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participative; 
humane- oriented;
autonomous (House et al., 2004: 137).
These are intended to describe the ways in which people worldwide distin-
guish between effective and ineffective leaders.
The INCA Project
The INCA Project (www.incaproject.org) is a transnational interdiscipli-
nary project funded by the EU under the Leonardo da Vinci programme 
in 2005. The project’s full title is ‘Intercultural Competence Assessment’. It 
arose out of the need to provide a suitable framework to assess the cultural 
skills required for management and is used as a basis for training. The main 
research was carried out by Professor Michael Byram of Durham University, 
who generated six qualities required by successful international managers, 
which he calibrated at the three levels of competence, namely: basic, inter-
mediate and full.
According to the INCA Project, intercultural competence ‘enables you to 
interact effectively and in a way that is acceptable to others when you are 
working in a group whose members have different cultural backgrounds’. 
‘Cultural’ may denote all manner of features, including the values and 
beliefs you have grown up with, your national customs and, in particular, 
your attitudes and practices that affect the way you work.
The desirable cultural qualities are as follows:
tolerance of ambiguity: coping positively with the unexpected and the 
unfamiliar;
behavioural flexibility: the ability to adapt the way you work with others 
in order to avoid procedural conflicts;
communicative awareness: the ways in which misunderstandings may 
occur due to cultural differences in speech and body language;
knowledge discovery: a willingness to research and learn from intercultural 
encounters;
respect for otherness: regard for values, customs and practices of other 
cultures;
empathy towards other cultures: the ability to understand other people’s 
thoughts and feelings; to see and feel a situation through their eyes.
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Leadership Across Cultures 137
The six characteristics of intercultural competence required for leaders are 
simplified by linking them with three strands of competence:
openness includes respect for otherness and tolerance of ambiguity;
knowledge includes behavioural flexibility and communicative awareness;
adaptability includes empathy towards other cultures and knowledge discovery.