Cross-Cultural Leadership: How to Create People Alignment (Part 3)

Posted on May 28, 2012 by

Photo: Tuppys/Flickr (Creative Commons)

This series is about people alignment as a crucial competence for today’s leaders. Especially in a globalized world, where cross-cultural and multinational challenges are becoming more and more a normal part of the leader’s job. Successful leaders create people alignment and they do it by mastering three elements of alignment. In Part 1 I describe the first element: ‘personal alignment’. Part 2 describes the second element of people alignment: ‘team alignment’. In this Part 3 I highlight the third element: ‘organizational alignment’.

Why organizational alignment is important

Without having a sufficient level of personal alignment, leaders will experience difficulties with creating team alignment. Without having a sufficient level of leadership team alignment, leaders will experience difficulties with creating organizational alignment. A pitfall for executives is to believe that creating organizational alignment is primarily the domain of line-management. ‘The top should focus on strategy and financial targets, the execution and aligning the organization around the strategy is the job of line-managers.’ False! The 21st century’s business reality does not allow this.

The idea that senior leadership teams can stay out of sight in order to be able to focus their energy on the strategy (and believe that their team’s behavior will not trickle down into the organization) is a big mistake. In today’s fast evolving businesses, senior leaders play a crucial role in creating organizational alignment around vision and direction, focus, strategy, values, change execution, desired behavior, teamwork and cross-departmental collaboration. They interact actively with the organization on all levels. And this is even more important in multinational and cross-cultural environments where perceived cultural differences can enhance misalignment. Leadership teams who do not actively invest time in creating organizational alignment run the risk of getting disjointed from their organization, of not knowing anymore what is really going on, of not being aware of what the organization is expecting from them and not knowing how they are perceived by the organization.  The leadership team’s ability to create organizational alignment has a strong impact on the business’ success.

How leaders can spot a lack of organizational alignment

How can you spot lack of organizational alignment in general, and more particularly in cross-cultural environments? How to create your ‘leadership compass’ that guides you to potential weak spots in the organization’s alignment? The following questions might help you in building your compass:

  • What is the employees’ perception of me as leader? And of us as leadership team? Is it a consistent picture? How do cross-cultural aspects affect this picture? To what extend do we as leaders enhance this picture?
  • To what extend is our vision, strategy and focus really shared by our employees and managers? Do they show ownership? If not, what are they missing?
  • What is our corporate culture? Do we have one or multiple corporate cultures? Do we as leadership understand the culture(s) and the impact on our performance well enough? What do we do to support managers and employees to create cross-cultural effectiveness?
  • Do I know the concerns of managers and employees in the organization well enough? How do I listen to their concerns and ideas? What can I do to improve this? How can I create a closer communication loop without being perceived a micro-manager who is interfering with their responsibilities?
  • Do we know and understand well enough the obstacles that are hindering our managers and employees in the execution of our strategy? If not, why is this? What can I and we as leadership team do to remove these obstacles? How do we support them to be able to remove the obstacles themselves?
  • How good is our organization with collaboration cross-department, cross-division, cross-region? What are we missing? What can we as leaders do to stimulate this? How should we support/coach our managers with this?
  • Do we know the potential and talent of our people well enough? Do we know what qualities we specifically need to build our success? Are there cross-cultural differences in these qualities? Do our managers and employees know these qualities too? If not, how is this affecting our future as a company? How can we as leaders support people to develop and use their talent to build our future?
  • How do we share and transfer knowledge within the organization? How well do we take cross-cultural differences into consideration when we share? How well do I and we as leadership team share successes and openly show appreciation to teams and individuals in the organization? How good are we as organization in coaching/mentoring each other? What can we as leaders do to influence this positively?

 

How do you create alignment in cross-cultural environments? What is the level of alignment in your organization? What questions would you add to the list above? Please share your ideas and thoughts.

This post is a brief abstract based on my keynote called ‘Is Your Leadership Compass Pointing in the Right Direction?’, a condensed and energizing program designed for leaders who face the challenges of leading cross-cultural organizations and teams. If you would like to know more about this program don’t hesitate to contact us.

