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This chapter begins with an overview of the concept of intercultural competence and its fundamental role in our global society. Using examples of inquiry-based learning (IBL) methods as a means to provide interdisciplinary pedagogies that foster learners’ intercultural competence development, this chapter examines innovative approaches to respond to this global community need in the academic context. With a review of interdisciplinary IBL methods, the chapter centers on the following three principal areas: (1) role of IBL and service-learning (SL) in the development of intercultural competence within an interdisciplinary framework, (2) practical examples of how the author implements IBL using cooperative learning strategies and SL into humanities courses that consist of students from various disciplines ranging from health to political sciences for intercultural competence development, and (3) challenges and benefits of SL programs as forms of IBL.

As graduates in higher education engage with multiple constituencies from around the world, having cultural competency skills is valuable. Intercultural competence enables people to initiate and sustain dialogues among their diverse colleagues and members of the globalized community. In this chapter, Barger examines the role of dialogue education in attaining intercultural competency in graduate courses. According to Vella, dialogue education values inquiry, integrity, and commitment to equity. People should treat others with respect and recognize their knowledge and experience within the community of learning. Dialogue education provides a safe and inclusive place for learners to voice their perspectives and opinions. This chapter utilizes a professor’s reflections with respect to teaching a graduate Intercultural Communication (IC) course in a private liberal-arts college. In the narrative, she discusses teaching and learning strategies to help adult learners understand the importance of intercultural competence and interactions in a multicultural and multilingual world. Barger also examines the integrative reflections of graduate students that took the IC course.

Students entering higher education often lack a sense of cultural awareness and a basic understanding of what diversity, multiculturalism, and intercultural competence (ICC) have to do with their future goals. Ironically, student populations tend to be diverse in and of themselves. Yet the critical element that is often missing is their ability to interact across these differences, to confront (and engage with) their discomfort in the face of something new and unfamiliar. Getting students to overcome this discomfort so that meaningful learning and critical skill-building can take place is challenging for a number of reasons. Students are typically more motivated to expend effort in a course if they can recognize and appreciate the value and relevance that the material may have on other areas of their lives, most notably their professional pursuits. This appreciation can best be cemented though the use of active, rather than passive, learning strategies. This chapter introduces strategies for the intentional design of a classroom environment that will engage students and promote the development of ICC. Activities and assignments designated as promoting the accumulation of specific knowledge (K), the development of particular skills (S), or the exploration of certain attitudes (A) are shared.

In this chapter, we attempt to establish global leadership broadly and intercultural competence specifically as constructs of leadership that are essential in the global context and accessible and applicable within the Eastern and Central European context. We examine several international studies of global leadership and cultural differences and highlight the patterns of culturally bounded values and behaviours that can be found in Eastern and Central Europe. We also explore the dimension of intercultural competence, its development, and share two case studies where intercultural competence was either enacted or needed in an Eastern or Central European context. Finally, we share different frames that can and/or have been employed to examine glonal leadership in Eastern or Central Europe. By looking at the cultural differences that have been uncovered in the region and the concept of intercultural competence as foundational to success, we can see that leaders aspiring to global leadership work in this region can find the dimensions of global leadership that will support their goals. The development of intercultural competence specifically and global leadership acumen broadly can be a topic for a different chapter in a different volume.

Recent development shows increasing international trade and across-borders investment as well as growing bilateral and multilateral free-trade agreement among the Asian countries. This is resulting in more and more Asian (and global) organizations facing increasingly culturally diverse groups to manage and to deal with. Hence, it indicates the need for systematic development of intercultural competence and sensitivity for Asian leaders. This study attempts to apply an indigenous approach to deal with the underdeveloped systematic knowledge for non-Western societies and the lack of practices to develop global Asian leaders. A series of 110 interviews with Chinese, Indonesian, and Singaporean international assignees and their local coworkers was conducted in China and Indonesia. More than half of the interviewees were business leaders and senior executives, while the others were mostly at mid-management levels. All interviews were recorded and fully transcribed in their original languages. Grounded Theory analysis was applied to analyze the interview data, supported by the computer-based QDA software Atlas.ti. Our result suggests that Asians are both neighbors and strangers. In spite of our closer physical proximity, many Asians are less prepared to interact with each other than with Westerners. As the number of Asian expats working within Asia grows, there is a need for more applied research to help prepare companies and individuals to overcome the challenges and capitalize on the potential of intra-Asia collaboration.

Canadian postsecondary institutions are increasing their emphasis on internationalization, sending many students abroad and welcoming students from far and wide onto their campuses. Also, Canadian organizations and multinational corporations have an increasingly diverse workforce. These trends require postsecondary institutions to prepare students adequately for this global village of the 21st century. At the University of Victoria’s (UVic’s) Co-operative Education Program and Career Services, we have created a strategy to help develop global ready graduates using a framework derived from Earley and Ang’s work on cultural intelligence (Earley & Ang, 2003). Cultural intelligence (CQ) is defined as an individual’s capability to function and manage effectively in culturally diverse settings (Ang & Van Dyne, 2008). A recently completed research project to measure the development of cultural intelligence of students participating in the UVic’s CANEU-COOP program formed the impetus for developing this CQ strategy (McRae, Ramji, Lu, & Lesperance, 2016). The strategy involves a framework that includes curriculum for inbound international students, outbound work-integrated learning (WIL) students, and all students preparing to work in diverse workplaces. In addition to developing specific curricula for these audiences, the strategy includes tools to assess the intercultural competencies that students gain during their WIL experiences, as well as helping students use these competencies to transition to the 21st century global village. This strategy and the Intercultural Competency Development Curriculum (ICDC) are discussed in this chapter.

This chapter describes the special advantages of globally networked learning experiences (GNLE) for engendering cognitive complexity as a means for developing mindful global citizenship among undergraduate students. Practitioners discover pedagogical approaches that take advantage of the possibility of direct communication with the cultural “other” afforded by recent advances in cost-free, user-friendly, robust, and reliable technologies. Examples of effective pedagogical practices, ideas for building successful faculty-to-faculty partnerships, suggestions for preparing participants, guidelines for selecting and implementing appropriate technologies, and resources for further exploration are provided.

This paper summarizes the findings of the empirical papers in this volume and outlines future research directions for global leadership in general. We summarize the state of global leadership development in universities and recommend design criteria for these efforts. Given the popularity of study abroad as an integral component in many global leadership programs, we highlight common challenges for study abroad programs and the importance of taking an organization development approach. We conclude with future directions for global leadership development research in university settings, most of which emerged from the featured papers on this topic in this volume of Advances in Global Leadership. It is our hope that this chapter serves as a primer for both university program directors and researchers.

Too often students who study abroad are unable to adequately explain their transformational experience, nor have researchers figured out just quite how to measure transformation using a standardized scale (Savicki, 2008a). This chapter explores the outcomes of a faculty-led international service-learning course implemented at a large 4-year public institution in the southwest region of the United States. Utilizing personal inventories and the student development framework of “challenge and support,” students began to understand themselves and conversely how they come to navigate the world around them.