Decoding Cultural Enigmas For Sustainable Leadership Impact

Authors:

Keywords: Language, Wisdom, Leadership, Culture, Globalization

Abstract: Our Professional Development Workshop is based on the premise that language - and especially critical hard-to-translate terms - reveals deep-seeded assumptions, values, and praxis that are often misread outside of its context. In this sense they can be seen as entranceways into exploring core yet mysterious local wisdoms along with the accompanying best practices that guide life and success with some tantalizing implication for artificial intelligence in global organizations. By combing insights across different language cultures around the globe, these ‘wisdoms of the world’ offer leaders a litany of insights for enlightening understanding, enhancing practice, deepening learning, bridging contexts, and making a sustainable positive impact. Here we a) analyze how language reflects, and guides, leaders’: thinking and understanding (cognition), feelings and motivation (affect), ethics and integrity (character), meaning and mission (purpose), community and connection (coordination), and action and execution (effectiveness) as well as b) explore in what ways might the above illuminate underlying reasons for successes and failures, how outsiders might learn and incorporate these wisdoms, and how they might be used for engaging and working effectively across cultures.