Content area
Full Text
Abstract
In today's fast-paced and ever-changing global context, there is great need for culturally adaptive skill leaders. The Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School Leadership Development Program for Multicultural and Multinational Leaders is an academic program with a focus on the development of cross-culturally competent leaders. This article describes the evolution of the program from a regional focus to a national focus to a global one and the curricular aspects of the program that distinguish the program from traditional leadership programs.
Keywords: Leadership development; teaching and learning; cross cultural competence
Johns Hopkins Carey LDP - the Early Years
There is a great need for culturally adaptive leaders in this ever-changing global context. Individuals can be shaped through academic, professional, or community-based leadership programs and experiences all of which can contribute to successful leadership development. The global drive to prepare culturally cognizant leaders who are able to learn and acquire facilitative culturally competent skills and practices is increasingly found in K-12 educational systems, community programs, as well as in post-secondary contexts. Examples include cultural exchange programs, study abroad programs, as well as certificate or degree-earning international education programs. These educational efforts to increase cross-cultural competence are based both in the United States and abroad and exist alongside corporate-based programs offered by multinational companies and such recognizable programs as the Global Mindset at Thunderbird, INSEAD Global Leadership Centre, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation in Africa, and external leadership curriculum partnerships by Fudan University in Shanghai, China, with a number of universities. The Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School Leadership Development Program for Multicultural and Multinational Leaders (LDP), a postsecondary academic learning program housed within a university business school, is one such program. The LDP combines traditional business coursework with integrative seminars and a team-based comprehensive project -together these learning opportunities contribute to the development of cross-culturally competent leaders.
A primary driver for the introduction of curricula-driven approaches is the need to foster understanding and to increase knowledge about cultures, diverse leadership traits and strategies, and to spur methodologies for recognizing and working with individual and organizational capacities to embrace ever-present change. The second driver is that the LDP brings together solution generating skills, global perspectives and issues through community and policy, and networked leadership practice for application...