GB526 Unit 10 Leadership Development Report Example

From National Averages to Seven Real People: A Unit 10 Leadership Development Report

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

GB526: Global Management and Leadership

Unit 10 Leadership Development Report

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, the team and its members are composite; the research and sources cited are real.

Part 1: What the Term Showed

Three findings from the term's work shape this plan.

Knowledge ahead of behavior. My cultural intelligence self-assessment showed a high score for knowledge of other cultures and a low score for adjusting my behavior, and recordings of my meetings confirmed it: I spoke most of the time, waited only briefly for answers and asked some colleagues for their views far less than others.

Treating colleagues as averages. In the cultural analysis and case work, I found myself predicting how a person would behave from their country's scores. When I compared those predictions with what my team members actually did, many were wrong. A Romanian engineer I had expected to be formal is the most informal person on the team; a Mexican engineer I had expected to defer to me disagrees with me more than anyone.

Process over tools. The seminars showed me that I reach for tools, such as polls and templates, when the problem is how and when I consult people.

Part 2: How Global Leaders Develop

McCall and Hollenbeck (2002) interviewed global executives about how they learned to lead across borders and found that most of the learning came from experience: demanding assignments, difficult relationships and mistakes, rather than from training alone. Their advice for developing global leaders is to choose experiences deliberately and to reflect on them with help.

Osland and Bird (2000) argue that cultural generalizations are useful as first hypotheses but harmful when treated as conclusions. They call the latter sophisticated stereotyping: using a framework to predict an individual's behavior without checking. They recommend sensemaking, in which a manager notices behavior that does not fit expectations, asks what it means in context and revises the hypothesis.

The plan below treats each team member's preferences as a hypothesis I hold until the person shows me otherwise, not as a fact derived from their passport.

Ang et al. (2007) found that the behavioral factor of cultural intelligence predicted performance in cross-cultural settings, which confirms that my weakest area is the one most worth developing.

Part 3: The Plan for My Team

My team builds data pipelines for a composite bank's risk reporting. It has seven members besides me, though I describe roles rather than personal details.

1. Senior engineer, Charlotte. Hypothesis: prefers direct debate and fast decisions, which suits my own style and may lead me to rely on this person too much. Step: ask this engineer to hold back in design meetings until others have spoken, and give the role of summarizing decisions rather than making them.

2. Engineer, Charlotte. Hypothesis: new to the team and quiet in large meetings. Step: weekly one-on-ones for three months and a named role in one design review.

3. Lead engineer, Guadalajara. Hypothesis: comfortable disagreeing with me directly, contrary to my early expectation, and respected by the Guadalajara engineers. Step: make this person the decision owner for the team's testing framework and consult them before decisions affecting Guadalajara.

4. Engineer, Guadalajara. Hypothesis: prefers to raise concerns with the lead engineer first rather than with me. Step: respect that channel and ask the lead engineer to bring concerns forward, while offering private time if wanted.

5. Engineer, Guadalajara. Hypothesis: interested in moving into data architecture and underused. Step: pair with the Charlotte senior engineer on the next architecture change.

6. Lead engineer, Cluj-Napoca. Hypothesis: informal and quick to share views in writing but reluctant to commit to dates in meetings. Step: ask for estimates in writing a day before planning meetings.

7. Engineer, Cluj-Napoca. Hypothesis: technically strong but working in a second language and slower to contribute in fast discussion. Step: send discussion questions in advance and use the chat during meetings for written contributions.

My Own Development

Following McCall and Hollenbeck's emphasis on experience, I will seek three experiences over the next year:

Time on site. Spend two weeks each in Guadalajara and Cluj-Napoca, working from the local office rather than visiting for meetings.

A stretch assignment. Lead the migration of our largest pipeline, which requires coordinating all three sites under deadline pressure.

A reflective partner. Meet monthly with a mentor in the bank who has led teams across Latin America and Europe, to review incidents where my expectations were wrong.

I will also keep the behavioral changes from my self-assessment: waiting longer after questions, asking people by name with notice and speaking less.

Habits to Drop

Growth here also requires giving some things up. I will stop opening design meetings by presenting my own preferred solution, which tends to end the discussion before it starts, especially for engineers who defer to the person running the meeting. I will stop reading silence on video calls as agreement and will follow up privately with anyone who has not spoken on a decision that affects their work. I will stop sending long messages late in the Charlotte day that arrive in Cluj-Napoca overnight and frame the next morning's work before anyone there has had a chance to respond. Each of these habits came from working with people like me, and each makes the team less able to use what its other members know.

Measures and Review

I will review recorded meetings every two months, counting how often each team member speaks and how often I interrupt. I will ask each team member for brief, private feedback twice a year. I will revisit each hypothesis in Part 3 after three months and record whether it held, changed or proved wrong. The measure I care about most is whether the team's quieter members contribute more to design decisions, which I will track by who proposes and who owns each decision.

Risks

The main risk is reverting to old habits under deadline pressure, especially during the migration. A second risk is that my hypotheses about individuals become new stereotypes. Writing them down and reviewing them is meant to prevent that. A third is that site visits and mentoring are cut when budgets tighten, so I will agree them with my director now.

Conclusion

The term taught me that frameworks describe nations, but I lead individuals. This plan keeps the frameworks as a source of questions, builds hypotheses about seven real people and commits me to experiences and measures, and the test after twelve months will be changed behavior rather than wider reading.

References

Ang, S., Van Dyne, L., Koh, C., Ng, K. Y., Templer, K. J., Tay, C., & Chandrasekar, N. A. (2007). Cultural intelligence: Its measurement and effects on cultural judgment and decision making, cultural adaptation and task performance. Management and Organization Review, 3(3), 335-371. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-8784.2007.00082.x

McCall, M. W., Jr., & Hollenbeck, G. P. (2002). Developing global executives: The lessons of international experience. Harvard Business School Press.

Osland, J. S., & Bird, A. (2000). Beyond sophisticated stereotyping: Cultural sensemaking in context. Academy of Management Perspectives, 14(1), 65-77. https://doi.org/10.5465/ame.2000.2909840