Influence of culture on leadership training

Author: Iloka Benneth Chiemelie

Published: 7th of July 2014

Culture has been described as people’s way of life. Whether you are training to become a leader or you are leading as a leader, culture does have some influence on what you do and how you do it. In literatures, a number of researcher have identified new competences for leadership in the modern business environment and one of such competences is “cultural awareness” or “cultural competence” (Gurstein, 1999; Graen and Hui, 1999).

The most influential aspects of culture when it comes to leadership training are individualism-vs-collectivism, and high- and low-context culture. In an individualistic system like the USA, there is chances of people learning on their own and this is manifested in the level of online courses as compared with Asian countries. In collectivist cultures like China, team leadership training is more likely as the classroom system is still preferred. Additionally, China will likely use more of symbols and signs in their leadership training as compared with USA that will required detailed training program. In that case, one can easily argue as well as conclude that culture does have an influence on leadership training.

References

Graen, G.B. and Hui, C. (1999). U.S. Army Leadership in the 21^st century: Challenges and implications for training. In J.G. Hung, G. E. Dodge and L. Wong (Eds.), Out-of-the-box-of-leadership: Transforming the 21^st century army and other top performance organization (pp. 239-252). Stanford, Connecticut: Jai Press Inc.

Gurstein, M. (1999). Leadership in the peacekeeping army of the future. In J.G. Hung, G. E. Dodge and L. Wong (Eds.), Out-of-the-box-of-leadership: Transforming the 21^st century army and other top performance organization (pp. 195-218). Stanford, Connecticut: Jai Press Inc.