___________________

Aad is an international business advisor, business transformation expert, leadership team facilitator and executive coach. He works with executives and leadership teams of multinational companies and focuses specifically on four topics: ‘leading complex change’, ‘cross-cultural leadership’, ‘post-merger integration’, and ‘amplifying business performance’. Find out more about Aad and his services. Feel free to contact Aad for more information.

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Cross-Cultural Leadership: How to Create People Alignment (Part 2)

Posted on April 20, 2012 by

Photo: Tuppys/Flickr (Creative Commons)

In Part 1 of this series I wrote about the importance of people alignment as a crucial competence for today’s leaders. Especially in a globalized world, where cross-cultural and multinational challenges are becoming more and more a normal part of the leader’s job, leaders need to understand how to create people alignment. In Part 1 I also described how ‘personal alignment’ plays an important role when creating people alignment. This Part 2 is about another crucial element of people alignment: ‘team alignment’.

What does team alignment actually mean? For one thing, a truly aligned team shows behavior that goes further than just ‘liking each other’, ‘understanding our goals’, ‘having agreement on things’, and ‘behaving as a group’. When we are part of a really aligned team we have a different relationship to the decisions we take in the team: we own these decisions as if they were our own. And even more: we commit to having these decisions work. We go beyond taking decisions together; we commit ourselves to the execution of these decisions. Team alignment is a choice by each team member: when a decision is taken, I will align with it and go for it all the way. Team members behave as co-owners and as partners in achieving what they decided as a team. This is radically different from the ordinary team behavior we see in many teams. 

The leader’s ability to build real team alignment has a direct effect on the business’ success. This leadership competence has always distinguished great leaders from average leaders. And it has become even more crucial for today’s leaders of cross-cultural teams in multinational business environments.

What are specific team alignment challenges for leaders of cross-cultural teams? The most important is that cross-cultural teams often deal with perceived differences in cultural behavior and cultural values. These perceived cultural differences can create confusion and irritation that could seriously hinder the team’s openness and trust. Underestimating the impact of these perceptions will likely damage the team’s alignment and therefore the team’s performance and effectiveness. Also languages can play a role in creating unintended misunderstandings. Don’t underestimate what unequal proficiency can do to a team. And last but not least, openness is vital to creating team alignment, but the way we deal with openness can differ between cultures. In creating team alignment this plays an important role.

Successful leaders know when a team is not really aligned or when team alignment starts to decline. They pay special attention to (re) building it. They understand that team alignment is not a static situation, but a process that needs to be sustained and maintained.  

How can you spot potential lack of team alignment in cross-cultural environments? How to create your ‘leadership compass’ that guides you to you potential weak spots in your team’s alignment? The following questions might help you in building your compass:

  • How is the team doing? Do we know each other well enough? Do we understand each other’s ambitions, aspirations and concerns?
  • What is our mutual level of respect, openness, and trust? How do I encourage this as a leader?
  • Do we understand the cultural differences in our team? Do we share and discuss the perceived differences?
  • Do we discuss sensitive topics with each other or do we keep a safe distance? Do we openly share with each other when we feel certain team behavior or decisions are not in line with our individual values and ethics?
  • How do I share our company’s vision, values, and strategy with the team? How well is the team aligned with the vision, values, and strategy? Are there different interpretations around the table? Do I know these?
  • Do we tend to show agreement rather than alignment focus in our meetings? How do I stimulate alignment focus?
  • Are our meetings spending more time on information sharing and operational details than on driving accomplishments? How do I stimulate the latter?
  • Are we committed to each other’s success? How do I stimulate co-ownership?
  • What are the things I can do to increase the level of team alignment?

How do you create alignment in cross-cultural environments? What is the level of alignment in your team? What questions would you add to the list above? Please share your ideas and thoughts with me.

In Part 3 of this series I will talk about another important element of cross-cultural alignment: organizational alignment.

This post is a brief abstract based on my keynote called ‘Is Your Leadership Compass Pointing in the Right Direction?’, a condensed and energizing program designed for leaders who face the challenges of leading cross-cultural organizations and teams. If you would like to know more about this program don’t hesitate to contact me.

