Leadership beliefs and praxis are shaped by values from national, institutional and system cultures. However the dominant educational leadership discourses have frequently assumed a mono-cultural reality and their appropriateness when working with indigenous, multi-cultural and international contexts is limited. In the past decade scholars have begun arguing for a more “culturally sensitive approach” (Trompenaars, 1993, 1997; Begley, 2000; Chapman, 2000; Hallinger & Kantamara, 2000; Ribbins & Gronn, 2000; Walker & Dimmock, 2002) and cautioned about unmediated “cultural borrowing” (Leithwood & Duke, 1998; Walker & Dimmock, 2000). Early research efforts to counter this have employed cross-cultural theory to map differences between national cultures and identified values such as power distance, individualsim/collectivism, masculinity/femininity, uncertainty avoidance, long/short term orientations as important variables (Hofstede 1980, 1986, 1995: Cheng; Walker & Dimmock, 2000;  Walker, 2003). Whilst this has been an important development, the epistemological foundations and research methods of this approach cannot help explain interactions between agents from different cultures.  The cross-cultural approach relies upon static and stereotyped generalizations about national cultures and fails to accommodate that such cultures are themselves a mix of complex elements which are changing and evolving (Beck, 1993). It also ignores the reality of important indigenous, ethnic, institutional or generational sub-cultures within nation states. Nor can it provide us with fine-grained analysis of what actually happens when leaders from different cultural frameworks interact. More finely focused and phenomenological approaches are needed to render this knowledge. We need fine-tuned case studies utilizing phenomenological methods to identify the reactions and cognitive changes occurring in particular individuals from different cultural frameworks in specific contexts. A growing body of such research approaches in other aspects of education ( Kvale, 1996; Marton, 1996; Marton & Pang, 1999; Collard, 2000, 2002) may help us move towards a second generation of studies in leadership praxis in a culturally diverse world.