OLEAD 410: Leadership in a Global Context

Cultural Leadership blog

Organizational Change Resistance

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Organizational change is almost a modern buzz word because there are several conversations highlighting reasons why adapting to a changing market is the new way of life. It is amazing to see the changing face of industries over time. Consider that, for example, that the popularization of mobile phones radically disrupted the telecommunications market two decades ago. Now smart phones are again revolutionizing the market so much that today’s youth depend on them to “navigate life…. They use cell phone for social networking, playing games, listening to music, and many other purposes, even calling is less preferred purpose of using a smart phone” (Arora, Singh, & Taneja, 2016, p. 35). If these students leave their smart phone at home or its battery starts to die, they would be willing to go home to retrieve their phone or a charger, even at the expense of being late. Rapidly improving mobile phone capability is just one example of changing markets, and this single change had so much impact on several other markets as well. Companies that are unable to keep pace with changes are left behind. Blackberry was one company that was rapidly outpaced by android and OS operating systems; it went from the number one phone device in the world to one of the more obscure models, and it is only really popular in India (Moran, Abramson, & Moran, 2014).

Modern organizations need to embrace change or they will be left behind, just like the example with Blackberry. Companies have become acquainted with products being impacted by technology, but what is still a struggle is getting company infrastructure to change. Individuals are resistant to change based on the overall circumstances the company is in. In a time of crisis, constituents are very receptive to change because their entire operation is at risk of collapse. In reactive situations, on the other hand, the company is only beginning to stagnate, which makes constituents skeptical of whether or not change is necessary. Based off of performance uncertainty within a reactive organization, agents have medium to high resistance to change. Within a proactive situation, however, there is high resistance to change. Proactive companies are still performing well, but leadership and other experts foresee that the organization has plateaued its performance. Agents that do not understand requirements of staying competitive are highly resistant to change, and leaders and other change agents should find ways to encourage constituents to instead accept motivations to change (Moran, Abramson, & Moran, 2014).

Even if it is difficult to motivate employees to want to change, organizational change expert Edgar Schein (1993) explains that organizations can to do three tasks to diffuse resistance. The first task is identifying how new ways are better than old ways, and then requiring the new change to be effective immediately. Second, leaders should make their constituents feel guilty or have anxiety if they do not change. The message during step two should essentially be that doing business with the old model is detrimental to both the agent and the company. The third step is making the constituents who have changed feel safe. This acts as a positive reinforcement for the employees who successfully change, and it serves as an example to peers (Schein, 1993).

In fact, such peer examples are an effective teaching mechanism. Change agents are the individuals that influence the workplace environment to emulate a certain behavior, so it is clearly important for organizations to recruit change agents early on in an organizational change effort. This is because psychological behavioral theorist Albert Bandura explains that humans are effective learners through observation. Within social cognitive theory, Bandura explains that humans are able to learn vicariously through the outcomes and experiences of others performing the same task. Agents need to have motivation to learn and respect the role model being observed, which means that leaders should select agents that their constituents respect (Bandura, 2012).

References

Arora, N., Singh, N., & Taneja, P. (2016). Smart phone usage pattern: A study of college

students. International Journal of Knowledge Management and Practices, 4(2), 31-36.

Bandura, A. (2012). On the functional properties of perceived self-efficacy revisited. Journal of

Management, 38(1), 9-44.

Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing Cultural Differences (9th ed.).

Oxford: Routledge.

Office Communication and Egocentricism

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Most individuals erroneously believe communication to be an easy task. To get a better handle on the struggles of communication, it is important to break down the phenomenon into its basic components. Communication is the process of creating and sending an idea (known as encoding) with the intention of a recipient understanding and forming their own ideas based on this sent idea (which is known as decoding). Encoding and decoding may sound basic enough, but it is vulnerable to misinterpretation because of egocentric tendencies inherent within people.  For example, I know what intention and meaning I have when I say something and thereby this makes me bias towards believing my verbal packaging is excellent. Nevertheless, individuals decoding messages have their own egocentric biases wherein they would misconstrue message mean because it doesn’t align with what their personal beliefs and mechanisms of understanding (Penn, 2017). Not to over simplify the phenomenon, but children often misunderstand communication because they have an incomplete understanding of the relevant details surrounding a message. In one psychological study, for instance, children misunderstood directions and messages if it conflicted with their own personal understanding of the details (Vogl, 2016).

As a call center manager, I’m tasked with communicating with several departments and staff members in order to coordinate business efforts. Notwithstanding message content communicated, constituents will automatically attach a certain degree of information just based off on my position as a manager. According to Sniderman, Fenton, and Searle, some individuals will automatically be wary of anything managers say to them out of fear of being, for lack of better words, in “trouble” (2016). Such hesitation may be indicative to my own decoding perception biases or an indictment on my authoritarian tendencies, but it is worth noting that they attach those meanings and others based on position title. Attaching meaning based on position title is something that can transcend all organizational levels. Consider that peers, for instance, are more than likely to be more comfortable around each other. Different department personnel are more than likely going to communicate more freely within their department too (Sniderman et al., 2016).

