Power Distance – How do people behave in proximity to power?

Power Distance

Geert Hofstede developed the concept of power distance as part of his work exploring the interactions of people with different levels of power in different cultures.

One of the key findings of this work is that individuals who lack power interact and behave differently around powerful individuals depending on the cultures they are in.

Building on these findings, it’s possible to grade cultures from “low” to “high” levels of power distance, providing insights into how individuals in them will behave around power.

From our perspective, this is important as the ways normal people react around powerful people can have huge impacts on organizations, as well as on the wellbeing and experiences of the individuals within these organizations.

High Power Distance Cultures

The term “high power distance” is used to describe cultures where people with high levels of power and authority (however that is constructed) are respected and rarely questioned. In these cultures there is deemed to be a clear distinction between superiors and subordinates, with people very much accepting their place in this hierarchy and defering to those above them.

Malaysia, much of Central Amercia, Egypt and China are examples of countries with high power distance cultures.

Individuals working in these cultures typically will expect leaders to be make decisions without consultation, and these decisions will be accepted without challenge. Individuals will not “speak truth to power”, will not speak up and share their ideas, will not point out risks and may not really engage on a personal level with leaders.

Individuals in these cultures will just keep their heads down and unquestioningly do what is asked so as to avoid being noticed. In fact, they may even go out of their way to avoid being noticed by powerful individuals, thus the term high power distance.

Low Power Distance Cultures

The term “low power distance” is used to describe cultures where people with high levels of power and authority are just thought of as fairly normal people and not held in mystique or intentionally kept at a distance by others.

Examples of cultures that are considered low power distance cultures include many of the Nordic nations, New Zealand, Israel and Austria.

In these cultures workplaces are more llikely to be fairly egalitarian and individuals with low formal power will feel able to speak up, contribute, challenge and share their thoughts with powerful leaders. 

Why should we care?

There are lots of reasons that this is interesting.

Firstly, it’s hugely helpful to know that individuals from different cultures behave differently. If we are to work effectively cross-culturally, we need to have an awareness of these differences, be non-jugemental about them and be able to read the actions and behaviours of others well. This is particularly important for individuals working with and leading teams in different countries.

Secondly, power distance has been cited as a reason behind some organizational catastrophies. You can read up on these in your own time, but they include the Challenger and Discovery Space Shuttle disasters, multiple air-crashes including some Korean Air disasters, the Bohpal gas leak tragedy of 1984, and many many more.

Power is an intesting concept. On power distance specifically, you might enjoy the Hofstede Insights tool that lets you explore power distance for different countries (as well as other cultural dimensions).

We also think French & Ravens forms of power is helpful.

Given that politics is power in action, we’ve found Robert Caro’s epic book series, “The Years of Lyndon Johnson“, fabulous. Book one, “The Path to Power” is a particularly interesting insight into power in action.

Jeffrey Pfeffer’s books are also pretty interesting. They’re very much on the pragmatic side of things, real-politik even. They provide some good guidance on how to manage power within the structures that we live in, but they kill the idealist in me a little bit. 

You might also enjoy our article on power distance as well as our podcast exploring power:

We tend to write about ideas we enjoy and find interesting, and think this is one of them.

We also think that keeping a significant distance from power is often a great survival strategy in countries that exhibit high power distance.

When it comes to cultures within the teams we work with, we tend to default to the view that Psychological Safety is a good thing. In other words, that we should minimise the fear of negative consequence that can result from taking interpersonal risk. Baked into this, there is an assumption that engaging with senior people should be a non-threatening action, which means we should strive for lower power distance cultures.

There are lots of benefits of having these lower power distance and higher psychological safety cultures from both an individual and organizational perspective.

That doesn’t mean that it’s easy to create them though, particularly if you’re working with a multi-national team with members from countries that tend to exhibit high levels of power distance.

As ever in the type of work that we do, context really matters and there tend not to be one size fits all solutions to the challenges we face.

Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values. Sage Publications.

https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison/

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