“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:
- There is a high demand for global leaders right now because of the pace and nature of globalization.
- 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:
- Think globally. Recognize when it is beneficial to create a consistent global standard.
- Think locally. The process of becoming truly global means deepening the company's understanding of local and cultural differences.
- Think globally and locally at the same time. Recognize situations in which demands from both global and local elements are compelling.
- 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.
- 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?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
