WHY – Your Leadership Approach Isn’t Working

Have you ever wondered why your employee tends to become defensive when assigned a task? Have you noticed one of your employees become less engaged in the work?

It is fairly common for leaders to tend to operate with one leadership style. Maybe your approach is typically one that is very directive or one in which you mostly are Telling someone what to do. After all, you have a lot to get done and just telling someone what needs to be done is the fastest way to get results. Or maybe your style is one in which you are Selling to them. You tend to show your employees what needs to be done, you explain to them a bit of why it needs to be completed in a specific way. Or perhaps you style is more of a Participating approach. One in which you typically ask more questions of your employees such as: “What are your thoughts on what needs to be completed and what do you think is the best approach ?” Or finally, maybe you are the type of leader that trusts your employees to get it done and do it the right way by completely Delegating the assignment. And thus, you only get involved when there is a problem.

In the early 1980s, Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey developed a very useful model called Situational Leadership. And today if you were to research this approach you would see slightly different views on how this is applied, but the essence of their model can be quite useful. The situational leadership model is such: Leaders should match one of the styles listed above to the specific situation based on the skills and motivation of the employee for the specific task assigned. And thus by adapting your leadership style to the needs of the individual you will get the work completed more efficiently and your employees will be more engaged.

Think of it this way. What would happen if your Manager were to be very Directive with you on something that you already knew what to do and how to do it? You would likely resent the fact that you were being told how to do the work. On the other hand, what would happen if you were assigned something new that you had never completed before and didn’t know where to start? Your Manager said, “Well, good luck, and let me know if you have any problems?” You would likely be a bit apprehensive about making a mistake.

In my experience, after working with many leaders from around the globe, it is often common for a leader to use one of the styles as their default way of leading versus adapting their style to the situation.

Here are a few practical tips on how to avoid this common mistake:

1. Write down a list of the current assignments that your employees have been assigned to complete. You don’t have to list every single task, just enough of the main responsibilities.
2. Next to each task make an indication of the employees current skill level (High, Medium, Low). Have they demonstrated that they know how to do this and have done this before? Or are they new to the task and need guidance? Or somewhere in between?
3. In the next column, indicate their current motivation level. (High, Medium, Low). Are they confident and willing to take on the work? Or are they a bit tentative and afraid to make mistakes. Or somewhere in between?
4. Use these two data points to help you determine which of the four styles to take with each person for a specific assignment. For example: If they are Medium Skill and low Motivation, you would use a Selling leadership style. One with both some direction and a lot of explaining/encouragement. I suggest in the fourth column that you list the current approach you should take with the employee.
5. Review and modify your list on a regular basis (Weekly, Bi-Monthly). If you are matching your own style correctly, you should also notice changes to the person’s Skill and Motivation levels. For example, someone is brand new to the task. Their Skill is Low and their Motivation is Medium. This week you are fairly directive showing them how, telling them what needs to be completed. Next week, you use more Selling style, giving them encouragement and explaining why it is completed that way. The next month, you are more Facilitative with the individual and asking more questions about how they think it should be completed. And within 6 months, you have completely delegated the assignment, staying informed but only getting involved when needed.

Certainly this is mostly common sense and in many cases as leaders we adapt our styles without thinking about it. And when your leadership style is adapted correctly to the appropriate situation, the employee’s skill level, and the employee’s motivation levels, you will have highly engaged employees. Unfortunately, it’s also common for leaders to try to shortcut the situation and, with good intentions, delegate an assignment to one of your employees for which they aren’t ready. This causes the need for you to jump in, tell the employee what needs to be completed, and also squash their motivation and their confidence to complete the assignment on their own. A thoughtful approach to using the right leadership style can help you develop your employees much more quickly and in the end save you time.

WHY – College graduates struggle in their first years in the workplace

Have you ever been in a meeting and watched the new employee say something that was a bit awkward? Have you watched the new employee present way too much information than would have been appropriate for the situation? Or have you personally experienced a time in which you didn’t know how to match your approach to the client or to the person to whom you were speaking?

There have been many studies over the years about personality and behavior styles. In the 1970s Carl Jung pioneered the study of personalities, and today there are tools such as Meyers Briggs, DISC, People Skills, and others. With all these tools and methods to teach people how to work with people, you would think it would be one of the first things college students learn. Unfortunately this isn’t the case is neither high schools nor colleges this subject is rarely taught.

