Which state­ment do you, as a global leader, agree with more? 

“A successful global leader gets every member of his multi-national team on the same page by ensuring they under­stand and value his back­grounds, culture, values, goals, and approach, and by making them see situ­a­tions from his perspective.” 

Or: 

“A successful global leader gets every member of his multi-national team on the same page by ensuring he under­stands and values his team members’ back­grounds, culture, values, goals, and approaches, and by being able to see situ­a­tions from their perspective.”

At first glance, the first approach may seem plau­sible and like it might lead to success; a leader who can make his team members see the world through his eyes must be great indeed, right? 

But by changing around a few simple pronouns to make the second state­ment, you realize that the first approach actu­ally sounds egocen­tric, cultur­ally insen­si­tive, unaware, inflex­ible, and a lot of other unflat­tering things that defi­nitely aren’t traits and compe­ten­cies of successful global leaders. 

It would, in fact, lead to mindless enforce­ment of the leader’s way of doing busi­ness and making deci­sions, without being open to his team members’ expe­ri­ences, strengths, and cultural differ­ences. It would foster ‘lemmings’ who mindlessly follow the leader off of every cliff instead of having the gump­tion to suggest that taking the bridge might be an easier and more effec­tive way to cross to the other side. 

In other words, it wouldn’t be mindful. 

According to Zen master and spir­i­tual leader Thich Nhat Hanh, mind­ful­ness is defined as “the process of thinking in new cate­gories, being open to new infor­ma­tion, and recog­nizing multiple perspec­tives. Being mindful means switching from auto­matic commu­ni­ca­tion routines to paying atten­tion simul­ta­ne­ously to the internal assump­tions, cogni­tions, and emotions of both oneself and the other person.”

When put into a context of inter­cul­tural collab­o­ra­tion, these traits of mind­ful­ness are even more impor­tant for successful commu­ni­ca­tion. A good global leader must under­stand that mind­ful­ness is one of the greatest tools in his toolbox. 

So we sat down with global lead­er­ship expert and eurac’s General Manager for Greater China, Claudia Jing Zhang, to discuss the impor­tance of mind­ful­ness for global leaders in inter­cul­tural communication. 

The Impor­tance of Mind­ful­ness in Inter­cul­tural Communication

Inter­cul­tural commu­ni­ca­tion is an inter­ac­tive and inter­de­pen­dent multi­fac­eted process. In busi­ness context, being compe­tent at inter­cul­tural commu­ni­ca­tion prepares global leaders to func­tion well on and across thresh­olds of where cultures collide, because leaders construct their own iden­ti­ties, create inno­v­a­tive ideas and form part­ner­ships with those who are different from their own cultural back­grounds, values, and logic. There­fore, being mindful of these differ­ences bene­fits a posi­tive and comfort­able conver­sa­tion, paving the way for a mutual endeavor. 

Seeing the World Through a Cultural Lens

Much of the commu­ni­ca­tion among people from diverse cultural groups is filtered through ethno­cen­trism, stereo­types, and uncon­scious bias. These auto­matic nega­tive atti­tudes hinder commu­ni­ca­tion compe­tence and favor­able atti­tudes such as ethnorel­a­tive mindset, open-hearted posture, and a non-judge­mental approach. 

Often, we only hear what we want to hear — and then we inter­pret what we managed to hear through our own cultural lens. It should come as no surprise that this can result in a lot of confu­sion and subse­quent mistakes. 

The Three Dimen­sions of Inter­cul­tural Commu­ni­ca­tion Competence

Harnessing mindful inter­cul­tural commu­ni­ca­tion prac­tice (both verbal and non-verbal) relies heavily on inter­sub­jec­tive percep­tions: from reflexive self-percep­tion, over intro­ducing percep­tion shifts about others, to aware­ness of how one is being perceived by others in a stig­ma­tized or non-stig­ma­tized manner. 

Inter­cul­tural (in)competence percep­tion is often based on the criteria of perceived commu­ni­ca­tion appro­pri­ate­ness, effec­tive­ness, and adapt­ability — the three dimen­sions of inter­cul­tural commu­ni­ca­tion competence:

1. Appro­pri­ate­ness - mindful commu­ni­ca­tors employ contex­tu­al­ized commu­ni­ca­tion behav­iors that are cultur­ally proper, sensi­tive, and match specific cultural expectations. 
2. Effec­tive­ness - mindful commu­ni­ca­tions are successful in achieving mutu­ally shared mean­ings and goals.
3. Adapt­ability - mindful commu­ni­ca­tors are mentally, affec­tively, and behav­iourally flex­ible to meet specific needs and make inter­ac­tion changes in a certain situation. 