___________________

Aad is an international business advisor, business transformation expert, leadership team facilitator and executive coach. He works with executives and leadership teams of multinational companies and focuses specifically on four topics: ‘leading complex change’, ‘cross-cultural leadership’, ‘post-merger integration’, and ‘amplifying business performance’. Find out more about Aad and his services. Feel free to contact Aad for more information.

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Cross-Cultural Leadership: How to Create People Alignment (Part 1)

Posted on March 29, 2012 by

Photo: Tuppus/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Today’s and tomorrow’s leaders are more and more facing cross-cultural challenges caused by globalization, emerging economies and new markets. How to notice differences in cultures? How to understand their impact on people behavior and performance? How to avoid cross-cultural friction and conflict? How to lead people and teams with different cultural backgrounds? How to create successful collaboration and teamwork cross-border? Effectively dealing with cross-cultural challenges like these is rapidly becoming one of the key differentiators for effective leaders and successful companies.

The cross-cultural business environment is creating a fundamental mind shift: the ‘soft’ side of business (culture, people, teamwork, etc.) is turning out to be a very ‘hard’ element in creating business success. Mastering the essence of people alignment is a crucial competence for today’s leaders.

What differentiates leaders that master the essence of people alignment? Over the years I have worked with many leaders in many different cultures and I’ve identified two important elements in the behavior of successful leaders. First of all, they do not perceive creating people alignment as an activity next to all the other leadership activities, but it is on their mind in everything they do. Secondly, they understand that their ability to align people depends on the extent to which they create personal alignment with respect to the environment where they operate.

Personal alignment is about understanding yourself. It is about being in balance with the inter-cultural environment where you find yourself. It is about being able to explain and show others where you stand within this environment of cultural differences and why. It creates trust, transparency, and confidence. The impact of a lack of personal alignment on your leadership behavior and on the organization is direct and significant. Creating people alignment starts with having a sufficient level of personal alignment. Especially in cross-cultural environments personal alignment can be challenged easily. Successful leaders are aware when personal misalignment occurs, and they pay special attention to fixing it.

How can you spot potential areas of personal misalignment in cross-cultural environments? How to create your personal ‘leadership compass’ that guides you to potential weak spots in your personal alignment? The following questions might help you in building your compass:

  • What are my core qualities? How do I use these in my work as a leader? How do they fit the inter-cultural challenges that I face? How do they support my cross-cultural effectiveness?
  • What are my most important values that define who I am and how I act as a leader? How do I express these values as a leader? (Focus on the 3-5 most important values)
  • How do my values fit the company’s vision, mission, and strategy? Where do I feel misalignment?
  • How do my values fit the corporate culture and subcultures? What cross-cultural differences do I perceive? How do they make me feel? What is the effect on my behavior?
  • Do I understand the cross-cultural differences that I experience? How can I increase my understanding? How can I increase other’s understanding of my perception and observations?
  • What qualities do I want to improve or develop to increase my cross-cultural effectiveness? How could people in my environment support me with this (peers, colleagues, team members, mentors, coaches)?

How do you create alignment in cross-cultural environments? How is your level of personal alignment? What questions would you add to the list above? Share your ideas and thoughts and join us in the discussion.

In Part 2 of this series I will talk about a next important level of cross-cultural alignment: team alignment.

This post is a based on my keynote called ‘Is Your Leadership Compass Pointing in the Right Direction?’, a condensed and energizing program designed for leaders who face the challenges of leading cross-cultural organizations and teams. If you would like to know more about this program don’t hesitate to contact me.

___________________

Aad is an international business advisor, business transformation expert, leadership team facilitator and executive coach. He works with executives and leadership teams of multinational companies on topics like ‘leading complex change’, ‘cross-cultural leadership’, ‘post-merger integration’, and ‘amplifying business performance’. Find out more about Aad and his services. Feel free to contact Aad.

