OLEAD 410: Leadership in a Global Context

Synergy is what happens when people from different backgrounds or groups work together towards something despite their differences, they find a common cause. “The objective is to increase effectiveness by sharing perceptions and experiences, insights, and knowledge.” (Moran, p.266) It is important while leading a group to exemplify the type of culture you would like to see amongst the team and it also helps if the company you work for does as well. “If the organization’s culture emphasizes employee participation through team management, the group microcultures are likely to reflect that system’s microculture.” (Moran, p.271) Islamic culture embraces this tactic.

Following a set of guidelines amongst a culture allows for synergy to take place. Islam has deep roots in their beliefs and applies them to their lives on different levels. “Islam, unlike many other religions, isn’t simply a religion—it is a way of life.” (PSU, Lesson 7, p. 2) If we review the qualities of a good manager according to Islam, we will see that many, if not all, of the qualities reflect those found in and taught their religion. Some are avoiding pride, work as an act of worship, always be truthful, seek and share knowledge and be just. (Moran, 2014)

It is clear to see that anyone who applies these guidelines to their own managerial practices will most likely be a good manager. This also creates a cultural platform for synergy to form. “Islam focuses its attention more on the individual people who manage or are managed, and less on the methodologies and processes of management. This is because Islam believes that it is the individual people that guide and apply these management methodologies and practices through their motivations, enthusiasm, desires and emotions.” (Moran, p.304) I can see how if you focus on the individual, you are able to get a better picture of how much they are absorbing, if they’re happy with what they’re doing and if they agree with the qualities that are being set out for them to follow. It also allows those in charge to make sure their environment allows for synergy to develop amongst the organization.

Because Islam is so rooted in their religion down to the ways of doing business, I understand how things may become difficult while doing business with anyone who is not from there. Not all countries route themselves so deep in their religion that it reflects in the way the do business. Many countries do not have the same religion. Most countries may have a dominate religion but are mostly a blend of many. This prevents or slows down the formation of synergy from developing through this platform. However, most genuinely good people have similar morals. They don’t necessarily have to be religious to maintain a similar mindset on that level. Perhaps this is why things are shifting in the Middle East.

Thankfully things are looking up for the future of collaboration in the business realm for the Middle East. “More people from the Middle East of all types are beginning to prefer collaboration with one another, even former enemies.” (Moran, p.331) In collaborating and creating synergy growth emerges. More business endeavours appear, more opportunities are created, and stronger relationships are formed. “Cultural synergy is about using the diverse perspectives of various cultures to create something that is greater than each individual culture.” (Lesson 6, p.4) “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” – Proverbs 27:17 The more we work together the better we become as individuals and the stronger we become united.

 

 

References:

Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing cultural differences (9th ed.). Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Pennsylvania State University (2019). OLEAD410: Leadership in a Global Context, Lesson 06: Cultural Synergy, Penn State World Campus, The Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved October 10, 2019, from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/canvas/fa19/21981–15727/content/06_lesson/printlesson.html

Pennsylvania State University (2019). OLEAD410: Leadership in a Global Context, Lesson 07: The Middle East: Focus on Saudi ArabiaPenn State World Campus, The Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved October 10, 2019, from https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/canvas/fa19/21981–15727/content/06_lesson/printlesson.html

Thinking about the meaning of Synergy and the relation this word has with a developing country like the USA or Germany and the undeveloped country like Venezuela or Nigeria. Then I understand why the influence of synergy makes a country poor or rich.  In the context of global leadership is possible to connect the power of synergy also when leaders have a global mindset are successful but when they do not the success they could have is debatable.

In a nation with a high synergy is common to have social institutions to promote individual and group development. Looking into the USA is normal to see many foundations that help to fight poverty or hunger inside and outside the country. Also, in universities scholarships reward the best students to encourage them to improve themselves, even if the come from a poor home. Usually, this does not happen in poor countries like Venezuela or Honduras, where the institutions can not help too much. Because they have the characteristic of low synergy society: “social arrangements self-centered collaboration is not reinforced as desired behavior. (Moran 2014)

Also, the same culture in America is high in synergy because they help each other and feel compassion for the fellow.  “Open system of secure people who tend to be benevolent, helpful, friendly, and generous, its heroes are altruistic and philanthropic”. (Moran 2014). But this does not happen all over the world unfortunately in undeveloped countries reigns selfishness and rudeness.  This is why the poor people in Venezuela sometimes need to find food in the trash cans and nobody cares, because they are too many that nobody knows or figure that out.  The leader in Venezuela is very rich and all his family but surrounded by a huge number of people starving to death. The issue of lack of synergy in countries like that causes poverty and misery to most the people and must have a change in urgent way to stop this problem.

