Chapter 3: Cross-cultural Dimensions of Personal Stories in Communicating Authentic Leadership

The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on the cross-cultural dimensions of telling personal stories to communicate authentic leadership. The chapter is based on findings from a research study conducted among aspiring leaders from 41 countries. The study consists of three stages: (1) analysis of responses from an interview aimed at testing whether authenticity is considered an important leadership trait across cultures, (2) analysis of findings from two experiments aimed at measuring the effectiveness of telling personal stories to communicate authentic leadership across cultures, and (3) discussion of written reflections by English and Chinese respondents on the role of personal stories to communicate authentic leadership in their respective cultures.