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CHAPTER 1

Introduction to Global Dexterity

Eric Rivers was pacing back and forth in his office. He poured himself a cup of coffee but then immediately threw it out; the tea was much better in Mumbai. Eric asked his assistant to get him a cup of chai, then decided to take a walk around the neighborhood to clear his head. He passed by a brand-new school, a few businesses selling t-shirts and electronics, and a large open construction site where two elderly men were walking their cows the way Eric used to walk his dog back in Los Angeles. It had been three months since Eric had moved to Mumbai, and he was still getting used to it all.

Eric had been hired six months earlier to lead the division of a global consulting firm offering strategic advice to technology firms in the fast-growing Indian market. He saw amazing possibilities for what he could achieve; that was why he decided to forgo more conventional work opportunities in the United States.

Eric felt like he was doing everything right in his attempt to adapt to the Indian cultural environment. A seasoned leader with extensive management experience in the West, he was eager to bring his American management philosophy to this vibrant developing economy. His philosophy had two key elements. The first was empowerment, which Eric felt was a universal idea that transcended cultural boundaries. In the past, Eric had worked for many different bosses, and the ones he respected the most had worked hard to inspire their workers to succeed by giving them opportunities to develop skills, make decisions for themselves, and contribute to the firm. Eric also deeply believed in a flat hierarchy: in being highly collaborative and involving his employees in as much of the decision making process as possible.

Eric put his philosophy into action as soon as he arrived in Mumbai. First, instead of taking an office with a door in the corner of the building as he noticed other managers in the building had done, he took a cubicle right in the “trenches” with his fellow employees. That way he would not be seen as an arm’s-length, unapproachable leader, but as someone who was willing to get his hands dirty and figure things out with the team. Eric also decided to engage his employees in the process of making key strategic decisions. One of Eric’s best managers in Los Angeles would always involve her employees in the strategic decision-making process. Rather than pretending that she had all the solutions, she would include employees as she herself was trying to work through challenging strategic issues. Her view was that employees who were often closest to the “action” also had very important ideas to contribute to the discussion. Also, by involving them in the process, she could help mentor employees in the process of how to make a decision, which she believed was a valuable skill to teach anyone. Thus, whenever his Indian employees came to Eric with a problem, Eric patterned his approach after his mentor’s. He would not pretend that he had all the answers; instead, he would invite them into the decision-making process.

Eric was eager to put these powerful management techniques into action. He was passionate about engaging with his Indian workers, getting them thinking for themselves, and, most importantly, letting them know that they were part of the team.

The only problem was that his vision didn’t work. In fact, it failed miserably. Unlike his former employees in the United States, who relished the chance to make their own decisions and who saw Eric as more of a colleague than a boss, Eric’s Indian workers interpreted this freedom as a lack of competence and confidence on Eric’s part as a manager. After all, why would a leader sit with his employees and keep asking their opinions about important leadership matters? He must lack the ability to do it himself. Rather than being energized and engaged by Eric’s empowerment initiatives, his workers were becoming increasingly demotivated. When Eric approached them for ideas, their interpretation was that it was because he did not know what he was doing. Rather than gaining his employees’ respect, Eric was starting to lose it.

He overheard conversations in the mailroom and cafeteria about how the previous boss “knew what he was doing” much more than Eric did. Eric’s colleagues in other departments told him that the rumor was that he lacked confidence and decisiveness. He even heard through the grapevine that two of his star employees had already started to look around for other jobs.

After discussing the matter with some of his closest colleagues and friends both in India and the United States, Eric came to the conclusion that to be successful in India, he would have to adapt his behavior to the more hierarchical Indian leadership style. He would have to take that corner office, begin to make more unilateral decisions, and also start communicating with his employees in a more authoritative tone.

But he really didn’t want to do that. He firmly believed that what he was doing was correct in terms of managing and leading people. And so he resented the fact that he would have to change to a less effective management style—from his perspective—in order to please his workers. It just didn’t make any sense to him. Additionally, Eric dreaded the idea of having to act so far outside his personal comfort zone to manage in this new context. He had always hated working for authoritarian leaders in the United States, and the last thing that he wanted to do was to become one of these types of leaders himself. It felt disingenuous and unnatural. Finally, even if he were able to somehow convince himself to do it, Eric also had to admit that he was at a loss for how to actually be effective with this new kind of cultural style. Shedding this style felt like dropping his identity, and he didn’t want to do that.

The combination of thoughts and feelings was overwhelming. All he wanted to do was to be effective, yet everything he was doing seemed to be backfiring. Eric had never failed on a management assignment, but he feared this might be the first time. That too made him anxious. As he sipped his cup of tea, Eric wondered if he had made a terrible career decision in moving to India.

A New Way of Understanding Cultural Adaptation

If you have ever lived or worked in a foreign culture, you have likely confronted situations very similar to Eric’s in which the natural, comfortable “default” behavior from your native culture turns out to be ineffective for a situation you find yourself in within a new cultural environment.

In each of these situations, you don’t just struggle with understanding cultural differences. Rather, you struggle with the far more challenging task of actually changing your culturally ingrained behavior. I call this ability global dexterity—the capacity to adapt your behavior, when necessary, in a foreign cultural environment to accommodate new and different expectations that vary from those of your native cultural setting. For Eric Rivers, it’s acting with a leadership style that fits his Indian setting and that differs from his own in the United States. Or for you, it’s learning to adapt your behavior to function effectively in a particular situation in a foreign culture with expectations for behavior that are very different for how people would typically act in that same situation in your native culture.

Global dexterity is a critical skill for anyone from any culture attempting to function successfully in today’s global environment. Business scholars and other writers have recently focused considerable attention on the importance of cultural knowledge, but being effective in a myriad of foreign cultural situations that you find yourself in when working or living abroad requires more than mere knowledge. It requires the capacity to act on what you know: the ability to mold and shape your behavior in foreign cultural settings so that you can be simultaneously effective and appropriate in that setting without losing who you are in the process.

Lack of Global Dexterity Can Limit Effectiveness

Global dexterity can be a challenging skill to acquire. You can feel anxious and embarrassed about your inability to master the new cultural rules; you can feel inauthentic when performing these new behaviors, especially if the new rules conflict with aspects of your ingrained values and beliefs. You can also feel frustrated and angry about having to adapt in the first place, wondering why the other side can’t simply adapt to you. These feelings can interfere with your ability to successfully adapt your behavior—and, as a result, your professional reputation and effectiveness can suffer.

Here’s an example. A few years ago I was speaking with an American manager at a company that had been recently purchased by a larger German firm. That manager was quite annoyed with his new German boss, whom he perceived as cold and uncaring. When I pressed him about why he had this impression, this manager said that the biggest problem was small talk. When they had first met, his German boss showed absolutely no interest in him as a person. He did not ask him any questions about his family—which was hard to do, given all the personal photos the manager had arranged on his desk and walls—and he also didn’t comment on his interest in sports, which also was obvious from the many posters and photos on the wall. The boss simply came into his office, introduced himself, shook his hand quickly and coldly, and that was it. And this pattern continued into the future—no small talk, no effort to get to know him as a person.

I was curious about this story, so I followed up by interviewing several of the manager’s German-born colleagues and asked for their perspective. It turned out that they knew about the importance of small talk in the United States, but felt uncomfortable doing it. In Germany, small talk is far less common than in the United States, and from a German perspective, it can feel superficial, irrelevant, and inefficient to engage in such random banter with a person you barely know. The problem, of course, was that in avoiding small talk, the executive inadvertently made a bad impression on his new employee and compromised his reputation within the firm.

The lack of global dexterity can also hurt your effectiveness at work. Take the case of Feng Li, a Chinese-born management consultant for a major American-based professional services firm in Chicago. I initially learned about Feng’s case from Robert, one of the managing directors of the consultancy. Several years ago, Robert had hand-selected Feng to work for him in the managing director’s office. Feng had impeccable oral and written English, outstanding technical skills, and was also very creative. He was on the fast track to senior consultant and then director, and eventually partner, except for one major issue: Feng could not get himself to participate actively in meetings. The problem had nothing to do with a lack of ideas. Feng was one of the brightest consultants at the firm, and he had excellent ideas and insights. According to Robert, in terms of pure mental “firepower,” Feng was at the top of the firm. The problem was that Feng was simply unwilling to contribute his ideas in a public forum.

Instead of raising his hand or his voice, Feng would remain silent in meetings. Nothing. Not a word. This was especially unusual given the culture of this particular firm, where, according to Robert, people typically had to bite their tongues not to speak and be noticed. Senior mentors would coach Feng, explaining that to get ahead, he would have to come at least halfway into the culture of the firm. They would encourage him to participate and contribute because they knew he had the chops. But Feng simply could not do it.

Robert himself tried to work with Feng to overcome these differences. He helped create a special role for Feng in these meetings, which would be an explicit role of authority—it would be Feng’s job to own and drive the agenda within the meeting, and everyone would know that. Feng seemed to react positively to the idea, and Robert was encouraged. He was excited for Feng and also proud of himself for developing what really was a very clever idea. But it didn’t work. Feng came to the meeting in this explicit facilitator role but remained silent, as he always did. Robert was tremendously frustrated. He wanted Feng to succeed, and the firm had spent a great deal of time and money trying to help him get ahead. But for some reason, he simply could not adapt to the culture. In the end, Feng ended up leaving the firm because of a “bad fit.”

