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 [...]

So you’ve laid them bare, all the “shameful” thoughts. Now what? The first instinct is often to reject, to wish the thoughts away. “That’s not really me,” we think. Or, a common response to some of the milder thoughts is to believe them, to reaffirm them: “Well, Chinese really are [insert stereotype].” Neither of these responses will [...]

Building on the last post: One aspect of China life that keeps me going back is how it pits my highest and basest selves against each other. For anyone, an honest engagement in that struggle cannot help but yield rewards: for your organization and for yourself.

These past two weeks in Beijing, charged with guiding Americans with little or no exposure to China through their initial, often strong reactions, I was reminded so many times of my own initial struggles almost 18 years ago. Time had dimmed for me the power of my own reactions. As a hot-headed and very American [...]

There’s a colleague of mine whom I finally had the opportunity to meet in person today, after several months of occasional emails. As we sipped beverages in the hot, sticky Beijing July air — Coke for me, specialty Hefeweizen made in Wuhan for him — the conversation turned, as it often does in China, to [...]