A few years ago, I collected feedback from over 1000 employees and the two most frequent items they pointed out that leaders needed to do differently were: #1 – Value differences in their employees. #2 – Provide better coaching to their employees. Over the last 20 years, I have seen many examples of new employees struggling with this important leadership skill in the workplace. And when combined with cultural differences, the lack of skill in understanding differences and being able to flex ones behavior style can result in tension, poor relationships, lack of productivity, loss of customers, and conflict in the workplace.

Here are some practical tips to brush up on this skill:

1. Build your awareness of differences - Read or take a class about personality and behavior differences. After using many of these tools with people around the world, I have found the People Skills from the Effectiveness Institute to be one of the more practical and useful tools on the market. Learn about other cultural tendencies.
2. Practice looking for the differences – How fast is the person speaking? What is their body language? How quickly do they make decisions? How much content is in their email? Does the person focus first on the relationship or business?
3. Flex your style towards the other person – I am not suggesting you try to be someone completely different, but with a little practice you can match the appropriate style with the other person and thus increase the effectiveness of the conversation.. For example, speeding up your presentation for someone that makes decisions more quickly. Or, for the appropriate person, you could respond to the email with a few bullet points vs. lots of detail. Or, for the person that focuses on relationships, you could share something about your weekend before jumping into business.

The above are just a few examples of things you can do to keep yourself out of embarrassing situations. As a certified facilitator of several of these tools and after teaching these principles to hundreds of leaders, I have had the opportunity to watch the positive impact a little skill in this area can have. There is no question that this subject should be a part of any professional’s curriculum. Whether you have recently entered the workplace or have been in it for many years, consider investing in this important leadership skill. Otherwise, with the lack of strong interpersonal/cultural skills, you might quickly dismiss what appears to be a simple “faux pas” instead for something that results in poor relationships, additional cost, and lost business.

WHY – Our gut is often right!

Have you ever finished conducting an interview and had a strange feeling that there might be something “off” about the candidate but you weren’t quite sure what it was? Have you ever finished a meeting with one of your employees, having something in the back of your mind that you couldn’t quite place your finger on, but you knew “something wasn’t quite right?”

Malcolm Gladwell in his book titled “Blink”, describes this powerful concept of how our subconscious is smarter than our consciousness and how our bodies are sensing thousands of inputs (body language, facial gestures, tone of voice, pauses in our speech, etc). It is these senses that our subconscious is interpreting but our consciousness hasn’t yet pinpointed the issue. Based on our life experiences, the subconscious part of our mind is connecting these data points to past experiences and thus, is literally physically telling us “something isn’t quite right.”

You may have said this, or may have heard other leaders make a comment such as: “I have learned to trust my gut when hiring people.” So, this type of thinking has some merit, but this approach by itself is dangerous. Basically this concept describes that there was something about the interview that you couldn’t quite put your finger on, but your subconscious picked up on something. Unfortunately, this is also where leaders typically make the mistake of making a snap judgment to either hire or not hire the person based on this “feeling”. This could lead to lawsuits and it may be difficult to prove you were fair in your approach. In my experience, without development in this area many leaders have a difficult time describing why the candidate wasn’t a good fit. A skilled interviewer should be able to clearly articulate the key requirements of the role and how the person’s skills and experience matched up with those requirements.

Here are a few practical tips to being a more effective interviewer:

1. Prepare for the interview, by reviewing their CV/Resume and preparing 5-7 key areas most important for the person to have experience and skills in.
2. Use behavioral based questions to get maximum amount of information in the shortest time. Past examples are often a better predictor of future behavior. Behavioral based questions are simply taking a specific competency/area of focus and asking the candidate to give you an example. E.g. “Please give me an example of a time in which you led a difficult project?” Use the same base questions for each candidate.
3. Record the critical information about the situation, action they took, and their results. Use probing questions to ensure you have enough information for each competency/focus area. While the person is sharing their experience, is typically when your gut starts to react. Focus on recording both good and bad information. Train your brain to actively listen and probe deeper to get more data. This is what will help you evaluate and qualify whether this is the right candidate in an objective way and uncover what your subconscious might be trying to tell you.
4. For each candidate evaluate and qualify each competency/focus area with specific notes and add a rating of (Does Not Meet, Meets, Exceeds) compared to the requirements.
5. A summary of your interview can be recorded on notepaper, an interview form, or within some automated interviewing tool. It doesn’t have to be fancy. What’s important is a consistent objective process that helps you get maximum information in the shortest period of time and to be able to evaluate whether the person has all the key things necessary to be the best fit for the role. This approach can be used to compare candidates side by side.

