There’s a reason why change manage­ment experts are in such high demand. The reality is that changing cultures and blending cultures in any context is a really diffi­cult thing to do. Around 75% of any attempts people make to change orga­ni­za­tional culture end in failure.

Within the context of global lead­er­ship, the battle is fought on two main fronts. Global leaders that para­chute into a new envi­ron­ment as a ‘foreigner’, must possess excel­lent inter­per­sonal skills as well as a cultural sensi­tivity that helps to bring every­body together behind a new vision and direction.

It’s no surprise that very few people get it right. Let’s use the following case study to look at ways global leaders can effec­tively do this.

We begin with a summary…

The Inciting Incident

This case study follows the journey of a French fragrance company Deronde Inter­na­tional, looking to expand their oper­a­tions in emerging markets and stabi­lize or continue to grow in their estab­lished markets. 

Enter Jianguo, a sharp-minded man with scien­tific flair and an excel­lent track record of producing hit fragrances that took the Eastern market by storm. He had the advan­tage of under­standing the whole process of fragrance produc­tion having been promoted from managing a fragrance lab. This, paired with his ability to turn a small market into the fastest-growing subsidiary of Deronde, made him a force to be reck­oned with.

In the race to win the role of Senior Vice Pres­i­dent of Global Product Devel­op­ment, Jianguo managed to finish first in front of his colleagues that were favorites to get the promo­tion. He had a few misgiv­ings about the different ideas he had, being a little concerned that his colleagues wouldn’t be recep­tive to his new ideas. 

Never­the­less, he arrived in Paris with his wife ready to take on a new challenge.

How Things Progressed

Jianguo went for a welcome lunch with his new colleagues and the CEO. They only seemed to be inter­ested in ‘small talk’, so Jianguo took the oppor­tu­nity to get straight to busi­ness. There were meet­ings to orga­nize, ideas to be curated. In Jianguo’s mind, he just wanted to be left to his work. Why all the idle pleasantries? 

His colleagues and Alain, the CEO, on the other hand, found Jianguo to be very abrupt. Jianguo had lots of ideas for the emerging markets; every­body knew that he would come with those ideas. He’d talked about them briefly at his welcome lunch. But the first meeting the day after with the entire exec­u­tive committee went down like a lead balloon.

Jianguo had a long list of ideas and requests. Lab expan­sions, requests to acquire research facil­i­ties, fragrances for men and even a new skin­care line. Different scents for the eastern markets. Ambas­sadors appro­priate for each new market.

But nothing about culti­vating the existing western market. Awkward exchanges followed. Yves, one of the other exec­u­tives who had been in the running for Jianguo’s posi­tion, wasn’t too keen on drawing so much focus away from the existing customer base. Alain already had an existing rela­tion­ship with Yves and so was happy to listen to the feed­back. After a brief discus­sion about finan­cials, Alain called the meeting to a close early. Jianguo couldn’t under­stand why people weren’t getting on board with his ideas.

Over the next week, his colleague Yves came by to discuss some ideas; he’d tried to brain­storm some ways to honor both cultures whilst staying true to the Parisian culture that was an essen­tial part of the Deronde brand. Jianguo often shut down his ideas without further conver­sa­tion. As a result, the other exec­u­tives began talking and plan­ning amongst them­selves. They’d be cordial to Jianguo’s face, and he would hear rumors of meet­ings being orga­nized, but he was never notified.

Elise came by with some feed­back; as the only female on the team, she often felt excluded too. But as a word to the wise, she said that Jianguo needed to be willing to compro­mise; a ‘my way or the highway’ approach was extremely unlikely to work here. His only way of breaking the ice would be to get on board with the culture in Paris and then try to change things as best he can from that standpoint.

The Final Situation

The final situ­a­tion saw a very frag­mented lead­er­ship team. The CEO had given every­body 10 days to either sink or swim; Alain was ready to come back from his holi­days to a clear strategy of how things were going to move forward. Would Jianguo get every­body to settle on a strategy or would he go back to China and regional management?

Chal­lenge 1: Lack of Cultural Intelligence

The first glar­ingly obvious issue is the clear lack of cultural sensi­tivity roaring from both sides. This case study is really inter­esting because when we look at true cultural intel­li­gence, we see that a huge part of that process is sepa­rating culture from the idea of hierarchy. 

All of us at times can be defen­sive of our culture. It’s a part of who we are and it’s not wrong to be proud of what makes you who you are. However global leaders need to be able to see value in all the cultures they come into contact with. It’s not about cham­pi­oning one over the other, it’s about weaving all the cultures together into a comple­men­tary tapestry that draws out the advan­tages for all involved.

The French Executives 

With a desire to double down on the success of the emerging markets, Jianguo’s appoint­ment was meant to combine the inter­ests of both the western and eastern markets. Jianguo’s expe­ri­ence in the eastern sector gained while working for a French company, is prob­ably what gave him the edge over his French colleagues. 