What You Will Learn in This Book

It’s not easy to learn to adapt your behavior. And as we have seen, the stakes can be quite high. Failing to adapt successfully can have serious consequences—for people and for companies. But don’t worry. This book will give you the tools to learn how to adapt your own behavior successfully in any situation you face and in any culture in which you operate.

The first lesson is that people can face three core challenges when learning to adapt their cultural behavior:

 The competence challenge: Feeling that your knowledge and skill is not up to the task of adapting behavior

 The authenticity challenge: Experiencing the new behavior as being in conflict with your accustomed way of behaving and with your preexisting cultural values and beliefs

 The resentment challenge: Feeling that the very act of adapting cultural behavior is a burden and an imposition.

Individually, any one of these challenges can be taxing, and collectively they can be very difficult to overcome. When you feel resentful about having to adapt behavior in the first place, embarrassed and anxious about your ability to do so, and awkward and uncomfortable about how disingenuous it feels to act so differently than you are used to, it’s very hard to muster the psychological resources necessary to adapt your behavior.

So what can you do to overcome these challenges? How can you find a way of adapting behavior that does not feel so uncomfortable and inauthentic? It sounds impossible, but in fact, with the tools and frameworks that you will learn in this book, it’s really quite straightforward. The key is to realize that you have much more power than you think to craft behavior that fits the new culture and that also fits you.

The first step is learning the new cultural rules, or what I refer to as the cultural code. Learning this code is key because it’s the first step in helping you devise a way to feel authentic and be effective at the same time. It provides you with insight into the particular set of challenges you face when adapting your behavior in a particular situation and how you might be able to adjust your behavior in order to respond to these challenges.

What do I mean by the cultural code? You will learn that each situation you face—whether it’s learning to give constructive criticism, make small talk, negotiate, participate at a meeting, or ask a favor of your boss—has certain rules for appropriate behavior in a given cultural setting (see “On Diagnosing the Cultural Code”). Although there are undoubtedly many different ways to characterize these rules, I portray them in terms of six dimensions that capture the expectations that others have for our behavior in a foreign setting:

 Directness: How straightforwardly am I expected to communicate in this situation?

 Enthusiasm: How much positive emotion and energy am I expected to show to others in this situation?

 Formality: How much deference and respect am I expected to demonstrate in this situation?

 Assertiveness: How strongly am I expected to express my voice in this situation?

 Self-promotion: How positively am I expected to speak about my skills and accomplishments in this situation?

 Personal disclosure: How much can I reveal about myself in this situation?

On Diagnosing the Cultural Code

As you read through the book, you’ll notice that instead of providing you with the cultural code for every possible situation that you might face in a foreign culture, I instead provide you with a tool—the six-dimensional framework—that you can use to decipher the cultural code on your own.

Why not just provide you with an encyclopedia of all the cultural codes that you could possibly encounter, detailing, for example, how exactly you need to adapt your behavior to act effectively in China, India, France, and so on? Such a resource would certainly be useful and convenient. The problem is that it would be impossible to create—at least in a way that would provide you with practical information for the particular situation you’re facing. That’s because cultural codes are not generic. People often mistakenly assume that there is an “American” or “Chinese” or “Indian” code for behavior, and that once you understand this country code, you’re set to interact successfully in any situation you encounter. But this is simply not true. Rather, these codes depend a great deal on so many other factors other than country-level differences.

Regional differences, for example, often matter a great deal—such as the difference between the Midwest and Northeast of the United States, southern and northern Italy, or the urban cities and countryside of China. Company and industry cultures also greatly affect the cultural code for the particular situation you face in your work abroad. In China, for example, state-run enterprises tend to have more “classically” Chinese cultural norms—emphasizing indirectness and modesty, for example, than Western- or non-Chinese-owned companies. And of course, company norms vary tremendously and make their own contribution to the cultural code for any particular situation. Finally, the preferences and backgrounds of the particular people you interact with may change the cultural code in your situation. You may be in a culture that emphasizes assertiveness, but be interacting with people who are quite atypical. As a thought experiment, imagine trying to explain to someone how “directly” you are expected to communicate in the United States. In very general terms, you might say that communication norms in the United States are quite direct, compared with many other cultures, but does that hold in all cases? Would there be differences debating your case at a vigorous brainstorming session with investment bankers in downtown Manhattan, as opposed to a similar discussion with more mild-mannered colleagues at a small bank in central Illinois?

The point is that cultural norms are not generic and that context matters a great deal. For that reason, it would be unadvisable to provide a list of cultural codes for you to simply slap on to your own circumstances, because such a list would likely be inaccurate and dangerously misleading, So, instead of a list, I provide a flexible tool (detailed in chapter 3) that, with the help of knowledgeable colleagues and mentors, you can apply to any situation you may face in your work abroad to get a valid and reliable portrait of the local cultural norms.

Each situation you encounter in a foreign setting will have a specific cultural code for behavior along each of these dimensions. When motivating workers in India, there is a certain level or amount of assertiveness that you will be expected to show as a leader. When bonding with work colleagues after hours at a restaurant or bar in Japan, a certain level of enthusiasm is expected, which is quite different from how enthusiastically you are expected to behave in other situations that you might encounter in Japan.

I call the range of appropriate behavior along each of these dimensions the zone of appropriateness. When adapting our behavior across cultures, we often mistakenly believe that there is one very specific way of acting in that new setting—as if the required behavior were like the center of an archery target, and you received no “points” unless you hit that very specific bull’s-eye. But that’s simply not true. Instead, there is a zone—a range—of appropriate behavior, and your job is to find a place within this zone that feels natural and comfortable for you: somewhere within your personal comfort zone.

In an ideal world, this would be easy: your personal comfort zone would overlap nicely with the zone of appropriateness for behavior in the new culture and you could act appropriately and feel natural with little effort. Unfortunately, however, sometimes there is a gap rather than an overlap between the two—your personal comfort zone is quite distinct from the zone of appropriateness in the new culture. When attempting to act assertively with his Indian colleagues, Eric Rivers, for example, had a personal comfort zone that was well outside of the Indian zone of appropriateness, as illustrated in figure 1-1.

To become effective in this new setting, Eric had two options. The unrealistic option was to try to change the Indian zone of appropriateness; that is, somehow change the rules in India to fit with his existing preferences. The only realistic option was to stretch his personal comfort zone: to find a way of somehow becoming comfortable with a wider range of behavior than he typically was used to. By stretching his personal comfort zone, Eric could create an overlap between what was comfortable and natural to him and what was demanded in terms of effective and appropriate behavior in the new cultural setting (see figure 1-2).

FIGURE 1-1

Eric’s original personal comfort zone

FIGURE 1-2

Eric’s personal comfort zone after adaptation

In the pages ahead, you will have the opportunity to learn how to stretch your own personal comfort zone through a simple three-step process:

1 Diagnosis: Diagnosis means identifying the particular aspect of the new cultural behavior that is the most challenging in your particular situation. In Eric’s case, it was assertiveness. Perhaps in another situation it might be directness or enthusiasm or personal disclosure. Using the six-dimensional approach highlighted above, you will learn how to diagnose the conflict you experience in any situation that you encounter and identify gaps between your personal comfort zone and the zone of appropriateness in the new culture.

2 Customization: Customization means putting your own personal spin on the behavior you need to show so that it feels natural to you and at the same time is appropriate and effective in the new setting. Customization also means creating your personal rationale for why you need to adapt your behavior in the first place. For example, instead of focusing on how the new behavior conflicts with your own values and beliefs, you might focus on how it is aligned with the cultural values and beliefs of the new cultural setting—and how natives in that setting actually expect you to act in this particular way, even if it feels awkward and unnatural to you. Customization is the answer to how you can have your cake (personal integrity) and eat it too (effectiveness).

3 Integration: Integration means becoming so familiar and comfortable with the new way of behaving that it becomes your “new normal”: a way of acting in a foreign setting that feels automatic and intuitive. Evaluation and feedback play a key role in this process. By periodically evaluating how you feel internally as you engage in the new behavior and also assessing your external effectiveness by gauging others’ responses to your behavior, you can make ongoing adjustments in your style. The ultimate goal is to create a way of behaving that feels “just right”—natural for you and also effective and appropriate in the new setting. You will be surprised how easily this can be achieved with just a bit of strategy and effort and with the tools available to you in the rest of the book.

A few years ago I held a special forum in my MBA course in which senior managers from several different firms spoke with my students about the challenges of adapting cultural behavior. Each executive shared personal stories about the challenges that he or she had faced in managing and leading abroad and answered questions from the student audience. One particular moment stood out for me because it captured what I believe to be the essential challenge of developing global dexterity: an executive told us that the key to developing global dexterity was “to simply be yourself.” Of course, this sounded quite odd to us. How can you adapt and at the same time remain who you are? The executive’s answer was telling and has stuck with me to this day. He said that adaptation is indeed essential for success but that also, in his words, you have to make sure that you don’t “bleach out who you are” in the process.

In this book I will provide a framework and set of tools to help you accomplish this objective: to build your global dexterity without losing who you are in the process. These tools will help you make sense of the challenges you face in adapting behavior abroad and to help you manage these challenges successfully. It will take some effort, although less than you might initially believe, and it might also take some courage. It’s not easy to put aside what has worked for you for so long to adopt a completely different form of behavior. However, although challenging, this transformational experience can be tremendously rewarding—and in some cases, can even be fun. Let’s dive in.