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Leading Multinational Companies: Three Significant Changes in the Role of Senior Leaders

Posted on February 28, 2012 by

Photo: Horia Varlan/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Today’s business environment is changing. A lot has been written in recent years about this change and its various aspects: globalization, emerging markets, different competitors, exponential rate of change, new technologies that change business models and market places, impact of social media, etc. It affects people and businesses worldwide, and surely also multinational companies. In working with multinational companies I see three specific changes that affect the role of its senior leaders. Three changes that require special attention and sometimes even a fundamental mind shift. Let me list these three changes in a condensed manner.

a)     A shift from management & control focus to alignment focus

In today’s business world it is clear that agility, resilience, flexibility to respond, ability to adapt, speed of defining and executing strategic priorities, are more important for the company’s success than ever before. It has become one of the main roles of senior leaders to enable the organization to adopt these qualities. Hierarchical, top-down oriented mechanisms of control and management need therefore to be adapted and complemented with new ways of collaboration and teamwork. New ways that enable managers, employees, and teams to exchange relevant information faster with each other; to let knowledge and competencies flow more easily cross-boarder between units, departments and functions; to detect issues and solutions quicker; to be more flexible in adjusting to new circumstances; to speed up execution of new methods, processes and procedures.

New ways of working that focus on creating alignment between people and teams rather than on managing and controlling activities. An alignment focus that shows its power especially when changes are taking place, pressure is up, frictions occur, and opinions and ideas about what should be done are diverge. Senior leaders play an important role in creating this ‘alignment culture’. They focus their energy for instance more on building mutual understanding than on ‘who is right and who is wrong’. They want to understand the reasoning of others before they draw conclusions. They pay attention to the people behind the tasks and to the way people and teams collaborate. They show alignment focus inside the C-suite and are therefore perceived as a strong leadership team. But they show it also outside the C-suite and they expect the same behavior from their managers and employees. They make it a strategic success factor for their company. Alignment focused companies have the ability to quickly incorporate new insights, circumstances and opinions, and to convert these into choices, decisions and effective execution (read more here about the characteristics of Alignment focus).

b)     Different and closer interaction between senior leaders and the rest of the organization

Not just more written communication or road shows, but more frequent and in-depth interaction with managers and teams within the organization. The key process from creating vision and defining strategy to implementing and monitoring execution has changed substantially. The organizational and market dynamics are changed in such a way that senior leaders can easily get disconnected from the company’s fundamental challenges and issues when they keep too much distance from the organization. In order to stay on top of their game they need to adjust their way of interacting with the organization.

Different interaction: by combining a traditional territorial focus (functional, business unit, geographical, etc.) with a focus on the informal cross-departmental networks and mechanisms that play an important role in the way the company operates. These networks and mechanisms are often less visible and can be important sources for success as well as for problems. Knowing and understanding these networks is becoming important for senior leaders in effectively handling today’s business complexity. This requires a change within the C-suite, where senior leaders sometimes tend to stay focused on their individual territories. Next to that a more integrated, cross-departmental orientation is needed to be able to better understand the organization and its informal networks and mechanisms. It allows senior leaders to interact with these networks or to stimulate networks deliberately, and to mobilize, share and transfer the benefits of the network to other parts of the organization (read more about dealing with informal networks).

Closer interaction: successful senior leaders create a flatter organization by having closer communication lines with managers and teams within the organization. They are more visible and accessible than they used to be. They actively carry out the vision and the company’s strategic focus and ask people for their ideas and concerns. They are aware of the power of leading by example and they coach their managers when needed (read more here about the coaching role of senior leaders).

c)      Shift from one-culture thinking to cross-cultural thinking

Emerging markets and economies have created a shift in the way companies deal with cross-cultural differences. Expansion to new countries and cultures is no longer a ‘West moving East’ operation; bringing our culture to you. It is more and more also the other way around. Many multinational companies are confronted on the one hand with market places that develop and become mature rapidly, and on the other hand with ambitious and self-confident competitors. This creates new challenges for its leadership. One challenge is to address the question ‘how well do we understand and align with the local culture / how do we create the acceptance of the local market?’ Another challenge is the influx of new members from other cultures in senior leadership teams. This all means that cross-cultural sensitivity, skills and effectiveness are vital assets for senior leaders in multinational companies.

