Leadership Skills As A Key Constituent Of Efl Teachers’ Intercultural Communicative Competence

Abstract

Intercultural communicative competence is regarded as the major characteristic of a foreign language teacher in any educational context. Being of a very complex structure, it presupposes quite a deal of various knowledge and skills and emphasizes not only a good language proficiency, but also the ability to understand and interpret one’s own and the other view of the world in their interaction forming the basis for effective intercultural communication. The study of literature devoted to intercultural communicative competence shows that there is practically no direct reference to leadership skills among its numerous components, whereas they prove to be one of the most necessary abilities for the teacher in the constantly increasing diverse students groups. The article is aimed at indicating interrelation between EFL teachers’ intercultural communicative competence and leadership skills. As a practical implementation of the results found, an attempt to design a special technique for developing EFL teachers’ leadership skills as part of intercultural communicative competence has been made. The technique can be used as part of an advanced professional teachers training program in Additional Education Center at Irkutsk State Agrarian University. The main task of the program is to improve teachers’ organization and time-management skills, assertiveness, flexibility, critical and quick thinking, cultural consciousness and tolerance while working in an intercultural group of students.

Keywords: EFL teacher, intercultural communicative competence, language proficiency, leadership skills, teaching technique

Introduction

The role of an EFT teacher has changed greatly for the past twenty years. S/he has stopped being just an educator and become the link that connects the representatives of different cultures in a multicultural society. This role is even more enhanced with the fact that since 2012 all educational establishments of higher education in Russia have to go through the procedure of effectiveness monitoring. There are five monitoring criteria, including international activity, one of the indicators of which is the number of foreign students among the total amount of the students in the university. Irkutsk State Agrarian University after A.A. Ezhevsky occupies 39th position among 54 agricultural universities of Russia with the rate27according to this criterion (in 2020). This means that teachers have to work in international groups of students. At the present moment the university hosts students from Mongolia, Germany, China, Ukraine, Vietnam, Congo, the USA and CIS (Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan, Kazakhstan). As a result, a class is a “melting pot” or a “salad bowl” of different unique cultural, racial and religious identities. To respond to the challenge of working with such an enrolment, an EFL teacher must develop a very high level of intercultural communicative competence (ICC), under which we understand “the ability to realize, understand and interpret the two world views – one’s own and that of a target language – in their interconnection and on this foundation to execute the process of intercultural communication” (Tareva, 2014, p. 69). This ability presupposes linguistic and sociolinguistic or socio-cultural knowledge and the ability to manage the relationship between their own and other systems (Byram, 1997), the skill to act as a mediator between several cultures (Sercu, 2004). Thus, a teacher has to somehow MANAGE the process of communication, leading, directing and correcting it the way to reach mutual understanding in the educational situation (primarily), and then, in real intercultural communication. Obviously, an educator needs some kind of leadership skills/competencies to implement communication and reach education goals under such circumstances.

The article aims at finding the link between intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and leadership skills and describes one of the techniques of developing ELT teachers’ ICC with the aim of effective educational process in international groups of students.

Problem Statement

There is little study of the connection of ICC and leadership skills. Having observed literature sources in the field of intercultural communication and management (Arasaratnam & Doerfel, 2005; Flauto, 1999; Jokinen, 2005), we have made an attempt to correlate ICC and leadership models and find intersection points at their constituents/competencies.

There has been a considerable rise in interest to ICC phenomenon in recent years. First scientists searched for correlation between ICC, intercultural and communicative competences and proved that only the former fully responds to the challenges of communication process with the representatives of other cultures (Alptekin, 2002; Byram, 1997; Chen & Starosta, 1996; Kim, 1991, 1995; Riggio & Riggio, 2001; Sercu, 2004; Spitzberg, 2000). Later, specialists in linguistics, psychology, communication and cognitive sciences focused on identifying elements/components of ICC, organizing them into a hierarchy and modelling its structure. Below are some most significant and profound findings of the scientists and their emphasizing certain aspects of the phenomenon of ICC.