In the past, while your “Gut” may have been right, helping you avoid a poor hiring decision, it is far better to know “Why” you sensed something wasn’t right. Many leaders make the mistake of not exploring more and being able to qualify this information. By using the above steps, you can train yourself to be conscious of the signals you might be sensing, and be able to articulate “Why”. In this blog posting, I have focused on how your “Gut” plays a role in the interview process. This concept is applicable in both interviewing and many other situations of dealing with people. With practice you can train yourself to be more conscious of what you are sensing and “Why”.

WHY - Humility is the secret to employee loyalty

When was the last time you heard your boss make some of these statements?

"I don't know, let me ask Sally.” “My employee Sean came up with an idea that I want to run by you.” “Nick, I am confident you will make the right decision without my input." If you were one of the few people that heard your boss say something like this recently (in the last week or even month), tell your boss to keep up the great work. If you aren't one of the few leaders that is commonly willing to admit they don't have the answer, commonly share the credit with their employees, or willing to trust their employees to make the right decision, you might consider the impact this could make on employee loyalty.

Did you know: The US Department of Labor Estimates that todays earners will have 10-14 jobs by the time they are 38. (see more about these interesting facts - watch this video. I personally only worked for four companies by the time I turned 38. It has also been well documented from company employee exit surveys that the number one reason employees leave a company is not for money but because of their boss. Recent articles about the emerging "Me Generation" are suggesting that the times of people working for one or two companies their whole career are being looked upon as not only a thing of the past, but almost as ancient as 8-track tapes.

Those of you that live in the U.S. might know some of the famous stories about the legendary service from the fashion retailer Nordstrom. I personally had the pleasure of working at this great company and watched several of the leaders demonstrate what "Being Humble" looked like. One year, at an annual employee meeting, Blake Nordstrom, 4th generation Nordstrom family member and CEO, related a story about visiting New York and having to meet with Wall Street Economists. This meeting was during the ".com bust" and the economists were drilling him with questions about how the economy was impacting Nordstrom's sales results. Now, anything Mr. Nordstrom said to these guys could probably impact the Nordstrom stock price. And yet, his response to the question was: "You know, I don't know anything about the economy and its impact on our sales but I do know that we need to sell more shoes." This is also the same guy you would see out on the sales floor helping customers and employees during every sales event. The morale: It's not an accident that Nordstrom is recognized as one of the top 100 companies to work for and has low employee turnover. Of course, it takes more than one leader being humble to achieve results like these, but it starts one leader at a time.

Three things leaders can do to show their humility:

1. Give full responsibility of something to one of your employees. Employees need to feel a part of something and feel like they own it. Yes, of course you are still on the hook for their deliverables and depending on the employee's skills and experience you may need to be involved to help them succeed. Trust them to own it, let them have the conversations with your peers and your boss on their own.

2. Defer the credit. It is human nature to want to be valued and it is human nature to want to be seen as doing a good job by our boss. It's much harder to say, "John I am glad you are happy with the proposal. I also want you to know that Sally not only came up with the idea, she wrote the proposal on her own, and I would like her to have an opportunity to discuss the details of her proposal with you."

3. Most companies use some sort of annual performance review system. The performance review conversation is usually an extremely anxious time for most employees. While generally, the intended purpose of an annual review discussion is to provide the employee with feedback on their achievements, development areas, and potential career progression, it can also be a great time to show your humility. Ask your employees: What can I do to support you better or help you develop your skills? While this is a relatively simple question, in my experience, it's rarely asked. After conducting thousands of 360 feedback surveys, the feedback suggests that most leaders could do a much better job of actively helping their employees grow and develop. This is something that takes time and you need to be deliberate about it. The annual review can be a good time to turn an anxious discussion into something you and the employee can both use to help the employee succeed.

These are relatively simple practices and I am not claiming to be an expert about humility, but I do know I personally have worked with a few great leaders, ones that lived these practices and I would chose to work with them again.

WHY – Your employee problems snowball

The good news is you aren’t the only one this happens to. The fact is, it’s human nature to want the problem to go away by itself. We generally avoid confrontation, though there are a few people who actually create confrontation. You might find one or two of them hoping to be a part of a bar fight or arguing with you just for the sake of an argument. For the rest of us, avoidance is the natural preferred course. We hope our employee problems will resolve on their own without our having to intervene even though deep down we know that the chances of that happening are slim to none. The worst part is that we can look back at a problem that started off rather small, that then got worse, and finally was a huge problem which when it had to be addressed, taking a significant amount of time and energy. You would think this would get our attention and the next time we would jump on the problem at the earliest warning sign of a potential issue. Unfortunately the definition of “insanity” comes into play. We keep doing the same thing expecting a different outcome.

