Cultural Leadership

Leaders in a Global context need to understand the impact of culture. This post will take a look at the some of the complexities that leaders may have faced when planning the 2015 Pan American Games and some of the issues that would need to be addressed by the organizers as it pertains to the many dimensions of leadership and culture. In addition, how will the events be perceived by the athletes themselves? Consider if you will that the planners are the leaders and the multitude of athletes are the employees. 

Canada will host the XVII Pan American Games from July 10-26, 2015 in Toronto. There will be over 6100 athletes from 41 Nations participating in 36 sports. (2015 Pan American Games, 2015). The organizers of this massive event have a number of responsibilities including creating the venues, transportation to and from the event for both participants and the general public, the athlete’s village, broadcasting, and of course the opening and closing ceremonies. What really makes things difficult is that different cultures may have different expectations as to how all of these things are done so the onus is on the organizers to research and have solid understanding of the different cultures that are involved and the nuances for each.  

Webster’s dictionary defines culture as the “the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time; or a particular society that has its own beliefs, ways of life, art, etc.” (Webster’s Dictionary, 2015). The take back here is that every culture has a different way of looking at things and great leaders recognize that their effectiveness as a leader is somewhat contextual and therefore they must do their best to accommodate or at the very least not to alienate such beliefs. Much research has been done with regards to the dimensions of culture but this post will focus on three dimensions as posited by Robert J. House’s “Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies” and their significance, if any, to the perceived effectiveness of the leadership for the event in question. 

The first major dimension is the Power Distance which House defines as “the extent to which a community accepts and endorses authority, power differences, and status privileges” (House, 2002, p. 513) which is essentially how power is shared. As the Pan American Games consist of only North America and South America, we will look at the cultural similarities based on only two country clusters. Anglo, consisting of Canada and the United States, and Latin America. Out of all nine dimensions there are only two where there are some significant differences between the two clusters and although this is not one of them, as both Anglo and Latin American score similarly, I think this is important with regards to this event because it is all about what people want and expect. Understanding that there is no major differences hear would clearly ease the expectations of the organizers. What is the expectation for accommodations, food, functions etc. 

The second dimension and one where there are some differences between the country’s clusters is In Group Collectivism. This is “the degree to which individuals express pride, loyalty, and cohesiveness in their organizations or families” (House, 2002, p. 30) and it’s is important as it is strongly associated with the key leadership values of charisma and value based leadership, which are strongly linked worldwide as being a common outstanding attribute to great leadership. While the United States and Canada score high, Latin American is strongly linked to this cluster. Of particular importance is how the leadership handles the more highly visible venues such as the opening and closing ceremonies.

The final dimension is Performance Orientation and this is reflects “reflects the extent to which a community encourages and rewards innovation, high standards, excellence, and performance improvement” (House, 2002, P. 30). Anglo countries score higher than Latin American and this means that more emphasis is placed on training and development, and feedback as necessary as it relates to performance development. So what may be of importance to Canada and the U.S. is lessons learned and they can improve on such an event in the future.

What clearly at issue here is that different cultures perceive leadership styles differently and what is important to one may be important to another. It is important to know your audience and understand their expectations. 

I’m going to close post and make a giant segway into something that is not so much cultural in a global context but very much so even within ones own borders. Tim Horton’s has recently decided that it would pull it’s in restaurant monitor ad spots for Enbridge due to the pressure it was receiving from local environmental groups. What the leaders of this company clearly did not foresee was the outrage that this type of move would have for those who work for Enbridge or make their livelihood of the development of such resources. The hashtag #BoycottTims is now the top trend in Canada. Sometimes leaders get placed in a difficult position of trying to please everyone and in the course of it all end up pleasing on one. 

References

Culture. (2015). Merriam Webster’s Dictionary: “Culture”. Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/culture

House R.J. et al. (2002). Culture, Leadership, and Organizations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Pan American Games. (2015). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Retrieved 15:39, June 3, 2015, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2015_Pan_American_Games&oldid=665270432