For instance, Gudykunst (2002) accentuates psychological constituents of ICC allotting to interact with strangers and. Kim also bases her theory of successful intercultural communication on person’s inner capabilities, namely and which she defines as “capacity of an individual’s internal psychic system to alter its existing attributes and structures to accommodate the demands of the environment” (Kim 1991, p. 268). The same idea is found in Chen and Starosta (1996), who define ICC as “the ability to effectively and appropriately execute communication behaviours that negotiate each other’s cultural identity or identities in a culturally diverse environment” (p. 355). It is obvious, that the authors consider the a key constituent of ICC, at the same time accentuating on, which are left behind in the above-mentioned theories.

Even more emphasis on person’s is done by Byram (1997) who views a person who has developed ICC as “able to build relationships while speaking in the foreign language; to communicate effectively, taking into consideration his own and the other person’s viewpoint and needs; to mediate interactions between people of different backgrounds, and who strives to continue developing communicative skills” (Byram, 1997, p. 34). Besides, from the author’s definition it is clear that are a core component of ICC.

The most well- founded and complex structure of ICC, to our opinion, is offered by Wiseman (2006), who represents it through six “C”s:

1) Communicative competence;

2) Cooperative competence;

3) Confidence;

4) Commitment to universal human rights;

5) Critical thinking;

6) Comparability.

The above model shows that communication skills (that is, the knowledge of not less than two languages) make a substantial part of ICC, alone with critical thinking skills, team-working, individual’s confidence as a professional, individual’s civic duties and responsibilities, patriotism and tolerance, analytical and matching skills. It is proposed that in the process of gaining highand getting acquainted with the target culture, the student at the same time analyses and interprets other’s view of the world through his\her own perspective, developing t,, strategic of interaction and feedback. Such an approach is likely to contribute into person’s cognitive, which ensures constant supplementing and revising accumulated knowledge and experience to build new categories instead of forcing new information into old frames.

Further, it is appropriate to consider leadership models with the aim to find corresponding elements and maintain connection and interrelation between ICC and leadership.

It was Barge (1994), who stated that “communication and leadership work together”. Naturally, it is impossible to imagine a good effective manager lacking elementary communicative skills. Communication competence becomes a prerequisite for competent leadership. Leadership is enacted through communication (Flauto, 1999). The link between leadership and communication appears more pronounced in recently developed leadership models (Hede, 2001; PanjiHendrarso, 2019; Rouhiainen, 2005; Yukl et al., 2002). In this way, Bennis and Thomas accentuate on ability to engage others in shared meaning, distinctive and compelling voice, sense of integrity (including a strong set of values), and “adaptive capacity” (which is hardiness and ability to grasp context) (Bennis & Thomas, 2002).

As a result, communicative competence/ skills can naturally integrate into leadership model structure. However, it is obvious that the offered theories do not emphasise intercultural specifics (peculiarities) of communication, whereas competent communication in today’s global and diverse societies needs to be intercultural (Chen, 2005; Samovar et al., 2009).

One of the first indicating to cross-cultural interaction is found in Harris and Morgan (1987) who distinguish such qualities of a leader as empathy, openness, persistence, sensitivity to intercultural factors, respect for others, role flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity, and. Jordan and Cartwright (1998) maintain that the key to success as an international leader lies in a mixture of personality characteristics and managerial competencies. Herewith, psychological profile comprises four attributes: intellectual capacity, self-confidence, openness to experience and emotional stability; and managerial competences include relational abilities, cultural sensitivity, linguistic ability and ability to handle stress. In more recent researches conditioned by globalization processes the intercultural dimension of leadership competences is observed more and more distinctly. Caliguiri and Di Santo (2001) emphasize on openness and flexibility. The top of the list of seven qualities offered by McCall et al. (2002) is headed by open-mindedness and flexibility in thoughts and tactics; cultural interest and sensitivity; ability to deal with complexity.

