A recent post on Dan Harris’s China Law Blog referred back to a 2008 post entitled “Chinese Cultural Awareness Simplified: Don’t Be an Asshole“. As a believer in, and blogger about, the business value of cultural consulting and training, I was intrigued. Essentially the post argues that as long as you avoid being an asshole, [...]

In earlier posts I’ve quoted from Jack Perkowski’s Managing the Dragon: How I’m Building a Billion-Dollar Business in China. I haven’t yet finished the book. I’m enjoying it a lot, because it’s chock full of wisdom for the Westerner who wants to make a go of it in China, and much of what he writes [...]

I was thinking about the qualities of the culture-savvy leader as I read this piece on Dan Harris’s always insightful China Law Blog. At one point Mr. Harris quotes an earlier essay of his:

Any leader needs to be mindful of resources. Leaders are often evaluated on how they use an organization’s resources. The twist here is that in China the stakes are raised to a level that at times approaches the absurd. One small-seeming cultural snafu here or there can cost an enormous amount of time, money and [...]

In any organizational setting, leaders are best off keeping their cool and avoiding big swings — in mood and in direction. This goes tenfold for the Western leader in China, where there’s much more than the standard fare to knock you off your game.

If curiosity and humility are “head” qualities of the culture-savvy leader, empathy is all about the heart. Empathy toward whom? Everybody: peers from your culture, superiors “back home,” direct reports from both cultures…everybody.

Leaders face all manner of obstacles in culturally complex environments. Our home cultures provide us with many resources for overcoming obstacles — including a sense of self, born of belief in the values of the culture. When confronted with different values, though, that sense of self can feel under threat. Humility is a powerful antidote, [...]

Today we begin taking a look at the qualities of what I’ve come to call the culture-savvy leader. Success in China depends on many factors. “Leadership,” broadly defined, is one of them — but not just any kind of leadership. Success in China requires culture-savvy leadership.

A few weeks ago I posted a series of pieces on Geert Hofstede’s five “dimensions” of culture. In my last three posts, the notions of universalism and particularism have come up. Today we’ll take a look at these two concepts in the context of the work of Dutchman Fons Trompenaars and his British colleague, Charles [...]

First, yesterday I came across this article — a thoughtful discussion of some Chinese reactions to the Tonghua tragedy discussed last week in this blog. There is much worth commenting on, but I’m shirking the temptation in order to probe a little more deeply into a topic we began looking at yesterday: American moralism and [...]