The CCBS Global Leadership series seeks to compare and contrast leadership styles and practices across the world. Based on country-specific literature reviews, and empirical analyses of survey and interview data with local leadership scholars, management trainers, and writers, our series demonstrates how global leadership skills are wholly distinct from those that are required in the domestic context. In this chapter we examined Slovakia.

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Slovakia
Luuk Keurentjes, Mirco Nieberg & Tarik Azouagh
Slovakia (Slovensko) is a country ideally suited for explorers and adventurers,
insofar as it is a unique combination of traditional and native elements and more
modern developments. This is what makes this small and rapidly-changing nation
in the centre of Europe so interesting and attractive to tourists. After the collapse
of communism and the ensuing Velvet Revolution, the Slovak population sought
independence and ultimately broke away from Czechoslovakia in the 1990s to
become an independent state. Today, Slovakia has a population of over 5.4
million people, while its main religion is Roman Catholicism and the native
language is Slovak (Slovenský). Slovakia’s largest exports are cars and vehicle
parts (OEC, n.d.). The main car manufacturers are Volkswagen, PSA Peugeot
Citroen, Kia Motors and Jaguar Land Rover. In fact, these four companies employ
half of the workforce in the car manufacturing industry in Slovakia (Sario, 2020).
The shift to a market economy in the 1990s led to increased investment in the
country from international firms, which, in turn, resulted in a marked increased
of foreign managers working within Slovak organisations. This significantly
impacted on the business culture and leadership styles and practices in Slovakia
(Bauer, 2015).
How the Slovaks characterise leaders
Čiefová’s (2017) research demonstrates that competence and the ability to make
decisions are highly valued in Slovakia in relation to leadership, while the ability
to think critically is valued considerably less. Overall, Slovakians prefer team-
oriented and charismatic leadership styles (Pucko, Remisova & Lasakova, 2013).
These aforesaid styles produce strong feelings of pride and loyalty between team
members in Slovak organisations, in which team cohesiveness and having a
common purpose are accorded strong significance. The charismatic leadership
style is predicated on leaders inspiring their subordinates through the clarity and
power of their vision. Bauer’s (2015) research supports and develops the findings
of Pucko et al. (2013) by putting forward the argument that integrity, which is a
part of ethical leadership, is the most important factor in effective leadership.
According to Lašáková, Remišová and Kirchmayer (2017), Slovak leaders listen to

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what their employees have to say and, in turn, are trusted by them. More
specifically, leaders in Bratislava were found to be more ethical in their practice
than leaders in other parts of the country. Overall, however, foreign-owned
companies scored higher in terms of ethical leadership than Slovak companies.
In our interview with a local scholar, Lenka Theodoulides (16 March 2020), she
posited that the influence of these multinational enterprises has led to a
profound change in leadership style in the country towards more foreign-based
methods and styles. In parallel with these developments, a generational shift in
the country has also led to leaders and managers increasingly seeking to educate
themselves on coaching, alongside developing their emotional intelligence.
Viskupicova (2016) stresses the importance of emotional intelligence in
leadership, opining that an “emotionally intelligent leadership approach becomes
more and more urgent. And this especially applies for the contemporary Slovak
business environment” (p. 77). Despite this, she concludes that the majority of
Slovak organisations continue to overlook emotional intelligence when seeking to
recruit new managers. The respondents in the CCBS survey similarly believed that
employees expect their leaders to be emotionally intelligent and capable of
developing the skills and capacities of their subordinates. Finally, as per the
findings of extant literature, our respondents also noted that it is important for
Slovak leaders to be viewed as visionary thinkers (CCBS Survey, 2020).
Survey results and what local respondents say
The CCBS survey (2019) was completed by numerous C-level executives and
experienced managers currently working in the country and provides notable
insights into the prevailing leadership styles and practices in Slovakia. A
noticeably large number of respondents reported that their leaders are firm and
decisive, as well as being unlikely to change their management decisions. In most
cases, missed deadlines are classified as failures, with staff being chastised
accordingly in staff meetings to obtain the desired results. However, most
respondents asserted that they do not seek to maintain personal distance from
their employees. Hence, it is evident from the survey data that there is
simultaneously a firm leadership style and team-oriented style in operation,
perhaps as a result of the aforesaid Western influence in the country in recent
years. As one respondent observed: “I am sensing that it is trending towards
blurred lines between personal and professional relationships at the workplace. It
is getting more important for people to feel comfortable at work, making friends
with co-workers and being on good terms with superiors” (CCBS Survey, 2020).