Summarising the ideas of the discussed authors, we can specify leadership competencies identified as (Hassanzadeh et al., 2015; Hooper & Potter, 2019; Iordache-Platis, 2017; Kessler, 2020; Kazakevych, 2020; Ruben, 2019). First of all, it is/ language proficiency viewed in intercultural dimension. Second, it is (ability to see things in many different ways, critical thinking,, open-mindedness, self-knowledge as ability to understand and manage oneself - one’s emotions, strengths, weaknesses, needs, and drives) (Bartz, 2018; Goleman, 1998; Meldrum & Atkinson, 1998). Third, (ability to maintain confidence and objectivity under difficult circumstances) Meldrum and Atkinson (1998) or (Goleman, 1998) - “ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods and the propensity to suspend judgement – to think before acting” (p. 88). Forth, or- “ability to understand emotional makeup of other people” (Goleman, 1998, p. 88). Finally, or personal drive - determination to succeed, to be proactive and take personal risks.

It is apparent, that most of the denoted core constituents of leadership competence perfectly correlate and interact with the elements of ICC offered by Wiseman (2006). Thus, we can make a conclusion that ICC structure can and must integrate leadership skills as one of its key component.

Research Questions

The role of a teacher in modern society is a link connecting representatives of different cultures in a multicultural society. Obviously, a teacher must have a very high level of intercultural communicative competence (ICC). At the same time, a modern teacher should be a good manager, a leader, as s/he plans, organizes, motivates and supervises all the educational process. This comprises assessing possibilities, putting forward goals and choosing the ways of reaching them; structuring and designing team work, selecting tasks, distributing roles; correlating personal aims of students with the general goals of education; controlling the effectiveness of chosen techniques and methods (Bartz, 2017; Croft & Seemiller, 2017; Sadulaeva et al., 2019; Skarbaliene, 2018; Supermane et al., 2018; Thrash, 2012; Wenner & Campbell, 2017).

As we stated above, leadership skills appear a significant element of ICC structure. Having obtained the necessary level of ICC, a foreign language teacher cannot but face with such problems as:

• How to communicate, motivate and manage students and students groups that are culturally different from each other and oneself?
• How to be flexible, adaptable and manage complexity and change?
• How to communicate in order to meet one’s objectives?

Generally speaking, how to become a leader in a multicultural class and make the educational process as effective and enjoyable as possible?

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study is to work out a technique aimed at developing teachers’ leadership skills as part of their intercultural communicative competence. The technique is focused on developing teachers’ basic actions/ skills that will enable him/her to occupy the leader position in a students’ group. These actions are:

• setting/ formulating goals;
• organising class activities;
• creating group norms;
• using supportive tricks;
• occupying “the right” location in class.

It should be noted that the above actions/ skills are considered in multicultural dimension as we are concentrating on international students’ groups.

Research Methods

Observations and discussions with the teachers working in international groups of students let us make some very important conclusions about the strategy of organising educational process in such groups. The first thing each teacher should do is to identify which nationalities his/ her students represent.It is a well-known fact that all cultures can be classified into high-context and low-context ones (according to Hall, 1959). The style and manner of communication and interaction differ drastically in each group type. For example, low-context cultures prefer explicit verbal communication being very goal-oriented, whereas high-context cultures use a lot of non-verbal cues and great deal of background information. In low-context cultures privacy is very important and their representatives are focused on individual accomplishments. On the contrary, high-context cultures base on trust and close physical contact; their productivity depends on relationships and group processes; an individual identity is rooted in groups; they value social structure and authority.

The survey showed that overwhelming majority of students in Irkutsk State Agrarian University belong to high-context cultures, namely Chinese, Mongolian, Central Europe, Central and Eastern Asia, Africa. It means that in such groups some kind of mentoring/ coaching leadership style will be most appropriate, which can be characterised by the following features:

• reliance on students’ background knowledge;
• friendliness and positive psychological climate in the group;
• dialogue;
• challenging tasks for students’ self-realization and development;
• permanent supervision and control after fulfilling tasks;
• empathy, assistance and self-control.

With account on the denoted features a teaching technique was designed. The suggested technique presents a training system for teachers working in intercultural groups of students aimed at developing necessary leadership skills as part of their intercultural communicative competence.