The influence of leaders has to buildup synergy in a team is basic to lead on the right path to be a team winner. There are some characteristics that make possible a global leader to grow a successful team like tolerance, interest, feedback, nonjudgmental, good environment, relationships, communication, constructive criticism, group morale maintenance, delegation, trust, sensitivity, synchronizes efforts, high performance, listening skills. (Moran 2014) All those traits allow a leader to build a good team with the capacity to get goals and be satisfied with the task.

The synergy is basic in an effective group either in a local or global leadership context.  The global mindset is also important when we talk of synergy at the global level. This means working together as countries to fight world problems as, hunger, pollution, immigration, etc.  A global leader uses synergy to comply with global goals between different countries and cultures. They should look at the big picture, understand change,  be process-oriented, consider diversity,  open to new experiences. (Reinsmith, Moran 2014) Those characteristics make synergy possible in the world level and enable a global leader to enhance the world how it is necessary to be and make this planet a better place to live.

 

References:

Robert Moran, Neil Abrahamson, 2014, Managing Cultural Differences, 9^th

Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2014

Penn State World Campus, OLEAD410 Leadership in Global context, Cultural Synergy,

Retrieved from: www.psu.instructure.com/courses/2008449/modules/items/27026977

A multinational company is invested in finding a competitive advantage in the global marketplace through the introduction of new markets for products and services or through low cost factors of production (Moran, 2014). While this can prove to be successful, some companies can face change conditions force them to learn new ways of doing business because of disruptions to their business performance (Moran, 2014). One particular situation is when because of poor products, poor service, an inability to adapt to change, or poor competitive strategies a company must face a crisis change (Moran, 2014). A company in this situation is often suffering from poor performance and is potentially facing bankruptcy (Moran, 2014). 

One example from the text is the company Blackberry, who in 2013 was facing crisis change because their operating system was losing ground to Apple and Android (Moran, 2014). There only option to continue to be profitable was to expand their growth into new markets, such as India and Indonesia (Moran, 2014).

A successful example of how a company faced a crisis situation is Netflix, who started in 1997 with selling and renting DVDs mail (Ilas, 2017). When they were faced with the reality of DVD sales crashing in 2006, instead of crashing with it they adapted their business. Netflix changed its focus to developing a video-on-demand internet platform in 2007 and by 2010, it had become “the largest source of internet streaming traffic in the U.S.” (Ilas, 2017). 

I believe it is important for any company to be able to adapt to change and grow. This is what helps set a company apart and stay relevant. Netflix was able to see the writing on the wall and was able to make changes before a true crisis set in. Moran (2014) states that “there are many warnings that change is necessary before the crisis sets in, and companies need to change before it is almost too late”. 

 

Works Cited

Ilas, M. (2017, April 10). 10 Companies That Failed To Innovate and Change. Retrieved from https://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/10-companies-that-failed-to-innovate-and-change-572511/

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

Being at a company for a long time most likely means you have grown in many ways and learned a lot. It is easy to get into the same rhythm everyday and you most likely enjoy the schedule you have. It is hard to always understand changes around you and bouncing into a new type or routine. This is how I feel in my current position with an organization that I am happy to be apart of. Recently however, there has been a lot of organizational change. Keeping up with the technology growing, we had to change a lot of the ways we do things. Management came together and decided to not only implement these changes, but do that in a short amount of time.

This change was hard for me at first. I thought about all the different objectives we have to meet now and how will these changes affect me. After years of experience and having this same schedule, this change did not feel positive to me at first. Since management did not motivate us to want these changes to happen, I thought about ways I could personally adapt.

One way of feeling confident in this change can be unfreezing by creating the motivation to change (PSU, Module 5, 2019). Creating a motivation behind the change can help you to change your behavior, get a new outlook, and feel driven towards the change. After this, I was able to create a reasoning for my behavior to change and then actually accept these changes. As I continued to learn the different changes, I made sure to stick in the new behavior I worked on and found at the end, I was able to adapt easier to these organizational changes. From there I could work more efficiently, and could even help others adapt to the new changes.

