One of the most
interesting learnings I keep coming back to is the cultural dimensions model of
Hofstede. While it is easy to put question marks on scientific validity (ask about what I think of social science and be prepared to hear an outpour...) and
rigour of these types of work, I have rarely come across a more applicable
tool of understanding cultures, people and contexts.
One of the dimensions
is "power-distance" and it describes to what extent people accept
that different people in society or a context hold a difference in power. Many
societal structures, conditioned by this cultural dimensions can be drawn from
that. My own Norway, a network society, has notoriously low power distance. For
a Norwegian it generally makes no sense why any person would have more power
than another person - surely such a state is as temporary blip and a mistake.
But even in Norway,
while that may be the accepted world view, real power distance exists and it
often expresses itself in formal hierarchies. The one we are the most used to
is the hierarchy at a work place. We report
to superiors, we supervise employees and the higher up the food chain the more
power you have.
One of the most
interesting experiences in AIESEC is to constantly switch roles from project
member to team leader and back again to a team member. It gives you a constant
roller coaster of formal power changes, which, for sure, is not always easy to
deal with. All of my three years at AIESEC International the immediate reaction
of most team members who had been leading their national/territory association
(called MCPs) was a relief to "be able to just be a team member".
Leading a whole entity was tough and to be allowed to be "part of the team
again" was seen as a better life. Within months (sometimes days!),
however, the fingers would start tickling. Why is the boss doing it like this?
Why do we plan like this? Why the team is run like that? How come we are not….?
I remember when I was MCP, we….".
The most interesting
thing was to see how this patterns repeated itself in the three years, more or
less without exception. Every year there were about 15 people who came into the
global team as team members who were used to being their own general manager.
So that's around 45 people I observed going through this over a 3 year period.
The contrast to the
team members who came from team roles was stark. Those who had been team
members on a national level and came into the team were much less critical of
specific ways things were run or done - especially in the first weeks and
months. However, conversely, with time the ones who had the general manager
experience would be more likely to start taking charge, sometimes invited,
sometimes uninvited. For sure, it was an interesting fish bowl to observe.
One of the things that
I learned, having led AIESEC in Norway before, being a team member again on a
global level and then leading the global team, was that hirarchy is a temporary
structure. And while having formal decision making follow some hiererchical
structures is sometimes necessary, it is important to realise the limitations
of ones own understanding and knowledge, no matter the role one is in. If
leading, there are things only you experience, only you see and can make better
decisions based up. When you are being led, there are things only you see (and
the leader does not), which is great as well. Both the leader and the led do
well to apreciate their own limits of view and acknowledge the superior
position of the other in seeing some things.
In fact, because if
this, the greatest teams I was ever on were the ones that could change their
hierarchy internally based upon the context, or even the specific argument on
the floor. Where sometimes the leader became the curious challenger, where sometimes
the team member was the authority but where other times team members
"sucked it up" based upon an understanding that the leader sees
somethings I don't. To get to that level, however, requires many things which
can only be gained the hard way. First of all trust - and trust is that most
precious of resource. Trust in intention, trust in competence.
To
go a bit of topic a bit - I always loved the example of the man coming into the
room asking "Do you trust me?" and the other person answering
"Yes". Surely, the right answer is "trust you with what".
Trust is a character thing but also a question of domain. You may trust me to
support you if you are struggling, but probably you wouldn't (and shouldn't!)
trust me if I asked you if I could be your brain surgeon. The best brain
surgeon in the world might be cheating on his wife, but perhaps you still trust
him to drill inside your head - but you might not invite your wife to have a
talk with him about your health state while you are out after the operation.
Back to hierarchy. The
experience of going in and out of formal hierarchical roles, as well as seeing
fluid hierarchies within teams was a great learning for me. 18 months since
being "President of the World" (as I jokingly refer to it as), I have
little or no formal hierarchical position in my current role. What I do see,
however, is that hierarchy is perhaps not well understood in many organisations
I observe. Sometimes formal hierarchies are not respected when they should be
by team members, other times those in formal positions use hierarchy to make
decisions independently of what is a good process. More than anything, it is
little discussed - the formal power distance is just "a fact" - that
is just "how it is", and it is a rather static concept.
Even more interesting
is to observe that in most organisations the "path" of a career only
goes one way - up the latter or out. That means that you gain ever more
authority and power in a rigid hierarchy - or you fall completely out. This is
in stark contrast to the more cross-team collaboration as well as the fluid
learning I had in AIESEC. I think this rigidity is bad for everyone. To long as
a team member, the respect for how hard it is to lead disappears. To little
shifting of powers and leaders lose sense of what matters.
Power distance - it
explains a lot of things. Understanding power, in a formal settings and in
societal structures might explain even more.
