Norwegian politicians and executives have certainly had their share of challenges in their relationship with Chinese officials for an extended period of time now. Today’s news headlines include stories about how China has recently banned import of Norwegian salmon from several districts in Norway, and that they will probably extend the ban to include salmon from our entire country.

Now, personally, I think that this is a great idea – I don’t like Norwegian farm-salmon either. However, I find it interesting that China all of a sudden should have managed to bring their regulations and actual implementation of quality control to such a level that the Norwegian salmon should now be deemed to be below internationally accepted quality levels. Now, this is entirely possible, of course, but in my opinion it could also be that this discussion is about something completely different than fish…..

Western Vs. Asian Leadership styles

Describing stereotypes is not best practice, but on the other hand – they are there for a reason. Even if it is as difficult to describe ‘an Asian executive’ as it is to define the typical ‘Westerner’, there are some fundamental differences – and similarities – that it is worth taking into context when attempting to be leading a team with a broad variety of cultural backgrounds.

While the Westerner often will fall back on the formal agreement between the parties for directions on how to proceed, the Asian executive will take into account past behavior and the trend in their relationship development over time before making a decision. After all, the contract is just a snapshot of where their relationship was at that specific moment in time. Right?

The caricature of the Western leader as a charismatic and talented hero that rose to power through courageous solo acts on one hand, and the Asian collectivism rooted deep in family values and society’s traditions on the other hand is often used to portray incompatibility of leadership styles between the West and Asia. Western leadership style is often described as using professional company managers where successors raise through the ranks – or brought in externally -and appointed through a formal committee, like (I.e) a Board of Directors. Asian leadership, on the other hand where social standing is often as important as formal background and experience, is often portrayed as having the business established around a family – or a group of families – as well as through individuals’ political network connections.

Western leadership styles are commonly described as Directive, Participative, Empowering, Charismatic or Celebrity. Those leadership styles exists, of course, also in Asia and even if the Directive leadership style is the most practiced for the time being, more and more companies are adapting a more Empowering leadership style – just like the trend is in the West. I would claim that there are more similarities than differences between the West and Asia on the topic of leadership styles. Yet, we see so many times that the differences are perceived enormous, and that the team is set to fail from day one. Why?

In my opinion, the failure happens despite the similarities and not due to the differences in leadership style. The friction is most of the time a result of poor execution from the top – and in my experience – through failure from the Western leader'(s) lack of understanding of the Asian high context society that is reflected throughout the team. When an executive from a high context society in Asia is continuously asking the Western leader for more instructions, it does not mean that the executive is incapable of working out the solution for himself. Most likely, he or she is more capable of working out the solution in the local context than the Western leader, but is at the same time trying to develop a relationship with the leader. The leader, on the other hand, coming from a society where clear communication is valued higher than politeness, will be confused by the never ending questions from that specific team member and wrongly conclude that the ability of working independently is not there. At the same time, the Western leader is often completely ignorant of the unspoken communication that is continuously happening around him. The Western leader will most of the time not read more into a message than what is being said. Executives from a high context culture will on the other hand most of the time be trying to interpret what is really being said and often conclude something completely opposite of what has been said. It is not only what and how things were said, but equally important – to executives from a high context society – is to take into account past relationships with this individual or organization, sub-cultural background, etc.

Don’t be excited about who you are meeting – worry instead about those NOT attending

As an example, in the past I witnessed a situation where two executives – one Westerner and one Asian executive – were leading a business delegation and had a meeting with a senior government official directly in charge of a certain type of investment on a national level. The government official – in the meeting – gave a direct order to one of his aids to arrange for a tender committee to be established. The Westerner was very excited after the meeting while the Asian executive was not able to show much enthusiasm. Even if nothing much was discussed directly afterwards, I understood that while the government official was surprisingly straight forward in his approach, the Asian was discouraged by the fact that the official had been so clear in his message. To the Westerner, this meant that there would be progress in the potential business development, while the Asian executive correctly understood that the government official had coded his message as ‘this is not at all interesting’. The Westerner was positively surprised about the opportunity of meeting such a high ranking official in charge, while the Asian executive was more worried about who did NOT attend the meeting. Not paying attention to the number of delegates from the visiting side, their seniority in respective organizations and the lack of matching the ethnicity of the visiting party, the government official was in this instance signaling; “we are doing somebody a favor by seeing you and therefore politely allowing this meeting to happen, but we are also indirectly communicating to you that we are not interested in what you have to say. Please, be graceful and leave it at this”.

This type of miscommunication happens at all levels where Western and Asian executives are working together as a team (or as opposing parties) – and causing substantial loss of time and money. And even if there are grey areas and it is not always as straight forward as in the above example, and even if the differences are becoming smaller due to the globalization of trade and ongoing dilution of cultures, this can still cause enormous misunderstandings and frustration – on both sides of the cultural divide. Imagine, if the Western executive did not understand what was being communicated (he did not) or if he was not told what had happened (eventually he was told) – how much frustration would have been caused on both sides if he continued pursuing this ‘very positive business opportunity’….

It is of course possible to manage these cultural differences, and many companies are becoming more aware of the importance of this – not only in team management, but also in their approach to legal agreements where the Western approach is that ‘a deal is a deal and it is specified in the contract’ but the Asian counterpart’s opinion is that a contract is not a definite agreement, but rather a reflection of the ongoing relationship development.

In a future blog-post I will give some examples on how inter-cultural team relationships can be managed.

Rolf-Henry, MBA

Entrepreneur

rolfhenry@applezeen.com

Skype ID: rolfhenry.groenlund