I can’t offer any such stories, and I be surprised if many of these stories exist. At the same time, I think what’s missing from the piece is the flipside: what can Western organizations gain from a deeper understanding of Chinese culture? In other words, why stop at not being an asshole? Once we’ve achieved non-asshole status, how can learning more about Chinese mindsets help Western organizations reach their highest aspirations?

The case that I’m continually building in this blog is that if Western leaders are mindful of culture, and of what people bring to the table as a result of culture, the upper limit on their success is much higher than without such mindfulness.

“Don’t be an asshole” is great advice the world over, and will save your business time and money. What more can we do to help our organizations thrive in China?

…even under the most favorable circumstances, China isn’t always transparent, and if you’re not careful, disagreements can still occur. Instead of overreacting or leaping to conclusions, the best policy is to take the time to listen and to understand. (p. 179)

Humility, empathy, equanimity.

Next:

90 percent of the mistakes made in China are due to misunderstanding and miscommunication. (p. 177)

It’s a good idea to take figures like this “90 percent” with a grain of salt. At the same time, it’s worth some reflection: What if it’s true? What if we could reduce our mistakes by up to 90 percent by dedicating ourselves to minimizing misunderstanding and miscommunication? What leader wouldn’t want that return on investment?

PRINCIPLE TWO: Keep an Open Mind. Assume Nothing.

Doing business in an emerging market means taking nothing for granted. I have a mantra for my own legal work in these countries that translates well to the business world: “Assume nothing, but assume that you are assuming things without even realizing you are doing so.”

Things will be different. Very different. Things you take for granted in your home country might not exist in the emerging market country. Things you take for granted in your home country might be the exact opposite in the emerging market country. Things you think will be totally different in the emerging market country may be exactly the same. Things you thought you knew about emerging market countries based on what you know from another emerging market country may be completely different in a neighboring country, or even in another region within the same country.

The principle, one more time: Keep an open mind, and assume nothing.

Well put.

China is an emerging market that can be particularly disorienting in this regard. The culture-savvy leader’s curiosity, empathy and equanimity are strong allies in this setting.

Please read the entire piece by Dan Harris. You’ll find it worthwhile.

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 goodwill. One particularly painful example comes to mind.

A friend once told me of an American businessman she knew who had managed to secure a meeting with two top officials of a major Chinese province, in the hope that he could get them to throw their support behind his business. Obviously savvy in important ways, this man knew enough to make it happen. That already puts him further along than probably more than 99% of Americans doing business in China.

The problem for this man was that he lacked cultural savvy, and as a result unknowingly ended up playing fast and loose with resources he might not have even been thinking about as resources: the time and money he had already spent, and the goodwill he had built as a result.

Not having received any intercultural training, the man sauntered into the meeting as if he were in charge, his bearing oozing arrogance. (He should have been politely and firmly — though not fawningly — deferential and respectful, to give them face as gracious hosts.) As the meeting progressed, talk turned to specifics. When the man’s interpreter mentioned something that made the man uneasy, the man expressed some worry. Noticing this, one of the officials said the man should fàngxīn. In this context, the obvious translation into English would be: “Don’t worry,” or “Put your mind at rest.” Instead, the interpreter translated it as “Take it easy.” Feeling pooh-poohed, the man grew more and more angry — highly inappropriate in this setting. (Someone losing his cool loses face along with it.) Things went downhill from there. The meeting ended in disaster, and the American businessman ended up having wasted untold time, money and goodwill: because he lacked some nuts-and-bolts understanding of the Chinese cultural mindset, because he didn’t hire the right interpreter, and — most importantly — because he didn’t have the cultural savvy to realize how quickly his resources could vaporize.

The culture-savvy leader understands that “cultural” issues are business issues. Cultural misunderstandings cost real dollars and hours. In China, the Western leader must always be treating time, money and goodwill as the precious resources that they are, and be mindful of how quickly they can disappear in that environment.

