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Very important concepts to organizational leadership are the concepts of diversity, cultural synergy and participative leadership. Lets look at them a little closer and examine how they fit together.
“Participative leadership may be defined as the approach in which leaders involve others in making and implementing decisions. A participative leader collects subordinates’ ideas and perspectives and integrates them into the decisions” (PSU, 2016). “Synergy is the synthesis of what each individual in the group has to offer. It is about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts in the way an automobile is more than the pile of its individual parts. Cultural synergy is the same idea but involving cultures rather than individuals” (PSU, 2016). “Synergy is a cooperative or combined action, and occurs when diverse or disparate individuals or groups collaborate for a common cause. The objective is to increase effectiveness by sharing perceptions and experiences, insights, and knowledge” (Moran, Abramson, & Moran, 2014, p . 266). “Diversity generally refers to the ways that people in organizations differ” (PSU, 2016).
We can see that the parts are interconnected. A leader chooses participative leadership style to find the missing piece by enlisting help from a diverse group of individuals as the best source for talent and encourages them to use synergy to collectively solve the puzzle.
Globally this is the same principle just at a much larger scale. Fareed Zakaria said it well: “If, on the one hand, we come together and work on common problems of humanity, imagine the opportunities it would create for everyone.” (Moran, Abramson, 2014).
These three concepts are in the play more times than we notice. For example, when a leader hires a foreign manager that has perfected an art of food&beverage to better quality of a club we see these concepts at play. We see these concepts at play when a multinational group of scientists is working on a cure for cancer. When people come to vote for a president we see it again.
Naturally each concept is important by itself, but by connecting these parts together we can see that this inter connectedness improves chances of solving any puzzle.
References:
Cultural Synergy. Penn State. Retrieved October 2, 2016 from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1802572/modules/items/21179088
Defining Diversity. Retrieved October 2, 2016 from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1802572/modules/items/21179061
Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing Cultural Differences (9th ed.). Oxford: Routledge.
Participative leadership. Penn State. Retrieved October 2, 2016 from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1790923/modules/items/21146646
Thanks for linking participative leadership and synergy in organizations. Seems so obvious once you pointed it out to me!
Solid connection made between a leadership style leveraging diversity to create synergy. In my blog post today I wrote something very similar to this but not as directly connected as yours. In my example, I was a trainer. I was not officially their boss, but I was the authority figure. Your post led me to ponder had I stopped the interaction in the classroom with the trainees and said they were being disruptive by helping each other learn; that would have probably been detrimental to the synergy they had come in with. A leader can have a direct impact to the synergy of a team,especially if the leader is more about creating competition amongst the group.Thank you for the insight.
This is a great post. Right from the beginning the picture had me wondering to why you chose that picture, and if it would relate to the article. Using the concepts you described three examples in which you believed cultural synergy was displayed. The example of the foreign manager is a little vague and hard to relate to this lesson. However, the one about voting for president and scientists coming together to cure cancer I think hit the nail on the head. Keep in mind that cultural synergy also refers to the concept of working as a team, or sense of community. Some would view voting for president to not be cultural synergy as you are broking into multiple parties and groups voting for what you think is right path of our country. Yes, they are groups working together, but outsiders would look at that as communities and cultures being against each other. Just some food for thought.
Great Blog!!!