Nation’s culture and heritage influence on people’s leadership styles

India is a country with a lot of diversity in social as well as environment. This diversity can see in their food, dressing, festivals and so on. We see people speak different languages and different religion lives together under one roof. You may have heard about Harappa civilization which started long years ago. This shows that India has a long history of culture and it is still continuing. Though there are some revolutionary changes in modern India the basic believes and thoughts are still continued. In India itself there are different cultures in different states. For instance, there is Bangla dance in Punjab, Pongal of Tamil Nadu, these are celebrated after a rich harvest of crops. History has an important role in forming a culture. However diversity is born due to being different.

China is different from India, India is different from America, and America is different from Arab. I think a nation’s culture and heritage influences peoples leadership style. For Indians the great leadership style comes from family. They take great pride in their family and treat it as backbone of our family. A child grows with lots of affection and caring from their family. Likewise a great leader would apply the same principle in the company as a head of the family, the head of the organization should provide motivation, appreciation and care for each workers. Through this a company should grow. Human relationship and behaviors are really important in India and effective leadership is charismatic who attend the needs of employees like respect them, ask their opinion, and enquire about the problems. But we can see greater power distance and inequality in culture. In a masculine culture, gender roles are different, where men are considered dominant, powerful, and tough while women are modest, nurturing, caring and concerned. Men are considered as the head of the family and final decision depends upon them. There is an unequal distribution of power. While speaking about the Indian socialization, mothers are the primary care giver. Before sons receive good education and better opportunities whereas girls are stayed in homes and helping mother. However this situation is changed now. Both male and female gets equal opportunities.

While telling about the culture of Canada, the history and culture are influenced by Europe especially the American culture. As Canada promotes immigrants well, I have a multicultural ideology. There are mainly two languages English and French. Most of them are from Christian religion. Many years before, most of the families were headed by married coupled whereas now it is changed because many want to choose co-habit than marriage. The laws are different in every province. Recently the same sex marriage becomes legally approved. Coming to the gender roles, there is equal role for both men and women. Bur some places like health sector men’s are more tend to become doctors and females are concentrated in nursing. Both men and women can participate in politics. There are many day care centers can be seen as mothers are tend to go to their workplace. Canadians communicates more through speaking than non-verbal expressions. What I felt that, they are friendly and open minded. We are free to share our feelings and suggestions. They are more polite than Asian people.

While comparing with India, both India and Canada has vast different culture especially in food, clothing, celebrations. India is built with more values like family, respect of elders, tradition etc. whereas in Canada children gets more independent soon from their family. One goes for multiple relationships with many other than married partner. But in India people find happiness in going out with families instead of chilling in pubs.

Leadership varies in each country because of their cultural difference. People who grow up in different countries follow different values. In Canada, face to face communication is not necessary in business, as business can be done through telephone also. Comparing with India there is no aggressive competition business in Canada. Canadian leaders are more flexible and try to listen the problems of employees. I have worked under both Canadian supervisor and an Asian supervisor and I felt that Canadians can listen the workers more than others. However a good leader should have some qualities like good communication skill, good decision making power, good understanding and so on. In most of the Asian countries, the hierarchy shows that leaders are taking decisions and workers should follow that.

As there are different leadership styles, good leaders choose the right way of style according to the current situation by listening to what people are saying and trying to solve the problems. In today’s world it very difficult to manage for a leader as every individual have their own ideas and thoughts. So in this competitive world every leader those who want to be at the top should think twice before doing anything.