Romanian women leading a cross-cultural team: what are the challenges?

In the previous article we discussed the challenges that the leader of the team of engineers– a Colombian woman- had to go through. The mixture of cultures made this unique experience a bit spicy – five British and four Indian specialists were not mixing well, in fact the results of the projects showed that there was no team established at all. Now let's see how would things look like if the leader of the team were a Romanian woman. Feel free to add you insights on the situation by e-mailing irina-budrina@hotmail.com. By Irina Budrina Comments from our readers showed that a woman from Colombia with a diplomatic business culture had to develop a strategy how to work with two different groups at the same time: the Indian one, based on “family” long-term relationships and a British one, with the inflexible culture in respond to dynamic business approaches and ‘one-dimensional’, ‘mechanistic’ and a short-term mindset. What would happen if the leader of the team is replaced by a Romanian business woman? Women in Colombia can be very often assigned to the positions of power, leading businesses and usually at the same professional level as men. Women-leaders are very proud of their professional achievements, experience and knowledge. Women leaders in Romania are an interesting phenomenon. An increasing number of women are setting up successful businesses in Romania, overcoming barriers and building their credibility inside and outside their organizations. In Romania women entrepreneurship tends to become a force in the economic development. Women make 51, 2% of the Romanian population and cover 47.6% of the total active population. Consequently, women represent a readily available pool of potential entrepreneurs in diverse fields: trade, industry, tourism, advertising, IT and communication and real estate that each Romanian region can leverage to improve its economy. Which cultural business values in Romania can be useful in our case? Relationships are very important in the Romanian culture, in business a lot of time can be spent on building trust by talking about personal issues, interesting events, etc. They tend to use personal relationships to solve work problems. - Perfect match for our Romanian Leader! In general Romanians are risk takers. And they will work hard to close a deal once everyone is on the same track. They are actually more open with foreigners than with each other. But even though they are skilled negotiators, they often show little knowledge of Western experiences, particularly with regard to speed, urgency or integrity. When a deal is concluded, everything should be put in writing, witnessed by decision makers and the competent experts. Plus an approval from the senior person in the organisation. – A bit heavy for the decision-making process in out project?! Romanians are not punctual in general. They are comfortable with ambiguity where the Westerner wants final clarity. –