The key point here is that these three dimen­sions are eval­u­ated not just by your­self, but also by the people you’re commu­ni­cating with. Other people’s feed­back about your commu­ni­ca­tion behavior is crit­ical in deter­mining your commu­ni­ca­tion competence. 

Without mind­ful­ness, no leader will be an appro­priate, effec­tive, or adap­tive commu­ni­cator, espe­cially on an inter­cul­tural level. 

What are the Conse­quences of Mindless Inter­cul­tural Communication?

“If commu­ni­ca­tion is at the heart of lead­er­ship, mindful inter­cul­tural commu­ni­ca­tion is at the heart of global lead­er­ship.” ~ Claudia Jing Zhang

When leaders are mind­less of inter­cul­tural commu­ni­ca­tion, nega­tive conse­quences such as misun­der­standing, conflict, damaging part­ner­ships, as well as losing clients and busi­ness occur. Global leaders must be mindful commu­ni­ca­tors, compe­tent in using cultur­ally appro­priate verbal and nonverbal commu­ni­ca­tion in diverse settings. 

A study mentioned by Steers, R. and Osland, J. in their book Manage­ment Across Cultures, found that 50 percent of surveyed compa­nies iden­ti­fied commu­ni­ca­tion misun­der­stand­ings as the prin­cipal reason they had lost major cross-border oppor­tu­ni­ties, such as sales, contract, mergers, or investments. 

The history of doing busi­ness on a cross-cultural level has given us some great exam­ples of mind­less commu­ni­ca­tion that resulted in failure. Let’s take a look at one of them in more detail and deter­mine what would have been a more mindful approach, and which of the three dimen­sions of commu­ni­ca­tion compe­tence were neglected. 

Nego­ti­a­tion Failure between G.E. and Mitsubishi

Edito­rial note: The news of the passing of former G.E. CEO Jack Welch, reached us just as we were wrap­ping up the creation of this article. To high­light the impor­tance of mind­ful­ness for global leaders, we chose a case study that involved one of Mr. Welch’s busi­ness deals, which ulti­mately fell through. We feel it’s impor­tant to point out that we mean no disre­spect. Rather, this case study serves the purpose of looking at Mr. Welch’s conduct as a global leader in the past by laying out and discussing the facts. We would like to show that even global leaders as successful as Mr. Welch may at times be led astray by less mindful moti­va­tions and approaches — but that those are also oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn and evolve, in order to be successful in the future. 

In the 1990s, in an effort to re-estab­lish itself on the lucra­tive Asia/Pacific market of basic elec­trical supplies, General Elec­tric (G.E.) sought an alliance with Mitsubishi Elec­tric, one of Japan’s premier elec­trical equip­ment manu­fac­turers and a viable new partner for G.E. ‘s new strategy. After prelim­i­nary meet­ings by managers appointed to set things in motion on both sides, G.E. CEO Jack Welch and Mitsubishi CEO Moriya Shiki met in Japan for the first time. 

In Japan, such first meet­ings are called aisatsu, defined as a brief cere­mo­nial meeting for greet­ings or giving brief speeches. In that vein, this visit was meant to be a brief initial meeting to demon­strate G.E. ‘s commit­ment to the project and begin to estab­lish a working rela­tion­ship between the two CEOs. 

In such initial meet­ings, only general issues, for example on the state of the industry, are discussed, whereas specific topics about busi­ness and the actual alliance are avoided. Details of any part­ner­ship aren’t up for discus­sion until an initial rela­tion­ship has been established. 

Despite knowing and having previ­ously expe­ri­enced this Japanese way of doing busi­ness, Welch chose to discuss why a deal was attrac­tive to G.E. in that very first aisatsu with Shiki, surprising everyone by suggesting that the two compa­nies should agree to a deal immediately.

It was quite inap­pro­priate to press for an imme­diate commit­ment when nego­ti­ating with the Japanese, yet Shiki repeated his desire to go through with the plan. This was a subtle but signif­i­cant indi­ca­tion of how invested his company was in final­izing the agree­ment. However, he was not about to finalize anything on the spot.

After the meeting, Welch explained to his team that he had pressed Shiki because he felt that if the agree­ment wasn’t concluded quickly, it wouldn’t be concluded at all. He felt that Shiki’s reluc­tance to agree to the proposal in that first meeting meant he wasn’t serious about a partnership. 

Nego­ti­a­tions continued between both compa­nies’ spokesmen until Welch commu­ni­cated with his people several weeks later that he was leaning against signing the agree­ment. He felt he had been sand­bagged and embar­rassed by one of the Japanese busi­ness community’s most promi­nent figures. He would only consider going through with the deal if Shiki wrote a personal letter of apology, stating that he would agree to the proposal.