Communication between staff is at risk due to egocentric tendencies, especially with written messages. In my office, there are hundreds of emails sent between staff members. Several of my staff members are more sensitive to written communication because they feel that the messages are curt or intentionally shor. However, I have to remind them that they should only read messages at face value instead of looking too into them. Communication vulnerability is further compounded when considering there are interoffice instant messenger chats occurring. Even slight moments of delay can be misinterpreted as intentional and offend some staff. In any event, it’s clear that written communication within my office has potential for misunderstanding.

Since I’m the customer service manager, it is clear that my staff and I have communication with the outside world as well. Egocentric tendencies also cause frequent misinterpretations between company representatives and outside customers. One of the more pronounced examples is found with customers who do not speak English. When a customer does not speak English, representatives utilize an outsourced translator service. So not only are the egocentric items between representatives and customers impacting communication decoding, but now there is also a third party making translations based on his/her own biases.

In any event, communication may seem easy, but egocentric tendencies make it more difficult. With just my own experience within my company it was evident that communication has the potential to quickly become misconstrued. With communication with the outside world, customers and third parties bring additional layers of miscommunication risk. In order to mitigate the risks of miscommunication, it is important to retain standards of communication that are uniformly applied, but this is difficult to do between companies, cultures, and other countries, so having a cultural subject matter expert available will hopefully help this (Moran, Abramson, & Moran, 2014).

 

References

Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing Cultural Differences (9th

ed.). Oxford: Routledge.

Penn State. (2017). “Global Communication.” Retrieved from

https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1867265/modules

Sniderman, P., Fenton, M., & Searle, R. (2016). Effects of managerial communication

as moderated by LMX and trait NA. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 31(6), 1074-1090

Vogl, S. (2015). Children’s verbal, interactive and cognitive skills and implications for

interviews. Quality and Quantity, 49(1), 319-338.

Networking and Mentors for Women in Leadership

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At some point during this semester I think you might be able to piece together where I work.  That said, I am going to be a little vague with some of the details each week on purpose to “protect” my topics.  My topic this week focuses on my vice president, who is my direct boss.  She is a perfect example to use for my subject this week, as not only is she multi-racial in a high profile executive role, she is also a person who has struggled with networking and mentorship as a woman.  Before she was my boss, she was my mentor, and with that said she has shared some “real” examples of obstacles she has had to overcome to feel included, grow, and be taken seriously in her executive role.  Inclusion and diversity are part of our lesson this week, so hearing about, and sometimes witnessing, her full story over the last eight years to say has been eye opening experience would be an understatement.  Simply because, as a white male in a workforce that is dominated by other white men, I have seen this movie with a different lens so to speak, and luckily she has trusted me enough to give me what she experienced with a totally different perspective on leadership that you will never find in a textbook or classroom.

First, I need to paint the picture where working and growing at my billion dollar telecommunications company has been wonderful.  It has allowed me to see first hand what it is like to be fast tracked up to a position I wanted and value.  I have been lucky enough to have had a few mentors over the years, not to mention I have had an immense assortment of training dollars spent on me, and I have been asked and allowed to help carve my own path to the top by way of my individual development plans, certifications, mentor/mentee program, and schooling.  All of this, along with my background and experience, has always been taken into account or consideration when tasks and opportunities have “found me.”  The two biggest focuses that I have been told to follow and hone are the mentor/mentee relationship and my networking for career advancement.  The guidance from my mentors, including my current mentor, have always been a way to share experience, along with guidance and support.  The idea, at least for me, has always been to build a relationship with the mentor that allows them to push you to a point of business discomfort to help you grow, and to simply learn from their career and even their mistakes.  Networking, with a focus of growing my telecommunication contact pool, was something that helped me to get my current job.  It is the “process of gaining advice and moral support or using contacts for information in order to become more effective in the work world” (Dworkin, Ramaswami, & Schipani, 2013).

My research from both our class work and scholarly articles tells us unfortunately the way things are supposed to work and how they work in reality for women are very different.  The idea is that “women, and men and women with dependents, represent important sources of diversity at work, and networking and mentoring are mechanisms through which gender inequality in career attainment [should] be reduced” however, in reality “organizational processes hinder [a woman’s] career development” (Dworkin, Ramaswami, & Schipani, 2013).

