WHY MILITARY OFFICERS ARE FAILING
By Elizabeth Vaughan Moyer February 18, 2020
The prerequisites for cross-cultural leadership are to reflect on and understand one’s own culture, and how it shapes one’s experience.
My first deployment was an excellent leadership lab: I worked side by side with experienced military officers from all branches. This experience sparked my curiosity as to what made one officer exceptional and another a failure. To explore this question, I began by gathering insights from those around me on the attitudes, tools, pitfalls, and successes of great commissioned leaders. One key concept jumped out at me: cross-cultural leadership. While there are many definitions for the concept, it requires cultural learning and agility and its focus is on developing the right skills, knowledge, and abilities to lead effectively across diverse cultures. The prerequisites for cross-cultural leadership are to reflect on and understand one’s own culture, and how it shapes one’s experience. Cross-cultural practice entails appreciating and understanding others’ cultural differences, to gain useful sociocultural context. Cultural agility allows a leader to incorporate that knowledge into daily interactions with diverse stakeholders and to lead successfully. In fact, our current national defense strategy demands it.
https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/why-military-officers-are-failing/