Findings

The technique of training teachers’ leadership skills as part of their intercultural communicative competenceconsists of four steps: Below, each step is carefully described form the standpoint of must-be-achieved goals, ways of teacher-student / student-student interactions, methods used and tasks and exercises fulfilled.

Conclusion

In this paper, the leadership skills as part of intercultural communicative competence have been studied. The paper addressed the question of why the acquisition of leadership skills is important forintercultural communicative competence, especially for teachers working with international students’ groups. It defined leadership skills and intercultural communicative competence, matched their models and identified common/ shared elements. The implications of this information for assessment purposes are also discussed. Finally, a technique of training teachers’ leadership skills as part of their intercultural communicative competence has been developed. The described technique can be applied as part of an advanced professional teachers training program in Additional Education Center at Irkutsk State Agrarian University. The main task of the program is to improve teachers’ organization and time-management skills, assertiveness, flexibility, critical and quick thinking, cultural consciousness and tolerance while working in an intercultural group of students.

References

• Alptekin, C. (2002). Towards intercultural communicative competence in ELT.ELT Journal, 56(1), 57-64. DOI:

  Google Scholar

  Crossref

• Arasaratnam, L. A., & Doerfel, M. L. (2005). Intercultural communication competence: identifying key components from vulticultural perspectives. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 29(2), 137-163.

  Google Scholar

  Crossref

• Barge, K. J. (1994). Leadership: communication skills for organizations and groups. St. Martin's Press.

• Bartz, D. (2017). How teacher leaders can help principals achieve school’s goals and improve student learning. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 7(12), 1-4.

• Bartz, D. (2018). Leaders expanding their minds through elastic thinking for creative and innovative problem solving. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 8(3), 1-5.

• Bennis, W. G., & Thomas, R. J. (2002). Crucibles of leadership. Harvard Business review, 80(9), 39-45.

• Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Multicultural Matters Ltd.

• Caliguiri, P., & Di Santo, V. (2001). Global competence: what is it, and can it be developed through global assignments? Human Resource Planning, 24(3), 27-35.

• Chen, G. M., & Starosta, W. J. (1996). Intercultural communication competence: A synthesis. In R. B. Brant (Ed.), Communication yearbook: Vol. 19. Sage.

• Chen, G. M. (2005). A model of global communication competence, China Media Research, 1(1), 3-11.

• Croft, L., & Seemiller, C. (2017). Developing leadership competencies. In C. Seemiller (Ed.), Newdirection for student leadership, vol. 156, (pp.7-18). Jossey-Bass.

• Flauto, F. J. (1999). Walking the talk: the relationship between leadership and communication competence. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 6(1-2), 86-97.

• Goleman, D. (1998). Whatmakes a leader. Harvard Business Review, 76(6), 93-103.

• Gudykunst, W. B. (2002). Intercultural communication. In W. B., Gudykunst, & B., Mody (Eds.), Handbook of international and intercultural communication (pp. 179-182). Sage.

• Hall, E. (1959). The silent language. Doubleday.

• Harris, P. R., & Morgan R. T. (1987). Managing cultural differences (2nd ed.). Gulf Publishing Company.

• Hassanzadeh, M., Silong, A., Asmuni, A., & Wahiza, N. (2015). Global leadership competencies. Journal of educational and social research, 5(2), 137-146. DOI:

  Google Scholar

  Crossref

• Hede, A. (2001). Integrated leadership: multiple stylesfor maximal effectiveness. Leadership in the antipodes: Findings, implications and a leader profile, 6-21.

• Hooper, A., & Potter, J. (Eds.). (2019). The Business of leadership. Routledge.

• Iordache-Platis, M. (2017).Strategies for academic leadership towards increasing productivity in higher education institutions; business education case. Proceedings of the International Conference on Business Excellence, 11(1), 255-263.

• Jokinen, T. (2005). Global leadership competences: a review and discussion. Journal of European Industrial Training, 29(3), 199-216.

