Leadership Passages: The Personal and Professional Transitions That Make or Break a Leader (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership)

Breaking your frame of reference is not an easy task, but living in a foreign culture facilitates achieving this objective. Many business executives grow up in a corporation and develop strong, unconscious cultural biases. They are frustrated, surprised, and sometimes daunted to see first-hand that despite their relative sophistication about business and the world, out-of-awareness cultural values can impede communication, decision making, and the effort to lead people. They have experienced what CDR International Partner Stephen Rhinesmith, terms the “Epcot Center version of cross- cultural experiences,” that is, moving quickly through countries and observing differences is similar to the experience of moving through cultural pavilions at Disney World’s Epcot Center; the reality of living for some time in a country different from one’s own can create deep, fundamental change, both personally and professionally.

We all operate with certain assumptions about our companies, competitors, markets, and industries. It takes a frame-breaking experience—a direct challenge to these assumptions—to develop into a better leader. The professional passages create this adjustment in certain ways, and living abroad does it in another way. If you take full advantage of your time abroad, you’ll emerge with an expanded capacity for seeing things from multiple perspectives and an ability to work effectively with people who have ideas and approaches very different from your own.

To capitalize on your foreign experience, do the following:

• Adopt an adventurer’s mind-set. Be willing to try new things, to take reasonable risks, to explore areas and ideas that you find the most foreign. This doesn’t mean that you should put yourself in physical danger but that you should test yourself in other ways. If you’re in an Asian country, it may mean spending time touring a Buddhist monastery or taking a class in meditation from a monk. If you’re in South America, it may mean taking a weekend trip down a river through an ancient rainforest. In the business world, it may mean working hard to communicate your ideas to others in a different language, working differently with customers or suppliers, and listening hard so you understand their ideas.

  This type of communication takes time and effort. It may take you days and scores of questions to comprehend a complex distribution system or assess why their unique sales strategy is so effective. At times, you will feel foolish and ignorant because you have to ask so many questions, and it takes you so long to figure things out. An adventurer, though, is willing to endure a bit of hardship for the sake of exploration and discovery. Leaders who view living abroad as a career stepping-stone are conservative in how they approach a different culture; they let their anxiety about being different, vulnerable, or visible keep them detached. They get much less out of the experience than those who view it as an adventure.

• Learn first; teach second. Some people approach foreign assignments, especially ones in less-developed countries, with an unconscious defensive attitude of superiority. They believe they have much to offer and others have little to offer them in return. This can also be true for people who live abroad for other reasons, from volunteers to missionaries, and much cross-cultural training today is designed to help people uncover these attitudes before they depart. They intend to manage a different culture rather than experience it. As a result, their time abroad becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; they do give a lot and receive very little.

  No matter whether you’re living in a developing country, a major industrial power, or somewhere in between, it’s best to operate on the premise that a new culture has a great deal to teach you. This is easy to remember when entering a new culture, because excitement and enthusiasm are predominant. It is after a year or two that subtle contempt can set in. Force yourself to keep an open mind, especially if you become frustrated with what is different and begin to long for the familiar. Your view might be that your host country is backward or unsophisticated, and this judgment prevents you from grasping the underlying cultural values and differences that constitute the context in which you are now living. If you’re open to learning and make an effort to observe and listen, you’ll find alternatives to your standard operating procedure.

  We know a CEO of one of this country’s largest corporations, and we’ll call him Frank. A number of years ago, his company gave him a tough European assignment. Frank was designated a “high talent” within the company, always successful, always in control; he could have easily approached the assignment with the idea of mastering and controlling his new environment. Instead, he recognized that he didn’t understand the subtleties of the European country to which he was assigned, and before he issued a single directive or suggested any changes in the status quo, he listened and observed. More than that, he spent weekends traveling throughout Europe, attempting to get a feel for the people and the culture that he would never get in his company’s offices. By the end of his time there, he had not only earned the respect of his employees, he had adapted his ideas and strategies to his new culture. This ability to adapt served Frank well. When he returned to the United States, he continued to be promoted; his ability to read situations, intuit subtle differences in attitudes, and respond in a flexible way served him well as a leader.

• Function effectively without knowing the rules or how to behave. This is great practice for when you return to your home country. Today, because of globalization and the constant homogenization induced by global media, in almost every large organization in every country, business rules and practices are rapidly changing. Leadership models such as openness, operational metrics such as Six Sigma, practices such as longer workdays with shorter lunch breaks—are converging and continuously shifting with each new trend or technological breakthrough. Leaders can’t wait for clarity and for all the answers to emerge before they act. Instead, they need to get things done with limited information, all the while assimilating and assessing and adapting their policies as new data emerge.

Working in a foreign country provides training for assimilating, assessing, and adapting skills. Most people worry about committing a business or social faux pas because they don’t know the customs. They also become concerned about seeming incompetent because they don’t know how to navigate foreign bureaucracies, the transportation system, or even something as simple as ordering food at a restaurant.

When you’re in these situations, don’t panic. More important, don’t fear exposing your lack of knowledge by saying, “I don’t know” or by being reluctant to ask “dumb” questions. For leaders, the ability to expose one’s vulnerabilities by admitting to “not knowing” is a skill that creates a learning environment for others in any context. In a different country, as a leader you can practice the “don’t know everything” response and try to learn what you need to know and be willing to make mistakes. Order steak in a restaurant, receive a fish stew, and resolve to either try something new or learn the right words for what you want. Similarly, if you request a marketing plan and your direct report provides you with a plan that contains all manner of sidebars, digressions, or tangential information, don’t give in to frustration. Pay attention instead to the sidebars and digressions and see if that’s your direct report’s way of providing you with information you really need.

Through Action Learning programs and other global leadership training experiences, we’ve witnessed the positive impact of a foreign sojourn when people do the right things. Even though Action Learning only provides a short-term situation (a few weeks or a month in another country), it delivers long-term results. The program is purposely designed to force executives to rely on their own resources; they have to make their own travel plans and living arrangements, as well as meet a business challenge by figuring out the modus operandi of businesses and people in their country. Companies like Johnson & Johnson, GE, Novartis, and Diageo have similar global programs, deliberately placing their executives in countries where they don’t know the language, forbidding them some of the common support tools, and generally subjecting them to the adversity experienced by any first-time traveler to another land. This adversity demands that people gather information, be creative, and think through accepted practices and beliefs.