Leading Through Nonverbal Communication Across Cultures

Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. Communication plays a central role in social influence in human interactions: what is communicated and how it is communicated would determine the breadth and depth of leadership effectiveness. This chapter reviews the literature on how cultural communication norms in message, relationship, time, and space context affect leadership effectiveness across cultures. It develops propositions about how leaders might deal with challenges in understanding and interpreting nonverbal communication norms to achieve effective cross-cultural communication at work.