The problem is that Deronde is a classic case of the dangers that come when global busi­ness func­tions and projects don’t share infor­ma­tion. Sepa­rating their busi­ness func­tions based on loca­tion meant that there was little oppor­tu­nity for collab­o­ra­tion between the senior exec­u­tives across the world. This meant that all of the senior French exec­u­tives had no idea about the culture of the place where Jianguo was coming from and he, in turn, had no idea about the nuances of French culture. Essen­tially there was an expec­ta­tion that he, having worked at Deronde, would seam­lessly inte­grate into Deronde’s ‘French­ness’. 

We’ll discuss Jianguo later, but he essen­tially walked into a very cold, awkward situ­a­tion. French people are very proud of their culture and in many cases due to the history of that nation, it is not uncommon for them to feel that in certain matters, ‘the French do it best.’ That atti­tude is clearly present in the way they respond to ideas Jianguo puts forward, and there is no attempt by the CEO to prepare the way for a collab­o­ra­tive style of working where all opin­ions are valid and all cultures are grace­fully accounted for whilst looking for a common thread that every­body could unite behind. 

As a result of this, every idea put forward felt like an attack on their existing base. The response was to alienate Jianguo which decreased his chances of success and held the project back right from the get-go.

Jianguo

Now we turn our atten­tion to Jianguo. Jianguo ulti­mately was appointed to this role because he has the capacity to be the bridge between all regions where Deronde oper­ates. Similar to his French colleagues, he arrived with a sense of cultural supe­ri­ority. His atti­tude made him dismis­sive and diffi­cult to approach.

The reality is that in his prepa­ra­tion to move to Paris, he did not think it vital that he famil­iarise himself with French culture. He expected to ride the wave of his authority to rush his ideas into the company without honoring what already existed. So you have the proud French exec­u­tives on one side, immov­able in their attach­ment to main­taining the ‘spirit of Paris’ in their prod­ucts. You then add an immov­able Jianguo, passionate about furthering emerging markets and eager to shake up the status quo. 

You guessed it. There was no progress at all.

Jianguo then found himself to be entirely confused as to why it is that nobody was responding to him. His atti­tude, unfor­tu­nately, became increas­ingly petu­lant as time progressed. His ideas weren’t neces­sarily bad, but because he completely lacked under­standing about French culture, his delivery was poor and people strug­gled to see the bigger picture of his ideas. He also completely discounted the estab­lished market in order to ‘fly the flag’ for his nation and make every­body proud.

The trouble here is the distinct lack of balance. If Jianguo had been willing to temper his sense of national pride, with a love and appre­ci­a­tion for French culture, his whole energy and way of dealing with his peers would have been totally different.

All in all, every­body could have done better here. We’ll look at ways they could have fixed this later.

Chal­lenge 2: Low Levels of Inter­per­sonal Competency

Global leaders have to master so many different compe­ten­cies in order to succeed. Inter­per­sonal compe­ten­cies are like baking powder in a cake; it’s diffi­cult to quan­tify what baking powder does short of the fact that it helps the cake to rise, but you’ll be left with a pancake of pastry if you don’t include it.

Inter­per­sonal compe­tence includes the ability to commu­ni­cate effec­tively. It includes the ability to empower the people around you. It includes not just team­work but teaming, which is the art of building a team even when you know that lots of things could change. It’s the ability to trust your team members and draw insight from those around you even as they draw insight from you.

This point falls almost exclu­sively on Jianguo here. This is only a short case study, and there is no doubt that Jianguo has all the makings of a very capable global leader. But here, his levels of inter­per­sonal compe­tence is very, very low. There was no attempt to get to know his colleagues or build a foun­da­tion of trust and collab­o­ra­tion. There was no discus­sion around existing prior­i­ties. There was no attempt to build a team at all; in fact, feed­back was summarily dismissed. 

The reason why there was no evidence of Jianguo’s inter­per­sonal compe­tence level, is because he appeared to have very little inten­tion to involve others in moving the company agenda forward. He wanted to be a clear super­star. The person who every­body held up as the man respon­sible for single-hand­edly turning around the fortunes of Deronde, by tapping up emerging markets for new revenue and explo­sive growth in market share.

But no man is an island.

More often than not, ideas that are shared go through an invalu­able process of refine­ment until they become solid, action­able strate­gies that move projects forward. Jianguo decided to play his cards close to his chest, receive no input from his colleagues and base his busi­ness deci­sions on a chat he was having with his niece.

He really did let himself down in this regard; instead of creating an open, empow­ering envi­ron­ment, where every­body felt valued and a part of the vision and the success to come, people felt pretty awkward. They became unwilling to share, and because there is only one of Jianguo and more French exec­u­tives, he ended up becoming very isolated and confused.

Having looked at the two biggest prob­lems with this whole scenario, there are defi­nitely some points of learning to be drawn out.

