Prof. John Yang: Cross-Cultural Leadership Critical in VUCA World

Dec 20-2022   

For Chinese enterprises, the efforts to build overseas business must go hand in hand with improvement in leadership and management in cross-cultural environments, said Prof. John Yang in an interview with a magazine affiliated with the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council. He is NSD’s professor of management and former Co-dean of BiMBA Business School.

Prof. Yang’s long-term focus on cross-cultural leadership led to the creation of a dedicated forum at the NSD in June 2017, which has since been held for over 60 times. By probing cultural idiosyncrasies, convictions and hypotheses across nations and ethnicities, participants of the forum get to examine and compare different thinking modes and enhance their cultural sensitivity and cross-cultural IQ, all of which contribute to their gains in cross-cultural capabilities for communications, exchanges, and management. This is particularly relevant to Chinese companies and multinationals with global presence.

Against the backdrop of global VUCA landscapes, Prof. Yang proposed ‘Three Meta Leadership’ paradigm, which enables entrepreneurs to build cross-cultural leadership by cultivating the power of thoughts, the power of professionalism, and the power of character. The first one, thought leadership, can be extended and expanded into four dimensions: mission, vision, values, and thinking modes. To achieve the second one, leadership of professionalism, entrepreneurs must learn to be highly efficient in decision making, powerful in motivating others, dedicated to craftsmanship, and determined to reform and innovate. As for the leadership of character, Prof. Yang emphasized integrity, probity, reliability, and courage, among others.

He reminded that there is no one size fits all in leadership, which means entrepreneurs must learn to grow with the changing world and remain perseverant and proactive.