Chapter 14: Gender, Diversity and Cultural Leadership
The chapter on gender, diversity, and cultural leadership provides important insight into how leaders should enact appropriate management skills in the current globalized business environment. The issue of globalization and changes in the demographic trends and patterns at the workplace has made it critical for leaders and managers to understand how to manage and influence individuals with different traditions, beliefs, values, and expectations ((Kossek & Buzzanell, 2018). This chapter provides insightful informs on the best approaches that leaders should adopt to manage the diverse workforce.
The interesting thing in the article is the impact of culture on the leadership style. Considering the current work environment, employees are composed of people from diverse backgrounds such as different races, religions, languages, ages, and gender among other demographics backgrounds. As a result, leaders must attempt to understand the culture of the employees to determine the appropriate leadership style that can drive the organization to success. Culture determines business strategies that an organization should apply to become competitive in the marketing environment (Yukl, 2010). Without acknowledging the culture of the employees and customers, organizations can find it difficult to survive in a competitive business environment.
The chapter is interesting since it not only gives how culture impacts leadership approach but also how the leaders should respond to the diverse needs of customers. This is evident nowadays as a leader can be assigned to work in a new cultural environment which requires a unique leadership approach. In the article, the author stresses the need for leaders to come up with accommodative organizational culture which represents the values and mission of the organization. I agree that culture has a significant impact on leadership traits. Arguably, cultural leadership has been attracting the attention of many scholars as it proves effective in addressing some of the unique challenges faced by organizations. Thus cultural leadership has been indicated as the best in addressing the issue of gender and diversity (Yukl, 2010). It specifically requires that leaders accept the culture of all the followers and integrate them when making the shared organizational culture. It implies that cultural leaders are essential in aligning the cultural practices of the diverse workforce with the organizational beliefs and values.
I consider cultural leadership is important for several reasons as suggested in the article. One importance of cultural leadership is that it ensures that the needs of the employees are met by the leaders. Employees normally become satisfied when there is a good working environment and this can motivate them to work hard and accomplish the desired objectives of the company. Apart from motivating the employees, cultural leadership is important in attracting the loyalty of the local employees. Leaders should avoid exposing their home culture in the companies that operate in foreign countries having unique traditions and beliefs (Yukl, 2010). This is because customers often favor the leaders and organizations who adhere to their culture. Adhering to the local culture of the customers and the surrounding community is important in promoting the sales of the company and enhancing its performance in the market.
Culture also has an impact on the marketing strategies and branding of the products among other human resource management practices (Kossek & Buzzanell, 2018). Since leaders are entitled to provide direction that an organization should take, they must evaluate the cultural environment to come up with proper strategies to outperform their rival firms in the market. This can be achieved by adapting cultural leadership styles in foreign countries.
References
Kossek, E. E., & Buzzanell, P. M. (2018). Women’s career equality and leadership in organizations: Creating an evidence‐based positive change. Human Resource Management, 57(4), 813-822.
Yukl, G. (2010). Leadership in Organizations. Seventh Edition. Prentice-Hall