 

 

 

Reference:

Pennsylvania State University (2019). Leadership and Global Context: OLEAD 410. Online course lesson, Penn State World Campus, The Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved October 7, 2019 from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2008449/modules/items/27026970

As I grew my team over the past four years, it became extremely important that we deliver the same type of support when working with a provider in a clinic. While the same level of support is important, I also knew that everyone would bring something unique from their own experience and personality to each session, so I had to figure out how to get the entire team rowing in the same direction but still allow each individual to have their own “spin” on their session with a provider. Social learning is how I accomplished this task. Social learning, “allows people to learn from one another, via observation, imitation, and modeling” (David, 2019). There are four steps to social learning, I will share each step and how I incorporated the step into our work.

1. Attention – “being able to focus one’s attention on the person and the behavior that is being learned” (PSU, Module 5, 2019). In order to garner the new team members attention, it would be important to put them in a situation where they could easily observe the desired behavior of a provider session and to see how one of my team leads works with a provider. This focus of attention allows the new employees to easily see the type of behavior, interaction, and expectations I have for our work and what our providers have become accustoming to receiving. After the observation session, the new employee is given an opportunity to ask questions and give feedback to the team lead that they had been observing. The attention period may occur anywhere from 3-5 times depending on need and feedback from the new team member.

 

2. Retention – “being able to store the observed behavior in the brain and then recall it when one wants to produce the behavior” (PSU, Module 5, 2019). Once the attention period is achieved, we move to retention, we start slowly. This means, after 2 or 3 attention sessions, the team lead will begin to randomly ask the new team member to answer a question for a provider. This allows the team lead to see if the team member is retaining information or if we need more time in the attention phase. As the team lead becomes more confident in the ability of attention and retention, they will begin to ask more and more questions of the new team member during a provider session. This accomplishment leads us to the next phase of social learning.

 

3. Motivation – “the desire to reproduce the behavior” (PSU, Module 5, 2019). Motivation can be tricky and what motivates an individual is different for each person, so the team lead and I work hard to learn what motivates each team member. Luckily in our field, (as we are all nurses), motivation typically comes from helping the provider; if this is the case for the new team member, the quicker we can get them engaged and leading these sessions by successfully achieving the attention and retention steps we easily check motivation off the list.

 

4. Reproduction – “the person is actually physically capable of producing the learned behavior” (PSU, Module 5, 2019). For me, this is the most exciting part; to watch a new team member be able to run their own provider session and bring their own personality, dynamic, and creativity to the session is what this role is all about. I welcome the creativity, without it we would not be able to improve upon what we do, we need fresh eyes to look at our process and bring back ways to possibly do something better, more efficient, more successfully.

 

While this process isn’t always easy and sometimes takes other long to grasp than others, it is a worth-while process and if followed, one that you, a team, and a customer can see clear and satisfying results from. The 4-part process also allows a manager to recognize in what area a team member is struggling, go back to the previous step and keep working on successfully achieving that step.

References:

David L, “Social Learning Theory (Bandura),” in Learning Theories, February 7, 2019, https://www.learning-theories.com/social-learning-theory-bandura.html.

Pennsylvania State University (2019). Leadership and Global Context – OLEAD 410. Online course lesson, Penn State World Campus, The Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved October 6, 2019 from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2008449/modules/items/27026970

 

 

Making assumptions about someone or a group of people most of the time leads to misjudgment. In this blog, I will focus on lesson seven in from our OLEAD commentary, particularly Islamic life. I choose to focus on this topic because I learned many new things about Islamic life that I was never able to understand. While taking this class, and reading this lesson I learned that we sometimes make judgments on others without knowing their story. We learn at a young age that it is not good to judge a book by its cover, so why do we judge one’s entire culture based on a mistake that one person/group of people made?

I was very unfamiliar with Islamic life until the tragic incident that occurred on September 11, 2001. After that, all the stories I heard about Muslim’s were negative and most of them started by stating that Muslims were terrorists. It is sad to say but even to this day, when Muslims get on an airplane a lot of people are afraid of what might happen. What people fail to realize is “the religion of Islam actually teaches peace and tolerance just like most other religions around the world” (PSU WC, 2019, L. 7, p. 2).Which means they are normal human beings, they are not robots programmed to kill.

Could you imagine being an Islamic person at that time? What makes things worst the current president of the United States has always made negative remarks about Muslims. Ten years after the tragic incent, “In an interview with Fox News, Bill O’Reilly asks Trump if there is a “Muslim problem” in the world. Trump responds, “Absolutely. I mean, I don’t notice Swedish people knocking down the World Trade Center. There is a Muslim problem in the world, and you know it and I know it” (MPower, 2018). I agree there is a “Muslim problem”, they are not being treated fairly!

