Leadership case study

Unit V Global Leadership Transcript

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Dr. Sonya Rogers: In this unit, we will discuss how cultural perceptions can

influence global team leadership. And we've spoken before about

organizational vision and diversity in followers or employees. And so, Dr.

Hargadon, I was just wondering what is it that you think is the key for

leaders to successfully lead those at a distance?

Dr. John Hargadon: That's a good question. In particular when we’re talking

about a global context, right? First of all, difficult even if everyone is in the

same culture but at a distance. And then, if you add the fact that some folks

may be in different cultures or different cultural clusters, as Hofstead or

House might say, then that just adds another level of complexity to the

leaders that sort of play what they need to keep in mind as they're trying to

work through how to effectively lead the team and accomplish the vision

that they have for the organization.

So there are, again,

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many, many different examples of how culture can come into play in a

leadership context. But one example that I have from my personal

experience was being able to be on a discussion panel where we were

discussing ethics from a multicultural perspective. We had an individual who

was from the Congo, in Africa, grew up in Europe.

I just was discussing Confucianism and Taoism, the Eastern Asia sort of

perspective of ethics. And then of course, we had some folks that were from

the sort of Judeo-Christian, the Western conceptualization of what ethics

mean in those particular cultural clusters. And so we were interested to find

out whether or not the same thing would be considered ethical in each of

those different cultural contexts, given individualism and collectivism and

power distance, and some

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of those different aspects of the different cultural clusters. And it was

interesting. What we found is that everybody says it's the same. From a

behavioral standpoint, all of the different clusters, the cultural clusters from

around the world say that you should treat people with dignity; you should

treat them with respect.

The motivations for treating them with dignity and respect differ from one

culture to the other, why you're treating them with dignity and respect

might be different from one culture to the other. But from a behavioral, from

a purely behavioral standpoint, there really was no difference in how you

should treat people.

So that kind of can serve as a baseline, potentially, for how to lead a team

that's going to potentially cross cultural boundaries, that's going to be at a

distance. Just keep in mind that we always want to treat people with dignity

and respect. And if we're doing that, then I think that that opens the door

for us to look at different types of motivations and how to effectively lead

the team to accomplish the vision for the organization.

Sonya: Yes, I've

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always heard that followers will act better or perform better if they really

respect their leader.

John: Mm-hm.

Sonya: And if the leader acts out of fear or wants to provoke fear among the

followers, that it's more of a short-term goal of-

John: Right.

Sonya: Behavior and performance results. So, I agree that no matter what

the organization might be like, if everyone works together and shows

respect and I treat you how I would like you to treat me, then positive

results should occur.

John: That's right.