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When questioned about whether leaders need to be addressed by their titles,
around 70% of the respondents reported that it is not necessary. Indeed, an even
greater percentage of the respondents noted that employees could address their
leaders by their first name (CCBS Survey, 2020). This confirms that leaders do not
position themselves as above their employees but, rather, as being at the same
level as them. This finding is also in accordance with the observed trend of more
Western leadership styles.
In response to what skills leaders must possess in order to fulfil the role, around
80% of the respondents answered organisational experience and market
expertise. Around 15% of the respondents agreed that leaders need to be of a
certain age and background, or be elegant in their appearance (CCBS Survey,
2020). This testifies to the fact that Slovakians only select their leaders once they
have wholly examined their competence for the requisite position.
Local leadership analysis
Lenka Theodoulides: a Slovak leadership scholar
Dr Lenka Theodoulides has been a senior lecturer in the Department of
Corporate Economics and Management at the Matej Bel University in Banská
Bystrica from 2003. Her principal teaching and research areas are management
and leadership. She has conducted research and written multiple journal articles
and monographs on a range of leadership topics, such as innovation in
leadership, leadership in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region and the
role of leadership in organisational change. However, Theodoulides’ main focus is
mapping changes in management and leadership styles (16 March 2020).
She posited that one of the most interesting changes in leadership in recent
years is that companies and managers are shifting from a production-oriented
approach towards an innovation-oriented approach and, in turn, a people-
focused approach. However, the pace of this transition varies significantly across
different sectors. For instance, the governmental and public sectors continue to
adopt more traditional and autocratic leadership styles, as do heavy industries
like steel and mining. Conversely, ICT, smaller businesses and daughter
companies of multinational enterprises tend to be more progressive in terms of
both their organisational structure and democratic and participative leadership
styles. These progressive industries are also more inclined to utilise coaching,
mentoring and feedback. Theodoulides (16 March 2020) purported that the
cause of this aforementioned transition is the greater influence played by foreign
companies in Slovakia, as well as the inclusion of greater numbers of generation

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Z members in the workforce, who demand to be treated equally at work.
While she has not conducted research specifically on gender, she nevertheless
posited that there are fewer female C-level managers and executives. However,
with respect to those women who are in positions of power, she believes that
there is little difference in their managerial and leadership approach compared
to their male counterparts. Lending support to Čiefová’s (2017) research,
Theodoulides (16 March 2020) stressed that it is vital for managers and leaders
to develop their critical thinking skills and that this should occur within
universities so that future leaders will be even better.
Eva Gaborikova: a Slovak cross-cultural trainer
Eva Gaborikova, MA, PhD, ACC, has been an intercultural trainer for the past 15
years. In this time, she has worked with numerous international companies to
help them settle in not only Slovakia but also the Czech Republic, Hungary and
Austria. Given that she specialises in helping expatriate companies in these
countries, she has extensive knowledge of hierarchy and leadership in Slovakia.
In our interview, Gaborikova (18 March 2020) emphasised that Slovakia has two
highly contradictory leadership styles: the more traditional style of leadership
and an emergent more progressive style. This hybridity derives from the
aforesaid transition from a planned economy to a market economy. When
Gaborikova was asked what distinguishes Slovakia from its neighbouring
countries, she concluded that while Slovakia has a lot in common with its
neighbouring countries, the one notable difference is Slovakia’s open economy,
which she believes resulted in faster economic development compared to
neighbouring countries (18 March 2020). Gaborikova then proceeded to discuss
that it is important to understand this business culture in Slovakia because it
explains why there are two distinct types of leaders. On the one hand, there are
leaders who were around before the transition to the market economy, who
learned their skills during the communist era and had to adapt to the transition.
On the other hand, the generation who grew up under a market economy
developed their knowledge and gained experience during an era in which
numerous expatriate companies were setting up in Slovakia, and bringing new
leadership styles with them. In the interview, Gaborikova reported that Slovaks
expect their leaders to take care of them and their loved ones and help them
build a good future. For Gaborikova it is important for leaders to have mentors to
teach them these fundamental values. While this has changed over time, she
believes that a mentoring system is still vitally important for socialising
prospective leaders.

