This article is by Erin Meyer, a professor at INSEAD business school and the author of The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business.
When you visit the headquarters of Heineken, in Amsterdam, you find a lot of tall blond Dutch people, and also a lot of Mexicans. In 2010 Heineken purchased a big operation in Monterrey, Mexico, and now a large number of head-office employees come from there.
Among them is Carlos Gomez, who described his experiences since moving to Amsterdam. “It is absolutely incredible to manage Dutch people, and nothing like my experience leading Mexican teams,” he said, “because from my experience the Dutch do not care at all who is the boss in the room.”
The degree of respect we show to authority is deeply rooted in the culture we are raised in. We begin as young children learning how much deference we should show to an older sibling, a parent, a teacher. Later, in business, these same ideas affect how we view our relationships with our bosses and subordinates.
Gomez learned to lead in a culture where deference to authority is relatively high. He found it both confusing and challenging to lead a team where the boss is seen as just one of the guys. The Netherlands is one of the most egalitarian cultures in the world. Gomez explained:
I will schedule a meeting in order to roll out a new process, and during the meeting my team starts challenging the process, taking the meeting in various unexpected directions, ignoring my process altogether, and paying no attention to the fact that they work for me. Sometimes I just watch them astounded. But often I just feel like getting down on my knees and pleading with them, “Dear colleagues, in case you have forgotten I . . . am . . . the boss.”
Geert Hofstede, one of the first researchers to examine what good leadership looks like in different countries, coined the term “power distance” and defined it as “the extent to which the less powerful members of organizations accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.” As subsequent researchers have explored and researched this topic, we have looked at questions such as:
- How much respect or deference is shown to an authority figure in a given culture?
- If you want to communicate a message to someone two levels above or below you, do you go through the hierarchical chain?
- When you are the boss, what gives you your aura of authority?
The answers to these questions vary dramatically by country. One of my INSEAD colleagues, Prof. André Laurent, polled hundreds of managers worldwide, asking, “Is it important for a manager to have at hand answers for most of the questions subordinates may raise about their work?” Some 45% percent of Japanese claimed that was important, while only 7% of Swedes did.
One Swedish manager commented, “Even if I know the answer, I probably won’t give it to my staff . . . because I want them to figure it out for themselves.” Conversely, one Japanese said, “I would try not to ask my boss a question unless I was pretty sure he knew the answer.”
Most East Asian countries are high-power-distance cultures. One of the many reasons for this is the influence of Confucianism. Confucius believed that mankind would harmonize with the universe if everyone understood their role in society and behaved accordingly. He devised a system of interdependent relationships, in which lower obeys higher and those who are higher protect and mentor the lower.
To understand many East Asian hierarchies, you must think not just about a lower level person’s responsibility to follow, but also about a higher person's responsibility (whether father, boss, or elder) to protect and care for those lower down (whether sons, staff, or youth). Although Confucius has been dead for millennia, anyone leading a team in China can benefit from understanding these principles.
During a research project I conducted with my colleague Elsie Shen, we interviewed Steve Henning, an Australian who had lived in China for many years. “In China, the boss is always right,” Henning reflected, “and even when the boss is very wrong, he is still right.” Gradually he had learned to understand and respect this system of reciprocal obligations. “Your team may follow your instructions to the letter, but in return you must understand your role to coach and take care of them,” he explained.
In a hierarchical culture, protect your subordinates and mentor them, always look out for their interests, and you may reap many rewards. As Henning put it, “There is great beauty in giving a clear instruction and watching your competent and enthusiastic team willingly attack the project without challenging you every step of the way.”
In today’s global business environment it is not enough to be either a low-power-distance leader or a high-power-distance leader. You may find yourself leading a team with both Dutch and Chinese employees (as well as Italians, Swedes, and Mexicans). You need to develop the flexibility to manage up and down the cultural scale. Often this means going back to square one. It means watching what makes local leaders successful. It means frequently explaining your own style. It may even mean learning to laugh at yourself. But ultimately it means learning to lead in different ways in order to motivate and mobilize groups that follow in different ways from the folks back home.