In this environment, equanimity is crucial. Despite cultural breakdowns all around — miscommunication, ruffled feathers, unmet expectations, and plain old prejudice — the culture-savvy leader remains above it all. She expects strong emotions, so she’s not prone to overreacting. Instead of falling back on her heels, she leads from the balls of her feet: solid, stable, grounded, balanced. Her empathy helps her in this: able to see things from many perspectives, she doesn’t take any one view too seriously — including her own. She trusts her instincts, but she’s not wedded to any single idea or way of doing things.

From the outside it might look easy, but it’s anything but. Like any human, she has internal reactions, including those based on her own prejudices. Those reactions are particularly charged. What she’s mastered, though, is the art of identifying her reactions, getting a handle on them, and moving forward toward solutions. She’s got passion and fire, but knows how to have them work for her, rather than vice versa. Her equanimity provides an anchor for her organization to do what it came to do.

Equanimity comes more naturally to some than to others. It is an absolutely essential quality of the culture-savvy leader. Thankfully it can be learned and practiced, like any skill. Do an honest assessment of your equanimity, preferably with the help of others close to you, and be sure to fill in the gaps before setting off for China. Some of the courses offered here might help.

Empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy, while also important, is still self-focused: “If I were in their shoes…” Empathy is deeper: getting yourself as thoroughly into the world of another person as you can, doing your best to experience the world as they do. To do this you have to quiet down your internal mental chatter and just listen. Open up your ears and your heart and let in what others are experiencing.

Sometimes people will come to you; other times you’ll notice something in other people’s behavior, and will seek them out. Either way, be ready to suspend judgment.

There are still those who think “soft skills” like empathy don’t belong in the “hard” world of business. As I discussed in an earlier post on the business of culture, though, what could be “harder” than time, money and goodwill for the success of a business — or of any organization? An environment where people feel heard and understood will unleash their energy and their creativity like nothing else. Problems will be solved faster, more will be accomplished, and people will feel empowered, with a new level of commitment to your organization’s success.

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it: China will present you with day-to-day challenges like few other places will. Generating and sustaining empathy will be one of your greatest challenges as a culturally savvy leader — and one of your most rewarding.

By “insignificance” I don’t mean smallness or inability to affect the world. Those could be disempowering. I mean a sense that the world is a large and complex place — a rich place — and “my” way is but one way. This nourishes in the culture-savvy leader an abiding sense of abundance. While those more susceptible to arrogance tend to feel they’re being robbed when things go wrong, the culture-savvy leader’s eyes bend toward gratitude. The “strange” and “maddening” habits of “others” that are unfamiliar are transformed into a smorgasbord of options for solving problems. Problems might even cease to be “problems” in his eyes: they are, instead, opportunities to learn, and to expand his repertoire of ways of seeing and responding to the world.

Perhaps ironically, the culture-savvy leader’s sense of his own insignificance allows him to play big in the world. The voices of hubris in his mind reduced to a whisper, he is able to listen to his colleagues — those from his own culture and those from other cultures — with a genuinely open heart. Around him, people feel understood. Even if they don’t get what they want in the end, they respect his decisions, because they sense that he is serving a purpose larger than himself — a purpose which they share. The culture-savvy leader is thus able to accomplish more.

In our most difficult cross-cultural moments, when the “other” culture seems most bizarre and just plain wrong, our egos will try their hardest to inflate themselves. Westerners in China face this all the time. Western leaders in China, given their organizational reach, run the risk of creating and perpetuating a reactive mindset among a large group of people, subtly sabotaging the organization’s efforts. In this setting the importance, and power, of humility is magnified. By cultivating humility in yourself, you will cultivate it in others, and improve your chances of success in the challenging cultural environment that is China.

If you’re savvy about something, you understand it: how to recognize it, what its impact could be, and how to deal with it in ways that will move you forward. The culture-savvy leader recognizes culture, sees its potential impact, and deals with it in proactive ways.

The culture-savvy leader is first and foremost a person of profound curiosity. Why curiosity? If you’re curious about something, you see it as outside of yourself. You’re not only willing to study it; you crave knowledge about it. You want to see how it operates, how it functions.

