Growing Global Executives

The New Competencies

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Ripa Rashid

• Publisher: Rare Bird Books, A Vireo Book
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781942600480
• eBook ISBN: 9781942600510
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

THE CENTER FOR TALENT INNOVATION (CTI) is an NYC-based think tank which focuses on global talent strategies and the retention and acceleration of well-qualified labor across the divides of gender, generation, geography, and culture. CTI’s research partners now number 86 multinational corporations and organizations.

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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 irre...

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