Source: Photo by Phearak Chamrien on Pexels
Publication Team
Editor-in-Chief
Fang Tze Chiang
Editor
Diana Marie Capel
Graphic Designers
Awang Ismail bin Awang Hambali
Abdul Rani Haji Adenan
Leader’s Digest is
with
From the Editorial Desk
Freedom. What is that?
For ages, humanity has embarked on a profound quest for freedom. The United Nations describes freedom as a right inherent to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status. These rights include the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work and education, and many more. Everyone is entitled to these rights without discrimination.
At the workplace, these include the basic right to work in just and favourable conditions, the right to social protection, to an adequate standard of living and to the highest attainable standards of physical and mental well-being, the right to education, and the enjoyment of the benefits of cultural freedom and scientific progress.
While independence in leadership can yield significant benefits, it also poses challenges. One of the primary concerns is maintaining alignment with the organisation’s overall vision and objectives, which requires careful management of autonomy to ensure consistency in company policies. Effective communication and continuous alignment are essential to mitigate these risks.
Freedom is the ability to choose how to spend your time and where to place your awareness. When freedom and choice are applied to employment, be it operational or leadership, they emphasise the critical truth that everyone can make their own choices and is responsible for their own decisions.
Implementing a leadership strategy that champions freedom requires a commitment to measuring outcomes and making necessary adjustments. This could involve regular feedback sessions, performance metrics tailored to independent working styles, and continuous training and development programmes. The adaptability of these strategies ensures that leadership remains effective and responsive to the evolving needs of the organisation.
Celebrating freedom in leadership is about more than just enhancing productivity or fostering innovation; it’s about creating a work environment that respects and values the individual contributions of each team member. By empowering employees and encouraging autonomy, leaders can unleash the full potential of their teams and pave the way for a more dynamic, responsive, and successful organisation. This celebration of freedom should inspire and motivate us all.
Inner and outer freedoms are the most ideal state for human beings. Each of us has the freedom to choose our own path.
WHY WOMEN HOLD THE KEY TO AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP
BY WILLIAM ARRUDA
How Women are Redefining the Leadership Landscape
In a world where change is accelerating, authentic leadership has emerged as an important leadership philosophy for future-focused organisations. At the heart of this, women leaders are proving to be the ideal torchbearers. Their innate qualities and distinctive perspectives are not just enriching leadership but are also setting a new benchmark for authenticity.
Of course, you can’t paint an entire gender with one brush, but data show that women excel in many of the competencies that are essential for effective authentic leadership. “An analysis of thousands of 360-degree reviews revealed that women outscored men on 17 of the 19 capabilities that differentiate excellent leaders from average or poor ones,” according to Harvard Business Review
Here are seven ways women are redefining leadership:
Pursuing Self-awareness
Self-awareness is the foundation of authentic leadership. Before being able to understand those around you, you must understand your own strengths, challenges, preferences, and biases. Self-awareness is the first step in Daniel Goleman’s emotional intelligence (EQ) model, the first phase of the personal branding process, and an essential attribute for building relationships. It is obtained through self-reflection and external feedback. Yet, despite women being 20% less likely to receive actionable feedback, according to Korn Ferry, ”Women are 86% more likely to display consistent and effective emotional self-awareness.”
Source: Image is from freepik.com by @pikisuperstar
2
Embracing Emotional Intelligence
Women often bring a high degree of emotional intelligence to the table. They are adept at reading the room, empathising with their colleagues, and responding to non-verbal cues. “Women are superior to men at decoding emotions,” according to the National Institutes of Health. Empathy is a strategic asset for women in leadership. By genuinely understanding and valuing the feelings of others, women leaders create a supportive environment that encourages risk-taking and innovation. This emotional acumen positions them to forge strong bonds and nurture a culture of trust and respect within their teams.
Prioritising Collaboration
The female approach to leadership often emphasises collaboration over competition. Women tend to build networks of cooperation that benefit the whole, understanding that a collective effort often results in greater success. Collaboration is essential to solving challenging problems and innovating at work. CEO/ founder of HR consulting firm, Chief of Minds, Lakeisha Robichaux shares one of her secrets to successful collaboration, “Celebrate the wins, challenges, and lessons learned. Often times, we get bogged down with only identifying wins, however, success and solutions can be found in every stage of collaboration.”
