Leadership & Cultures

I got a chance to read a paper about Guanxi and leadership in China. The chinese society they say is driven by the principles of "Guanxi". I was totally impressed and could relate to everything written in the paper because it's pretty close to the culture I grew up in. 

I had a brief discussion with my friend from Britain and it was pretty evident that "Guanxi" is a pretty difficult concept to comprehend in the west. Anyway, here is a brief brain dump of my thoughts after reading the paper.

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What?

I have been living and working in Britain for the last three years whilst most of my upbringing has been in the collectivistic culture. In the recent past, I have some times found it difficult to understand actions and behaviors of people at my work place and have had some trouble trying to bring out my true character at work.

So what?

Prof. Ellen Langer says that "Behavior makes sense from the actor’s perspective". But what makes sense to one may sound completely unfair and unacceptable to another. Understanding motivations

and cultural background is very important to make sense of a person’s actions and behaviors  To share one example, a leader or a manager in one cultural context may be seen as a figure who would tend to the needs and feelings of a follower and expecting this behavior in a different culture can lead to misunderstanding and lack of trust. Increasing interaction with global teams spread across different cultures has increased the chances of conflict within teams and team members. Conflict of interest, conflict of goals is a common theme especially in matrix organizations.

Now what?

Examining some of my core beliefs about individual goals, team goals and working in teams has revealed a deeper influence from my cultural background. While cross-cultural interactions are difficult to manage, I realize that I have to consider my internal biases before evaluating people and situations. Henceforth, I intend to consider cultural background to understand expectations of different people in the team and harness the potential of the team to achieve organizational goals.