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In-country leadership bestseller
The only title available in online bookstores on the subject of leadership in
Slovakia is Etické vedenie ľudí v slovenskom podnikateľskom prostredí (Ethical
leadership in Slovak business environment) written by Anna Remisova, Anna
Lašáková, Ján Rudy, Rozália Sulíková, Zuzana Kirchmayer and Jana Fratričová.
The main goal of this book is to identify which cultural and ethical factors
influence managers’ decision-making in the field of value-oriented leadership.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on delineating the
theoretical framework. The second part is about the research objectives, content
and subject matter. It also delves deeper into the research methods used and the
criteria on which the results were evaluated. The third part presents the main
findings of the research. These are directly applicable to both the domestic and
international business environment as well as management development. Hence,
every manager in Slovakia should have this book on their shelf.
Local leadership book
Title
Etické vedenie ľudí v slovenskom
podnikateľskom prostredí
Subtitle -
Authors
Anna Remisova, Anna Lašáková,
Ján Rudy, Rozália Sulíková, Zuzana
Kirchmayer and Jana Fratričová
Publisher Wolters Kluwer
Year 2015
ISBN 9788081681998
Slovak leadership YouTube review
Tomáš Hasala is the co-founder of Limba.com, the industry leader of Central
European reservation systems. Since 2014, he has also been the CEO of Nexteria,
a non-profit organisation that supports young talent and leaders. In this
interview he talks, among other things, about the differences between leading a
private company and a non-profit organisation in Slovakia and what it is like to
start and lead a company there. He begins by stating that he prefers to cooperate

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with others when starting a company because when you co-found a company
with, for example, four people, everybody is fully focused on the company.
Conversely, if you have four employees, they will never have the same
relationship to the company that you do as a founder (Startup Grind Local, 2019,
21:33). He then proceeds to say that it is very important to take risks when you
are leading an organisation. He notes that this is why he and his former business
partner went their separate ways. Because, even though they had the same
values, his former partner was unable to take risks. Alongside risk-taking, the
other most important quality needed to be a successful leader of a company is
generosity. That is to say, you should attempt to help other people to succeed
even if this may go against your own interests at times (Startup Grind Local,
2019, 24:21). Later in the interview, he talks about switching from the private to
the public sector in Slovakia, noting that a major challenge for him was gaining
money to start the business in the first place. “We’ve had no state money, no
European money and we have no money at all from ‘strange’ private sources,
which is absolutely normal in Slovakia” (Startup Grind Local, 2019, 44:45). This
appears to suggest that the business landscape in Slovakia is still not necessarily
completely ethical. By way of concluding the interview, he states that in modern
times it is very important to be a team player and, as such, every day is
somewhat of a compromise.
Two other specialists in the field of organisational structures and leadership in
Slovakia are Jan Gregor and Roman Kurnicky. Both are CEOs of companies that
help organisations with people-related transformation and process management.
They gave a lecture at OpenSlava 2017, in which they talked about the
possibilities of building an agile organisation in Slovakia. One of the slides in their
presentation notes that building an organisational structure is not about
changing structure but, rather, about embracing agile values. In this respect, they
argue that a lot of Slovakian companies are still not fully able to, or even open to,
embracing these values (OpenSlava, 2017, 2:49). The first issue that they observe
in those organisations that do attempt to become more agile is that they try to
do so by using the old-fashioned reward and punish leadership style. Managers
also find it hard to grant their employees freedom, while employees find it hard
to have freedom because freedom also brings responsibility, which they are not
used to (OpenSlava, 2017, 9:55). In tandem with this newfound responsibility is
the necessity for employees to reflect on their own actions when attempting to
implement solutions and help the company move forward. However, employees
tend to focus on merely making the business owners happy instead of making
the customer happy, which needs to be inverted in an agile organisation

