Multicultural Leadership Tolerance for Ambiguity in Global

Multicultural Leadership

Tolerance for Ambiguity in Global Managers

Each worker and manager in today's world is affected by globalization. This does not mean, however, that all individuals in each organization are equally prepared or equally capable of meeting the demands of a world in which traditional boundaries are overrun and even erased. One of the key qualities, especially for managers and other leaders, of succeeding in the world of global companies and global markets is a higher tolerance for ambiguity than would otherwise be needed. Bringing together people of different cultural values, traditions, and needs (whether this collection of differences occurs in the workplace or in the marketplace) requires an ability to be highly flexible. And key to the ability to be flexible is the ability to tolerate ambiguity (Williams, 2001).

To bring together the different voices of worker and consumers in a way that allows the strengths of diversity to come out while limiting the degree of conflict that can often occur in multicultural environments, global managers have to be able to absorb different ways of working and different values and perspectives without becoming personally defensive when opinions that are very different from his or her own are expressed. Fundamental to the ability not to be defensive is the ability to understand that there is not a single right or wrong way to perform tasks (Harrison, Price, Gavin, & Florey, 2002).

Of course, there are a few exceptions to this dictum: A person who's heart has stopped beating should have their heart stimulated to restart before, for example, getting a manicure. But in any normal work situation, a realization that there are different ways of getting to a goal, and that difference between the habitual way of doing something and possible ways that arise through the negotiations among people from different backgrounds may well be far more powerful than the solutions that have arisen from a single cultural perspective (Diversity in Practice: Becoming Culturally Competent).

Indeed, the result of the honoring of only a single tradition in the workplace (and arguably in the family and political arena as well) tends to produce a form of silence that dampens creativity and innovation, as Bowen & Blackmon, (2003) argue: