QUESTION
Your company has offered you a promotion as head of a division in a country that has very different culture from that of your native country. While you are excited by the new challenge, you are also aware that you need to consider whether your leadership style will be effective or appropriate for the new location.
Using two countries of your choice (your native country and one with a different culture), critically evaluate the most importan factors relating to the style of leadership you should adopt when considering the offer of promotion into the new culture.
SOLUTION
People and Organization
Your company has offered you a promotion as head of a division in a country that has very different culture from that of your native country. While you are excited by the new challenge, you are also aware that you need to consider whether your leadership style will be effective or appropriate for the new location.
Using two countries of your choice (your native country and one with a different culture), critically evaluate the most important factors relating to the style of leadership you should adopt when considering the offer of promotion into the new culture.
The Operations Manager in “XYZ” Wires Pvt Ltd. is a native of India and has been promoted as Operations Head in New Zealand office of the company. This new opportunity presents managers with following set of challenges:
1. Individual and group equality: The manager will face this problem as the group or team he will have to manage will look forward to their betterment while working with him. And also he will have to take into considerations his own personal as well as personal goals and thus he will have to strike a balance between the two, so that people’s behavior towards him becomes justified and fruitful. This issue will also involve the human resource policies, which will play a vital role in attaining the group as well individual goals.
1. Resistance to Change: This is the most important issue which will be faced by the manager or the operations head. The employees of the organization which will report to him in his new team or group will have the resistance to accept him as their manager, which will be the result of human nature as he is from a different culture and country. The team members will have questions and confusions regarding his managerial capacities and the problems which may arise in the attainment of their personal as well as professional goals due to the change in leadership of the organistion. Also the person will have a resistance to accept the new country and its culture present in his team members. This will involve the role of human resource manager which may strike a balance between the two (House, 2004).
2. Team cohesiveness and Divergence of employees: The employees in the new team will have the groups which will be made unofficially by them to help them. This work group will have resistance to the acceptance of the new leader in the organization and that to from a different country. The employees will behave differently in New Zealand and this will be because of the introvert nature of the employees in the country. Some of the employees will upfront oppose the change in the leadership of the organization (Nowicki, 2007). The employees may have internal differences too and the change in leadership may add fuel in their conflicts. The employees may be ignorant about the work and may behave differently at the work place because of the policies of the unofficial group they are part of. The new leader may have to face these issues to resolve their differences so that the organization will have harmony and productivity is not affected because of trivial issues.
3. Segmented Communication Networks: Another issue which the new leader may face in the organization will be of the different levels of communication between different groups. The different groups in the organization will behave differently based on their construction, culture and composition which will be because of differently personal and professional goals of the people in different groups. The new leader will face these problems because he will not be able to understand the mental setup and problems of the employees in the different country because of cultural differences. The people in New Zealand may see some problems in the personal life as of more importance whereas the people in India may see the same issues as of very low intensity. This type of issues to be faced by the new leader will add up to his problems and make him face issues which if he is able to resolve make him the hero of the organization. Leaders are the people who make people follow them by their way of working. This is the policy which if the new leader follows will add up to his caliber and skill set (Thomas, 1996).
4. Backlash: Few people in the organization will behave differently with the people who wish to get in the culture of their country and belong to a different country. The new leader which is the operations head form India will have to face these issues and the consequences of the same because the people in the groups in the organization will feel that they should stop the encroachments from the people who does not belong to their groups and specially people who does not even belong to their country.
5. Retention: Retention is the issue which will be faced by the leader because of low satisfaction levels of the different minority groups of the organization. The minority groups of the organization will have low satisfaction levels because of diversity in the organization and they will face certain issues which will be because of the people belonging to the majority groups. The people will similar mid sets will make their own unofficial groups in the organization and the minority groups of the people who are left out in the group will have to face the consequences. The people in the minority group or people who are forced to be left out in the minority group will usually leave the organization and will look forward for the change and will hope to be happy in the new organization. The new leader will have to resolve these issues so that he may be able to retain the people in the organization and this will be made feasible or possible only by the help of his interpersonal skills and this will add to the lives of the employees who belong to the minority group, let it be females, old age employees or people who think they are of different nature then others (Robertson, 2004).
