Culture and Leadership: When In Rome . . .

This guest post was written by Ivonne Chirino-Klevans, Ph.D., Walden School of Psychology faculty member, for HireDiversity

A service-oriented economy, globalization, and dynamic economic environments have all contributed to diversity becoming one of the realities of today's organizations. Organizations now extend their recruiting pool beyond national borders to find the best candidates that meet the needs of their workforce -- that is, the entire world becomes the new pool from which to draw the brightest and the best to fill a position. This change in hiring practices has left managers with the task of leading groups of individuals with different cultural backgrounds who bring their own expectations about what makes a good leader.

These expectations are shaped by what the cultural-intelligence expert Fons Trompenaars calls "dimensions of culture" in his book Riding the Waves of Culture. Individuals use cultural dimensions to approach their reality. For instance, cultural dimensions in the workplace help to form our expectations about our relationships with team members (collectivism versus individualism), our relationship with time (multitasking versus doing one thing at a time), and our use of policies (universalism versus particularism). From deciding how we display emotions, how close we become with others, and how we reach professional status, culture has a strong influence defining what we expect from a leader as well as from an employee.

Margarita Mayo, James Meindl, and Juan Carlos Pastor, in their study called "Shared Leadership in Work-teams," have shown that leaders who are not culturally competent and have to manage a culturally diverse group report lower job satisfaction and perceive themselves as less effective as leaders. These results are partially explained by the fact that leaders who are not culturally competent will not be able to predict and successfully interpret reactions and behaviors of their diverse group members, and will not be able to reward those behaviors effectively.

Let's take managers who come from cultures with a low orientation to power, where the decision-making process is shared with the group and tasks are often delegated. These managers may have someone in their team who comes from a highly power-oriented culture, where decisions are centralized and the manager is seen as someone who provides direction. In this scenario, these managers may be perceived by their direct report as ineffective for not taking charge, and these leaders may perceive their direct report as unassertive and lacking an entrepreneurial attitude.

The good news is that situations like the one described above have inspired researchers in the field of management to identify ways to successfully lead multicultural teams. The following three strategies have been shown to be effective when leading a culturally diverse team:

1) Start with exploration--Learn as much as you can about the cultures of the people with whom you will be working. Identify how cultural dimensions--such as collectivism and individualism, power distance, masculinity and femininity, uncertainty avoidance, and fatalism--manifest in the work environment.

2) Preparation--Identify an approach that considers the group needs within your goals. How are your goals aligned with what is important for that culture? For example, if you are a manager who is results-oriented and your group focuses on the process, create tasks that can meet both goals.

3) Adjustment--Although there are cultural dimensions that help us with our first approach to a culture, we need to remain open-minded. Cultural dimensions are there to help foster, not guide every interaction. Each individual, regardless of cultural context, has a personality, a set of values, goals--all of which may or may not be consistent with pre-identified cultural dimensions.

It is in this light that leadership effectiveness can be defined as being culturally dependent. This concept represents a challenge for global managers who not only have to develop cultural intelligence, but also have to be able to adapt their style according to the regions they serve. As they say, when in Rome ...

Dr. Chirino-Klevans received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Universidad Iberoamericana, and also holds an MBA from Universidad de las Americas, and a Masters in Psychology from Georgia College and State University. Her extensive experience includes years of working with Fortune 500 companies in designing training and development programs and serving as Program Director for Duke Corporate Education. Earlier in her career, she also served as the psychologist for the Mexican national rowing team, and contributed to the team winning a silver medal at the 1991 Pan Am Games. She herself is a Pan American games medalist in gymnastics.