While third-year students in the Chancellor’s Leadership Development Program (CLDP) at the Shelton Leadership Center spent a week in Valencia and Madrid, Spain, this May, their Global Leadership Experience (GLE) was actually the culmination of a year-long journey. Throughout the academic year leading up to the trip, the cohort engaged in intensive seminars and rigorous planning meetings to prepare for the international experience.

Rather than acting simply as participants, the students took full ownership of the initiative, spending months meticulously planning and organizing logistics to showcase their ability to lead an organization and navigating cross-cultural barriers.

Cultivating Globally-Minded Leaders

The GLE’s main purpose is to cultivate globally minded leaders and directly supports the development of four core competencies in students: Global thinking, cultural intelligence, cross-cultural communication, and ethical decision-making.

By stepping outside domestic boundaries, students are challenged to apply classroom discussions and exploration to real-world, international settings. The trip itself served as a platform for the cohort to demonstrate their organizational leadership, and they returned with an enriched toolkit dedicated to ultimately strengthening local North Carolina communities.

“The Global Leadership Experience is really designed to be the capstone learning opportunity to the students’ time in CLDP,” Dr. La’Toya Cesar, CLDP Program Director, said. “Through their three years in the program, CLDP students learn about leadership in a scaffolded way. First, they learn about leading themselves, then about leading others, and finally about leading organizations and communities. By the time the Global Leadership Experience occurs, students are equipped to be able to practice leadership with a global mindset.”

Intentional Preparation

To ensure students were ready to navigate complex cultural differences while abroad, the CLDP partnered with staff from NC State’s Global Training Initiative (GTI) to produce preparatory seminars and workshops. GTI is part of the Office of Global Engagement and develops customized short-term education and training programs for students and professionals from across the globe by harnessing the university’s resources.

Members of the GTI staff facilitated workshops for CLDP students in the months leading up to the program’s global experience in Spain. During this time, students spent time discussing the connection between leadership and cultural confidence, according to Becky Cibulskis, the international programs coordinator at GTI.

“The Global Training Initiative facilitated three hours of customized training with the cohort as part of their Spring semester course and preparation for the international experience. In addition to considering general culture and helping students develop common language for understanding cultural competence, the Global Leadership Experience students received their personalized GlobeSmart Profile,” Cibulskis said. “The results of the self-assessment allowed students to consider common cultural gaps between the USA and Spain as well as unique perspectives across their cohort. Self-awareness is a key component of developing interpersonal skills like leadership and cultural competence, and we are grateful to have been part of the students’ growth this year.”

Cultural Immersion: A Global Classroom

In Spain, the CLDP cohort successfully shifted from academic preparation to real-world international execution, putting their student-led logistics and cultural training into practice. They traveled to both Valencia and Madrid while exploring leadership concepts in Spanish.

In Valencia, student leaders organized various experiences to learn more about local culture and the environmental needs of the places they visited. They participated in a hands-on culinary class where they learned to make paella, visited the City of Arts and Sciences to learn more about Spain and its culture through science and architecture, and took a tour of the Apostles’ Gate of Valencia Cathedral.

The group also engaged in various activities to learn more about environmental and agricultural aspects in Spain, such as volunteering at a coastal cleanup at Malvarrosa Beach and visiting Huerto San Eusebio, a local orange farm that emphasizes sustainable agriculture. 

In Madrid, the students navigated the capital city and immersed themselves in local civic pride and traditions during the annual Fiestas de San Isidro festival and participated in a Flamenco dance class and experienced the Mercado de San Fernando.

The operational layout of the trip tested these pre-planned skills daily. Individual students stepped into executive roles, rotating responsibilities as designated “Daily Leaders” who navigated logistics, spearheaded group coordination, and led reflection. Each student was responsible for applying the skills they learned in preparation for the trip during specific experiences abroad, according to SLC Director Dr. Debbie Acker, who traveled with the group to support the international experience.

“Daily reflection provides the students the opportunity within the experience itself to think critically about how they respond to setbacks and other learning moments throughout the trip,” Acker said. “Each member of the third-year cohort was responsible for leading intentional reflection for their peers, which was a great way to bring the immersive elements of the trip together while exploring how cultivating a global mindset is essential to being a values-based leader.”

For the students on the trip, the experience provided the opportunity not only to strengthen their global viewpoints but also to reflect on the values they incorporate into their leadership approach.

“While being in an unfamiliar environment, I learned that my core values didn’t waver in it, even if we hit a snag in the execution of the day,” Emily Hall, a third-year CLDP student, said. “I was able to rely on these values during these situations, which helped greatly and decreased the feeling of small hiccups being ‘scary.’ In the future, this gives me more motivation to rely on my values first when facing a difficult situation.”​

Ultimately, completing the Global Leadership Experience served as a powerful capstone, demonstrating the cohort’s ability to lead an organization and manage complex operations on a global stage.

​“I discovered that many people look to me for leadership even when I am not the dedicated leader. I learned that my core values help me navigate unfamiliar environments in a way that projects confidence and allows others to put their trust in me,” Bo Kinsland, a third-year CLDP student, said. “This will help me show up as a values-based leader in the future by allowing me to recognize that others look to me, so I should maintain a calm demeanor and be prepared to delegate or give leadership to others too.”