This is a YouTube sizzle-reel style interview featuring Paula Caligiuri, PhD (distinguished professor at Northeastern University, founder/CEO of Skillify, and author). The clip focuses on the gap in global organizations: while diversity & inclusion efforts emphasize understanding differences, Paula stresses the complementary need for cultural agility — competencies that let people be comfortable and effective across countries, cultures, generations and functions. She defines cultural agility and advises using any intercultural interaction as an opportunity to learn others' values and perspectives.
Chapters
Paula Caliggiari is a distinguished professor at Northeastern University, founder and CEO of Skillify, author of Build you'd Cultural Agility, and an expert on multicultural teamwork.
What is the number one thing you need to deliver for the future of your global organization? Number one thing, they had to deliver great global leaders. The thing they said they did least. Well, you got it. Developing great global leaders, especially in this.
Whole diversity and inclusion world, you know, we're all thinking about, you know, sincerely thinking about differences, you know, like, okay, what do I need to know about the other person from his or her lens? Which is. Which is important. But that's like one half of the equation. The other half of the equation is the competencies you bring to that new situation, to that situation of being in a multicultural environment. Cultural agility is the ability we as humans have to be comfortable and effective. And different countries, but also with people from different cultures. And those cultures could be people of different generations, different functional areas.
So if you think about individuals, individuals have differences, and how we react to being in different intercultural or multicultural experiences and what type of experiences really do help us move the needle on global leadership development.
It's the idea of understanding the context and understanding how you're going to look through the eyes of the other person. Use any opportunity that you have to interact with someone from another culture, another generation, any context that's different from your own. Use any one of those opportunities to really learn what his or her values are.