6. Competition for Opportunities: This is the issue which the leader in the organization who has migrated from the foreign country will face because he may not be able to decide as to which group in the organization is most deserving for the available opportunities in the organization. The leader will have to balance the available opportunities in the organization between the different groups made or available within the organization. The majority or the minority groups will have their own advantages and own disadvantages and this will make it tough for the new leader to decide on the opportunities available. The new positions or new opportunities available in the organization will demand certain specific skill set and analytical abilities to be assigned to the people in the organization. Now the people who have these abilities or the skillets may be in the group which may be in the majority or which may be in the minority in the organization. The new operations head may face these issues in New Zealand as he may not be able to cope up with changing environment and the change in the culture. This change will eventually lead to a way where he may be unable to decide on the feasibilities of the project assignments to the employees in the group. This will also impact certain other polices and cultures of the organization (Rijamampianina, 2005). As the retention and satisfaction levels in the organization will lead to organization’s betterment and this will be the achievement of the new leader if he is able to resolve the issue.
The most important factors relating to the style of leadership he should adopt when considering the offer of promotion into the new culture are:
• Training: This can prove to be an important factor in tackling issues like that of diversity problems and minority group issues in the organization. The employees may be trained to get acquainted to and to embrace the different cultures from the organization and eventually mix up better in the change. The new leader or the operations head will be responsible to manage these issues and manage change in the organization. He may initiate trainings in the organization to manage change and to break the majority or minority groups and make the fruitful groups in the context of the organization and the employees. Training can be an important tool in managing change and diversity which is been used by the leaders over the world to tackle situations which were usually out of their control or which grew up too large to handle (Parker, 1997).
• No Discriminating Policy: The manager or operations head have to put the no discrimation policy in place by which the discrimation againt various minor groups would be stopped and eliminated. The discrimation in the group can be beacuser of various reasons starting from racial, gender and economic group discreimation. The people who will be in the minority group in any of these factor may face the consequenbces of discrimation in the work place. The same will be experienced by the new joined operations head and thus by implementing the no discrimination policy he will be able to ctop the group from being negative towards him and thus will encourage the acceptability in thr group towards him (Hernez-Broome, 2006).
• Electronic job posting: Next policy which the leader or operations head may iomplement will electronic job postings which will involve the employees working from various locations in vraiuos groups of the office. This will also involve the working from home of the employees and thus this will give them an extra comfort bit which will add towards the acceptability levels of the operations head. Theelectronic job posting will also involve the availability of open positions in the organistion which may be filled by the sutiable candidate within theoprganisation by internal job posting. This will lead to the employees from different countries to go and work in other locations of the company or organization. This will increase the diversity in the organization and thus will increase the acceptability levels of foreign nationals in various country locations of the organization (Crossan, 2006).
• Harassment-free work environment: Another leadership style which will assist the new leader in the new country to get acceptance in his reportees or team members is setting up the harassment-free work environment. Employees in the new reporting team may be suffering from harassment of one or other kind in the work place. When this new leader enters the team, he may make his place in the team and acceptability easier by establishing an harassment free environment. This may be done by easy approachability style of leadership. This will help the employees to approach him any time in case of need and the team will feel encouraged to be working with him.
• Employee network groups: Another policy which could be in place for the employees to help them feel that the new leader is in favour of them and the diversity in the organization is establishment of employee network groups. The new leader may help to establish these groups and these groups can be created based on various work culture specifications and objectives. When these work groups or employee network groups are created will help the employees to share their best practices and work group problems and in tur searching the problems for them. This will help to integrate the whole organization and thus the new leader can gain acceptance and appreciation in the whole organization.
• Open Door Policy: The new leader once establish this policy of open door, will soon gain the importance amog his team members. This policy will simply mean that the employees will have the freedom of approaching any manager or leader for their issue and complaints with anyone in the organization. This will eliminate the bias from the work culture and everyone in the organisdation will be answerable to someone or the other and hence will perform better in their key result areas and capabilities. This will add a sense of responsibility in the organization and hence motivating the employees toward growth and organizational harmony. The new leader or operatiosn manager will gain importance and acceptability by his working style of this nature (Burnham, 2003).
