Two additional leadership factors are the variations we see among cultures, such as whether they are high or low context or value high or low power distance. You may recall that people from high-context cultures (such as Japan) tend to communicate in indirect ways, whereas those from low-context cultures (like the United States) communicate with more verbal directness (Hall, 1976). Imagine, for example, a manager tasked with keeping a team on target to meet a very tight deadline. A leader from a high-context culture might simply present a calendar noting due dates and filled with tasks and competing projects; she would rely on her team to get the point that the deadline is in trouble and expect team members to offer solutions. A leader from a low-context culture, on the other hand, would be more likely to clarify the situation directly: “I’m moving the deadline earlier by two weeks; that means you’ll need to accelerate your work accordingly.” The ways in which group members respond will also be influenced by culture: group members from a high-context culture might communicate in a similarly indirect way with their leader (“We have some concerns about the new deadline”), whereas those from a low-context culture would be more direct (“Sorry, we can’t make the new deadline”).

Power distance is another cultural difference that affects how groups may communicate with their leaders. As we learned in Chapter 3, power distance is the extent to which less powerful members of a group, be it a business organization or a family, accept that power is distributed unequally. In a high power distance culture, the members are not likely to challenge their leader’s opinions or authority. This means that a leader who wants all members to offer their ideas at a meeting might need to make a special effort to encourage everyone to participate in the discussion. In contrast, in a culture with low power distance, members are likely to offer their opinions and disagree with the leader without much prodding.