Organizational Leaders and Cross-Cultural Environments

Cross-cultural environments may be explained as those contexts in which individuals from different cultural backgrounds get together and must interact with each other. This scenarios may be present in classrooms, forums, museums and, of course, international organizations. In the latter, it is the mission of organizational leaders to create synergies and adequate interactive frameworks, in order to accomplish a successful result in the performance of the organization towards its goalds and purposes.

The behavior of organizational leaders in this context should be characterised by a cross-cultural managerial approach, which means understanding the differences between his or her own culture and the ones' of those who constitute his/her colleagues, subordinates or superiors. However, this process of understanding shall basically start by being conscious about the fact that those differences exist and that may be exploited or become an obstacle in the performance of the organization's activities. Organizational leaders facing this kind of situations should then try to find those advantages present in different cultures and use them on behalf of the common goals and purposes shared by individuals in the organization, so that the results may be as satisfactory as the desirable ones, or even more, generating value to the organization and making of this advantages, competitive ones.

It is important to remark, however, one conduct an organizational leader in a cross-cultural environment must never perform. This conduct is trying to change or attack other people's culture or set of beliefs and values that underlie their behavior. That mistake may significate the loss of valuable human capital and the failure of the mission which is appointed to fulfill, due to the judgement of very sensitive abstract components of human nature that are not ever available for judging.

Acknowledging that differences exist, that they can be exploited and that those differences may become competitive advantages of an organization able to lead it to a greater success ought to be the main characteristics present in the behavioral approach used by an organizational leader in cross-cultural environments.