In conclusion, lesson seven reminded me of ethnocentrism, which we learned about in lesson two. “Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s culture is better than others’ simply because one cannot see the world from the other culture’s viewpoint”(PSU WC, 2019, L. 2, p. 5).In other words, if people were able to put themselves in the shoes of an Islamic person, there would be less judging, people would understand how they feel, and maybe that would change the world.

 

 

References:

MPower. (2018). 86 Times Donald Trump Displayed or Promoted Islamophobia. Retrieved from https://medium.com/nilc/86-times-donald-trump-displayed-or-promoted-islamophobia-49e67584ac10.

Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2019). OLEAD 410 Lesson 02: Introduction to Culture. Retrieved from

https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2008449/modules/items/27026951

Pennsylvania State University World Campus (2019). OLEAD 410 Lesson 07: The Middle East: Focus on Saudi Arabia. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2008449/modules/items/27026982

 

 

Many people struggle with balancing work and family life as they pursue their career goals. Work life balance is a term that is often used to stress the importance of balancing work and family life. The term is defined as “the division of one’s time and focus between working and family or leisure activities” (Arenofsky, 2017, p. 4). It is based on the needs of working men and women and it can affect relationships, finances, health and happiness. (Arenofsky, 2017, p. 3) This can be hard to do when you have a limited time of leave available after the birth of a child or your role has already been defined for you. Women take on multiple roles automatically and this may hinder their balance between work and home life. Corporations that are looking to be successful can embrace diversity by supporting work life balance and offering incentives. This will promote employee engagement, productivity, and managerial support in a culture. (Arenofsky, 2017, p. 3)

One thing to look at that still plagues some in the United States is the role of women. There is a stereotypical thought that women have the responsibility of raising children. (Moran, Abramson, & Moran, 2014, p. 154) Women sometimes hold off on having children in order to pursue their careers because of the thinking that they can’t have both. During the past couple of years thing have started to change slowly as companies realize the importance for diversity. There are some jobs that offer daycare services to help support working mothers. The balance is important to be efficient at work and provide quality of work. The needs of men and women have changed over the years. In some careers individuals may experience working long hours that make it hard to have leisure time.

Another aspect is the amount of time people are spending at work. When an individual is overworked the quality of their work suffers and so will company production. In the United States about 11 percent of people work long hours and in Japan it is about 20 percent. (Arenofsky, 2017, p. 17) In Sweden they are incorporated ways to help bring balance by having a policy on subsidized childcare and required parental leave. (Moran, Abramson, & Moran, 2014, p. 155) Taking steps to ensure that all employees are not being drained and made to feel unimportant helps to build strong relationships with the employee and the employers so that both parties will be successful.

There are things to consider whenever a process is being reconstructed to improve the way of life. As we work towards breaking barriers, we may run into other hurdles that can have an affect on promotions or advancements in career opportunities. One thing that stands out is that women are still looked over when it comes to promotions because they are balancing both work and home. (Moran, Abramson, & Moran, 2014, p. 155) This is unfortunate because their circumstances does not mean that they will not be able to perform these job duties efficiently. Therefore, it is important that there is support by corporations to make vital changes to support diversity and balance.

References
Arenofsky, J. (2017). Work-Life Balance. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, LLC.
Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing Cultural Differences . New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Global Communication
Posted on September 20, 2019 by Tina Cermignano
Global communication Tina Cermignano
OLEAD 410

