Culture defines Leadership Behavior
Estella Guerra
South Texas College
9/5/16
Abstract
Organizational cultures refers to the principles and morals that have existed in their work environment. This can influence the employee’s attitudes and behavior at the work place. Many times upper management will adjust the employee’s leadership behavior to accomplish the goals of the organization. People must be able to understand each other’s cultures and respect it.
Key Words: Culture, Leadership, Behavior
Many people believe that there is a relationship between culture and leadership behavior. Culture is significantly important because that is was guides employee’s behavior towards each other. In today’s workplace it consists of many different individuals from diverse countries. The employee’s need to feel comfortable no matter from what country or culture they are from. There are many leaders that take culture and diversity very serious because that helps keep their employee’s happy to be at work and do their job. In order to do this, the company needs to find a way to maintain relationships with employee’s and seem more caring. One’s culture serves to determine our leadership behavior.
Literature Review
Leadership behavior has a significant impact on different cultures. On one of the articles I read was not so much about management as a leader, but as six Chinese language teachers teaching in the U.S. Culture differences does not only happen between upper management and employees but also with teachers and students. They brought the teachers to teach in America because there is growing interest in learning Chinese and there is a growing demand to keep recruiting teachers. These teachers had three main challenges: First, they were aware that they had differences in classroom management practices, and grammar translation. Second, the value of freedom and not being too strict with students with small things. Teachers also reported having to deal with students with special needs and parents who did not always have the same respect for the culture of the teachers. Finally, having to deal with differential beliefs between America and Chinese teaching styles. China is knows to be more strict with students and have a different method of teaching. It was all due too many culture mismatching and differences in leadership. “The Chinese language teachers in this study reported many cross-cultural classroom management challenges including the need to frequently attend to student misbehavior, lack of respect from students and proper language skills, and lack of effective management strategies that work with American students, especially with special needs students. These challenges were shaped by their cultural expectations and exacerbated by the insufficient pre-service training regarding cultural differences and culturally different practices. These findings on the impact of cultural expectations on the teachers' classroom management practices and challenges are consistent with previous studies on the significant role of cultural differences in shaping the Chinese language teachers' teaching experiences in the U.S.” (Zhou, 2015) The school decided that later in the future when hiring new teachers with different culture they were going to provide training so they can be familiar with the local school culture in contrasts of their culture. Also, the teachers will attend training on management strategies that can help them with new modifications in the classroom. After the rough year the new teachers and students had the school will start teaching students about cross-culture.
On this different article called “Diversity Matters Leadership Counts” the author gives out his example of how he is an American who had traveled to Brazil and he was constantly getting robbed and he did not understand why it kept happening. Well there culture is very different to the Americans so he later learned how to act and who surround himself with. When learning about his own experience he decided to make a change and try to fit in and maybe that would be a different outcome, and it did. He did not get robbed anymore and he had to learn about the culture in Brazil. Basically, if a person decided to travel elsewhere of the country they have to learn the other culture.
“Equity and diversity mean more than disaggregating standardized test scores each summer to measure the progress of subgroups, or stating in the school or district mission that all students can learn. Equity and diversity need to be embedded into the many facets of education: staff, pedagogical practices, communication, leadership, assessment, curriculum, and community engagement.” (Anderson, 2014)
On the other hand, an article called “Fitting in Is Overrated” explained that 2013 a survey was made and the results were based to only hire people that will fit in to the company. “82% of people who make hiring decisions felt culture fit was important in the hiring process; 59% had rejected candidates who didn’t fit in. Many thriving companies, including Zappos, Whole Foods and Canada’s own G Adventures, have long used culture fit interviews as a decisive hiring factor.” (Aarts, 2015) Instead of hiring different kind of people from different cultures they just want to stick with trying to fit in and getting along with each other. This can lead to a serious lawsuit for discrimination.
Furthermore, a different article named “The Power of Positive Culture”, mentions that we need diversity and having different cultures in a workplace is always a good thing. Aileen Wilkins states that, in order to have a healthy culture workplace it has to start with a strong leadership. If management does not enforce the rules the company can go downhill. That is what happened to Aileen Wilkins when she first started out as A Human Resource Specialist at her first job. She also indicates that she learned from her mistakes and now she discusses the following: “They also need a positive culture and work environment. This factor isn’t discussed much, yet it is just as vital to success as a sound business plan. You need to harness the power of your organization’s talent in order to achieve the organization’s goals. Great cultures drive great results. And great results create career and growth opportunities for talent—two ingredients essential to creating great organizational culture.” (Wilkins, 2015)
There is culture differences in being a patient, many of us have witness that some patients are high priority than others and at times it has to do with culture. The following article “Influencing organizational culture: a leadership challenge” states that there was a report made on a hospital that was nor meeting its needs to the patients based on the culture. The article reveals that leadership can influence and change in organizational culture, and ensuring that the patients remain the focus of the hospital. Many patients and their families were let done by the failure of the care of Mid Staffordshire Foundation Trust. All provider organization will have to evolve what they call the 6Cs. That is based of care, compassion, competence, communication, courage, and commitment. “A commitment to share a culture of safety among all health professionals assures that the patient remains the focal point of any changes in care delivery. Fostering leadership at every level throughout the organization, and creating capacity to develop future leaders by investing in programmers to support this, highlights the education and ongoing development aspect of health care. If, as leaders we can embed the 6Cs into our practice, this will allow us to build and strengthen leadership throughout healthcare organizations for the benefit of patients and staff.” (Ann Muls, 2015)
Culture and leadership behavior are joint together to work at its best. Hana and Marcela wrote an article about how important it is to have these two together in order to achieve greatness in a workplace. Culture plays a great role on companies because of business strategies. It discusses different leadership methods for workers. “Organizational culture and leadership has been of interest to scientists as well as managers for several decades. A well-built and managed organizational culture can create a significant competitive advantage for a company. Studying and understanding organizational culture is based on culture science in general and it is characterized by an inter-disciplinary approach; this brings methods and knowledge together, especially in sociology, psychology, economics and management. Staff leadership is a priority task for all managers in the organization, no matter what level of hierarchy they operate at. Its performance is linked to both successes and failures of the entire organization and all of their employees.”(Hana Mohelska, 2015)
Findings
My findings summarize that all the articles I researches were based of my hypothesis. There is a relationship between culture and leadership behavior. Upper management need to get more involved with their employee’s and learn about their culture. People just want to be treated fairly. An employee will do its best work when they know they are being acknowledge. Each staff member needs to clearly understand and respect other co-workers based on their culture. Training and enforcing the rules should make a change in the work environment. One’s culture serves to determine our leadership behavior.
Conclusion
In any organization, culture is significantly important because that is what makes a healthy environment in the workplace. Having different diversity of people is not a bad thing, one can learn from their cultures as they can learn from ours.
References
Aarts, D. (2015). Fiiting In Is Overrated. Canadian Business, 23-23.
Anderson, M. (2014). Diversity Matters Leadership Counts. Leadership, 12-15.
Ann Muls, L. D. (2015). Influencing organizational culture: a leadershipchallenge. British Journal of Nursing, 633-638.
Hana Mohelska, M. S. (2015). Organizational culture and leadership-joint vessel? Procedia: social and behavior sciences, 1011-1016.
Wilkins, A. (2015). The power of positive culture. HR Magazine, 24-25.
Zhou, W. (2015). Chinese language teachers' expectations and perceptions of American students' behavior: Exploring the nexus of culture differences and classroom management. System, 17-27.