Work and Lead Across Cultures

Organisations which are able to integrate cultures – retaining the best of the old, bringing in the best of the new, and creating something better still out of the mix – are more agile and better-placed to thrive in changing environments.

What

One of the biggest challenges in workplaces comes at the point where cultures clash. These cultures can be geographic, generational, or the result of a merger or bringing in a new team. It can be hard to adapt – for both newcomers and the established teams – and the realisation that some of our team may not share the same vision or values as others (or us) can lead to dissent or disagreement. 

When we experience culture clash, we experience a dissonance which leads rapidly to fear, isolation and deep-rooted unhappiness. It can make us ‘act out’ and become a difficult team member; or it can make us withdraw and deliver the bare minimum. Additionally, it can cause fragmentation as factions build around individuals, teams or ideas. Dissent – active or passive – becomes a driver and it becomes harder and harder for leaders to bring their people with them.

Why

Clashes between groups of people based on collisions of culture are rarely based on facts, or on a fact-based belief that ‘the way I do things’ is intrinsically or inherently better. More often, these clashes are the result of insecurity which drives rigidity: so, I fear that I’m going to be outshone by the new talent and that makes me dig my heels in and insist that my way is better; or alternatively, I’ve been hired as the new talent because of what I’ve achieved and I believe that in order to succeed I have to operate in the way which has made me successful. 

Insecurity as a driver of behaviour has long been known to be negative. We recognise that people who are fearful of losing their jobs underperform; people in teams led by volatile leaders underperform; and people in organisations in constant states of change underperform. Utilising this knowledge, and recognising that insecurity breeds instability and detrimental risk-averse behaviours, we work with clients to help them become more flexible, more agile, and more receptive to different ways of working and being.

How

Utilising key elements of emotional intelligence, we work with clients to develop self-knowledge, respect, empathy and resilience to build psychological safety. When we are in a place that feels safe, where we feel we have some agency, we are much more able to acknowledge where we feel insecure, and much better able to respond openly to change. We have more capacity for curiosity about things which feel alien to us, become less judgmental, and are less likely to jump to conclusions. Greater psychological safety means we are less like to seek familiarity in old ways of being. We become more able to risk trying something new.

Recent Engagement

Helping a North-America-centric law firm come to terms with the why and the how of the need to adapt its approach across markets

What constitutes even ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ is different across different cultures and geographies

A recent client asked for help developing and implementing work across their global partnership on inclusive leadership. The situation which had arisen was that there was no agreement on what inclusive leadership actually meant; each region believed that ‘their’ version was universal.

It raised a couple of significant and interesting issues: in order to work together, across cultures – which might be nationality – or ethnicity-based, but which might also be about age or faith, for example – we need to be able to recognise that our perspective is not the only perspective, and that others may see things which we don’t see or value; and that, even where you’re working with the notion of inclusion as referring only to protected characteristics, these vary from region to region, and the ‘ranking’ in importance is not consistent across regions.

We helped the partners start to recognise that, while they had come a long way in understanding what inclusive leadership meant, there was still work to do in recognising and respecting input from people different from themselves, and that, in order to really work cross-culturally, the ability to tolerate, understand and value a range of perspectives was essential in building a functional and truly inclusive culture.