Nowadays, effective leadership begins with the ability of a leader to manage and leverage cultural differences in cross-cultural environments. However, leading a group of individuals who come from diverse cultural backgrounds, or rather a multicultural team often creates frustrating management dilemmas. The expectations of the team concerning leadership are usually based on communication and decision making styles that tend to be culturally defined. Different people have different cultural patterns, which in most cases are primarily founded on the backgrounds of their childhood homes, as well as their varying ethnic, racial, and geographical backgrounds.
This leadership plan explores the difficulties of leading in a multicultural …show more content…
Additionally, it will be very difficult for me to express my own leadership expectations and intentions. Essentially, the communication of the team’s expectations and intentions is fundamental for its very existence, and more importantly it affects its effectiveness.
The Challenging Role of the Leader of a Multicultural and Why It’s Important
As noted earlier, dealing with the friction, as well any misunderstandings stemming from cross-cultural differences is one of the most challenging tasks of a multicultural leader. While successful leadership in the modern day environment requires cross-cultural competency, the challenging role of a leader is to respect and avoid discriminating his followers based on their beliefs and values. For instance, being a cultural shock absorber will go a long way in ensuring that one creates a shared culture defined by a common mission and strategy and shared operational goals.
Additionally, a shared culture provides an important foundation allows one to get the best out of any multicultural team. For example, the importance of leading a multicultural team can be linked to effective decision making and team orientation, better conflict management, efficient communication and thought …show more content…
According to this approach, “the leader is distinguished by personality and physical traits or characteristics,” (“Business is Now Global,” n.d). Also, according to the text, the traits or the characteristics of a successful leader ought to be studied and emulated. The trait approach focuses on personality competencies, characteristics, and values, and thus it views leadership from the perspective of an individual leader. ii) Skills