I’ve written in this blog about how culture can feel so personal (look for instance under the category “Dealing with Ourselves”). Not many phenomena hit us where it counts in the way culture does, forcing us to question our most deeply held values. That’s why we react so strongly to cultural difference: we feel fundamentally threatened.

Curiosity is a powerful ally in overcoming the automatic reactions that stem from difference. If it’s a phenomenon outside of me, one that can be studied, then it’s something other than a threat to me.

The culture-savvy leader understands that the people of the world have found many different ways to solve humanity’s basic problems, and that no one way is inherently better than another way. Her curiosity is what enables her to think like this. She sees that cultural differences aren’t about her. They are simply facts, and she knows that one of her main jobs as a leader is to understand the facts, and to use her understanding to advance the cause of her organization. So she invests time and money for her and her people to learn about the cultures of the places where they do business. She knows this investment will yield rich returns over the long haul: in time, money and goodwill.

Curiosity enables the culture-savvy leader to be resilient and fleet of foot: never bogged down in rage or frustration, the culture-savvy leader might react at times, but bounces back fast, always eager to learn more about what caused the reaction, and to glean lessons. The confidence that results from, and also fuels, this curiosity, spreads throughout the organization as a result of the leader’s example.

While this is true of any leader in any culture, it is especially true of Western leaders in China. The degree and depth of cultural difference, and its daily impact on every aspect of work and life, forces the issue as it does in few other places.

If you’d like to explore more, take a look at the course I offer on culture-savvy leadership.

In their own words:

Universalist, or rule-based, behavior tends to be abstract. Try crossing the street when the light is red in a very rule-based society like Switzerland or Germany. Even if there is no traffic, you will still be frowned at.…There is a fear that once you start to make exceptions for illegal conduct the system will collapse.

Particularist judgments focus on the exceptional nature of present circumstances. The person is not “a citizen” but my friend, brother, husband, child or person of unique importance to me, with special claims on my love or my hatred. I must therefore sustain, protect or discount this person no matter what the rules say.

Business people from both societies will tend to think each other corrupt. A universalist will say of particularists, “they cannot be trusted because they will always help their friends” and a particularist, conversely, will say of universalist, “you cannot trust them; they would not even help a friend.” (taken from Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner, Riding the Waves of Culture, 2^nd Edition, 1998, pp. 31-32.

In a survey distributed to tens of thousands of managers worldwide, the following question was asked, in order to probe this distinction (from pp. 33-34):

You are riding in a car driven by a close friend. He hits a pedestrian. You know he was going at least 35 miles per hour in an area of the city where the maximum allowed speed is 20 miles per hour. There are no witnesses. His lawyer says that if you testify under oath that he was only driving 20 miles per hour it may save him from serious consequences.

What right has your friend to expect you to protect him?

1a            My friend has a definite right as a friend to expect me to testify to the lower figure.

1b            He has some right as a friend to expect me to testify to the lower figure.

1c            He has no right as a friend to expect me to testify to the lower figure.

What do you think you would do in view of the obligations of a sworn witness and the obligation to your friend?

1d            Testify that he was going 20 miles an hour.

1e            Not testify that he was going 20 miles an hour.

It’s a tough question. The title of this post is taken from the title of another book by Trompenaars. People from particularist cultures have asked if the pedestrian died, in order to help them think through their response — though it’s hard for a hardcore universalist to see why it would matter.

Responses to the scenario were aggregated from national cultures the world over, with 100 representing 100% of respondents from that culture choosing c or b + e. In other words, the higher the number, the more universalist. China comes in at 47, the U.S. at 93. Of the 31 cultures listed, only four are more particularist than China (Venezuela, Nepal, South Korea, Russia), and only one (Switzerland) is more universalist than the U.S.

With the usual caveats about too-broad brush strokes, this is a stark finding. It sets a rich and fraught stage for Chinese and Americans to do business together. It fits in well with many of my research findings, discussed in previous posts (look under the Cultural Models category), as well as with observations I’ve made earlier about contracts/hétong. It touches so many aspects of the differences between American and Chinese cultural mindsets that it’s hard to overstate its significance.

