One of the major take aways for me this week is how much collaborative leadership is needed. I am also on other discussion groups with dominant members. I just tune out, which is unfortunate. I wonder if these types of people understand the effect they have on others? I think we need to understand that place to better understand how to create solutions.

Sometimes, however, the “gatekeeper” for information and communication is dependent on technology and language skills. Working on a project in Hungary, we usually went through the Director or Assistant director because they had the language skills to interpret. Another project in our office in Brazil usually worked through the assistant for US support staff because the Brazilian assistant spoke English better than the Director. As the upper management all spoke Portuguese, they would use conference calls for higher level discussions. However, because of the director’s limited computer skills (in many countries, at least 10-15 years ago, the upper management would not know how to type or use office equipment) any documents would be requested to the office assistant.