The Intersection of Cultural Diversity Outcomes and Leadership:

Global diversity has made cultural diversity prevalent in many organizations, calling for effective leadership styles to guide the outcomes of culturally diverse teams. While leadership styles influence how leaders drive and manage their teams, personality traits must also be considered in a leader’s behavior. More specifically, when researching culturally diverse teams, multicultural personality traits (MPQ) can influence how a leader leads their team and, in turn, influence the diversity work outcomes of the team. The study identified the following research question: How do a leader’s MPQ traits and leadership styles moderate the relationship between team cultural diversity and diversity outcomes? A quantitative survey was sent to people with experience working in culturally diverse teams (condition: more than two cultures). The influence of Diversity-oriented and Transactional Leadership, Cultural Empathy, Emotional Stability, Flexibility, Openmindedness, and Social Initiative on culturally diverse teams’ outcomes was analyzed using regression and moderation analyses. The data showed no significant effects which would accept any of the proposed hypotheses. Social Initiative was the only multicultural personality trait and moderating variable that showed significance as a moderator in the relationship between team cultural diversity and team innovation. However, it showed that diversity in teams with a high-social initiative leader leads to lower team innovation, contradicting previous studies and literature. Despite not having a moderating effect, all moderating variables, except Flexibility, directly affected either collective team identification, team innovation, or both. In sum, while not through moderation, leadership style and a leader’s multicultural personality is related to the level of collective team identification and team innovation, regardless of how culturally diverse the team is. These findings emphasize the significance of leadership styles and personality in team diversity outcomes and shed light on leadership and human resource management to consider these factors when selecting candidates for leadership positions.