Читать книгу Developing Cultural Adaptability: How to Work Across Differences - Jennifer Deal J. - Страница 8

What Is Cultural Adaptability?

Today’s global workplace is more diverse and complex than ever before. When organizations have business units, customers, and employees scattered around the world, managers find they must work across time, distance, and cultures. To build and maintain relationships that allow them to work effectively with others in such circumstances, managers have to figure out what the differences and similarities are between them and others with whom they work. Those differences affect expectations, approaches to work, views of authority, and other issues. They make managerial work more complex, and call for a new kind of flexibility for handling differences and change – cultural adaptability.

Cultural adaptability is the willingness and ability to recognize, understand, and work effectively across cultures. It presumes that such interactions will have successful outcomes (tasks are completed, goals are met, and the people involved are satisfied with their professional relationships). The implication for managers who want to be or remain successful is clear. Cultural adaptability is an essential competency for leading in a global environment.