Style Matters: Leading in Cross-Cultural/ Multi-National Contexts

YSC InsightsOriginal thought leadership from YSC

October 2011

Research

At YSC our mission is to release the power of people. We do this by combining industry leading psychological insight with a thorough understanding of our clients’ business needs. We work with clients across their entire talent lifecycles including: recruitment, induction, development, the identification of potential, internal selection, role change, measurement and departure. Our key client offerings include 1:1 and team assessment, executive coaching, organisational consulting and the measurement of change.

The global nature of business demands leadership that spans national and cultural boundaries, yet leaders often find themselves in these roles without training or education about how to lead in different cultures. As a result, leaders vary in their response to cultural pressure, i.e., it affects their style and their commitment to the task.

Background

Our clients are currently wrestling with the challenge of selecting and positioning leaders who can mobilize diverse groups, often virtually, into high performing teams. This is an especially urgent task for large multi-nationals who work in rapidly developing and rising economies.

We recently surveyed leaders to understand this issue so we could better advise our clients. In total, 377 senior leaders from 18 countries, 26 different industries in both the public and private sectors, and more than 19 job functions were surveyed. The average age of the participants was 42, and 85% of them were senior managers or above. Overall, 33% reported that they were currently leading a change effort in which their team spanned at least two different countries.

Some Key Findings

1. Nationality was a better predictor than personality of a leader’s style. Historically,

organizations have used personality tests to aid with leader selection and to predict a leader’s style. However, this finding suggests we need to consider (and possibly give more weight to) one’s cultural background when placing leaders. This supports academic research as well, which has found evidence that there are culturally endorsed leadership styles. Organizations would be well served to either select leaders locally or educate their leaders on the cultural norms and expectations of their followers.

2. The cultural context influences some leaders’ approach to launching change efforts more than others. Many change efforts fail early in the change process because followers choose not to cooperate, and it has been argued extensively that one way to gain others’ buy-in and cooperation for change is to include them in the planning and decision-making. Although personality did not accurately predict leadership style, years of research has shown that a leader’s personality influences his or her preferred

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Rob Morris is a Director and Head of YSC’s New York City office. In this research article Rob considers leadership styles and their correlation with national traits.

YSC Insights: Style Matters: Leading in Cross-Cultural/Multi-National Contexts

Historically, leaders have failed as much as they have succeeded (50% of the time), and change leaders have failed at even higher rates (approximately 75% of the time).

Leading change today is even more difficult, because it occurs in multi-national and cross-cultural contexts even more than in the past.

Approximately 1 out of every 3 senior managers is leading a cross-cultural change effort.

These leaders are not often selected deliberately for this capability, i.e., cross-cultural competence, which decreases their chances for success even further.

leadership style, which typically ranges from autocratic/directive to inclusive/participative. The leaders in this study who were high in self-monitoring (i.e., they look to their environment for social cues about what constitutes appropriate behavior) chose significantly different leadership styles depending on whether they were leading within or outside their own social group. In contrast, leaders who were low in self-monitoring did not vary their leadership style across contexts. Self-monitoring may be an important characteristic for cross-cultural leaders who need to vary their styles based on their context.

3. Even the ‘grittiest’ leaders experienced less commitment to change goals when faced with resistance to change. Grit has been defined as ‘passion and persistence in the pursuit of one’s goals, even in the face of difficulty.’ Resistance is a strong force that wears on a leader and often contributes to the failure of change efforts. Leaders who choose the wrong leadership style in cross-cultural contexts will likely experience stronger resistance than those who choose culturally appropriate styles, and placing highly driven and persistent leaders in these roles may not overcome this shortfall or guarantee success.

4. Past success predicted leader strength of purpose for leading current change efforts. The psychology of success is well documented and we know that success leads to self-efficacy, i.e., task-specific

confidence. There is some evidence that this holds true for change leadership in cross-cultural contexts. There was a significant and strong association between past success (and failure) and a leader’s resolve to stick with difficult change efforts. Assessing and profiling a leader’s history (e.g., understanding their successes and failures) before placing them into these roles is important, as is creating the condition for high potential talent to achieve some success before placing them into these complex roles.

Conclusions

• To increase the probability of success for leaders, organizations need to not only understand what personal characteristics are important for effective leadership, but they also need to account for the context in which leaders operate.

• Specifically, societal culture is a strong influence on leaders and it affects their leadership style as much as the leader’s personality.

• To be effective in cross-cultural contexts, leaders need to adapt their style to match the cultural norms and expectations of their followers. Implicitly, this requires organizations to identify and understand deeply the cultural context and the personal history and profile of its leaders.

• It also calls for more targeted development around cross-cultural leadership before placing individuals into leadership roles.

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Rob Morris is a Director based in YSC’s New York office. For further details please contact us on Tel: +1 212 661 9888 / Email rob.morris@ysc.com

YSC Insights: Style Matters: Leading in Cross-Cultural/Multi-National Contexts

Audia, P. G., Locke, E. A., & Smith, K. G. (2000). The paradox of success: An archival and a laboratory study of strategic persistence following radical environmental change. Academy of Management Journal, 43, 837–853.

Burke, W. W. (2011). Organization change: Theory and practice (3 ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Duckworth, A.L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M.D., & Kelly, D.R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Personality Processes and Individual Differences, 92, 1087-1101.

Morris, R. (2011). Can chameleons lead change: The effect of resistance to change on high self-monitoring leaders’ strength of purpose. Doctoral Dissertation. New York: Columbia University Press.

Snyder, M. (1974). Self–monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30, 526–537.

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