After some nego­ti­a­tion, it appeared that Mitsubishi was on the verge of complying with Welch’s request, when G.E. decided to take a different approach, focusing more on sales in the Asia/Pacific region than on busi­ness devel­op­ment. Welch had to tell his people to break off all nego­ti­a­tions with Mitsubishi. 

While Mitsubishi refo­cused their efforts on their existing part­ners and ended up expanding and thriving on this approach, G.E. ‘s long­time partner Fuji Elec­tric dissolved its part­ner­ship with G.E. shortly after the failure with Mitsubishi. In accor­dance with the disso­lu­tion agree­ment, Fuji then began selling prod­ucts in North‑, Central‑, and South America under its own brand name. In the long run, G.E. lost out in the Asia/Pacific region.

Let’s take a closer look at what went wrong, and how a more mindful approach could have saved the deal for G.E.. 

The Inef­fec­tive Approach

Upon analyzing the situ­a­tion, it’s easy to see that G.E. ‘s approach to the nego­ti­a­tions weren’t exactly mindful; even if the company hadn’t decided to take a different approach, the deal may have never been made. Welch prob­ably didn’t show much of either adapt­ability or appro­pri­ate­ness in the situ­a­tion by pressing Shiki to commit to a part­ner­ship in the prelim­i­nary meeting. He also didn’t seem to under­stand that Shiki was affording him a lot of slack by not breaking off the meeting and nego­ti­a­tions immediately. 

Instead of adapting to the Japanese way of doing busi­ness, Welch tried to stron­garm his way to the outcome he envi­sioned without much neces­sary regard for the people he was nego­ti­ating with, focusing more on what he wanted before their comfort, culture, and customs. Despite Mitsubishi’s will­ing­ness to over­look his lack of adapt­ability and appro­pri­ate­ness, this proved to be an inef­fec­tive approach in achieving shared goals. 

The Mindful Approach

What could Welch have done differ­ently to make the deal happen? 

First, nego­ti­a­tions could have gone smoothly from the start by following the protocol of aisatsu, the purpose of which is getting to know each other and to start building a rela­tion­ship, before details on deals and part­ner­ships are ever brought up. By going along with this Japanese way of doing busi­ness, Welch would have demon­strated being both adapt­able and appro­priate in his communication.

Second, another more mindful approach would have been to try to see the situ­a­tion from Shiki’s point of view. Welch report­edly “felt sand­bagged” by Shiki when he didn’t imme­di­ately agree to the deal; had he tried to put himself in Shiki’s shoes, Welch may have real­ized that Shiki did not mean this as a personal attack; jumping into a part­ner­ship in the very first meeting was simply not the Japanese way of doing business. 

Of course, it’s easy in hind­sight to see the flaws in Welch’s approach, though he surely never meant to head into the deal in such a self-sabo­taging way. Consid­ering his subse­quent success of many years, he certainly must have been mindful enough to learn from his improper behav­iors to grow into the influ­en­tial leader that he was — to such an extent that Fortune maga­zine even named him “Manager of the Century” in 1999. 

“The next CEO of G.E. will not be like me. I spent my entire career in the U.S. The next head of General Electric will be somebody who spent time in Bombay, in Hong Kong, in Buenos Aires. We have to send out the best and brightest overseas and make sure that they have the training that will allow them to be the global leaders who will make G.E. flourish in the future.” 

Jack Welch

Read the full case study here. 

What We Say vs. What We Mean vs. What Is Understood 

Besides being appro­priate, effec­tive, and adapt­able in their inter­cul­tural commu­ni­ca­tions, a mindful global leader also under­stands an impor­tant thing about the art of commu­ni­cating across cultures: 

That what we mean may not be what we say, and neither may be what is understood. 

Let’s look at some exam­ples of this phenom­enon between the British and Dutch way of commu­ni­ca­tion and inter­pre­ta­tion, as stated by Steers, R. and Osland, J..

Example 1

When a British person says “with all due respect”, what he actu­ally means is “I think you are wrong”. British people are just far too polite to put it so directly. What a Dutch person, coming from a far more direct commu­ni­ca­tion culture, will under­stand is “he’s listening to me”. 

Example 2

To a British person, saying “oh, by the way”, implies that “the following crit­i­cism is the purpose of this conver­sa­tion”. To a Dutch person, “by the way” makes it sounds like an insignif­i­cant after­thought, which he’ll inter­pret as “this isn’t a very impor­tant topic”. 

A mindful British leader would take into account that his British indi­rect way of expressing his thoughts and crit­i­cism may cause a misun­der­standing in commu­ni­cating with a more direct Dutch person. The British leader would adapt his way of commu­ni­cating to be more direct, even if the thought of stating “you’re wrong” may give him hives. 

