Growing up among cultures: Intercultural competences, personality, and leadership styles of third culture kids

The world seems to be increasingly in demand of global leaders with a transformational leadership style who do business across borders with intercultural ease. To identify such leaders, this study explores whether third culture kids (TCKs) (n = 121) compared to non-TCKs (n = 116) exhibit a stronger set of multicultural personality traits and intercultural competences, and whether TCKs compared to non-TCKs, via their multicultural personality traits and intercultural competences, prefer transformational leadership more. Results from group comparisons indicated that TCKs display more intercultural sensitivity than non-TCKs. Parallel mediated regression analyses showed that being a TCK, compared to not being a TCK, had a positive indirect effect on their preference for transformational leadership through open-mindedness, while it had a negative indirect effect on their preference for transformational leadership through flexibility and emotional stability.

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