Here are two common examples:

• Your employee comes in a bit late once a week and leaves a bit early. Soon it’s a regular occurrence and you wonder if the employee is really committed to this job.
• You’re the business owner and one of your supervisors starts losing employees quite frequently. In fact you have even started to interview the employees yourself before an offer is made to any candidate. Soon one of the supervisor’s employee’s is coming to you with complaints about his/her behavior. Before you know it you receive a letter from a government agency about an investigation for harassment. It is also worth mentioning that in many states in the US and in several other countries, as a Manager if you knew about the harassment problem and didn’t address the behavior, not just your company, but you personally, could be liable.

To stop the snowball effect you need to address the problem early and you can do so using these three simple steps:

1. Get all the facts written down in a clear and concise way. If possible try to observe the issues first hand. It’s always better to be able to discuss the issue from a first person point of view vs. addressing an issue with other people’s stories.

2. Have a face to face conversation with the employee. This is not the time to sugar coat the problem. In a calm even tone state the reason for the meeting and describe the behaviors and facts. Then, most important part……..Shut Up! There might even be a long uncomfortable silence. Keep waiting until the person responds with their point of view. This is extremely important and our natural tendency is to fill in the gap because silence is uncomfortable, usually giving them a way out.

3. Agree on a solution and document the conversation. Lastly the piece most leaders typically miss, follow up. It’s as simple as this…..if you want the problem to come back, don’t follow up. If you want the problem to go away permanently and not snowball into a larger issue simply reinforce the positive behavior. You can say, “I noticed you came in every day this week on time, thank you for making the adjustment. I am glad you are committed to the agreement we set." Change this to whatever is appropriate for your situation.

While the examples I used here are common of more junior leaders, employee problems happen at all levels of organizations. In my experience, I have observed Directors, VPs, CEOs, Owners, and every level in between avoid conflict, avoid the problem, and wish they had addressed the issue sooner.

WHY - Leaders fail to lead change

Do you drive the same route to work? Do you have family traditions you try and recreate each year during holidays? Or maybe you are one of those in the 15% category who drives a different route each day, arrives at different times, and jumps on a plane with little notice for a vacation. John Kotter wrote “More than 70% of all change initiatives fail due to lack of change leadership.” So, why do we as leaders keep trying the same approach expecting a different outcome?

It’s simple - we are afraid to have our teams be a part of the change. I know some of you are saying yes but I can’t tell them because jobs are impacted. In today’s economy this is a common conversation between executives and HR leaders. Many of my colleagues would advise you to keep only those with a need to know in the loop. There are certainly situations where this is the best advice. And because this is the familiar path, and thus easier, we often do it the same way.

Leaders typically focus on all of the things needed to do to prepare for the change event, the moment when we tell people. A well known change expert, William Bridges points out all major change initiatives have an End to something, a Neutral period where we are figuring it out, and a New Beginning in which we have fully accepted the change and moved on.

I have spent many hours helping executives from around the globe prepare for these change events. What I can tell you from experience is that leaders who lead change well do three things:

1. They understand everyone experiences change in a predictable pattern. The more they are mentally prepared and involved in the decision, the quicker they move through the neutral zone. The neutral zone can be a time for negative emotion so it is imperative that leaders learn to help them through this phase. If someone isn’t involved in the decision process they are likely to move through the transition stage more slowly.

2. Leaders help themselves and their teams move more quickly through the stages. There have been numerous studies done related to grieving, with typically 6 distinct stages. In the workplace I have had the fortunate and unfortunate opportunity to see this in practice and I call it the S.A.R.A. model.

S – Shock This is when the individual first finds out about the change, e.g. new system, new boss, loss of job, etc. It is like what someone may look like after experiencing or seeing a car crash. Do: Give people space, time to think about the change. Don’t: Oversell them on the benefits of the change.

A – Anger/Anxiety This is when the individual has had some time to think about what this means to them. Typically this takes on the form of being upset or worried about the impact of what the change means to them personally. During this stage it is common for people not be able to sleep, have trouble focusing, and often not be fully engaged at work or in their personal relationships. Of course there are some people in this world who can lose their job one day and bounce back with enthusiasm about the next adventure, but this is a very small minority. Do: Ask them how they are doing with the change. Listen to their frustrations. Encourage them to do something that they enjoy. Don’t: Oversell them on the benefits. Don’t expect them to be ok with it yet.

