The Power of Multilingual Leadership: Adapting Your Style to Communicate Across Cultures

💡Being multilingual as a leader enables you to communicate and contribute effectively across different cultures and sectors.

🗺️Leadership languages include the jargon and vernacular of the corporate world, nonprofit sphere, international development, and the public sector.

🌍Multilingual leaders have the ability to bridge gaps and collaborate between sectors, resulting in social and environmental impact.

📊The successful multilingual leader understands the measurement and timing differences across sectors, such as daily accounting in the private sector and multi-year cycles in the public sector.

🌟Leadership languages can be used to address important issues like gender equality, by creating equity, diversifying supply chains, and funding research and campaigns.

What are leadership languages?

—Leadership languages refer to the jargon and vernacular used in different sectors, such as the corporate world, nonprofit sphere, international development, and the public sector.

Why is being a multilingual leader important?

—Being a multilingual leader allows you to effectively communicate and contribute across different cultures and sectors, enabling collaboration and social impact.

What are some examples of leadership languages?

—Examples of leadership languages include finance, nonprofit, government, and international development.

How can multilingual leaders address gender equality?

—Multilingual leaders can address gender equality by creating equity, diversifying supply chains, funding research and campaigns, and increasing representation in decision-making roles.

What should leaders focus on instead of their leadership style?

—Leaders should focus on developing their leadership languages and being adaptable to different situations and cultural contexts.

00:00The speaker shares their personal experience as an Iranian refugee growing up in rural Tennessee and studying and working in different countries.

01:21The speaker discusses how they learned to navigate different leadership languages in business school and the importance of being multilingual as a leader.

03:50The speaker highlights the need for leaders to adapt and personalize their leadership to the situation and people involved, rather than relying on a single leadership style.

05:53The speaker introduces three key topics for leaders: data, climate, and power, and explains how each sector measures impact and uses different tools and timing.

07:37The speaker focuses on the topic of power and how leaders can address gender equality by using their leadership languages in the public sector, business sector, philanthropy, and international development.

08:10The speaker concludes by encouraging leaders to focus on developing their leadership languages and being open to learning new languages.