Categories
intercultural negotiation

Role Theories and Communication of the Leadership Role

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or any other language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com 

Cooperative Dialogue (Cooperative Interaction)

Being the leader of a family means being able to act as a “guide” of the family itself, and this is expressed in group and individual conversations with family members. Being the leader of a production department means assuming the role of reference point for all technicians, managing to manage conflicts, meetings, training and motivational processes.

Being the leader of a sales force means taking on the role of mentor and coordinator of resources and strategies, and applying the role in every communication with your collaborators. Regardless of which corporate or social reference group is, leadership must be considered a meta-role that transversally invests a subject within a group of individuals.

The assumption of the role is evident in the method of communication adopted, and its lack is equally evident. As Tonfoni points out, each role is charged with expectations and role behaviors: According to the Theory of Roles, a certain sequence of planned actions, called “role”, refers to the individual actors who occupy certain positions within one or more groups, within which there is a balance determined by the fact that at each “status “separate functions are assigned.

Based on the dynamics of the role, each individual must correspond to relative expectations; the role is therefore definable as a model of social behavior appropriate in relation to the expectations and the actual way in which an individual behaves in a certain situation. Failure to respect expectations and role behaviors is evident precisely in the inter-individual and group conversation in which the subject does not act as a “private individual” but as an “interpreter of the role of leader”.

Leadership therefore requires attention to the communicative listening dynamics in which they manifest themselves:

  • attacks on the role by team members;
  • improper role assumptions by team members or other subjects;

The correlated communicative behaviors are therefore:

  • reporting of the leader’s perception of the attack on the role;
  • clarification of the facts, making it clear that it is understood what is happening.
  • defense of the role;
  • negotiation of mutual roles. Leadership move detection exercise
  • Simulate starting a project to build a new product (banking, automobile, tourism, or others of your choice) that requires joint work between engineers, marketing experts and management control and finance experts.
  • Have all the participants start the dialogue in turn, with the requirement that those who open the negotiation try to be the leader.
  • Notice how during a conversation a participant taking an agreed role implements leadership. What to do to manage the power? Participants must decode the moves implemented by the assigned role, understand how the leader implements his leadership on the field.
  • In the debriefing phase (post-simulation analysis), provide feedback to the conversation leader on the effectiveness of the moves implemented.

Cooperative Dialogue (Cooperative Interaction)

The cooperative dialogue involves a strong concentration of positive moves, of openness, a use of SIM for analysis and sharing, and the elimination of attacks on the role and identity of others. The cooperative dialogue mainly consists of:

  • listening, avoiding interruption;
  • strategic shifts between the macro-purposes of the projects and the details, with a preference for macro-purposes and the search for a shared mission; consider the differences on the details as temporary, recoverable, and go in search of a common vision and what they have in common;
  • search for a win-win approach;
  • attitudes of openness and avoidance of the judgment of others (suspension of judgment until complete understanding).
Intercultural Negotiation Arab Edition

© Article translated from the book “Negoziazione interculturale, comunicazione oltre le barriere culturali” (Intercultural Negotiation: Communication Beyond Cultural Barriers) copyright Dr. Daniele Trevisani Intercultural Negotiation Training and Coaching, published with the author’s permission. The Book’s rights are on sale and are available for any Publisher wishing to consider it for publication in English and other languages except for Italian and Arab whose rights are already sold and published. If you are interested in publishing the book in English, or any other language, or seek Intercultural Negotiation Training, Coaching, Mentoring and Consulting, please feel free to contact the author from the webstite www.danieletrevisani.com 

For further information see: