“Organizations have gone global, but people have not! We are making goofy cross-cultural mistakes when we travel, but now, we are doing it every day!” This was according to Kyle Hegarty, author of the book “The Accidental Business Nomad”, as he spoke at the 1-HR.X event on the topic “The Future of Leadership is Artfully Managing Across Cultures” held last March 4, 2022.
In this age and time, when you’re working in a cross-cultural environment, even the Golden Rule has evolved to become the Platinum Rule that says, “Treat people the way you want to be treated.”
To move culture to where you want it to be, you should know where you are now and be able to communicate effectively. Communication is key to adapting to varying cultures and different cultures communicate differently; some countries communicate directly, which is a low-context type of communication, while others use high-context or indirect communication. The U.S., Australia, Germany, Denmark, U.K., Brazil, Mexico, among others, are direct communicators. They say “no” when they mean “no”. Meanwhile, these words mean “no” in other countries— “we’ll see”, “yes and no”, “in a way”, “could do”, or “I’ll see how I feel”.
Ultimate active listening, therefore, is very important when working across cultures. During meetings, the presider should let someone wrap up the entire meeting and ask for the next steps. That way, it becomes clear that “no” actually means “no”. Avoid questions that are answerable by a simple “yes” or “no”; instead, require to expound.
As we continue working remotely, communicating clearly has become very important more than ever. And so, Kyle Hegarty introduced the concept of Calibrated Storytelling. This is done by understanding the situation and communicating with stakeholders on a level of planned clarity. According to him, persuasion happens when strong data meets a good story!
According to Kyle, there are two types of managers—the Single Manager, one that brings his own working style in a team with different working styles, and the Chameleon Manager, who can change how they look or their style depending on the environment they are in. Single Managers don’t know what they don’t know.
The second resource speaker was Prof. Philip C. Zerillo, PhD. of Thammasat University, a renowned author, entrepreneur, and corporate director, who shared his insights and perspective on “My Global Journey”.
According to Prof. Zerillo, growing up, he learned that some things are the same and some things are different. Why are things the same and what drives their differences? His sharing delved into the unique attributes of some countries like Japan, Vietnam, and India.
The East, specifically Japan and Singapore, is capital-intensive, very scale-driven, looking to standardize, and export-driven.
For instance, Japan’s business model is to save for enough capital, citing that Japan is winning trade wars with the U.S. and all of the West. Primarily, Japan beats the world market in capital-intensive goods like energy and metal. The country invested heavily in steel plants and, because they have low-cost steel, they can afford to build and export cheap cars to the world. CAPITAL IS DRIVING JAPAN! They can afford to invest in robotics because they have the capital—cheap labor and cheap raw materials.
Vietnam is a different success story. The country has moved toward a market-based economy. Within 30 years, poverty was reduced by 83%. In 2020, they entered into 56 Foreign Trade Agreements (FTA)—more than Canada, U.S.A., Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Mexico. The FTA was so huge that it was tagged as “business unusual”. With Russia’s Perestroika (The Awakening) and Glasnost (The Restructuring) policies, where aids to their allies were cut, Vietnam was forced to revisit their economic policies by opening up the country to FTA.
Finally, India as an economy is largely understocked but with large foreign assets. The country is overly populated and so they are absorbing the workforce requirement of the world. A lot of countries are hiring Indians because of their expertise in technology and engineering, and competitive labor cost. The country has 22 states, with 121 languages spoken. India is the sixth-largest economy in the world and is expected to be third largest by 2030. However, the country needs to create more jobs within the next five years as the unemployment rate has exceeded most emerging economies in the recent years. (source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60211404)
Prof. Zerillo also talked about birth rate and population, emphasizing that birth rate replacement should be 2.5 for countries to not be dependent on migration. It will be difficult to manage a country with declining population. Nine or eleven of the countries with lowest birth rates in the world are in East Asia. Because of this, there will be potential talent and labor issues, as well as investment, national policy, and immigration policy issues in the future. Specific to the Philippines, birth rate in 1980 was 4.7, but in 2019, it was down to 2.58. Meanwhile, comparing Tanzania and Spain, the birth rates of these countries will make a huge impact on the economies of these two nations. How do you expect an economy to grow when you are losing population? How can they repay debt? These were just some of the open questions.
Key Takeaways:
- Cross-cultural management is very important with more and more organizations becoming borderless.
- History of countries define the culture and behavior of the labor force. Some countries say “no” in different terms. Be wary of high-context or low-context types of communication.
- The future of leadership is embracing diversity, among others. They need to be good communicators, following the concept of Calibrated Story Telling.
- The Philippines is said to have the most confusing economy. The country should have a clear story to tell and should have a positive mark in the world.
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