3 4 5 6 7
Communicating Effectively
Women excel in open and honest communication. Their leadership style is often inclusive and transparent, encouraging feedback and sharing information openly with the aim of empowering their teams. Women are better communicators than men, which can lead to an enhanced ability to connect with others, motivate and strengthen teams, and perhaps most importantly, become better leaders, according to a study featured in Harvard Business Review. Women leaders have a unique ability to be assertive without foregoing compassion. They can drive performance and demand excellence while also being supportive and understanding. And because women hold fewer senior leadership roles, they bring a different perspective to the discussion with peers. Women represent roughly only one in four C-suite leaders, according to LeanIn.org
Fostering Inclusivity and Belonging
A natural inclination towards inclusivity means women leaders are often champions of diversity. They work to ensure various voices are heard and acknowledged, paving the way for more innovative and inclusive decision-making processes. They build environments of belonging where team members feel heard and acknowledged. Belonging is a common value among most people, according to research from Valuegraphics.
Demonstrating Resilience
Women have a remarkable capacity for resilience, often built through overcoming personal and professional obstacles. This resilience is infectious and inspires teams to bounce back stronger from setbacks. Women were rated as excelling in “acting with resilience,” according to HBR.
Championing Growth
Women leaders are perpetual learners who value development and growth. They are often seen leading the charge for training and continuous improvement within their organisations. They recognise the power of guidance and are often passionate about mentoring others, fostering the next generation of leaders. One prominent women leader, civil rights activist, and suffragette Mary Church Terrell summed it up in this four-word challenge: Lift as you climb.
The key to authentic leadership lies not in commanding authority but in demonstrating genuine care for the organisation and its people. These traits are powerful tools that women use to unlock the true potential within their organisations. Women, with their nuanced approach to leadership, are setting a new standard that resonates with today’s talent and the needs of a rapidly evolving workplace.
This article was originally published in Forbes
WILLIAM ARRUDA
William Arruda is the bestselling author of the definitive books on personal branding: Digital YOU, Career Distinction and Ditch. Dare. Do! And he’s the creative energy behind Reach Personal Branding and CareerBlast.TV – two groundbreaking organizations committed to expanding the visibility, availability, and value of personal branding across the globe.
Perspective in Life and Leadership The Importance of
BY GREGG VANOUREK
Do things feel heavy and dense in your life right now?
Maybe you’re stressed out about a challenge at work, or a problem at home that’s got you off balance. Perhaps you lost your job, or lost a big account at the office. Maybe you’re struggling financially, or have health concerns in your family. Perhaps your team is struggling with performance and motivation.
It may feel like the world is closing in. In those moments, it’s hard to maintain perspective.
The Problem with Lacking Perspective
Feeling that way is understandable, but losing perspective can be a big problem—and even make things worse. How?
When you’re stressed, you tend to view things through negative filter, causing angst, resentment, and pessimism. And when you lack perspective you have a hard time determining the relative importance of things. (See my article, “How to Stop Catastrophizing—Managing Our Minds.”) That can cause you to let things get out of whack, leading to new problems down the road.
20 Benefits of Having Perspective
When you can put things in perspective, it means you can think about them in a reasonable and sensible way without making them better or worse than they are. Doing so has many benefits. For example, keeping things in perspective helps you:
1. assess the importance of things in their broader context
2. focus on what matters most
3. understand situations and other people’s viewpoints
4. keep anxiety and worries in check
5. understand things more clearly and accurately, thereby reducing mistakes
6. view things from different angles
7. see both positives and negatives
8. react intentionally and constructively instead of impulsively
9. maintain your objectivity
10. develop empathy and compassion for people instead of judging them
11. avoid unnecessary conflicts
12. improve your relationships
13. forgive people instead of holding onto counterproductive grudges
14. learn from experience
15. discover new ways to view your problems
16. develop your resilience
17. grow as a person and leader, in part by seeing how you can transcend your current limitations
18. appreciate what you have
19. live intentionally and according to your core values and vision of the good life
20. maintain your happiness and wellbeing
The Importance of Perspective for Leaders
Maintaining perspective is also important for leaders, in part because they face so many challenges.
Part of the job of a leader is finding problems in and discovering ways to get them solved. Encountering problems can feel overwhelming if you don’t have the ability to rise above them and see the big picture.
One of the things leaders have to be good at is perspective. Leaders don’t necessarily have to invent ideas, but they have to be able to put them in context and add perspective. -John Sculley, businessman, entrepreneur, and investor
Adaptive leadership is a modern leadership framework focused on how leaders can prepare and encourage people to deal with changing environments that are beyond the technical capacity of people to solve with straightforward solutions or the normal way of doing things.
Instead of trying to be the hero and solve everything, adaptive leaders motivate the people in the organisation to face their difficult situations and adapt to the challenges they face together. They recognise, as Harvard leadership scholar Ronald Heifetz says, that “The work is through the people.”
One of the keys for leaders, according to Heifetz, is for them to “get on the balcony.” He explains:
“ “
To diagnose a system or yourself while in the midst of action requires the ability to achieve some distance from those on-theground events. We use the metaphor of ‘getting on the balcony’ above the ‘dance floor’ to depict what it means to gain the distanced perspective you need to see what is really happening.