And it’s in an area where nerves can be raw: deeply-held beliefs about loyalty and principle. This is where our leadership will be most direly tested, and where we need to be most on guard for our automatic reactions winning the day. Definitely time to breathe deeply, detach, and refocus on why you’re in China in the first place.

Another of the interview questions I asked in my research was:

If a person is rich, what should he/she do with his/her money?

如果一个人很有钱,他应该怎么用他的钱?

As with the fallen tree question, the Chinese respondents hold to a very practical line: invest the money, because money makes money (钱生钱). The Americans, however, agonize over the question. They seem to feel intuitively that the “right” thing to do would be to give away a lot of the money. At the same time, they are troubled by the gap between ideal and real:

A      And you should give to people who don’t have much because they can’t…they’re not as fortunate as you.  They don’t have those capabilities.  They’re not in the same situation as you.  So I think people should give back to society.

B      I agree.

A      Do something, make a foundation, you know, I mean, you know like a charity.

B      Just put it where it’s needed.

A      Yeah.  A lot of people do say, yeah I earned the money, so I should keep it, but really what are you gonna do with all that money?  You’re just gonna spend it on yourself. That’s so selfish.  But then again if I were in that position I don’t know what I’d do.

B      Yeah.

A      It’d be…it’s easy to say…

B      Yeah, see, everybody says, this person should give it to charity, they should donate it, but that’s not what people do.

More than anything, what the Americans find troubling is hypocrisy: Saying one thing, doing something else. Not practicing what we preach. This is a function of the “universalist” aspect of American culture: Americans are inclined to judge a broad range of situations according to a fixed, static, set of criteria. In contrast, Chinese culture is “particularist”: specific situations, in all their complexity, tend to be privileged over abstract, universal principles.

The Chinese distaste for this kind of abstraction shows up in two responses. First:

C      How should he use his money,” “should”, this word, maybe I’m a little bit…uncomfortable.…“Should” has a bit of a feeling of morals, or preaching.

D      We should let everyone choose for themselves…how they should use…not “should.” Let everyone choose how to use his money.  We can only say if I were rich what would I do with it?

C      Right.

C         “应该怎么样用他的钱,” “应该” 这两个字我可能有一点…不舒服。”应该” 还有一点道德, 说教的感觉。

D     我们应该让每个人自己选择…应该去怎么用…不是“应该”…让每个人自己选择去用他的钱。  我们只能说如果我有钱的话我会怎么办。

C     对。

Another pair of interviewees goes as far as to suggest that a different question should have been asked:

E      This, I think…this question is different for each person.  Your saving or spending money depends on your own worldview, on the direction of your ideas about value.

F      I think this question should ask, “If you were rich, how should you spend your money?”

E      Yes.  In reality you’re just expressing your own view, right, about how you should use this sum of money.

F      It should be asked this way.

E     这个我觉得…这个问题就是因人而异的。  你这个钱的省花, 取决于你这个人的一种世界观啊, 价值意识的指向。

F     我觉得这个问题应该问, “如果你很有钱, 你应该怎么样用你的钱?”

E     对。  实际上你就是表达你自己的看法嘛, 应该怎么样去使用这笔钱。

F     这样问。

To put a harsh-sounding spin on it, we could say: What Americans do is pass judgment. We do so because we’re conditioned to judge based on how closely actual behaviors match up to a universal moral code. And lest I pass judgment on passing judgment, I’ll state again, as I’ve stated before, that in my own (very American) opinion, this has been, in the right contexts, one of the greatest gifts American culture specifically, and Western culture generally, has brought to the world.

You can see, though, what a mismatch a stubbornly universalist approach can be in the nitty-gritty, messy, detail-oriented context of Chinese culture. From one possible Chinese standpoint, Americans are hopelessly naïve: how could you hope to take one set of principles and apply them everywhere? Only someone who hasn’t lived in the world could think that way.

This is just one more way in which Westerners can get ourselves into trouble in our China dealings. It takes a special, hard-earned kind of self-awareness and leadership to function well, consistently well, in ways that are so contrary to our deepest, culturally conditioned norms.