Effective Leaders Adapt to Cultural Situations

Managers self-attribute ethical and moral leadership traits consistently, but they do not exhibit these character traits in their behavior consistently.

If a leader claims to be compassionate, she will keep claiming to be a compassionate leader....even regarding a wide range of different situations.  But, she may not be consistently compassionate.  She may exhibit a compassionate leadership style in some types of situations and not in others.

Many managers mistakenly assume that leadership style is always a function of personality rather than strategic choice.  Their leadership style is based upon their innate signature talents and this represents their default leadership behavior.  However, leaders can choose a different leadership style that best addresses the demands of a particular situation.

Being unaware that we can change our leadership style to match the situation at hand, we unconsciously engage our default behavior.  Only when we become aware of something, are we able to make choices as to the action we wish to take.  The ultimate leadership responsibility is modeling the behaviors you expect from others.  To a large degree, leaders operate in a fishbowl.  Employees are constantly watching the leader--and learning from him or her.

Throughout his long and storied career, Colin Powell has resisted chasing the latest management trend or fad. To anyone who would listen, Powell has always advocated the benefits of adopting a 'situational approach' to leadership instead of the 'one size fits all' approach that is favored by so many management consultants these days.

In Powell's experience, flitting furiously from fad to fad only serves to create confusion within your team and diminishes your credibility as a leader.  Worse still, blindly following a particular management theory can also generate unnecessary rigidity in your thoughts and actions. This, argues Powell, can be disastrous.  To quote Powell, "Some situations require the leader to hover closely; others require long, loose leashes.  Leaders must understand that management techniques are not silver bullets or magic mantras, but simply tools that can be reached for at the right times, as circumstances dictate."

Managers often fail to appreciate how profoundly the organizational culture can influence financial results.  Organizational culture is influenced by leadership style---by the way that managers motivate direct reports, gather and use information, make decisions, manage change initiatives and handle crises.  Changing the organizational culture happens by one enlighten manager at a time improving his or her department's unique culture.

Judith E. Glaser, author of The DNA of Leadership, tells us that culture represents how work gets done: how you make decisions, how you treat customers, how you complete projects on budget, how you reward effort for excellence and innovation, how you develop employees to more productive.

Cultural situation awareness begins with capturing accurate and deliberate business intelligence using the very best diagnostic measurements and precision tools.  Today, the Internet allows management to know 'what's happening now' across the enterprise.  Since people represent 50-80% of organizational costs and are a flexible resource through learning and innovating, engaging them for enhanced productivity is why effective leadership