• Jordan, J., & Cartwright, S. (1998). Selecting expatriate managers: key traits and competences. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 19(2), 89-96.

• Kazakevych, O. I. (2020). Liderskaya kompetentsiya kak sovremennoye mezhdistsiplinarnoye yavleniye i yeye formirovaniye [Leadership competence as a modern interdisciplinary phenomenon and its formation]. Innovatsionnaya pedagogika [Innovative Pedagogy], 2, 90-94.

• Kessler, E. (2020). The philosophical foundations of fundamental leadership competencies. Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings, 1, 12050.

• Kim, Y.Y. (1991). Intercultural communicative competence. In Cross-cultural interpersonal communication (pp. 259-275). Sage Publications.

• Kim, Y.Y. (1995). Cross-cultural adaptation.An integrative theory. In R. L. Wiseman (Ed.), Intercultural Communication Theory (pp. 170-193). Sage.

• McCall, Jr., Morgan, W., & Hollenbeck, G. (2002). Developing global executives (1st ed.). Harvard Business School Press.

• Meldrum, M., & Atkinson, S. (1998). Meta-abilities and the implementation of strategy: knowing what to do is simply not enough. Journal of Management Development, 17(8), 564-575.

• PanjiHendrarso, Ir. (2019). The importance of intercultural communication to improve students’ global leadership competence: a phenomenological approach of higher education institutions in Jakarta. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 9(6), 17-25.

  Google Scholar

  Crossref

• Rouhiainen, M. (2005). The communication competence of leaders in a knowledge-based organization. Frontiers of E-business Research, 1(2), 625-636.

• Riggio, R. E., & Riggio, H. R. (2001). Self-report measurement of interpersonal sensitivity. In J. A. Hall, & F. J. Berniery (Eds.), Interpersonal Sensitivity: Theory and Measurement (pp. 127-141). Lawrence Erbaum.

• Ruben, B. D. (2019). An overview of the leadership competency framework. In R. A. Gigliotti (Ed.), Competencies for effective leadership: A framework for assessment, education and research (pp. 19-28).

  Google Scholar

  Crossref

• Sadulaeva, B. S., Khataeva, R. S., Abdullaeva, D., Muradova, P. R., & Iusupova, L. (2019). Developing information and communicative competence in organizers of school educational process. The European Proceedings of Social and Behavioral Sciences, LXXVI, 2713-2719.

  Google Scholar

  Crossref

  European Proceedings

• Samovar, L. A., Porter, R. E., & McDaniel, E. R. (2009). Intercultural communication: a reader (12th ed.). Wadsworth Cengage Learning

• Sercu, L. (2004). Assessing intercultural competence: a framework for systematic test development in foreign language education and beyond. Intercultural Education, 15(1), 73-89.

  Google Scholar

  Crossref

• Skarbaliene, A. (2018). The leadership competencies of teacher mentors as a factor of education of leadership competencies in students. Mentorship Strategies in Teacher Education, 235-255. DOI:

  Google Scholar

  Crossref

• Spitzberg, B. H. (2000). A model of intercultural communication competence.Intercultural Communication: A Reader, 9, 375-387.

• Supermane, S., Tahir, L., & Aris, M. (2018). Transformational leadership in teacher education.Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, 8(3), 268-274.

  Google Scholar

  Crossref

• Tareva, E. G. (Ed.). (2014). Mezhkul’turnoe inoyazychnoye obrazovanie: lingvodidakticheskiye strategii i taktiki [Intercultural foreign language education: lingua-didactic strategies and tactics]. Logos.

• Thrash, A. (2012). Leadership in higher education.International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2(13), 1-12.

• Wenner, J. A. & Campbell, T. (2017). The theoretical and empirical basis of teacherleadership: A review of the literature. Review of Educational Research, 87(1), 134-171.

• Wiseman, R. (2006). Intercultural Communicative Competence. Sage.

• Yukl, G., Gordon, A., & Taber, T. (2002). A hierarchical Taxonomy of leadership Behavior: Integrating a Half century of Behavior Research. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 9(1), 15-32.