Introduction:

I begin this paper with Barack Obama’s Middle East speech “On a New Beginning”. Obama’s speech demonstrates the foundation and possible application of transcultural leadership in practice. To me, Obama and his corresponding speech exemplify transcultural leadership because they incorporate several elements I will outline over the course of this paper: Focusing on transcultural commonalities, rather than intercultural differences, in order to enable the capacity to cooperate; developing a global understanding of the world’s interconnectedness and contributing to a shared global moral order that does not amount to the worldwide imposition of a current one; and, most importantly, to bridge societal divisions, to embrace the challenges humanity faces, and to tackle them on the basis of a global sense of responsibility. (...)

The paper at hand aims to provide a twenty-first century perspective on leadership and leaders; it does not seek to present an analysis of the established literature on leadership. It seeks to find a possible starting point for challenging and enriching future debates on the topic.