepare to tackle these new and potentially difficult circumstances through increased knowledge and an expanded worldview. The capacity to navigate diverse cultural landscapes while maintaining authentic leadership practices is essential for organizations hoping to succeed globally.
Transforming leadership offers a compelling framework for global contexts because of its emphasis on the reciprocal relationship between leaders and followers (Burns, 2003). This approach recognizes leadership as a position of authority and a process of mutual growth and development. When applied across cultural boundaries, transforming leadership has the potential to bridge differences through its focus on shared values, moral purpose, and collective vision. This disciplinary grounding delves into the interplay between cross-cultural competence and transforming leadership. Examining course texts throughout our program gives us insight into leadership practices that resonate across diverse settings. The exploration of this intersection reveals not only how leaders can function in multicultural environments, but also how these environments can serve as chrysalises for profound leadership development and organizational transformation.
Working Cross-Culturally
For companies with an existing global footprint or preparing to transnationalize, it is vital to understand how culture and location impact individuals’ and teams’ ways of working. In her book The Culture Map, Erin Meyer (2016) explores the differences between how work gets done and how people interact based on where they fall on the map. For example, while the US has a very low context communication style, meaning people are more direct with language, China has an extremely high context communication style, meaning that the ability to read the subtext in a conversation is vital (Meyer, 2016). Similarly, some cultures enjoy a more consensual decision-making method, like Sweden, where others reach determinations based on a top-down approach (Meyer, 2016). All of these variances are essential considerations when building strong, multicultural working relationships. They also provide a robust foundation of perspectives on which to innovate. Meyer’s work paints a picture of why culture and location play an integral part in work and how understanding cultural differences can make teams more successful.
Expanding on the same subject matter as Meyer, Bordas (2007) also explores how culture shapes work, communication, and leadership. In her book Salsa, Soul, and Spirit, Bordas (2007) examines how culture can be shared and celebrated. Viewing diversity and the opportunity to work cross-culturally as positive allows leaders and teams to lean into the challenge of breaking down cultural barriers without fear. “When people respect each other and value differences, they can work together more amicably - and more productively” (Bordas, 2007, p. 9). Culture is learned, and therefore, everyone has the capacity to learn about and understand many different cultures. Similarly, Allen (2010) in Difference Matters tackles how cultural differences impact life and work with a keen eye toward gender, race, social class, age, power dynamics, and more. Consider her examination of gender, particularly within organizations; Allen (2010) asserts that gender roles and traditions are consistently reinforced within organizations (p. 50). Among the many elements that influence cross-cultural workplace interactions, varying gender roles and expectations across cultures exemplify the complex intersections leaders must navigate.
On Transforming Leaders
While the expectations of leaders vary between cultures - in terms of decision-making, relationship dynamics, and beyond - traits associated with strong, transforming leadership remain relatively constant. Whether decisions are reached from a consensual or top-down approach, leaders must cultivate trust and alignment among followers. Burns (2003) and Carey (2021) provide a comprehensive overview of transforming leadership, illustrating in detail the picture of a transforming, self-transcendent leader. Burns (2003) describes the term leadership as not simply descriptive but prescriptive, one tied closely to morality and the pursuit of happiness for all people (4:13). Carey (2021) further solidifies the point by explicitly stating that transforming leadership is moral leadership: Moral leadership cannot be decoupled from transforming leadership; they are simply one and the same. From Carey (2021), we learn that transforming leaders identify followers' underlying motivations, address their advanced needs, and connect with them as complete individuals. This creates a dynamic where both leaders and followers inspire and uplift each other, fostering mutual growth and development (Carey, 2021). The benefits of this approach cannot be understated.