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(OpenSlava, 2017, 11:45). Based on the lecture, it can be concluded that there
are nevertheless some Slovakian organisations that are ready to progress to
working in an agile fashion.
Understanding hierarchy in Slovakia
Slovak culture has changed profoundly since the fall of communism. The reason
for this is that numerous international companies have settled in Slovakia, and
brought a lot of expatriate workers with them. This has resulted in a marked
change in the business culture in Slovakia, according to Eva Gáboríková an
intercultural trainer specialised in the Slovak culture (18 March 2020). In
Hofstede’s original study, Slovakia scored notably high on power distance (103
out of 100), but this has changed over time. Bašnáková, Brezina and Masaryk
(2016) conducted a closer examination of Hofstede’s dimensions and came to
the following conclusion: Kolman’s original reporting on Slovakia’s high position
on power distance (103) must have been false because the new score was only
25. The controversy suggests that there are different types of business skills
needed in Slovakia. The transition undergone in Slovakia has culminated in the
organisational culture that currently prevails. Those leaders who worked during
the period of transition adopt a style that is reminiscent of neighbouring
countries. More specifically, the old-fashioned Slovak leader feels like a father
figure, insofar as he or she cares about their subordinates and their families. For
the older generation, a person’s title reflects their status, and status is very
important when conducting business. The traditional leadership style is also
based more on relationship building. To improve one’s status, ranking and
authority you have to gain trust by caring for employees (Bauer, 2015).
Moreover, leaders adopt a top-down management approach that characterised
communist societies. In this approach, employees do not speak up to their
leaders and have a lot of respect for them. This leadership style is still seen in
traditional Slovak companies.
However, in recent years a new generation of leaders has emerged, who display
a markedly different approach to leadership. Their style is infused with methods
and styles from the various international companies that have settled in Slovakia
since their transition into the market economy. Lenka Theodoulides (16 March
2016) states that this younger generation does not look up to leaders in the same
vein that the older generation did; rather, this generation appreciates equality
more than difference in status. Hence, the leadership style that is best suited for
this generation is a flat organisational structure, in which work is carried out in

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collaboration with a manager, and it is normal to share your thoughts. That is to
say, this is an altogether more democratic style of leadership, in which leaders
coach and help their employees, as opposed to controlling and commanding
them. As aforesaid, this approach is mostly seen in foreign companies and in
younger and smaller Slovak companies.
How Slovakians achieve leadership empathy
There are different leadership styles utilised in Slovakia, which also result in a
different style of orientation. As Bauer argues, “It is noticeable that Diplomatic is
most accepted for supporting effective leadership - while it is generally accepted
that Self-centred inhibits it” (2015, p. 18). Perhaps the biggest challenge in the
aforementioned transition from the traditional task-oriented leadership style to
the more democratic people-focused leadership style is attempting to secure
empathy from one’s subordinates. To achieve this in contemporary society,
increasing amounts of leaders are seeking to develop their own competences in
coaching and providing feedback to their teams. The most difficult aspect of this
task is not only to give the right feedback but also to be able to effectively
receive feedback from their employees (Theodoulides, 16 March 2020).
However, Bauer’s research (2015) highlights that charismatic-inspirational and
charismatic-visionary competences are also deemed to be the most accepted
methods for achieving effective leadership. The survey respondents (CCBS
Survey, 2020) reported that managers should actively spend time on the
personal wellbeing of their team members. This indicates that there is indeed a
trend of leaders being more concerned with the personal development of their
employees than with the task at hand. “We found that most of the project
managers [have] a sufficient level of competence. For competencies, we can
consider the competencies development of others, helping other people develop
their capabilities, realize their potential and identify opportunities” (Krchova,
2019, p. 239). Hana Krchova (2019) also states that the main difference in the
respective levels of competence between male and female project managers
pertained to their ability to gain empathy from subordinates, wherein female
managers showed a higher level of competence. This is because they are better
equipped to respond to the feelings and concerns of their subordinates.
Consequently, as noted by Theodoulides (16 March 2020), Slovakia is undergoing
significant changes with respect to management. Managers who watch and
delegate are beginning to make way for leaders that take care of the wellbeing of
their employees and want to develop their skillsets and capacities.