Multicultural Leadership in 21st Century

This assignment examines the concept of multicultural leadership in a contemporary business environment. It delves into the MET leadership model, highlighting its emphasis on collaboration, cultural understanding, ethical conduct, and teamwork. The assignment requires applying this model to a practical scenario, such as managing a Japanese restaurant, by considering cultural values, communication strategies, and organizational ethics.

Running head: LEADING AND MANAGING PEOPLE
Leading and Managing People
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Leadership is a quality of a person to be able to lead people; a leader is a visionary and
has the ability to make others follow his path, to guide them towards a better future. In a person’s
life, almost everyone faces this situation where one has to lead a group of people to achieve a
common goal. Likewise, I have received this opportunity to act as a leader in a multicultural
environment; I work as a manager in a Japanese restaurant bar where I have to work with people
belonging from various cultural backgrounds.
To become successful as a leader one needs to have certain qualities; the main organizing
ideas in my leadership model will be credibility, visions, establishing relationships, empathy.
Leadership requires credibility, the clients needs to know that under the particular leadership
tasks will be delivered on time (DuBois et al. 2015). Having vision or goals is very important
without goals nothing will be achieved and the purpose of leadership will not be fulfilled.
Building relationships with people is also important; establishing relationship with the clients
and the employees is another important organizing idea of the leadership model. I am as a person
very talkative and love to interact with different people building connections with my co-
workers is very important to me. Among all the other qualities, empathy is my strongest quality,
I can easily relate to the emotions and ideas of people and I try to support others whenever it
seems possible.
There are certain traits present in an individual, which differentiates that person from the
common people and makes that person a leader (Fairholm 2015). A leader should be confident,
all the goals and missions, which are to be executed, should be done in a confident manner so
that the people who will be following the leader should also have faith in the ideas. One who is
willing to lead a number of people into a new future should have an optimistic approach; the
positivity will flow from the leader into the employees (Northouse 2015). A leader should have

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integrity of character and should be accountable for any situation that the organization may have
to face; running away from responsibilities is a negative characteristic of a leader. A leader
should always know how to manage time, effective planning of time between personal and
professional life is a must for the person who wants to lead an organization.
My leadership model has been built round three of the core values Multiculturalism,
Ethics, and Teamwork (MET) these are the necessary competencies for a multicultural work
environment. The first of the core value is multiculturalism, as a manager in a Japanese
restaurant, for me multiculturalism is the most important factor to be kept in mind. Due to
globalization people belonging to various cultures are coming together for achieving a common
goal, thus understanding different cultures is important to communicate effectively with
everyone. Multiculturalism involves understanding the values, ideologies and beliefs of different
cultures, so that the requirement of the clients are better understood and the is better
communication with the employees, it will be easier to inspire the employees if the ways to
communicate with them is better understood. Only after establishing a trustworthy relationship
between a leader and his/her multicultural co-workers the person can become a good leader and
will be able to manage and motivate them to achieve the common goals of the company.
Multicultural leadership is a practice, which promotes the inclusion of various diverse cultures,
values and practices.
The second core value of my leadership model is ethics; it refers to the values and the
morals, which an individual has. Ethics decides what is good and what is bad for a particular
scenario. A leader requires having this kind of ability to be able to take quick decisions without
hampering the integrity of the organization (Goetsch and Davis 2014). A leader having ethical
characteristics will mean that the individual has respect for others, respecting others will mean

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that the person will listen to the grievances of others and understand the problems and will try to
solve them accordingly. The acts of the person will be humane and he will give first priority to
the requirements of others (Shapiro and Stefkovich 2016). Fairness and justice should be the aim
of ethical aspect of leadership. Honesty and loyalty to the aims of the organization is another
ethical trait. Ethical characteristics are necessary in a multicultural scenario.
The third core value is teamwork, which indicates towards the joint efforts made by the
leader and the teammates as well (Lisak and Erez 2015). Without teamwork, achieving a
common goal is impossible. While working in a diverse environment individuals have often
faced with certain difficulties where there is communication gap between two people and that
hindered them to work as a team. Working together with a common mindset is essential to
achieve the goals; each and every team members have their own individual sets of skills and
experiences, thus every member is equally important (Harvey and Allard 2015). In a
multicultural environment bringing the people together by reducing the communication gap is
necessary. Every member should do his / her part in the team and contribute equally for the team
to achieve success. This is an important value of my leadership model as without a team or
teamwork, leadership will have no value at all, and it will be the responsibility of a leader to
guide the team members to co-operate with one another and work as a common unit.
This particular leadership model that has been built will aim to achieve ideal leadership
of the 21st century, incorporating the characteristics of multicultural and ethical leaderships while
promoting teamwork at the same time (Webb, Darling and Alvey 2014). Globalization has
resulted in the world becoming a smaller place, thus people from different parts of the world can
contact anyone or can move to any other country for professional purposes. These three core
values mentioned above will help to facilitate a better form of leadership suited for a world,