Cross-cultural effectiveness is based on ‘reconciling and combining the best of both worlds’ rather than on thinking in terms of ‘one culture fits all’. It requires senior leaders to make it a top priority on their agenda: How well do we understand the local cultures in the markets in which we operate (read this interesting article about how to deal with local cultures)? How well do we understand the cross-cultural differences within our company? Or within the C-suite? What is the level of cross-cultural effectiveness of our managers? How well do we stimulate and support our managers to grow the necessary cross-cultural skills (read more here about how to deal with cross-cultural differences)?

What is your experience with leadership in multinational companies? How do you perceive these three trends? Do you see more changes? Feel free to comment below.

___________________

Aad is an international business advisor, change & business transformation expert, leadership team facilitator and executive coach. He works with senior executives and leadership teams of multinational companies on topics like ‘leading complex change’, ‘cross-cultural leadership’, ‘post-merger integration’, and ‘amplifying business performance’. Find out more about Aad and his services. Feel free to contact Aad.

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Leading Innovation: Why Executives Should Stimulate People to Make (Better) Mistakes

Posted on January 22, 2012 by
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Some while ago I was working with a senior executive team. The team was leading a global division and was facing a complex change that involved four continents. They organized a session together to align as a team on the … Continue reading →

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Leading Change in the 21st Century: 4 Myths About Cultural Change

Posted on January 6, 2012 by
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These days cultural change is a topic that is high on the agenda of many corporate executives. It looks like almost each change initiative within companies is linked to changing its culture. Many leaders proclaim that the ability to change/adjust … Continue reading →

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Cross-Cultural Leadership: How Misinterpretations of Dishonesty Can Destroy Team Alignment

Posted on December 17, 2011 by
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When leading change, for instance in post merger integrations, leadership teams are very often confronted with cross-cultural differences. These can be corporate or national culture differences. Not dealing with these cultural differences effectively can have a serious impact on leadership … Continue reading →

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Leading Change: Three Major Misconceptions That Hinder Innovation

Posted on November 16, 2011 by
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These days almost every organization is discussing the need for innovation. There is no CEO that talks with me about the company’s strategic drivers without mentioning ‘building more innovation power’. Every government is claiming innovation to be one of its … Continue reading →

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Amplifying Business Performance: Successful Leaders Approach Financial Growth Differently

Posted on October 23, 2011 by
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We all see significant economic changes taking place around us. The financial crisis, emerging markets, new technologies are putting their stamp on our economies, on market places, and on businesses. Organizations face changing circumstances that require different approaches. Yesterday’s success … Continue reading →

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Leading Change: What About the Coaching Skills of Senior Leaders?

Posted on September 27, 2011 by
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Senior leaders are confronted with an increasing rate of change and complexity and need to find ways to deal with it. Leading your company through change has become different from how it was ten to twenty years ago. Mobilizing employees, … Continue reading →

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Cross-Cultural Leadership: How Will China Influence The World?

Posted on August 30, 2011 by
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Recently I had the pleasure to travel around in China for a few weeks. Visiting a fair deal of the country, north and south, the big cities and a part of the country side. I came back with a truck … Continue reading →

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Leading Change: How Great Leaders Deal with Criticism

Posted on July 27, 2011 by
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We live in times of change. Shifting powers between West and East, technological evolutions, emerging countries and changing economic landscapes, financial systems that are under severe pressure, new innovative companies that change market places. As I described in an earlier … Continue reading →

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Leaders Who Create Alignment: Two Historical Examples

Posted on July 5, 2011 by
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Yesterday it was Independence Day – 4th of July. An important day for America. I was reading mails and tweets from American friends and got inspired by it to write this short piece. I am not American, but maybe my … Continue reading →

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Post Merger Integration: Cultural Alignment is a Prerequisite for Value Creation

Posted on June 26, 2011 by
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Post Merger Integration research over the past 15 years has shown that a great deal of mergers and acquisitions did not yield the desired value as was previously stated. Although success rates are difficult to compare, most surveys point to … Continue reading →

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Leading Change in the 21st Century: The Power of Letting Go

Posted on May 27, 2011 by
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The story goes that the hunters put an apple in a glass jar with a narrow opening and leave the jar deep into the jungle under a tree. In the evening the monkeys come out of the trees triggered by … Continue reading →

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