Growing Global Executives. Sylvia Ann Hewlett
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So it was with some annoyance that, during a pricing call with his Indian team, he discovered that the team hadn’t complied. “Use the template,” he implored the team manager. Six weeks passed, and still, the team used the old pricing model. So he called the team leader and, with the entire team on the phone, spelled out why the pricing philosophy had changed, why it would be adopted, and why he would tolerate zero deviations going forward.
He got through. In the wake of that call, the new philosophy took hold.
“Being direct, with no ambiguity, works in India; it cuts through the relatively nuanced nature of communication there,” explains this executive, who’s lived and worked throughout Asia. “It’s a chaotic country. Everybody does things differently. To get through, to develop consistency, you have to be incredibly direct. I made myself very clear, publicly. And now they’ve gotten it right.”
Contrast this approach with that of Sylvia Metayer, CEO worldwide of Sodexo’s Corporate Services Segment. Asserting authority in Eastern markets is not always the best way to get cooperation, she says. Metayer, who’s based in France, describes a recent meeting she had with important clients in China, who were accompanied by translators. The head of the Chinese delegation opened the meeting by addressing one of Metayer’s local managers, a man who barely spoke Chinese. Once the translator had finished and a response had to be given, Metayer leaped in to provide it—taking care to preface her remarks by stating that she spoke on behalf of Sodexo’s board. Made suddenly aware of her seniority, the head of the Chinese delegation, who was poised to present his gift to the local manager, froze with embarrassment. “Clearly he didn’t know who to give the present to,” Metayer explains. To help him save face, she took her local manager by the hand so that together they might accept the client’s gift. It was precisely the right gesture. “Everybody burst out laughing,” she recalls. The tension dissipated, allowing the meeting to culminate in a deal satisfactory to all parties. Metayer believes that handling the situation with any less emotional intelligence on her part would have cost her team its foothold in China with this client. “The client realized he had made a big mistake forgetting that these Westerners have women who are quite senior,” she explains. “My job at that moment was to prevent his mistake from becoming a business problem.”
Across all markets, we find, women are consistently expected to demonstrate emotional intelligence by being aware of others’ emotions, and acting accordingly—as Metayer did. For both men and women, of course, emotional intelligence is vital to projecting credibility in emerging markets, but it’s interesting that EQ for women is being attuned outwardly while for men, it’s being attuned inwardly. In China, for example, fully 67 percent of survey respondents thought women should be sensitive to other people’s feelings in conducting business, whereas only 36 percent believed that men should. Men are expected, rather, to act in accordance with their own emotions (as 64 percent of respondents in China agree).
Gender norms similarly dictate that in many markets—Brazil, China, India, Russia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan—female leaders demonstrate authority in a reserved way, whereas men are expected to flex it more assertively. In India, for example, a whopping 82 percent of our respondents thought it appropriate for men to be assertive in demonstrating their authority, whereas only 44 percent thought it appropriate for women to do the same. In Brazil, 79 percent agree that men should assert their authority, while only 46 percent believed women should do the same.
Gender matters somewhere in the practice of every single gravitas behavior. Take, for example, the imperative of demonstrating integrity, which lends credibility to men and women in all markets. How to do so varies: you can show integrity by conducting business in a way that is consistent with your own core values, or by conducting business in a way that is acceptable in the society where you find yourself. In China and Hong Kong, expectations of what projects integrity skew by gender. Fully 60 percent of respondents in China, and 54 percent in Hong Kong, feel that women should allow societal values to guide their business dealings; whereas 69 percent of respondents in China, and 72 percent in Hong Kong, feel that men should be guided by their own core values in any transaction.
Inspiring a following is another way for men and women to project credibility, particularly in India, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. One can inspire a following by setting a personal example, or by articulating a compelling vision: expectations on what works best vary by culture. However, in Turkey and South Africa, expectations also vary by gender. In these countries, women leaders are expected to inspire a following by setting a personal example. Men are too, but it’s more pronounced for women.
Generation Matters
Finally, pivoting among cultural norms around authority and emotional intelligence must take into account generational differences. After all, Gen X leaders can run aground of Boomer sensibilities and jeopardize credibility even when both share the same cultural background. Yet by the same token, younger leaders may have an easier time spanning vast cultural divides, as globalization continues to shrink those divides. Many of our interviewees in emerging markets point out that they and their colleagues who were born after 1980 have either completed their degrees in Western universities or worked at a multinational firm’s headquarters. That experience seems to inform greater acceptance of expat talent, including women, in regions historically opposed to foreign, let alone female, workers.
For example, Karen Attyah, a director with Landor Associates, the global branding agency, recalls being pleasantly surprised at being accorded credibility by a Middle Eastern client, who ultimately hired her away from Landor to work for him as his chief marketing officer in Dubai. Part of his ready acceptance of her was attributable, she feels, to her Lebanese surname and Mediterranean appearance. Her cultural intelligence served her well (“I know not to walk up and touch a man in traditional dress”); it helped, too, that she was conversant in geopolitical affairs and attuned to religious customs. But what made all the difference, she concedes, was that her boss was under the age of forty-five, “because men his age in the UAE have all had serious exposure outside the Emirates.” He had in fact been educated in Geneva before becoming a top hedge fund trader with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, “so he was quite modern in his approach,” she explains. “He could accept pushback; he wasn’t put off by my directness.” Even though, in the end, she says, it was his way or the highway, “he did trust my opinion.” That wasn’t the case, she stresses, with his board of directors, who were a generation older. “With them, at our annual general meeting, I was persona non grata,” she says. “At that age level in the Middle East, all eyes go to the Arab male in the room.”
The Pivot Payoff
Rising leaders who alter their leadership style—their gravitas—as they pivot among stakeholders are rewarded for their cultural sensitivity and contextual intelligence: they are more likely to advance in their careers. Our data show that leaders who pivot well horizontally, earning the trust and respect of their team, are more likely to be satisfied with their career progression than team leaders who haven’t (74 percent vs. 61 percent); that trend holds with leaders who pivot well vertically, and have won the attention and support of senior leaders: they’re more likely to be satisfied with their advancement than leaders who haven’t (75 percent vs. 65 percent).
Projecting credibility is a critical competency, as it earns trust and respect among various stakeholders across the divides of distance and difference. Yet it’s only half the journey that emerging leaders must make to be candidates for global roles. Global leaders leverage the trust they’ve built to drive market success. In the next chapter, we’ll look at how they do that: how they unlock value across distance and difference, and how they win the buy-in of senior stakeholders to ensure that market-worthy ideas and cost-cutting solutions get implemented.
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