Power distance, engineering teams, and leadership (part 2)

Closing the gap of emotional distance between you and your team, and making a difference between success and failure.

This is a post from a book I wrote about a decade ago. I’m releasing a few excerpts here, and hope you find them interesting. Part one introduced “power distance” and how it impacts multinational team management.

Power distance and the workplace

Management theories rarely recognize the implications of power distance in the workplace or account for how particular practices are perceived in a given culture. Most theories were developed in America and consequently have a strong bias toward a low power distance. Many of the assumptions, conditions, and ideals that these management theories strive for fly in the face of what makes high power distance cultures work.

This disparity shows up all the time across multinational teams. Usually, problems are attributed to “bad communication,” or perhaps poor team skills. More often than not, this is misplaced.

Consider the impact when it comes to 360 degree feedback programs, as pointed out by Trompenaars:

Cultures vary greatly in their willingness to …