A mindful global leader under­stands that different cultures both express thoughts and inter­pret what is said in different ways, and that this can lead to miscom­mu­ni­ca­tion and misun­der­stand­ings; he will make an effort to under­stand his conver­sa­tional partner’s cultur­ally inherent approach to commu­ni­cating and to adapt his own speech accordingly. 

How to Achieve Mind­ful­ness as a Global Leader

Seen from a western psycho­log­ical lense, Human Commu­ni­ca­tion Studies’ Professor Stella Ting-Toomey high­lights that the concept of mind­ful­ness focuses on attuning to the other person’s 

• cultural and iden­tity worldviews, 
• assump­tions, 
• atti­tudes, 
• emotions, and 
• commu­ni­ca­tion orientations. 

It involves the capacity to view a prob­lem­atic inter­ac­tion or situ­a­tion from multiple angles and learning to create new cate­gories through which the unfa­miliar behav­iors may be understood. 

There­fore, as a global leader dealing with your multi­cul­tural team members, busi­ness part­ners, or poten­tial allies, ask your­self: “Am I being appro­priate, effec­tive, and adapt­able in my commu­ni­ca­tion? Am I looking at this situ­a­tion from the other person’s perspec­tive? Am I being reflective?”

If not, adjust accordingly. 

But let’s get more concrete: What are some impactful prac­tices you as a global leader can incor­po­rate in your daily life and busi­ness to be more mindful? 

1. Aware­ness and humility
   Discover your own cultural iden­tity, be aware of your own uncon­scious bias. Learning to under­stand your­self before under­standing others. The more we are self-aware and humble we are, the more we’re able to be mindful and non-judgemental. 
2. Holistic thinking
   It might be human nature to engage in ethno­cen­tric thinking, believing that your way of doing things is more right and better than others’. Avoid this nega­tive eval­u­a­tion and under­stand others and their cultural values from their cultural frame of reference.
3. Inquis­i­tive­ness and patience
   Bring a friendly curiosity to inves­ti­gate an issue in cross-cultural encoun­ters. Don’t react to events imme­di­ately and nega­tively. Cultur­ally compe­tent leaders suspend judg­ment, find out more infor­ma­tion, consider the “big picture”, and respond based on full and current infor­ma­tion rather than reacting auto­mat­i­cally out of habit. 
4. Atten­tive listening
   Listen atten­tively with all your senses; check the accu­racy of your inter­pre­ta­tion and under­standing of your commu­ni­ca­tion partner’s meaning — try to figure out what he means rather than going by your inter­pre­ta­tion of the words he is using.
5. Focused obser­va­tion
   Care­fully iden­tify and actively pay more atten­tion to your commu­ni­ca­tion partner’s many non-verbal cues such as facial expres­sions, body gestures, mimics in cross-cultural situ­a­tions, while at the same time being alert to and moni­toring your own personal feel­ings and thoughts. 

In sum, the culti­va­tion of mind­ful­ness is an art form that involves the recon­cil­i­a­tion of several commu­ni­ca­tion para­doxes: 

• being strategic versus being spontaneous; 
• being focused versus being expanding; and
• digging in versus reaching out. 

The Bene­fits of Mind­ful­ness for Global Leaders

Global lead­er­ship is a complex and chal­lenging prac­tice across cultures. Effec­tive global lead­er­ship calls for cultur­ally sensi­tive and intel­li­gent global leaders, who utilize a global mindset to under­stand multiple perspec­tives. Mind­ful­ness is a reflec­tion of cultural intel­li­gence and a metacog­ni­tive strategy that global leaders can prac­tice to be more successful in cross-cultural inter­ac­tions. 

Mindful global leaders are mindful inter­cul­tural commu­ni­ca­tors, who have good situ­a­tional aware­ness and use atten­tive verbal and nonverbal commu­ni­ca­tion in diverse settings. They are aware of their pres­ence and the ways they impact people. They’re able to both observe and partic­i­pate in the moment while under­standing the impli­ca­tions of their actions in the long term. This prevents them from pulling away from their inherent, self-set values. 

In short, mind­ful­ness is essen­tial to helping global leaders culti­vate mech­a­nisms to 

• actively include diver­sity in their team, 
• over­come crit­ical situ­a­tions with inte­gra­tive solutions, 
• nurture a passion for their work and for others, and 
• empower their team and orga­ni­za­tion to be more inclu­sive, inno­v­a­tive, and productive. 

For more valu­able infor­ma­tion on global lead­er­ship, feel free to have a look through our other arti­cles to see how global leaders manage their often extreme chal­lenges. For more infor­ma­tion on getting the skills and the mentoring you need to become the most effec­tive global leader, please don’t hesi­tate to get in touch. And of course, check out our free ebook to learn all about global lead­er­ship and how you can develop it in your company: