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Projecting Credibility: Mastering the Double Pivot

What signals readiness for a global leadership role?

An ability to project credibility to stakeholders

around the world.

To be seen as having “the right stuff”—competence, confidence, and trustworthiness—leaders must exude executive presence: they must look, sound, and act in accordance with cultural expectations of authority figures. Research we conducted in 2012 on the “intangibles” of leadership shows that in the US, executive presence derives chiefly from gravitas, a constellation of behaviors that project credibility. Exhibiting calm in a crisis—“grace under fire”—tops the list of behaviors, followed by demonstrating decisiveness and integrity. Demonstrating emotional intelligence (EQ), establishing reputation and standing, and emanating charisma are other competencies that our research highlights as essential to being found credible as a leader in the US, whether you’re male or female.

Globally, we find, gravitas is still the heart of the matter. According to 47 percent of respondents, gravitas is the most important component of a leader’s executive presence (with communication skills and appearance—virtual and in-person—making up the rest).

Yet what our eleven-country dataset reveals about gravitas is that the behaviors that give rise to it are accorded different importance in different countries and regions. With the exception of demonstrating integrity, which respondents across markets prioritize in their leaders, gravitas varies from hemisphere to hemisphere, from country to country, and from corporate culture to corporate culture. If in US boardrooms it’s essential to demonstrate authority, in Japan it’s vital to show you can work across difference. In Russia, it’s terribly important for leaders to first establish their reputation and status; in India, credibility derives from being able to inspire a following. Rising leaders must understand these cultural differences and adjust their gravitas accordingly to win the trust and respect of globally dispersed team members and clients as well as centrally located senior executives.

Projecting credibility thus becomes quite a challenge for leaders operating across time zones and cultures. Global leaders must master a double pivot, demonstrating authority with senior executives in the West (the vertical pivot) and prioritizing emotional intelligence with stakeholders in global markets (the horizontal pivot, which may well prove to be a multifaceted challenge).

Projecting Credibility: The Double Pivot

The Double Pivot

Makiko Eda, VP of Intel’s Sales and Marketing Group and president of Intel Japan, is one such master pivoter. As a native of Japan, she enjoys working for a multinational company that respects her leadership skills and imbues her with authority—something that would never happen in a Japanese managerial hierarchy, where women are rarely welcome, she says. But she also enjoys, during her quarterly visits to Intel’s headquarters in California, being “a translator of my culture to the Western world.” Traveling between her office in Tokyo and Intel’s operation in Santa Clara, she reflexively pivots, modifying her leadership style to project credibility in both environments.

“I do put on my cowboy hat at headquarters,” she says. “People are debating: you have to participate. I’m not used to it; I’m used to being asked for my opinion, not to have to cut off people in order to interject it. But especially in topics where I’m assured of my expertise, I’ve learned to do it.” Once back in Tokyo, however, she drops the combative style and resumes her respectful stance. “My reports tell me that it’s a function of the language I’m speaking,” Eda relates. “I’m very assertive and strong when I speak English; I’m very polite and soft when I speak Japanese.” It’s a linguistic difference, as well as a cultural one, she explains: English is more clear and direct in its word order, whereas there’s more unspoken in Japanese; its very structure is indirect.

With her sales team and with clients throughout Asia, Eda adjusts her leadership style as local cultures dictate. With Koreans and Taiwanese, she works to coax out the unspoken in one-on-one conversations, as they rarely express their thoughts unbidden, and certainly won’t share them on a big call. Whereas in India, where there’s a culture of open debate—“each of them will have to say something about everything”—Eda asks clarifying questions and makes sure to hold individuals accountable. “India’s a good example of where they’re Asian but not my Asian,” she explains. “Coming from Japan, from headquarters, I knew how they’d feel: there would be a battle for authority. (‘She’s never been to India and she’s managing marketing!’) So I have adopted an approach of total humility. ‘Teach me, tell me why you do things that way,’ is how I win their trust. It isn’t my instinct, necessarily, but if I were them, that’s what I would like to hear from my management.”

Indeed, employing empathy—doing what Eda calls “the mind meld”—has served her extremely well in all local markets. “In instances where there’s likely to be cultural tension, I try to get inside their psyches and simulate how they’ll react in my head before I interact with them,” she explains. “Then I ask questions; I show a willingness to learn.” It’s a tactic, she says, that has helped her bridge gender and age differences, as well as cultural differences. “Once I make it clear I’m not there to criticize or judge but to support them in the best possible way so that we can do the best possible job together—they trust me,” she says. “Empathy works.”

