Public health leaders operating in a multicultural context face significant challenges in their work because they work with different groups of people from diverse cultural backgrounds. As such, public leaders must be aware of multicultural issues and challenges to develop effective strategies of combating the challenges for effective management of teams. The two most significant challenges associated with multicultural leadership in public health are ineffective communication and misunderstandings and intolerance to cultural diversity. First people from different cultures have different communication styles, which can create controversy about some pertinent issues such as the adherence to project and assignment deadlines. Also, the way a public health leader talks to their teams is important as members from some cultures expect to be addressed directly whiles prefer indirect communication. Thus, directness can be perceived as being rude in some cultural contexts (Hofstede, 2010). Another significant communication problem is the language barrier that can make it difficult for members from two different cultures to effectively collaborate. The second problem is the difference in working styles. Some cultures find it normal for their leaders to give them directions to achieve some tasks while some cultures value autonomy when working. Therefore, public health leaders working in the global context must understand the working styles of different cultures to minimize conflicts in their culturally diverse teams.
While communication issues and working style differences can be problematic when leading culturally diverse teams, public health leaders operating in a global context must develop multicultural leadership competence for them to effectively identify effective solutions. Also, public health leaders must bear in mind that the solutions to multicultural issues in the global context must be developed with their multicultural impact in mind. Overall, leaders of multicultural teams must embrace a global mindset. Bücker and Poutsma (2010) stated that global leaders should accept life as a balance of contradictory forces and they should be willing to rethink their boundaries and change their behaviors to accommodate different cultural perspectives. To solve the problem brought about by communication styles, global public health leaders should act as change agents and learn to listen as well as respect the opinions of others and react appropriately towards tricky situations. By being approachable, a global public health leader would encourage and support their teams to communicate their problems and how they can collaborate to build effective teams (Nahavandi, 2014). The problem of differences in the working culture can be solved if a leader takes time to learn about the cultures of different team members (Hofstede, 2010). Besides, the leader can also encourage other members from the teams that they lead to learning about the cultures of their colleagues to minimize conflicts when assigning tasks to different people.
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Finally, developing multicultural competencies can influence my public health leadership philosophy in various ways. First, multicultural competence develops a positive attitude towards managing multicultural teams in the global context. As a public health leader in the global context, I would develop “polycentric” and “geocentric” cultural perspectives, which are essential in leading people from different cultures around the world (Bücker & Poutsma, 2010). The two perspectives would allow me to show both the host country’s orientation as well as a global orientation thereby enhancing my global mindset (Bücker & Poutsma, 2010). However, developing intercultural sensitivity towards leadership in public health is one of the most significant impacts of multicultural competencies on my public health leadership philosophy as it will enable me to get on well with people from different cultures with ease.
References
Bücker, J., & Poutsma, E. (2010). Global management competencies: a theoretical foundation. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 25(8), 829–844. doi.org/10.1108/02683941011089116
Hofstede, G. (2010). The GLOBE debate: Back to relevance. Journal of International Business Studies , 41, 1339–1346. doi.org/10.1057/jibs.2010.31
Nahavandi, A. (2014). The art and science of leadership (7th ed.). Pearson.