This is exactly the experience my boss has shared with me.  For example, she shared with me that our CFO sat her down, outside of work, and trusted with her some advice wrapped with some honest opinion.  The advice was to seek a mentor outside the organization to help her grow.  While this sounds like logical advice here is where the opinion kicks in.  He told her that if she was waiting for a mentor opportunity or career path conversation to come from her boss, or the corner office it was not coming.  She would be forever stuck in middle management.  He told her to look around at the peer group she was trying to become part of and notice how it was simply “just white men.” She shared she was mad at him and the idea, but in the end she took the advice and eventually found her way to Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT), and today she is the President of her chapter.  Her ability to Network has not been too bad on the way up the corporate ladder.  However, now that she has made it to VP she struggles with other obstacles.  She has shared with me that on more than one occasion she was told she was going to “travel with our COO.”  This sounds good, but what that really meant is the good old boys will travel and Network together off site at conferences, etc., ut she was being told that basically “you keep our COO company and busy” so they can work on their own agenda.  She did not say this, but I get the impression that they meant keep him busy/baby sit him/keep him out of our hair so we can do our own thing.  In the end, this has backfired on them, her connection is stronger with him than any of them, and it has allowed her to grow in a different way.  In truth, it has also allowed us to spend money, time, and resources on things others have to put together proposals on that she gets by way of her relationship with him.

All this to say that her way of networking and mentorship has been on a different and more difficult path, and her ascendance to the “thrown of VP” for our line of business has been hard fought.  These are just a few examples of many that she has shared.  She always tells me, in not so many words, that trying to grow, feel included, and ultimately to be taken as seriously as the “man” sitting next to her has been challenging to say the least.  At times, I actually feel guilty regarding my path, but this has also made me grow so when I ascend to VP I will not make the same mistakes that her peer group has.

 

References

Dworkin, T. M., Ramaswami, A., & Schipani, C. A. (2013). The Role of Networks, Mentors, and the Law in Overcoming Barriers to Organizational Leadership for Women with Children. Michigan Journal of Gender and Law, 20(1), 83–128.

Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing Cultural Differences (9th ed.). Oxford: Routledge

 

Culture

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Growing up in a big New England city and then working for fifteen years in an even bigger New England city, I then found myself surrounded and exposed to many different cultures. Some of these cultures I was already comfortable in, but other cultures I felt like I was lost or even afraid.  It was not uncommon, for example, to find myself comfortable in the North End of Boston surrounded by a predominately Italian community.  There was full comfort because those connections with language, customs, and traditions were the exact same from where I was born and raised, which was Providence Rhode Island on Federal Hill. At the time, my hometown was predominately an Italian community.

On the flip side of this was how I felt with my exposure to some of the Chinese culture found in Boston.  Chinatown, for example, which was not far from the financial district and some of the more popular shopping areas, like Quincy Market, was a place I liked to frequent.  They too have their own history to share as Chinese Americans.  Their food, sharing of history, and culture in general was very foreign to me.  The traditions and the language alone left this Italian American kid from Providence confused and sometimes I felt as if I was being slandered and exploited.

All these years later, honestly with the help of this lesson, I realize what was going on.  I was suffering a form of ethnocentrism, and I didn’t know this was very detrimental. On some subconscious level, I was unfortunately stereotyping. My vulnerability mainly stemmed from I could not see the world from their perspective, even when I was fascinated, curious, and wanted to know.  Our lesson reminds us that “the idea behind ethnocentrism is that people who are not part of our group are perceived as being all the same because they aren’t one of us, so we treat them differently” (Penn State, 2017).

This is an important lesson for me because I need to recognize I may behave like this, even subconsciously, and if I do it within a business context, then I may fall into the same trap of making a generalization on a person from a different culture.  If I continue to fool myself into thinking that my values that were formed in my early years are not “working against me,” then I will continue making bad decisions with or around certain people that work for me.  Furthermore, I need to combat this by trying to gain a global perspective on them and their culture.  This course is helpful for sure, but until I really commit to this mindset and accept that I don’t know as much about my folks and their diverse culture as I pretend to, then I am vulnerable.

If I could travel around the globe I would, but that is not a reality in my job right now.  So my commitment, when appropriate, is to try and learn about my folks, ask about their language, perhaps even inquire about a dialect to better understand their family’s region, engage them by asking about their family’s traditional foods, and finally simply ask them questions about their culture when I interact with them.

 

References

Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing Cultural Differences (9th ed.). Oxford: Routledge

Hello Class!

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My name is Michael Saritelli, I am an OLEAD major, and I am anxiously looking forward to graduation next spring.  I live in Virginia, but I am not originally from here.  I currently manage in a telecommunications call center environment, and I have been in a leadership position since the early 90’s.  Long term, I would like to teach on some level, or perhaps even a career in HR.  I don’t have a favorite quote, but I do preach see it and say it.  Meaning when you see something good speak up and celebrate it, likewise when it’s not so good you have an obligation to speak up here as well.

Something personal… well, I like to build WWII military miniatures in my free time (Not that I really have any).

Good luck to everyone this semester.  I look forward to our interactions.

My best,

Michael

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