In my experience leadership and supervisor-subordinate relationships and hirerachies are farely flat. With that I mean that between me who have ofen been in s pecialist opsition there has sometimes only been one manager between me and the highest boss who often is the CEO of the company. This also make the relationships very close and you know all your collegues and your managers. The relationship is very informal, and you can talk to your boss more or less like a friend and sometimes even spend time with them in the free time or have lunch with them.
Working six weeks in spain, unveiled to me that this is not the norm or standard everywhere in Europe. There the bosses were not friends with their workers, they did not eat lunch together, even if they were in a small start-up team setup and there was a very clear division between the two different roles, which I found interesting.
In finland workers often get a lot of resposibilities and are expected to be independent and drive their own work forward rather than getting specific instructions from their managers. Managers and leadership is based on mutual trust. Leader’s often trust that their workers do what they say and that they take initiative.
What is lacking in finnish leadership often is a goal oriented mindset and thinking outside of the box about how a manager could support individual workers to reach their full potential and move towards their goals.
The flat organiational structure and friendlike relationship might also lead to the problem where the manager is not seen as an authority and is therefore not listened to and respected as one.
Other problems with the finnish leadership style is that everyone are pretty humble, closed off and cold and sometimes that can lead to teams not getting the visible credit they deserve for their work. Many finnish silent leaders needs to therefore work on their skills of giving compliments, lifting up the team spirit and being more chatty than they might naturally be.