• Education Assistance Program: The new operations head may establish the education assiatance programs for their employees and hence motivate them to study further and go for higher studies. This will have multiple advantages in terms of increases the skills of the employees which will help them perform better at their defined roles and responsibilities. This will also help them stick to one company and thus will decrease the attrition rate of the organization and this will be possible beacue of enchaced care for them and their career provided at the organization. Also this will help ereduce the cot of the company which is the oepratung cost which will be because of the reason that the employees will have enhanced skillsets at a lower coist and thus the organization will not have to hire the emploiyees from outside for a better skillset if needed. All this will be feasible because of the leadership style of the new operations head which will encorgae the employees to accept him and give his share of importance (Wallece, 2006).
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP): The employee assistance program may help the mployees who are in need of financial and oither type of help feasible from the organization. The set up of this type pf programs in the organistion will encourage the employees to look forward to the organistion for any feasible help and thus will increase the satisfaction level in the organization which will help them to increase thir productivity and loyalty towards the organization. This program would be an initiave if the new leader and hence he will gain the appreciation for his work.
• Open communications: Anither important factor which will lead to acceptance of the new leader will be open communications. He may follow this style of leadership by communicating directly to his team mebers na dand his reotees for any important issue reosulution or any important update. This will help in decrease in loss of information while in transit. This will also add tehs ense of open culture in the minds of the employees and will increase the approachability in addition to avoiding and problems or issues cecause of any miscommunication possible. This can be an important step for the new leader to gain acceptance and importance in his new team (Perinbanayagam, 2005).
• Share in company’s success: If the new leader follow this style of leadership of providing share in the company’s success to his team mates he is very liable to gain appreciation and loaylity in his team. Awarding the team for their efforts in addition to rewarding them for their initiative swill spread the word of praise in the team for the new leader and he will soon be everyone’s hero. A leader is someone who make the people follow his path and his style by doing right things and people will auytomatically follow his paths. This is impotant for any leader to be successful and for the new leader to be successful at his new role.
• Flexible work hours: This can be an inititive of the new leader to his team or his reportees which will allow them to be working at their convenient times in the day. This will help tyo increase the productivity of the employees because working at their conevenient times will make employees comfortable and thus work better for the organization. Thus the organization will have increase turn over and the better performance of the employees will also lead to the betterment of the employees. This will add a feather in the cap of achievements of the new leader and will work towards his acceptance in the foreign country and the employees of his organization there (Manna, 2008).
References:
1. Burnham, D. 2003. Prime motives: Average performers can be turned into stars. People Management, April 3.
2. Crossan, M., and F. Oliviera. 2006. Cross-enterprise leadership: A new approach for the 21st century. Ivey Business Journal, 70 (5): 1–6.
3. Hernez-Broome, G., and R. L. Hughes. 2006. Leadership development: Past, present and future. Human Resources Planning 50:25–31.
4. House, R., P. J. Hanges, M. Javidan, P. Dorfman and V. Gupta. 2004. Cultural leadership and organizations: The globe study of 62 Societies. Thousand Oaks, ca: Sage.
5. Manna, R., and R. Morris. 2008. ‘Strategic Aspects of the Importance of Employee Management.’ Journal of Diversity Management 3 (1): 3226– 31.
6. Nowicki, M., and J. Summers. 2007. Changing leadership style, the new leadership philosophy emphasises purposes, process and people. Healthcare Financial Management, February.
7. Parker, B., R. K. Brown, J. Child, andM. A. Smith. 1997. The Sociology of Industry. London: Allen and Unwin.
8. Perinbanayagam, R. S. 2005. ‘The Other in the Game: Mead and Wittgenstein on Interaction.’ In Studies in Symbolic Interaction 28, edited by N. K. Denzin, 341–353. Bingley: Emerald.
9. Rijamampianina, R., and T. Carmichael. 2005. A pragmatic and holistic approach to managing diversity. Problems and Perspectives inManagement 3(1): 109–17.
10. Robertson, Q. M. 2004. Disentangling the Meanings of Diversity and Inclusion. Working Paper 04-05, Centre for Advanced Human Resource Studies, Cornell.
11. Thomas, D. A., R. J. Ely. 1996. Learning for the future: Making the case for teaching diversity. Harvard Business Review 74 (5): 79–90.
12. Wallece, R. A., and A.Wolf. 2006. Contemporary sociological theory. Englewood Cliffs, ny: Prentice Hall.
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