R – Rejection This is when the individual is likely to be most destructive to themselves and others. Being sick, not wanting to use the system, complaining to others, not moving forward. This is a period in which people can get stuck and have a more difficult time moving to acceptance. This is also the place where leaders make the most mistakes. If this has been going on for a while, some leaders take the approach that the person just needs to get on board. While it is true you need to get them on board, the act of pushing on them while they are in rejection is what causes more rejection. Do: Listen and ask probing questions like “Which part of the change are you most frustrated about?” Validate that you understand why they are upset. Ask them “What can I do to help you thru the change?” Be sure to take the time to listen to their concerns and don’t discount them. Don’t: Debate with them and don’t try to prove to them it will be better. If they are stuck, point out to them that at some point they need to work themselves through this change, otherwise it is likely to have some negative impact. Don’t confuse this with an ultimatum; it’s not intended to be an ultimatum. It’s calm, collected, factual reasoning that the decision has been made regardless of their concerns about it, and, at some point, they need to help themselves thru the change.

A – Acceptance Somewhere between Rejection and Acceptance is a line in the sand in which the person says “I guess this is ok, maybe this will work out, etc.” It’s at this moment and shortly there after, when the person is on their way up from the valley of despair and it’s during this period where the most creative ideas are produced. This can lead to ideas such as (“Hey have we ever thought about what that means for the way this downstream system, process, people, etc.)” “Maybe we have an opportunity to change X as well.” Do: Try to capture and foster the creative ideas. Even if you don’t ultimately do anything with them, this is about being a part of the change. Don’t: Assume that everyone is at acceptance because one person is showing positive signs.

3. Leaders understand that not only is their team experiencing all these emotions in different periods of time. Some individuals have moved through the stages in a few minutes, others in days, and some individuals in weeks or even months. They also understand they experience these emotions themselves and may be at one of these stages themselves while having to put the company hat on, toe the line, and toot the company horn. Probably one of the biggest mistakes leaders make is they think saying the company line and selling the benefits of the change, is the right thing to do. This is tricky, my boss is expecting me to speak positively about the change and yet I am still not sure it’s the right decision. Teams see right through this immediately. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite of what your team needs. What they need to hear is you are human, it bothers you, and you will be there leading the team through the uncertainty. So how do you keep both your boss and your team happy? It sounds something like this: “While I am still trying to figure out what this all means, and I am not sure what the impact will be yet, I am also confident we will work through this transition together. You can always come to me to discuss your concerns.”

Leaders are typically on the front end of the change and if you were a part of the decision process you will have moved even more quickly through the transition period. Each transition poses an opportunity to help yourself with the what’s new and help each individual through the transition period. Try letting them in on where you think you are headed, trust them with the sensitive information, and you might be surprised at the positive impact this can make in your organization.

WHY – Global leadership will be the number one problem businesses face!

“Good morning! Oops, I guess it would be good evening to you in London at this time.” This is a common mistake many Leaders make as they first experience having a phone conversation with someone in a different time zone. This is one example of “why” the lack of Global Leadership skills will be the number one problem businesses face and just the tip of the iceberg.

As we all know, more and more companies are expanding their work to foreign countries. This expansion is causing the need for leaders to take on global responsibilities including managing work, projects, and people in different time zones, geographies, cultures, and laws. Yet many of our leaders today are completely unprepared for this responsibility. Black et al (1999) completed a survey of Fortune 500 firms showing 85% of companies felt that the demand for global leaders far outstripped the supply and 67% felt that their global leaders needed additional skills and knowledge in order to do the job effectively. There are two reasons given for this:

1. There is a high demand for global leaders right now because of the pace and nature of globalization.
2. There are not sufficient global leaders and as they haven't been developed in the past and cannot be developed overnight.

In a global company with offices in 20+ countries my team interviewed 30 leaders to get at some common issues related to Global Leadership. Here are the highlights of the common problems:

• There is a lack of understanding of culture differences.
• Corporate Headquarters (in this case a US based company) is out of touch with the business and forces changes on us that do not meet the local needs.
• It's hard to communicate with many different cultures all in one day and get it right every time, for example: Australians tend to be very direct, Japaneese tend to be very relationship driven, and thus the calls may take twice as long, China and Singapore are different again.
• Western people can sometimes appear aggressive in their working styles and damage client relationships in the East due to their not respecting the need to save face and respect hierarchies.
• In general, Eastern people will not speak out in a group and give their opinion, so unless a different way of communication is used, you will not hear the ‘real’ view.
• There is very little concession made on conference calls for people who don’t speak English as their first language and not sufficient budget for translation.
• Need to find ways to build relationships without spending time face-to face e.g. finding out how people work, how they like to be thanked, what makes them tick, otherwise you will never be respected.
• Must be able to communicate and motivate a team remotely to achieve their goals, not just tell them, as you can’t actually see what is actually going on. The team will fail if you don’t have that trust on both sides.
• The remoteness takes away intimacy, spontaneity and the ability to connect easily. Willingness to travel and meet people and find out what is happening on the ground is essential, otherwise your judgment becomes tainted.

