Filipino Leadership Styles – What are the

Four Distinctive Filipino Leadership Styles

FILIPINO LEADERSHIP – Looking from the outside, some of the common practices in Filipino
management can be misconstrued.

This is because the culture of Filipinos are derived from deep rooted indigenous core values. These
included focusing on kinship, family, and social acceptance.

Those value were then intertwined with ideologies from Chinese mercantilism, American Westernization
and Spanish Catholicism. Because of this, the leadership styles of the Filipino is what it is today.

The four types of Filipino leadership are Pakiramdam, Takutan, Kulit, and Patsamba-tsamba.
This is according to Management And Culture In The Philippines.

Pakiramdam focuses on a passive style of leadership, with subordinates doing work that is not
too little or too much to play safe. This is because this style does not provide workers with
guidance required to give them sense of initiative.

The four types of Filipino leadership are Pakiramdam, Takutan, Kulit, and Patsamba-tsamba.
This is according to Management And Culture In The Philippines.

Pakiramdam focuses on a passive style of leadership, with subordinates doing work that is not
too little or too much to play safe. This is because this style does not provide workers with
guidance required to give them sense of initiative.

Instead the leader motivates through being friendly or “Feeling the other” with the staff. This is done by
inferring the manager’s absolute expectations, regardless of the relevance to organizational objectives.

Takutan is a style of leadership that puts the responsibility on the manager who relies on oppression,
conceit, and hostility. This leadership is easily explained as a matter of professionalism.

This requires social distance between leaders and subordinates. In other words workers and
individuals with the “ranks” such as supervisors.
The manager persuades subordinates to obey without complaints to steer clear from threats and
punishments. As to secure one’s acceptance within the work group, it was preferred to avoid
dispute with higher-ranks.

Kulit which refers to a superior closely observes and controls the work of their subordinates by checking
every detail of the assignment. This results in a lack of freedom within the workplace.

Patsamba-tsamba is a style of management that has no goals, objectives, and direct instructions. It
relies on trial and error leaving success or failure to fate.

Rather than making rational decisions, the manager often prefers buoyant actions that creates disaster
and disorder. This leads to confusion among subordinates resulting to inefficient organization on its
operations.