Leadership across High- and Low-Context Cultures

Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Communications - Interpersonal Communication grade: Outstanding The University of Surrey language: English abstract: When you think of great leaders names like Nelson Mandela Martin Luther King Bill Gates Barack Obama or Gordon Brown may come up. But what makes a leader a good leader? Being a good leader requires a lot of things and therefore not everybody can be a successful leader. Leaders can be born elected or trained and groomed; they can seize power or have leadership trust upon them (Lewis: 2006 p.104). They can be democratic or autocratic individual or collective ascribed or merit-based imposed or desired (Lewis: 2006). Consequently there is no such thing as a perfect leadership style which works in every situation and with all followers; there usually is no ideal way of leading - there is only a better or worse way (Larkin: 2008). That is one of the reasons why a good leader needs to have the ability to use many different styles in order to succeed (Broadbent Kitzis: 2005). It is a false conclusion that the well-adopted hard skills of a manager inevitably lead to economic success. Those hard skills form the foundation of a strong effective and recognized leader but nowadays further acquirements are an absolute must. Endurance universalism knowledge of human nature communications collaboration and work input are inevitable (Eckert Drath: 2009). Additionally to the fact that it is in any case difficult to find the ideal style for every situation and every follower cultural differences set up another challenge: communication styles gender uncertainty avoidance power distance individualistic versus collectivistic etc. play an important role if it comes to finding the most ideal style (Ledlow Coppola: 2011). Several scientists support the idea of a culture specific view of leadership indicating that unique cultural (Paṣa Kabasakal Bodur: 2001 p.565) traits such as religion language and