CULTURAL INSIGHTS

About how multiple perspectives may impact perceived effective leadership in multicultural teams.

During a focus group session for a financial institution in Australia, two SME’s who recently came to Australia —one Indian, one Chinese — privately asked me, a Dutch facilitator, ‘why Australian managers are such poor leaders’. I asked them what made them come to that conclusion and they answered:
‘they always ask us what we think, they never tell us what to do’.

Cultural backgrounds shape perspectives and expectations of effective leadership:
Failure to accurately interpret multiple perspectives in multicultural environments may negatively affect perceptions of effective leadership and cause cultural bias.