{"id":601,"date":"2013-10-24T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-24T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beta.dminlgp.com\/?p=601"},"modified":"2014-08-13T21:55:43","modified_gmt":"2014-08-13T21:55:43","slug":"leading-in-a-globalized-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/leading-in-a-globalized-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading in a Globalized World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two questions:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Where was tempura invented?<\/li>\n<li>Where was the Caesar salad invented?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>If you answered Japan and Italy, you are of course wrong.\u00a0 The correct answers are Portugal and Tijuana, Mexico.\u00a0 Portugese missionaries brought tempura to Japan in the 16<sup>th<\/sup>\u00a0century.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the Caesar salad was birthed by American-Italians who opened a restaurant in Mexico during prohibition so they could still sell alcohol to hungry and thirsty San Diegans.<\/p>\n<p>The idea of globalization is actually nothing new.\u00a0 Cultures and peoples have been mixing, meeting and creating new things and tribes for a long time. I can trace my family history back to the Viking invasions and settlements of Normandy at the turn of the last millennium.\u00a0 They would eventually become French, then American by accidental travel.\u00a0 Tribes and tongues bumping in to each other creating evolution and change.\u00a0 What is new is now the intensification and rapidity of globalization.\u00a0 Through technology, the lowering of political, trade and work barriers, and the ability to travel anywhere in the world combined with a truly global economy, the world is fully connected to itself, everywhere all the time.\u00a0 As Bono sang on the cusp of the techno-global world in 1993, \u201cFaraway, so close.\u00a0 Up with the static and the radio.\u00a0 With satellite television, you can go anywhere: Miami, New Orleans, London, Belfast and Berlin.\u201d\u00a0 Sociologist Roland Robertson offers up one of the more cogent definitions of globalization as the \u201ccompression of the world\u201d specifically through \u201cthe interpenetration of what are conventionally called the global and the local\u2026 and the linking of localities. (30-35)\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Our reality is that in our work, life, family, and even church settings we will come into contact with other cultures. Houston, Texas for example is now the most diverse city in the US, surpassing both LA and New York. \u00a0Increasingly, as Christians and Christian organizations we must begin to think how to lead in this setting.\u00a0 I work for a global organization.\u00a0 I have one director who is Spanish, another whom is Irish (and his director is from New Zealand).\u00a0 My wife and I lead a team of people from Spain, Catalunya, Argentina, Columbia, the US and Lithuania.<\/p>\n<p>Manfred Kets de Vries in his expansive\u00a0<em>The Leadership Mystique: Leading Behavior in the Human Enterprise\u00a0<\/em>tackles the broad topic of modern leadership from both the perspective of psychoanalysis and management.\u00a0 De Vries defines leadership as showing \u201cfellow travelers the way by walking ahead (2).\u201d Moreover, he claims that the role of a leader is twofold: charismatic and architectural.\u00a0 Simple enough, but de Vries goes on to expound how this definition can play out in our modern global world of discontinuity and neurosis.\u00a0 Particularly, he delves into the factors that will delineate good global (cross-cultural) leadership.\u00a0 Here de Vries centers on the need for global leaders to be essentially, anthropologists.\u00a0 They must understand culture, and not only the cultures of others, but their own as well.\u00a0 Ultimately, a global leader will know how to bring teams of varying cultures together<\/p>\n<p>Culture is the key here.\u00a0 After reading de Vries, extrapolating the future of world global Christianity, and reflecting on my own experiences in missions and American evangelical life, I am convinced that the Christian leader of the future (whether they are in Midland, TX or Juba, Sudan) needs to have a strong cross-cultural\/anthropological element to their core competencies. They need to understand culture, how it works, and they must have strong theological understanding of culture. Most of all, they must learn how to read and understand cultures, and be able to find ways to work through the barriers to meaning that culture can create without antagonizing.<\/p>\n<p>This is a delicate balance for sure, and one that I am still very much learning.\u00a0 But, more and more I am amazed by people in my own organization (and others) who will travel far and wide to work and minister in cross cultural contexts with little or no concern to the cultural context and barriers they will encounter.\u00a0 It seems that in seminaries and organizational training, cultural awareness and intelligence are an afterthought in building the leader of the future.<\/p>\n<p>As such, and in reflection on my one life intersected with de Vries, I would like to offer some important aspects of being a good global leader.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Always be Learning:\u00a0<\/strong>Never go into a cross-cultural situation without taking the time to learn and prepare beforehand.\u00a0 Learn about the culture, and the history of the people.\u00a0 I find that\u00a0<em>Lonely Planet\u00a0<\/em>guidebooks do a great job of summarizing key aspects of culture.\u00a0 Watch movies and listen to music from that country.\u00a0 Know what sports they enjoy, their food, and the famous people or contributions the culture has made to the world.\u00a0 This will also open doors for you as well, as people will appreciate that you know about them.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Love Cultures:<\/strong>\u00a0This can be really hard.\u00a0 But, we need to learn to love and appreciate the cultures that we get to work with.\u00a0 We need to remember that culture is ultimately neutral, and has both positive and negative elements (depending on our perspective).\u00a0 We must appreciate the different perspectives that other cultures afford us in seeing and understanding the world.\u00a0 When we come up against cultural difficulties, we need to be able to hold on to the positive of the culture to work through the barriers.\u00a0 God loves the diversity of all his people\u2019s cultures.\u00a0 We need to cultivate a love for cultures.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Learn the Cultural Leadership Style:<\/strong>\u00a0This is probably the most important, especially if you ultimately want to get anything done.\u00a0 Learn what the expectations and understanding of a leader is in the cultures you are working with, and attempt to adapt as much as possible.\u00a0 In Spain, leadership is often understood and tainted by a strong, top down, boss mentality.\u00a0 As we felt that this was not going to be our style, nor was it something we felt was modeled in Christ, we attempted to find other cultural leadership forms that would speak to the hearts of Spanish staff.<\/li>\n<li><strong>It is Going to Be Messy, So Go Slow and Be Patient:\u00a0<\/strong>Working and leading cross-culturally is not easy, and we will make a ton of mistakes.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Roland Robertson, \u201cGlocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity,\u201d in<em>\u00a0Global Modernities,<\/em>\u00a0ed. Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson (London: Sage Publications, 1995), 25-44.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two questions: Where was tempura invented? Where was the Caesar salad invented? If you answered Japan and Italy, you are of course wrong.\u00a0 The correct answers are Portugal and Tijuana, Mexico.\u00a0 Portugese missionaries brought tempura to Japan in the 16th\u00a0century.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the Caesar salad was birthed by American-Italians who opened a restaurant in Mexico during [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,246],"class_list":["post-601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-ketsdevries","cohort-lgp3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1937,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601\/revisions\/1937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}