We all agree that good leadership involves motivating others to do their best. But to do that, we need to earn trust and respect, and know what kind of leadership motivates. In a job market where future employees may just as often come from Asia or the Middle East as from Bærum, Bergen or Berlevåg, leadership will necessarily require broad knowledge and flexibility, rather than "quick answers for good leadership". It will require cultural insight, and first and foremost that we do not believe that our own style is the "normal, correct and natural". Logic is not logical everywhere, and "common sense" is neither "common" nor "make sense" for everyone. So do you want to be right - or do you want results?
Marit Imeland Gjesme
She has a long, foreign-based management and HR career behind her, as Global Head L&D for about 70 countries in the originally Norwegian Nycomed. With the company CultureCatch, she now works globally with courses and lectures for international companies and the UN on improved efficiency in multicultural cooperation and management. Bridging both internally and externally between Asian, Arab and Western business cultures, as well as integration support for multinational acquisitions, are among her areas of expertise.
Challenges of leadership in international working life
Recently, I asked a group of managers at the start of a workshop what their challenges were in managing in other countries or for team members from other cultures. The group, of about 50 managers from 12 different countries around the world, exploded in engagement and responses, as they always do when this question is asked: "Misunderstood communication!", "Motivation doesn't work!", "I don't get honest answers", "I can't trust them", and "They don't want to take individual responsibility" versus "They want to take all the responsibility and credit themselves".
There were Norwegians, Americans, Germans, Indians, Japanese, Arabs and Finns. With completely different opinions about what good leadership is and what they reacted negatively to from their employees. What worked well for some, didn't work at all for others. When they were given explanations of what the behavior expresses in the different cultures, the frustrations disappeared. But how can we know that everything has a "local logic" if we haven't learned it?
In surveys of the intercultural field, we have found that the main differences, frustrations and misunderstandings in working life and management can often be traced to conflicts of values. In the emphasis on honesty vs loyalty, direct communication vs indirect and diplomatic, facts vs emotions and human considerations, product focus vs relationship focus and individual vs group focus, the consequences are completely different. Different views on hierarchy and roles don't make it any easier. If you learn the special and unique "cocktail" of the cultures you are going to lead or collaborate with, a lot can be gained on the management front.
Read also: How to make the collaboration between external and internal leadership development work well?
The importance of culture
But is culture really so important that it has an impact on the bottom line? Research has shown that a majority of multicultural teams are unfortunately often highly inefficient, conflictual and on average underperform monocultural teams. At the same time, multicultural teams are also, in some cases, star teams that can outperform anyone when they really manage to make use of their differences. When investigating the reasons for this performance gap, it was found that what separated the top performers from the underperformers was that the former had culturally competent leaders who immediately invested in cultural understanding for the team! Collaboration in the low performers where culture was neglected failed due to misunderstandings and lack of common "rules of the road", while this was addressed from the start in the best teams. In addition, both Harvard Business Review and The Economist found that 70-80% of acquisitions and integrations fail financially and in terms of well-being for as long as 5-7 years, and that the main reason for this is that cultural differences are not taken seriously and addressed. At the same time, a recent study by the Center for Creative Leadership found that 86% of experienced senior leaders believe that cross-cultural leadership is a critical competency, yet only 7% of them said they have mastered it. This expresses a huge need and potential. Isn't it a sobering thought that much of leadership development is still practicing "how" to hold difficult conversations, motivate, give feedback, use eye contact - the examples are countless - when the potential recipients will often be from cultures where the opposite "how" is correct? Here is a market worth its weight in gold for targeted leadership development.
Leadership is a key skill that never goes out of date - but perhaps much of its traditional content has? The view of what constitutes good leadership has always been shaped in and by a cultural context, and how far-reaching is that context? In a world where the global labor market is constantly "shrinking", broad and flexible leadership insights and cultural competencies are becoming increasingly critical and in demand. This could prove to be 2020's key success factor. If you succeed - and it takes a lot more than intuition to understand other people's values and business cultures - then you drastically increase your chances of achieving unprecedented results. Or to put it this way: Of course you can be successful in international and multicultural leadership roles - or you can pull a Frank Sinatra and insist on continuing to "do it your own way"!
