Chapter 3 and 4

Chapter 3:
One of the most interesting information I found from Chapter 3 was the idea of mentoring. Mentoring is the process of forming and maintaining developmental relationships between a mentor and a junior person. For me, the one factor about mentoring that I always wondered about was the dynamics between the mentor and the mentee. How did they make a relationship that could actually benefit one another?

For one thing, I learned that mentoring was a great way for companies to build trust between its workers. One article from Inc. Magazine even talked about how a mentor can benefit a worker and how to make that relationship work. “They had us think in ways we had never thought before, about the big questions, such as how big do you want to be?” He also said, “The trust factor is all-important. Our mentors showed us from the start that they wanted to make a commitment to our business.” (Macht) When the mentors were asked, on the other hand, their replies matched with what the mentees said. They also emphasized the idea of being open to new situations and the fact that having a good relationship with their mentees has helped them work harder. (Macht)

The one thing that I have learned from all this is the importance of give and take. When I thought of the word mentoring, I thought of the mentees just depending on the mentors for everything. After reading that article, though, I realized that a mentor-mentee relationship is more that just dependence, but a partnership.

Chapter 4:

One thing that I truly found interesting in Chapter 4 was the idea of the Globe Project. From a standpoint of a person who is very interested in the distinctions between the different of cultures of other countries, I really wanted to find out more about it. The aim of this project was to define the term “leadership” worldwide. It was said that the objective of the project was “To determine the extent to which the practices and values of business leadership are universal (i.e., are similar globally), and the extent to which they are specific to just a few societies.” (Grovewell) Also, the definition given of the word leadership was "...the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members". (Grovewell)

The Globe project studied 62 different countries across the world. From these 62 countries, a CLT was formed. CLT, also known as “Culturally Endorsed Leadership Theory Dimensions”, was represented “the ultimate result of the team’s statistical grouping of leadership attributes into common dimensions.” (Grovewell) These six included: Charismatic/value based, team oriented, participative, humane oriented, self-protective, and autonomous. The results that came up were fascinating. There were some that really made me think about how businesses function in those specific regions. It also made me think about the different interactions between people living in those countries. Here are some interesting results that I found:

Team oriented: “At the level of the 10 societal clusters, the Latin America cluster most positively associated the team oriented CLT with outstanding leadership.” (Grovewell)
Self protective: “Incidentally, the Middle East cluster also rated the self-protective CLT in an almost neutral manner. Nordic Europe, with a mean of 2.72, associated this CLT with the inhibition of good leadership.” (Grovewell)

Sources:

Grovewell, C. Grove. Dare to Be WorldWise: Overviews of the GLOBE Research Project Worldwide. 2007. 30 January 2010 .

Macht, Joshua D. Inc. . 2 June 2001. 30 January 2010 .