(64a) Global Communication: Achieving Understanding in Any Culture

Global leadership research confirms leaders must possess three dynamic, overlapping and reinforcing competencies: Personal & Organizational Credibility Mobilizing Internal and External Resources Moving Forward Towards the Same Ends My fifteen years of research concerning leadership communication indicates that communication is a shadow companion of all these competencies. As the illustration indicates, communication permeates all these leadership actions and functions. Many researchers show that when a leader fails at a competency, the communication component is the first to fail. For example, recent research by the International Association of Business Communicators show that when leaders fail at vision or strategy, roughly two-thirds of their constituents claim the failure isn't lacking a vision or strategy, but the inability to communicate it clearly or in a compelling manner. In my session I would show through a dynamic, interactive session that all leaders in all cultures must learn how to communicate across three channels to defeat this competency failure. These channels are: Facts Emotions Symbols My work with engineering and software firms (such as Intel, Microsoft, Symantec, Sage, Nortel, and AT&T) shows that even when it comes to the factual channel, some engineering managers struggle to get their message across. The People Side of Project Management is concerned about successful project management across cultures. Communicating clearly across cultures is a vital area to explore and in my session I would focus my remarks about how to make facts, emotions, and symbols (illustrations, metaphors, stories, case studies) work across cultures.