Integrity

As Eda’s story illustrates, the double pivot entails a seamless switch in gravitas. In general, we find, projecting credibility horizontally—to stakeholders across local markets—requires prioritizing emotional intelligence, whereas projecting credibility vertically (to those at headquarters) requires that one demonstrate authority.

In only one aspect of gravitas is pivoting unnecessary, and that’s in demonstrating integrity. Integrity is table stakes. Unless you’re seen as a person of your word—as someone who can be counted on to honor your commitments, no matter how onerous those may become—you won’t get traction with any of the other behaviors. Globally dispersed team members won’t go the extra mile for you because they don’t believe you have their best interests at heart. Peers won’t allocate work to your team or deliver resources that you request because they suspect your motives. Integrity is the foundation on which trust is built and relationships endure across both distance and difference. If you can’t project it, you’ll be incapable of driving results.

Integrity can take time to demonstrate. It often takes a crisis, as subordinates want to see not only how firmly you will stand in the face of a storm, but also whose interests you will shield. Nicolas Japy, CEO of Remote Sites and Asia-Australia for Sodexo, describes being repeatedly tested: crises are perpetual because his people—some seventy thousand employees—are working under extreme circumstances in some of the world’s most far-flung places, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the wilderness of Alaska. Japy depends on his on-site managers—who are fully empowered to hire, train, and deploy local talent, negotiate local partnerships, command resources, and otherwise do what’s necessary to fulfill Sodexo’s contract—to handle whatever comes up. Since the success of his division depends on these managers going the extra mile for him and the company, it’s imperative that he demonstrate he will go the extra mile for them—quite literally. Japy tells of one such opportunity that he seized early in his global role when a site manager in New Caledonia, where Sodexo ran a camp serving a mining operation, called to tell him he had a crisis that he couldn’t handle. “The client doesn’t want to listen to me,” the manager told him. “I don’t know what to do.” Japy, a French citizen who was working in central Africa at the time, got on a plane for the South Pacific. After two full days of travel, Japy arrived to learn that the client “didn’t have the time” to meet with him. Japy went out to the camp to wait. Two days later, when the client showed up, Japy calmly told him that Sodexo could no longer do business with him. The client’s deputy, sensing that Japy wasn’t bluffing, quickly intervened to speak to him alone. Fifteen minutes later, Japy had what he came for: the client’s commitment to honor Sodexo’s terms of engagement. “That happened ten years ago, and my people on the ground are still talking about it: ‘Nicolas flew twenty thousand kilometers, went to the campsite, and negotiated intensely with the client to sort it out.’ And that site manager? He is still there working for me.”

Authority vs. EQ

Our interviews with rising leaders and seasoned global executives make clear that what marks a leader as ready for global responsibility is knowing when to assert authority and when to demonstrate emotional intelligence. To put it another way, rising global leaders can’t afford to misread context. A failure to adapt your style to the situation can undermine your credibility as a leader in irreparable ways.

Ron Lee, a managing director at Goldman Sachs who heads up its private wealth business in Asia, has had to learn the importance of the double pivot: having grown up in Ohio and spending the formative years of his career in New York, he has a cultural background helpful for communicating to the firm’s senior leadership; and having spent the last twenty years living and working in Hong Kong and Singapore, he’s acquired Asian cultural smarts (an acquisition aided by the fact that Lee is of Korean descent). So it fell to him, he says, to coach a colleague who struggled to project credibility with Goldman’s senior leaders.

Lee gave his colleague an ideal forum in which to demonstrate his acumen and leadership: a convening of an important executive committee in Asia. But to Lee’s disappointment, when the strategic group began discussing a topic with which his colleague was very familiar, he remained silent. Afterward, Lee took him aside. “I’m shocked that when we were discussing material of relevance to both us, you let an hour go by without saying a word,” Lee told him. “Why didn’t you jump in to offer your expertise and insight? We all would have benefited.” His colleague seemed genuinely surprised at the censure. “But I’m never sure I’m senior enough to say something,” he told Lee.

As Lee regards this colleague highly, he was surprised that he hadn’t grasped just how important it is to pivot to a more communicative style when invited into the boardroom. “Some of our businesses in Asia have been run by colleagues from outside the region,” Lee observes. “That’s partly because local talent has not yet gained the visibility needed to be given the role.” Local talent, like his colleague, is sometimes perceived as having more technical and quantitative skills than strategic vision and as lacking the ability to build the credibility necessary to interact with divisions worldwide. Lee believes it’s an unfair characterization, but concedes that sometimes he can see where the criticism originates. “There’s definitely a case to be made for developing local talent to think more broadly and for equipping them with the executive presence that projects credibility to global leaders,” he says. On the other hand, “there is also a strong case to be made that in order for Western leaders to become global leaders, they need to develop the cultural sensitivity to recognize forms of leadership that may be different from their own,” Lee adds. Western leaders need to also master the double pivot.

Lee’s story underscores just how treacherous the waters can be between the shores of local culture and headquarters—particularly with regard to demonstrating authority. Navigating these straits demands recognizing that corporate culture is its own country, reflective of, but not limited to, the leadership norms of the country (and industry sector) in which it’s based. As Rosalind Hudnell, a global leader at Intel, puts it, “Corporate culture is defined by the people and norms of the organization, which continue to evolve. Our global employee base is made up of ambassadors for Intel around the world.”

Our dataset affirms this divide between the West and growth-hub geographies. If we aggregate data from our US and UK samples, where most multinational firms are headquartered (certainly most of CTI’s eighty-six Task Force members are headquartered in North America or Europe), a familiar array of boardroom behaviors emerges as salient. According to senior leaders in these markets (“the West”), demonstrating authority (after showing integrity) is what projects credibility. Demonstrating emotional intelligence is at the bottom of the list.

In growth-hub markets, however, the reverse is true: when we aggregate our data from Brazil, mainland China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, and Turkey, we see that gravitas derives from inspiring a following and demonstrating emotional intelligence. In essence, being authoritative makes you credible with Western top brass, whereas exercising emotional intelligence is likely to earn you the trust and respect of your team in local markets.

We heard countless stories to this effect. Nicolas Japy, who runs his division out of Singapore, arrived before Sodexo’s new office complex there was completed. The local manager, mortified that he had only a small room to offer to a member of the firm’s executive committee, insisted that Japy take over his own office. Japy wouldn’t allow it. “You’re a somebody here, and others should see that when they walk into your office,” he told the manager. “You’ve built this team, you’ve built this business, and it’s thanks to your success that we’re able to build a new facility in Singapore. When it’s ready, I’ll have a nice office. Until then, the small room is fine.” Though it cost him some credibility with Western visitors, Japy says that in the end it won him the undying loyalty of his new team in Singapore. “You’ve got to show your people that if everything goes right where they’re based, they have a future not just in their country, but in the company,” he remarks.

Gender Matters

Pivoting is further complicated by cultural expectations around gender—and by where the parent company is on the maturity curve of gender equity. In many markets (and in many corporate cultures), asserting authority and exercising emotional intelligence look very different for men and women.

Take, for example, one executive’s experience running a team in Bangalore from New York. Having created a standardized approach to pricing for the firm’s clients worldwide, this exec wanted his direct reports to abide by it. To ensure that they did, he created a new template. So it was with some annoyance that, during a pricing call with his Indian team, he discovered that the team hadn’t complied. “Use the template,” he implored the team manager. Six weeks passed, and still, the team used the old pricing model. So he called the team leader and, with the entire team on the phone, spelled out why the pricing philosophy had changed, why it would be adopted, and why he would tolerate zero deviations going forward.

He got through. In the wake of that call, the new philosophy took hold.

“Being direct, with no ambiguity, works in India; it cuts through the relatively nuanced nature of communication there,” explains this executive, who’s lived and worked throughout Asia. “It’s a chaotic country. Everybody does things differently. To get through, to develop consistency, you have to be incredibly direct. I made myself very clear, publicly. And now they’ve gotten it right.”

Contrast this approach with that of Sylvia Metayer, CEO worldwide of Sodexo’s Corporate Services Segment. Asserting authority in Eastern markets is not always the best way to get cooperation, she says. Metayer, who’s based in France, describes a recent meeting she had with important clients in China, who were accompanied by translators. The head of the Chinese delegation opened the meeting by addressing one of Metayer’s local managers, a man who barely spoke Chinese. Once the translator had finished and a response had to be given, Metayer leaped in to provide it—taking care to preface her remarks by stating that she spoke on behalf of Sodexo’s board. Made suddenly aware of her seniority, the head of the Chinese delegation, who was poised to present his gift to the local manager, froze with embarrassment. “Clearly he didn’t know who to give the present to,” Metayer explains. To help him save face, she took her local manager by the hand so that together they might accept the client’s gift. It was precisely the right gesture. “Everybody burst out laughing,” she recalls. The tension dissipated, allowing the meeting to culminate in a deal satisfactory to all parties. Metayer believes that handling the situation with any less emotional intelligence on her part would have cost her team its foothold in China with this client. “The client realized he had made a big mistake forgetting that these Westerners have women who are quite senior,” she explains. “My job at that moment was to prevent his mistake from becoming a business problem.”

Across all markets, we find, women are consistently expected to demonstrate emotional intelligence by being aware of others’ emotions, and acting accordingly—as Metayer did. For both men and women, of course, emotional intelligence is vital to projecting credibility in emerging markets, but it’s interesting that EQ for women is being attuned outwardly while for men, it’s being attuned inwardly. In China, for example, fully 67 percent of survey respondents thought women should be sensitive to other people’s feelings in conducting business, whereas only 36 percent believed that men should. Men are expected, rather, to act in accordance with their own emotions (as 64 percent of respondents in China agree).

Gender norms similarly dictate that in many markets—Brazil, China, India, Russia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan—female leaders demonstrate authority in a reserved way, whereas men are expected to flex it more assertively. In India, for example, a whopping 82 percent of our respondents thought it appropriate for men to be assertive in demonstrating their authority, whereas only 44 percent thought it appropriate for women to do the same. In Brazil, 79 percent agree that men should assert their authority, while only 46 percent believed women should do the same.

Gender matters somewhere in the practice of every single gravitas behavior. Take, for example, the imperative of demonstrating integrity, which lends credibility to men and women in all markets. How to do so varies: you can show integrity by conducting business in a way that is consistent with your own core values, or by conducting business in a way that is acceptable in the society where you find yourself. In China and Hong Kong, expectations of what projects integrity skew by gender. Fully 60 percent of respondents in China, and 54 percent in Hong Kong, feel that women should allow societal values to guide their business dealings; whereas 69 percent of respondents in China, and 72 percent in Hong Kong, feel that men should be guided by their own core values in any transaction.

Inspiring a following is another way for men and women to project credibility, particularly in India, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. One can inspire a following by setting a personal example, or by articulating a compelling vision: expectations on what works best vary by culture. However, in Turkey and South Africa, expectations also vary by gender. In these countries, women leaders are expected to inspire a following by setting a personal example. Men are too, but it’s more pronounced for women.

Generation Matters

Finally, pivoting among cultural norms around authority and emotional intelligence must take into account generational differences. After all, Gen X leaders can run aground of Boomer sensibilities and jeopardize credibility even when both share the same cultural background. Yet by the same token, younger leaders may have an easier time spanning vast cultural divides, as globalization continues to shrink those divides. Many of our interviewees in emerging markets point out that they and their colleagues who were born after 1980 have either completed their degrees in Western universities or worked at a multinational firm’s headquarters. That experience seems to inform greater acceptance of expat talent, including women, in regions historically opposed to foreign, let alone female, workers.

For example, Karen Attyah, a director with Landor Associates, the global branding agency, recalls being pleasantly surprised at being accorded credibility by a Middle Eastern client, who ultimately hired her away from Landor to work for him as his chief marketing officer in Dubai. Part of his ready acceptance of her was attributable, she feels, to her Lebanese surname and Mediterranean appearance. Her cultural intelligence served her well (“I know not to walk up and touch a man in traditional dress”); it helped, too, that she was conversant in geopolitical affairs and attuned to religious customs. But what made all the difference, she concedes, was that her boss was under the age of forty-five, “because men his age in the UAE have all had serious exposure outside the Emirates.” He had in fact been educated in Geneva before becoming a top hedge fund trader with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, “so he was quite modern in his approach,” she explains. “He could accept pushback; he wasn’t put off by my directness.” Even though, in the end, she says, it was his way or the highway, “he did trust my opinion.” That wasn’t the case, she stresses, with his board of directors, who were a generation older. “With them, at our annual general meeting, I was persona non grata,” she says. “At that age level in the Middle East, all eyes go to the Arab male in the room.”

The Pivot Payoff

Rising leaders who alter their leadership style—their gravitas—as they pivot among stakeholders are rewarded for their cultural sensitivity and contextual intelligence: they are more likely to advance in their careers. Our data show that leaders who pivot well horizontally, earning the trust and respect of their team, are more likely to be satisfied with their career progression than team leaders who haven’t (74 percent vs. 61 percent); that trend holds with leaders who pivot well vertically, and have won the attention and support of senior leaders: they’re more likely to be satisfied with their advancement than leaders who haven’t (75 percent vs. 65 percent).

Projecting credibility is a critical competency, as it earns trust and respect among various stakeholders across the divides of distance and difference. Yet it’s only half the journey that emerging leaders must make to be candidates for global roles. Global leaders leverage the trust they’ve built to drive market success. In the next chapter, we’ll look at how they do that: how they unlock value across distance and difference, and how they win the buy-in of senior stakeholders to ensure that market-worthy ideas and cost-cutting solutions get implemented.