The most common theme I witnessed was suspicion, on the part of some of the Americans, of the motives of the Chinese partners. I kept being reminded of the bugaboo of attributing intentions (usually erroneously) based solely on behavior. There was a particular kind of behavior observed by the Americans which made them uncomfortable, and it didn’t take long, as the Americans talked among themselves later, to create agreement about the (ill) intentions behind the behaviors. This is a savvy group of executives, though, and they were receptive to other interpretations of the behavior.

One thought that recurred frequently during the week was this: what about all the other organizations working in China, which either aren’t aware of intercultural issues, or which are aware but don’t want to invest in intercultural consulting? I thought of how intercultural misunderstanding grows over time, often without our noticing, until it’s too late. A former colleague once put forth the “fish poop” model of human relations: over time, a fish tank accumulates fish poop. From one day to the next, you won’t necessarily notice a difference. But over time you end up with a stinky, fetid mess of a place to try to live, let alone thrive. Human relations, like fish tanks, require constant attention to accumulating fish poop — especially in intercultural environments, where the poop is likely to come fast and furious.

My experience with this company left me with a profound appreciation for them and companies like them, who can see the importance of the intercultural piece for their future success.

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.

What’s to be done is simply to recognize the thoughts for what they are: automatic, survival-driven, abidingly human creations that serve a purpose in one area of human endeavor — staying alive — but not in the higher human pursuits. A respected colleague of mine once said: “Have compassion for the mechanism.” By “mechanism,” she meant the mental machinery that generates these thoughts. If we can generate compassion for that part of ourselves, and see the mechanism for what it is, then it doesn’t have to run the show anymore. Which is the punchline to this discussion: Only once you’ve become aware of the nature of your mind’s automatic mechanism, and shaken hands with it, will you be maximally free to choose what to think.

There may be times in your China dealings when you’re best served by thinking of the Chinese as utterly different from you. You may, for instance, be reminding yourself of the necessity of questioning your familiar, Western perspective on things, in order to adapt appropriately to China. There may also be times when you’re best served by thinking of the Chinese as absolutely identical to you: imagining the woman across the table from you as a wife and mother, just like you, could be the key to understanding her perspective — even if you don’t share it — thus opening the door to moving an agreement forward.

The trick to the whole thing — usually not easy, but easier with practice — is to continually ground yourself in your own freedom to choose what to think, and therefore how to act. Westerners are up against a lot of automated reactions in our encounters with China, so the task is formidable. But the work is well worth doing. I suspect you’ll find that its rewards will not stay confined to the China realm, but will spill over into other areas of your life.

True as that is, we still often miss out on how much is to be gained by laying bare our “naked truths” in all their ugliness. Robert Louis Stevenson once said that everyone has “thoughts that would shame hell.” Some are more tuned in to these thoughts than are others, but they are there nonetheless. What I find most unnerving about this is what it means for what human beings do, since our thoughts, conscious and unconscious, guide our actions. I believe a great deal about the current state of the world is attributable to our automatic, sometimes hell-inspired thought mechanisms ruling the roost and running amok, steering us along destructive paths of action, all unbeknownst to us.

It also follows logically that one of the ways intercultural consultants can best serve our clients is by creating ways for them to safely access, express, and reflect on their underlying thinking in all its beauty and ugliness. For yourself, right now: What are some of your stereotypes of China and of Chinese people? Take a few minutes to write them down. Give yourself freedom to get as ugly as you need to get to be true to your thinking.

Try to avoid the temptation of thinking that you’re a horrible person: your ugly thoughts are nothing more than an expression of your deepest humanity. In that ugliness we are truly united across all cultures.

Now, what to do with all that thinking? I’ll take that up in future posts.

I am caricaturing a bit here. Still, the point is central to everything having to do with intercultural understanding: if we don’t understand our own, deep-seated, culturally-conditioned automatic reactions to difference, we cut off all chance of meaningful connection with those whom we perceive as different from us.

One of the few absolute certainties I have found in life is that people will react strongly to difference. Everyone. It’s in the deepest core of our animal being. And thank goodness we do: it’s the ability to make snap judgments that, as we evolved, allowed us to survive a host of dangers in a nasty, competitive world. Now we find ourselves in an ever-more interdependent world, and those reactions, while always present, may not always serve us in our pursuits. The question is: How will you handle it when you react?

The key to the whole thing is seeing that you’re reacting, so that you know what you’re dealing with. Only then are you able to choose how much to listen to your reaction, and how much to listen to the inner voices that reflect your higher nature.

How will you react to your Chinese partners’ and counterparts’ behavior? How strong will your reactions be? What about those of your team? Will you have the fleetness of mind to shift on the fly, so that you can get back to business and make something amazing happen with your Chinese colleagues?

This is a fundamental human struggle. Doing business in China will have you on the front lines every day. A challenge worth relishing.