Grounding Leadership Curriculla in Culture

by Elmer S. Soriano

 

Many leadership programs are based on western leadership concepts and books. Authors like Heifetz, Scharmer, and Greenleaf are among the more popular western leadership authors and their concepts have made their way into mainstream MBA and masters in public administration curricula.

The problem is that many of these concepts from the top authors are too post-modern for many learners to comprehend.

It is up to leadership course designers to adapt leadership concepts to culturally-compatible instructional designs that take advantage of the existing wisdom already within a culture or organization.

Below are Levels of Instructional Adaptation for Leadership adapted from Caldwell.
 
Level 1 - Limited

• lecturing concepts straight out of a textbook authored in a different cultural context
• minimal translation to mother-tongue
• teaching and measuring leadership solely from foreign author's framework

Level 2 - Minimal

• Teaching in the mother-tongue of the learners
• understanding learner's felt needs, life questions and specific history
• discovering their worldview presuppositions
• transliterating foreign concepts to rough equivalents in mother-tongue

Level 3 - Mid-level

• understanding how their formal and informal educational systems work
• anchoring lessons and concepts in real-world Leadership Lab projects
• learning how they react to and interpret different kinds of information
• discovering their methods of perceiving, interpreting, and evaluating issues

Level 4 - Maximal

• telling stories in culturally appropriate ways
• communicating leadership concepts in culturally appropriate ways
• dialoging with local oral and written organizational or sacred texts

 Source: Adapted from Larry W. Caldwell (20__)

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