I had several personal experiences that helped me understand the gaps in culture awareness.

• In Nov 06 I visited our Munich office on business. I arrived around 8am and found the office empty. The door was open, as the cleaning crew was busy at work. I waited in the lobby for my local employee to arrive and introduce me to others in the office. At 8:58 employees started to arrive, said “good morning” or in this case “Guten Morgen”. At 9:01 all employees had arrived for work. I know this because I was still sitting there until 9:10 in which my employee greeted me and than began to give me a tour. So all 155 employees arrived within a 3 minute period and began their work day nearly precisely at 9am. Now this isn’t a factory, or a place of work that requires people to be punctual. These are predominately sales employees working in a culture that expects precision. Imagine a US employee having a conference call with someone from this German office that gets on the line 5 minutes late; lacks a prepared agenda, and struggles to keep the call on task. How well does this go over with the German employee? And if this was the employee’s Manager? Without even knowing it, the US manager just lost respect from their employee in Germany.

• While in Tokyo in Oct 07 I observed that employees begin their work between 9:45-10:30am but worked until 7:30-8:00pm. And because the corporate headquarters employees were not aware of this simple cultural difference, they regularly sent meeting requests for 4pm PST which translated to 9am in Tokyo, before the Tokyo employees would begin their day. The Japanese employees never mentioned the problem, and thus the US employees went on continuing to frustrate their Japanese colleagues, oblivious to the real cultural issue.

What about things like giving employees feedback, giving someone a performance review…..what are the cultural considerations? Did you know that generally in the UK it is more effective to focus on a verbal dialogue when providing someone feedback compared to a written performance evaluation? How do you your leaders learn these things and what impact is the lack of awareness having on your business? What about addressing conflict? Or soliciting input from people in different offices? Or keeping people informed? There are many complexities to effective Global Leadership and most companies are just beginning to think about tactics to address some of these potential problems.

So here are some things to consider in relation to Global Leadership:

1. Think globally. Recognize when it is beneficial to create a consistent global standard.
2. Think locally. The process of becoming truly global means deepening the company's understanding of local and cultural differences.
3. Think globally and locally at the same time. Recognize situations in which demands from both global and local elements are compelling.
4. Actively prepare your leaders for working in different countries, time zones, geographies. Hold discussions, formal training, or simply create a web page on your intranet with tips by country or office.
5. Face time is the most effective way to build relationships and begin to understand cultural differences. When traveling to another office, prepare by learning about the culture (read a book and ask lots of questions, do not overlook the small things). Here is one example of my own cultural blunder. While traveling to Paris in Nov 06, at the end of my visit with the Sales Leaders and my trainer, I stood on the street corner to say goodbye. My employee than awkwardly said, “So are we going to kiss or what?” As I looked dumbfounded, completely oblivious to the custom, she leaned in and kissed me on both cheeks. I know your saying to yourself, duh..I even knew about that. But the question I ask you, is were you prepared for it. Would you have initiated it? Or would you have stood there awkwardly as I did? And what if you had been in Spain, would the custom be the same?
6. Recognize and respect differences. Be willing to be good with your solution addressing the “intent” and leave the “how it should be implemented” up to the local person.
7. Creating ways to regularly communicate and e-mail is not enough. Consider a quarterly conference call focusing on strategy, accomplishments, and direction. Visit your employees no less than once a year in person. Since only 7% of our communication is the words we use, try video taping yourself delivering an important message to your team. Post your video message on your web server and send a link to your employees. You will be amazed at the positive responses you receive from your employees.
8. Learn a foreign language. Try Rosetta Stone learning language program.

Companies are continuing to expand globally. The need for Global Leaders is growing. And the supply of skilled Global Leaders is growing scarce. If you are not actively developing your Global Leadership skills personally and if you are not actively focused on this as an organization, you and your company will ultimately limit your competitive edge.

Thanks, Gracias, Merci, Grazie, ありがとう