Solu­tion 1: Cultural Sensi­tivity for Everybody

Everyone at Deronde in all subsidiaries should have had oppor­tu­ni­ties to work cross-cultur­ally. Engaging with one another in this way would help to build a cohe­sive company culture that cele­brates all the diver­sity within it. When done well, the awkward and quite frankly damaging cultural supe­ri­ority would dissi­pate. We say, good riddance to bad rubbish in this regard; a cultural supe­ri­ority complex robs so many orga­ni­za­tions of the new ideas that could cause the explo­sive growth they are looking for.

Prac­tical appli­ca­tions of this could include the creation of a program where exec­u­tives work in different regions for a period of time. They get to expe­ri­ence the culture and see how consumers interact with their prod­ucts. Imagine all the different ideas that would come out of that — it’s an absolute gold­mine for anybody inter­ested in product development.

They could make sure to see each other bian­nu­ally for team retreats so that they can build that sense of trust and unity outside of a compet­i­tive work envi­ron­ment. Discuss ideas in a relaxed setting and build the kind of strong bonds that make successful teams. 

The impor­tant thing to note here is that this kind of commit­ment to diver­sity needs to come from Alain, who is the CEO, and be filtered down­wards into every depart­ment and level of the orga­ni­za­tion. Although he wasn’t in any way unkind to Jianguo, it was clear from the start that he hadn’t made room for him either. All of them were unpre­pared to work with someone who was cultur­ally different from them and you could sense the tension from the beginning.

For Jianguo specif­i­cally, he really should have invested time under­standing Parisian culture. Not because it is better, but because the prin­ci­ples of Parisian culture drive the voice, look, prior­i­ties and overall style of the Deronde brand. In order to see what can be changed or what new ideas can come out, you have to under­stand the foundation. 

The good news is that Jianguo is right at the begin­ning of his tenure as Global Head of Product Devel­op­ment, so there is time to make this right. He can link in with his colleagues or find an external mentor who can help him and his wife accli­ma­tise to and enjoy Paris. But unfor­tu­nately, his work has been made harder because people now have a rela­tively poor impres­sion of him and his ability to get some trac­tion and support behind his ideas.

Had he taken the time to become more cultur­ally aware of his surround­ings, it would have auto­mat­i­cally acti­vated his inter­per­sonal competence.

Let’s take a look at what could have been done differ­ently there.

Solu­tion 2: Jianguo’s Inter­per­sonal Competence

Jianguo’s approach was to continue as he did in China where he did every­thing himself and took all the credit himself. In Paris, he entered into a much flatter struc­ture where roles were more loosely defined and strate­gies were a team effort. Here are some things he could have done differently:

• Keep Calm and Get To Know Your Colleagues — Jianguo could have relaxed a little bit at his welcome lunch and used the time to get to know his new colleagues. What projects were they working on, did they have fami­lies in Paris? How long had they been in the industry? He also could have opened up a little bit about himself and his family and started work on building that common­ality with his colleagues.
• Make Teaming A Priority - He should have gone with an open mind to build a strong team that would help him not only tackle his passion of increasing the market share in emerging markets but also work on lifting the numbers in the western market. He is only one man. And whilst emerging markets are his forte, his task was not just to tackle those markets. His job was to attend to the strug­gling numbers in Deronde’s estab­lished markets too. Had he been more empa­thetic and atten­tive, he would absolutely have seen that this was a priority too and he could’ve taken the oppor­tu­nity to draw lots of different insight from his new team.
• Find An Ally - Let’s say that Jianguo had arrived and every­body imme­di­ately took a dislike to him even though he’d done all that we’ve mentioned so far. He was cultur­ally sensi­tive and really open, but because of office poli­tics and people being angry about not getting the job, there was a little animosity. In the reading of the full case study, you’ll notice that Elise tried to give him some feed­back. Instead of rejecting that insight, Jianguo should have been eager to receive it. Nobody else seemed willing to help. So for global leaders going into chal­lenging dynamics, this is an invalu­able lesson. Find your allies and the rest will follow as things start to move and the successes start to roll in.

To conclude, global leaders have a respon­si­bility to inter­nalize the prin­ci­ples of inter­per­sonal compe­tence and cultural sensi­tivity if they wish to be effec­tive in their work. Whilst it is fair to observe that existing teams should be more recep­tive to new lead­er­ship, that isn’t really a real­istic expec­ta­tion based on human behavior. People resist change. So global leaders must be prepared to face this kind of resis­tance and have the skills to turn that resis­tance into loyalty, creativity, and excite­ment for all that is to come.

What do you think about Jianguo’s case? Do you think you’ve got what it takes to be a global leader in such a chal­lenging envi­ron­ment? Test your­self and see how well you score. To keep up to date with all the tech­niques that’ll help you on your journey to becoming a fantastic global leader, sign up to our weekly newsletter; you’ll get all these insights deliv­ered straight to your inbox.