Cultural Self-Awareness and Its Impact on Leadership Effectiveness

This essay explores the critical role of cultural self-awareness in leadership and its impact on organizational success. It defines self-awareness, emphasizing its importance for individual growth and psychological maturity. The essay highlights how cultural intelligence and self-awareness enable managers and leaders to understand and respect diverse cultural backgrounds, fostering effective communication and collaboration within teams. It also discusses how cultural self-awareness helps in self-motivation, skill development, and the ability to adapt to changing work environments. The paper emphasizes the benefits of cultural self-awareness for managers, team leaders, and administrators, including improved decision-making, conflict resolution, and the ability to build strong cross-cultural teams, ultimately contributing to enhanced organizational performance. Various scholarly sources are cited to support the arguments presented in the essay.

Running head:CULTURAL
Cultural
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1CULTURAL
Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
References........................................................................................................................................6

2CULTURAL
Introduction
Self-awareness can be defined as the constant attention that is given to an individual. It
also refers to reflective awareness of an individual where mind plays an important role in
examining and observing the experience with different types of emotions. It can be said that
manifestation of self-awareness and self-development is often seen in real life situations. It is
essential to develop self awareness because it helps the individuals to grow in different stages of
life and thus get the desired psychological maturity that is related to other individuals. The
cultural self awareness plays a vital role in the life of the individuals because it helps in
individual bonding and people with different cultural background can understand the cultural
values and thus respect one another. It can be said that cultural intelligence is necessary for an
individual to develop self-awareness and this refers to the capacity and ability of the person to
adjust to a new cultural setting for people with different cultural backgrounds. The individuals
with high cultural intelligence must be in harmony with the cultural norms, morale, attitude and
body language of the people.
In certain cases, self-awareness is defined as the process of reasoning that is associated
with high level of integration associated with the experiences of an individual and realism. The
interaction between the different stages of cognitive part of emotion and mind will help in
producing the desired outcome that is associated with an individual. Moreover, self-awareness
also enables an individual in the determination of future state that will guide and help the
individuals to set the goals for future. The paper will highlight the importance of self-awareness
in the development of cultural intelligence among the managers, team leaders and administrators.

3CULTURAL
It can be said that in different aspects of an individual’s life each person has their
individual way of doing their task. An example can be cited of a manager about his/her
individual career and how it will be subjected to production. The manager must also have the
capacity to interact with other people in the organization because there might be people from
different cultural backgrounds and it is important to adapt with them accordingly. It is important
for the managers to carry out cultural self-awareness check so that they can succeed in the
organization. This will help in motivating the managers and knowing their cultural self-
development progress in their profession so that they can rectify their problems
(Tomalin&Stempleski, 2013). The role of manager is changing continuously and the managers
must adapt to the changes so that they can manage uncertain work environment and complex
situations in the organization.
According to me, I think self-awareness will help an individual to develop continuously
and it is essential for the success of any individual. This helps in inspiring the population to a
large extent and if the individual is motivated, they can motivate other individuals and this will
help them to manage things in the right way (Tomalin & Stempleski, 2013). The ability of the
people to work with multitude of people from varied cultural backgrounds constitutes the
cultural background of the people. It can be said that self-developmentis based on self-awareness
test and thus it helps in the development of skills of the individuals. Livermore, Van Dyne &
Ang (2012) predicted that cultural intelligence is transformative and inward journey of cultural
information that includes a keen understanding of the contextual factors in the organization.This
has tried to shed light on the different ways that has helped in molding the culture and thus is
regarded as part of culture in the organization. The author has also stated that the relationships
and perceptions that are shaped by different cultural backgrounds. This kind of thought will help

4CULTURAL
to shape individual culture that plays a vital role in shaping cultural intelligence (Livermore, Van
Dyne, &Ang, 2012).
Cultural self-awareness also results in self-motivation and self-development based on the
experiences of the individuals that will help in working with different groups of people. It will
also help people to realize their individual strength so that it becomes easier to deal with people
from different cultural backgrounds (MacNab, &Worthley, 2012). It is necessary to recognize
the strength and weakness of the people that will help in the management of the organization.
Moreover, self-awareness test is also necessary and responsible for the managers who are trying
to manage their subjects for the people with different cultural backgrounds. It can be said that the
self-awareness test will help people to achieve and fulfill their own goals and thus managing
their own life (Mirsky, 2013).
It can be said that cultural self-awareness helps in checking the incessant and the self-
development progress helps the leaders to develop their own behaviors and subjects that are
regarded appropriate in the workplace(Tomalin&Stempleski, 2013). This will give the managers
a proper outcome of the anticipations and it will also help in the development of cultural and
behavioural changes in the work environment (Robbins, Judge, Millett, & Boyle, 2013).Self-
awareness also helps the individuals to perceive and investigate the various kinds of transactional
activities in the work environment that involves different kinds of people in the organization.
This will help the individuals to embrace cultural intelligence by allowing people to develop
their professional goals and careers. Thus, it can be said that cultural self-awareness will help the
people to study the manners, rituals and philosophies among the different people and thus it will
help in comprehending the likelihood that will affect the people (Mirsky, 2013).

5CULTURAL
Cultural self-awareness will help to make people intelligent and this can be done by
increasing the fortes, disappointments, objectives, emotions and morals of the people (Erez et al.,
2013). This will enable to comprehend the conflicts and pressures from the people with different
cultural backgrounds. This will also help to solve the varied cultural issues that will not affect the
other party. It will also allow people to develop cultural intelligence that will help in the
development of team bonding across cross-cultural teams (Toamlin & Stempleski, 2013)
Conclusion
Thus, it can be said that it is impossible to define globalism without highlighting the
cultural issues of the individuals. The organizations must also emphasize on the cross cultural
trade relations that will help the people from different cultural backgrounds to seek cultural
intelligence. The success of an organization is dependent on the unity among the stakeholders in
the organization and thus they can deal effectively and efficiently with one another. Therefore, it
is important to become conscious and aware of an individual’s judgment, principles, attitudes
and social values among the people from varied ethnic group in which cultural self-awareness
plays a vital role.

6CULTURAL
References
Erez, M., Lisak, A., Harush, R., Glikson, E., Nouri, R., & Shokef, E. (2013).Academy of
Management Learning & Education, 12(3), 330-355.
Livermore, D., Van Dyne, L., &Ang, S. (2012). Cultural Intelligence: Why every leader needs
it. Intercultural Management Quarterly, 13(2), 18-21.
MacNab, B. R., &Worthley, R. (2012).. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 36(1),
62-71.
Mirsky, J. (2013). Getting to Know the Piece of Fluff in Our Ears: Expanding Practitioners'
Cultural Self-Awareness. Social Work Education, 32(5), 626-638.
Robbins, S., Judge, T. A., Millett, B., & Boyle, M. (2013). OrganizationalBehavior. Pearson
Higher Education AU.
Tomalin, B., &Stempleski, S. (2013). Cultural Awareness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Van Dyne, L., Ang, S., Ng, K. Y., Rockstuhl, T., Tan, M. L., & Koh, C. (2012).. Social and
Personality Psychology Compass, 6(4), 295-313.