Articles by Deng et al. (2022) and Steinmann et al. (2018) speak to the positive outcomes of transforming leadership. Expanding on the sentiments of Deng et al. (2022), the authors note that evidence suggests that employee engagement, trust, motivation, and empowerment all improve under transformational leadership. Steinmann et al. (2018) also discuss a leader's ability to impact goal attainability by both guiding their followers to believe the goal is, in fact, attainable and also by influencing a follower's drive to explore alternative avenues and resources for attaining that goal. Leaders are simultaneously reinforcing someone’s confidence that they can accomplish something they set out to do, as well as empowering them to grow through self-motivation and self-efficacy (Steinmann et al., 2018). As accomplishments and opportunities increase, so too does satisfaction - a virtuous cycle by which the leaders' influence is reinforced as positive and transforming. Because the method of transforming leadership, ideally, creates a virtuous cycle for all parties, its application is universal, and it provides the perfect framework for intercultural teams at any scale.
Transforming Leadership in Cross-Cultural Contexts
The cornerstone of a transforming leader is the ability to connect with people separate from transactional or hierarchical circumstances. Jones (2010) explores the critical issue of connecting logos and mythos to form a strong foundation for transforming leadership: Logos, meaning the voice of reason, and mythos, meaning our shared human experience (2010). My interpretation is that logos, in the absence of mythos, creates a world where hierarchy and roles reign supreme over human connection, empathy, and transformation. For Jones (2010), the mythic life is connected to culture: Food, art, music, and more. While these cultural elements might not be the subject of every day-to-day, even in a multicultural working environment, they nevertheless demand attention from leaders who want to engage in transformation.
Connectedness between people and the ability to bridge that connectedness to logic is critical. Essentially, Jones puts forth that:
All this presents a new worldview for the leader/artist that transforms leadership. It connects the richness of the mythic past to the mythic present, as a place not just to return to but to grow out from. Leadership from this perspective creates a new marriage between mythos and logos; in so doing it links ancient wisdom and modern thought and thinks them together again.
Leaders' focus needs to shift from fixed boundaries and processes to a broader awareness that accounts for culture, energy, and collective flow (Jones, 2010). This balance creates the space for transformation and transforming leadership. Jones’ sentiments pair nicely with Bordas's (2007) abovementioned thoughts, which express that culture and work are irrevocably tied to one another. It is the path that leaders choose to either embrace or ignore culture that informs their success in cross-cultural contexts. Transforming leaders, opting to embrace diversity as power, will delight in more successful global organizations and multicultural places of work.
Rationale
This interactive framework delivers practical tools for developing global leadership competencies while remaining adaptable to diverse organizational contexts and needs. The website-hosted presentation deck format maximizes adaptability and scalability. By establishing this digital foundation, the program can be readily accessed, customized, and deployed without significant technical barriers. This approach offers me the strategic advantage of incremental enhancement, allowing for thoughtful expansion of both content depth and delivery mechanisms as needs evolve. The inherent flexibility of maintaining dual virtual and in-person delivery capabilities ensures the training remains relevant regardless of geographical constraints, team distribution patterns, or unexpected disruptions to traditional learning environments. Plus, a website is the perfect location to host other elements required by our capstone experience. It is the perfect marriage of form and functionality for this course and beyond.
References
Allen, B. (2010). Difference matters: Communicating social identity (2nd ed.). Waveland Press.
Bordas, J. (2007). Salsa, soul, and spirit: Leadership for a multicultual age. Berrett Koehler.
Burns, J. (2003). Transforming leadership: A new pursuit of happiness [Audiobook]. Atlantic Monthly Press.
Carey, M.R. (2021). The practice of leadership. Canvas. Gonzaga University.
Deng, C., Gulseren, D., Isola, C., Grocutt, K., & Turner, N. (2022). Transformational leadership effectiveness: an evidence-based primer. Human Resource Development International, 26(5), 627–641. https://doi.org/10.1080/13678868.2022.2135938
Jones, M. (2010). The marriage of logos and mythos: Transforming leadership. Journal of Leadership Studies, 4(3). DOI:10.1002/jls.20181
Kozai Group (2025). Intercultural effectiveness scale. https://www.kozaigroup.com/intercultural-assessment/
Meyer, E. (2016). The culture map. PublicAffairs.
Steinmann, B., Klug, H. J. P., & Maier, G. W. (2018). The path is the goal: How transformational leaders enhance followers' job attitudes and proactive behavior. Frontiers in psychology, 9(2338). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02338