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which has become a global village now. Thus through MET leadership model one can make the
workplace to become better suited for a diverse workforce.
The Multinational organizations can benefit from using this leadership model, as in a
Multinational organization there are people belonging to various cultural backgrounds come to
work and this leadership model will help those organizations to communicate with their
employees better (Jalal 2017). The ethical values will ensure that all employees are treated in a
just manner and this leadership model will also put stress upon teamwork.
The MET leadership model based on the features of multicultural and ethical leadership
frameworks, thus if this model is used in an organization then the culture of the organization will
have certain characteristics of ethical as well as multicultural leadership (Allard, Qayyum and
Mehra 2017.). The organization will believe in justice for all. Respect for each and every
employees. Honesty and transparency in the day to day execution of the tasks as well as between
the various levels of hierarchy within the organization. Focus will be provided on building teams
and teamwork will be the ultimate motto of the company. While making decisions within the
country value will be given to the decisions of all the members in the organization (Robinson,
Smith and Kovács 2014). Innovative ideas will be encouraged within the organization and the
employees will be rewarded accordingly. Unethical behavior will never be tolerated. The values
of the company will be regularly discussed with the employees and the management; the leaders
will abide by the values as well. People from every cultural background will be treated equally
and with respect. Regular training sessions will be provided to encourage cross-cultural
communication.

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The MET leadership model incorporates the characteristics of the multicultural, ethical
leaderships and the importance of teamwork, although multicultural and ethical leadership
models exist separately but there are no such leadership model which has the all the three
competencies as stated above. This leadership model is different as it collaborates the
multicultural features, ethical and moral aspects to guide an organization and also focuses on the
importance of teamwork at the same time.
Being the manager of a Japanese restaurant on a daily basis, I have to interact with my
Japanese co-workers. Applying the MET leadership model first, I have to gain knowledge about
their culture and values in order to understand their requirements (Kohler 2016). Only after
understanding their expectations and values I will be able to facilitate their work environment
accordingly. Regular communicative sessions should be held with the entire staff to discuss
about their requirements and problems and also to discuss with them the values of the
organization.
To conclude, to run an organization in the 21st century a leader has to have several
qualities specially the ability to work with people from various cultural backgrounds. The quality
to be a multicultural leader is of a great importance. According to the words of Martin Luther
King Jr. “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his
individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity”, thus to be a proper leader an
individual needs to embrace the beauty of diversity and be able to lead everyone to a better
future.

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Reference List:
Allard, S., Qayyum, M.A. and Mehra, B., 2017. Intercultural leadership toolkit for librarians:
Building awareness to effectively serve diverse multicultural populations. Education
Libraries, 30(1), pp.5-12.
DuBois, M., Hanlon, J., Koch, J., Nyatuga, B. and Kerr, N., 2015. Leadership styles of effective
project managers: Techniques and traits to lead high performance teams. Journal of Economic
Development, Management, IT, Finance, and Marketing, 7(1), p.30.
Fairholm, G.W., 2015. Overcoming Workplace Pathologies: Principles of Spirit-based
Leadership. Springer.
Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Harvey, C.P. and Allard, M., 2015. Understanding and managing diversity: Readings, cases,
and exercises. Pearson.
Jalal, A., 2017. Impacts of Organizational Culture on Leadership’s Decision-Making. Journal of
Advances in Management Sciences & Information Systems, 3, pp.1-8.
Kohler, R., 2016. Empirical Research: Analysis of Multicultural Leadership Approaches.
In Optimization of Leadership Style (pp. 81-115). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.

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Lisak, A. and Erez, M., 2015. Leadership emergence in multicultural teams: The power of global
characteristics. Journal of World Business, 50(1), pp.3-14.
Northouse, P.G., 2015. Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
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Shapiro, J.P. and Stefkovich, J.A., 2016. Ethical leadership and decision making in education:
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Webb, L., Darling, J. and Alvey, N., 2014. Multicultural leadership development in the 21st
century. Retrieved on February.