Role of Leadership PDF

Role of Leadership ================== The culture that organizations are embedded in influences their views about leadership. Besides organizational culture, there are two (2) other cultures that influence people in the workplace. These three (3) are altogether referred to as **cultures model**. Th...

Role of Leadership ================== The culture that organizations are embedded in influences their views about leadership. Besides organizational culture, there are two (2) other cultures that influence people in the workplace. These three (3) are altogether referred to as **cultures model**. This model is not only based on organizational culture of global businesses but also captures influences in local companies. **Personal culture** is the shared combination of an individual's traits, skills, and personality formed within the context of his or her ethnic, racial, familial, and educational environments. Everyone has a unique personal culture. **National culture** is a shared understanding that comes from the combination of beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors that have provided the foundation for the heritage of a country. Although it is a shared understanding, individuals within a nation still have a very wide range of beliefs about their nation. For interactions within organizations, culture is a mix of personal, national, and organizational culture. Inter- organizational culture occurs between participants from different organizations who share the same meanings and symbols. Tourism and hospitality leaders must, then, respond to the following questions to evaluate where the organization or workplace is in terms of organizational culture. - How do leaders and people contribute to the development of inter-organizational culture? - How should leaders and people, both closed and distant from relationships, be prepared for such inter- organizational interactions? Focusing on the importance of relationships, people must be reinforced, supported, inspired, and challenged to realize what a relationship is and its implications to the totality of the organization. In relation to the three \(3) cultural perspectives of integration, differentiation, and fragmentation, leaders must be aware of their role in the comprehension of these perspectives, the way these perspectives will affect people subordinated to them, as well as their interactions between people from different organizational areas and companies (Larentis, Antonello, & Slongo, 2019). - In connection with the **perspective of integration** (removes ambiguity by focusing people\'s attention on unifying values and assumptions), when an organization decides to deal with cooperative relationships and is aware of their features, the importance of the relationship is likely to be somehow already present. Misunderstandings brought by non-shared meanings and symbols may cause disintegration. Therefore, organizational leaders must initiate group conversations, meetings, and visits. - Shared meanings and symbols associated with the **perspective of differentiation** (have different views), interpretation, and practices about inter-organizational relationships pose a challenge to the organization. In such instances, visits and meetings can be venues for encouragement and support. - About the **perspective of fragmentation** (interrupts coordination processes in environments brought by gaps or uncertainties), the role of leadership is to comprehend how such meanings and symbols interact between organizations. This aims to guide people, considering the way relationships are supposed to perform in the organization or to find out some practices and narratives, which may contribute to the way top management teams make sense and interpret how relationships operate. In all perspectives, attention shall be given to the new employees. Beyond the aspects of selection, development, and appreciation, organizational leaders need to get involved in the rites associated with new employees, and the way they will learn a new culture. Mentoring is another useful tool. **Mentoring** is a relationship between two (2) individuals with the goal of professional and personal development. The *mentor* is usually an experienced individual who shares knowledge, experience, and advice with a less experienced person or *mentee.* New employees start learning an organizational culture since their first day, and they will learn from the available resources and mentors, comparing and interacting with their experiences and paths. Organizational performance and success are directly connected to the understanding of learning dynamics. Relationship development, maintenance, and performance are based on people learning how to deal with each other, understanding different positions, and acquiring more knowledge from facts and experiences. Apart from trust, inter-organizational learning is one of the key factors for inter-organizational relationship performance. **Inter-organizational learning** is defined as a dynamic process that occurs in cooperative inter-organizational relationships, in different structured and non-structured social spaces, which encourage learning situations, described as learning episodes (Larentis, Antonello, & Slongo, 2019). Learning does not only occur in a person's mind, but also in their social interactions; it is not only a cognitive phenomenon, but also a cultural and social one. *Situated learning* puts thought and action into a specific a time and space. It means involving individuals, environments, and activities to make learning complete. For instance, suppliers and service providers, interacting to develop a new product or even to define how to improve service quality to final customers, are learning, although not having a specific program to develop capabilities and improve tasks. This explains how inter-organizational learning shows its cultural and social implications. An important aspect of inter-organizational learning is the presence of dialogue. **Dialogues** work as interactive joint learning processes, frequently spontaneously and without having rules, but limited by a serious intention to achieve mutual understanding. As parties begin sharing information, a dialogue process is being developed. Dialogues constitute a specific element which will lead to interpretation or sense-making. Cultural meanings will be generated, interpreted, and figured out. During the interactions, people have the opportunity to learn, regardless of the lack of organizations' actions and practices associated with learning. There has been a great deal of focus on the global leadership competencies needed for success in the rapidly changing global environment. The competencies needed for effective global leadership, whether domestically in a multicultural environment or abroad, are similar. For leaders to be successful in multicultural interactions, they must be globally literate. To be **globally literate** means seeing, thinking, acting, and mobilizing in culturally mindful ways. Global literacy is the sum of the attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, skills, and behaviors needed for success in today's multicultural, global economy (Connerley & Pedersen, 2005). It also means that leaders must possess the following competencies: - Personal literacy -- understanding and valuing oneself - Social literacy -- engaging and challenging other people - Business literacy -- focusing and mobilizing one's organization - Cultural literacy -- valuing and leveraging cultural differences All these competencies are both interrelated and interdependent. Together they form the foundation for global competence. How each of these literacies is expressed depends on the culture in which the leader is working, living, and conducting business. The following characteristics are important in leading diverse organizations successfully: - A personal, long-range vision that includes employees of different ethnic and cultural groups - An awareness of multicultural issues and broad knowledge of diversity dimensions - An openness to change in themselves by encouraging feedback from their employees, accepting criticism, and showing a willingness to change their behavior - Mentoring and empowering those who are culturally different. For leaders to be effective in multicultural environments, they must have the necessary awareness, knowledge, and skills through training. This three-step approach is best known as *multicultural competencies:* - **Awareness** -- provides the basis for accurate opinions, attitudes, and assumptions. It presumes an ability to compare alternative viewpoints accurately, relate or translate priorities in various cultural settings, identify constraints and opportunities in each cultural context, and understand one's limitations. - **Knowledge**. It provides the documentation and factual information necessary to move beyond awareness toward effective and appropriate change in multicultural settings. Through accumulated facts and information based on appropriate assumptions, it is possible to understand other cultures from their own viewpoint (Connerley & Pedersen, 2005). - **Skill**. It provides the ability to build on awareness and apply knowledge toward effective change in multicultural settings. Trained people will become skilled in planning, conducting, and evaluating the multicultural contexts in their respective workplaces. They can assess the needs of other cultures, work with interpreters and cultural informants, observe and understand behaviors of culturally different people, and interact, advise, evaluate, and manage their tasks effectively in multicultural settings.