The world continues to get smaller as organizations become global and technology makes it easier to connect and work globally. As great as this is to be able to connect with people around the world there comes challenges with these advancements. Communication is one of the biggest issues that employees complain about. This happens with even small organizations that don’t have a global footprint. An example of this difference in what and how things are communicated became very obvious to me when I did a Civil War tour in Atlanta, GA after only having all of my information coming from the Northern perspective. The way this history lesson is taught and how it is described by tour guides in the South are completely different between the two regions. I was confused at times because the differences were so significant. When I asked one of the tour guides about the differences he stated that in the South they learn about the Civil War from a different perspective and that they are not taught that the South lost the war. I found that so interesting but after learning about what needs to happen in communication it makes sense. Imagine the complexities once you are communicating in a global format.
Global communication has the same definition as any communication, it is when “a message is sent from one person or group to another person or group anywhere in the world” (Weedmark, 2018). As with any communication process there is the 5- step process of communicating:
1. the message is sent
2. Message is encoded
3. Message travels through a medium, (voice, phone, text, video, email)
4. Receiver decodes the message
5. Recipient receives the message
This process happens at the very basic level of communication. When communicating globally it is usually during the encoding and decoding process that problems occur (Weedmark, 2018).
I had a unique opportunity a few years ago to participate in a consulting work between the hospital where I work and an independent group in China who wanted to build a Women and Children’s Hospital that would operate under the guidelines and requirements of U.S. healthcare institutions. I worked on this process for many months getting the details of what portion and information in my field of expertise was being requested so that I could than develop the necessary presentation. I then developed a PowerPoint presentation that was high in visual content with brief commentary or descriptions so that the presentation did most of the transfer of information, this was the encoding process. The presentation was then sent to an interpreter to translate the presentation as well as all of my speaker notes, which is equal to the decoding process. When all content was approved and adapted to ensure no incorrect translations the message was sent. When I say the message was sent I mean this was a live presentation between myself and what I believed to be the administrators for this hospital. Since I was presenting live from Philadelphia to participants in China, there was no room for ad-libbing or improve because there was someone across the world interpreting my presentation simultaneously. This required me to stay on script and to inform when to move to the next slide. There was a Q&A portion of the presentation that also required the real time translation back and forth, so additional encoding and decoding occurred in real time as well. I was informed the day before the presentation the Minister of Health would be in attendance for my presentation and I was coached on how to respectfully acknowledge and address this high ranking official. I know the presentation went well because I was told I received a standing ovation. What I did not realize until the end of my presentation was that there were over 200 people in attendance for my presentation from many healthcare institutions in China. I thought I was just presenting to a handful of investors who were interested in building this hospital.
My experience was a very positive experience because we had many months to prepare and work on this presentation. In global organizations there is not the luxury of having all that time to prepare. This is why learning about the different language skills, cultures, values, social norms, attitudes, stereotypes roles and the social organization of the culture is important knowledge to have when you have to communicate globally in more real time situations (Moran, Abramson, Moran, 2014). This is what I was coached to do when addressing the Chinese Minister of Health. To communicate without taking these key items identified by Moran, et. el, will lead to frustration and misunderstandings.
As complicated as global communications are there are some traits that are universal across all countries that can assist leaders with their global communications. Moran, Abramson & Moran explained how all “people have the same set of personality dimensions across cultures that the effects are independent of culture“(pg. 35, 2014). So instead of assuming that because of modern technologies and the ease of communication types that communication quality has improved if those who are communicating do not have the right skills as described above their quality of their communication will not improve (Mayer, 2010).

References
Mayer, M. (2010). Global communications—what does it mean in today’s business? Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2010—North America, Washington, DC. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute. Retrieved from
https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/global-scale-communications-teams-challenges-6641
Moran, R., Abramson, N.R., Moran, S., (2014). Managing Cultural Differences, Ninth Edition. Rutledge, New Your, NY

Weedmark, D., June 2018. A Definition of Global Communication, Bizfluent retrieved from https://bizfluent.com/facts-7601794-definition-global-communication.html

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Hello Classmates,

I wanted to resubmit my introduction which was posted to the wrong Blog and I just had my access corrected to the proper site. So i copied my original post for the other site to this one.

Class Introduction
Posted on August 31, 2019 by Tina Cermignano
Hello Fellow OLEAD Classmates.

My name is Tina Cermignano and this is my second time trying to post my introduction on the Blog; finger crossed that it works this time. I have one more semester to go before I graduate with a BS in OLEAD. I returned to Penn State back in 2014 after multiple start and stops throughout many years to finally stick to it and finish my degree. I believe this is my 4th or 5th OLEAD class and most have been with Dr. Redmond. I am looking forward to another interesting class.

I live in the western suburbs of Philadelphia and this semester we became empty nesters as our youngest has just started his college career. We have three amazing children all three which are now in college. My daughter is a 3rd year medical student at Drexel Medical School, current doing her clinical rotations and my two sons are currently at Widener University, a junior studying computer science and a freshman who has entered undeclared. So four of us are currently pursuing higher education.

I work at the #1 Children’s Hospital in the World, (I don’t care what the newspapers say), Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia where I am a Senior Operations manager of a very large support services bargaining unit team. In my spare time when I am not working or studying I like to create things. My creative interests go from costumes to paper crafts and anything in between.

I look forward to working with al of you this semester as we learn about Global leadership.

Tina