-Ron Heifetz, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership
The idea is for leaders to maintain both sharp focus and broad comprehension at the same time. This will help them understand the situation, the challenges, and the people. Meanwhile, leaders must reframe their view of conflict, seeing it not as a problem to be avoided but rather as an opportunity for learning, growth, and advancement. Doing so requires perspective.
How to Maintain Perspective
How can you maintain perspective when it feels like things are spinning out of control? Here are 12 ways to do so:
1. Read. One of the best ways to develop and maintain perspective is to read a lot, including classics of philosophy and literature as well as religious or spiritual texts.
2. Project forward. Think ahead five or ten years and imagine looking back on your current situation. That can help you see it in the larger sweep of your life so you don’t blow it out of proportion.
3. Talk things through. Lean on family, trusted friends, colleagues, a mentor, or a small group That way, you can connect with others about what’s going on and hear their views on things. You’re also wise to talk to people from different vantage points (e.g., age, gender, culture, circumstances, history).
4. Distance yourself from the situation. You can do that conceptually, by looking at it from another person’s perspective (e.g., if you’re struggling financially, consider your challenges from the vantage point of someone with far fewer resources than you). Or you can do it physically, by changing your scenery. Often, removing yourself from the situation helps in ways big and small.
5. Do a reality check. Keep in mind that bad things happen to all of us, and that’s okay. It’s the nature of life. Be clear about what you can and can’t control.
6. Recall your capabilities. Think of times when you’ve overcome challenges in the past. Why shouldn’t this time be any different?
7. Start working on solutions instead of worrying so much about problems. With small but steady steps, you’ll start to see that your problems are probably more manageable than you thought initially.
8. Get out into nature. Go on a hike. Get out on a lake or into a forest. Feel the sun on your face and breathe in the air while taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of our bustling world. Contemplate the vastness of the cosmos and observe the intricate mesh of nature and life with reverence and awe
They will forget the rush and strain of all the other weeks of the year, and for a short time at least, the days will be good for their bodies and good for their souls. Once more they will lay hold of the perspective that comes to those who every morning and every night can lift their eyes up to Mother Nature.
-Theodore Roosevelt, conservationist, naturalist, and former U.S. president
9. Be grateful for what you have. Pausing to think of all the blessings in your life can help you avoid excess negativity and keep the positive things in your life front and centre in your thoughts.
10. Meditate. With a meditation practice, you can train your mind to be more present, focused, and still, with a calm and clear awareness of the present moment. That can help you avoid anxious reactions to life’s vicissitudes.
11. Pray and attend religious services. Prayer can help you tune into a divine perspective. Attending religious services can connect you with ancient scriptures and teachings—and the importance of viewing life from a sacred perspective.
12. Contemplate your death. Engage in the ancient practice of memento mori, which is Latin for remembering that you will die. In many ways, death can be the ultimate purveyor of perspective. It can help you see trivial things for what they are. And it can help you face up to the fact that much of what you worry about isn’t so important after all.
Conclusion
Ultimately, when you maintain perspective you’re able to weather storms better and keep your focus on what’s most important. Getting good at having and keeping perspective will serve you very well in life and leadership.
Postscript: Inspirations on Perspective
“Plan with your whole life in mind.”
-Aristotle, ancient Greek philosopher
“Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone—those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river…. Nothing is stable, not even what’s right here…. You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German poet, novelist, and scientist
“It is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.”
-George Eliot, Middlemarch
“Some things are just plain more important than others; in fact, some things are so important—your life, your health, your family—that others are trivial by comparison.”
-Stephen R. Covey, Primary Greatness: The 12 Levers of Success
“As you look back on your life, you may realise that the things that mattered most were too often at the mercy of things that mattered least… that you were terrorised by the tyranny of urgency, and that you enjoyed very little creative freedom….
How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and, keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most.”
-Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
““Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilisation, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.”
-Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
This article was first published on greggvanourek.com
GREGG VANOUREK
Gregg Vanourek is an executive, changemaker, and awardwinning author who trains, teaches, and speaks on leadership, entrepreneurship, and life and work design. He runs Gregg Vanourek LLC, a training venture focused on leading self, leading others, and leading change. Gregg is co-author of three books, including Triple Crown Leadership (a winner of the International Book Awards) and LIFE Entrepreneurs (a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose and passion).
Is Your Culture Hindering Progress?
BY MICHELLE GIBBINGS
Building a Resilient Culture: Strategies for Long-Term Organisational Success
According to PWC’s annual Global CEO survey, 45% of CEOs believe their organisation won’t be viable in ten years if they stay on their current path.
The pressure to keep up, perform, outperform and reinvent what you do and how you do it is neverending.
In this race to succeed, it’s imperative to consider whether your organisation’s culture is helping or hindering this process.
Culture Influences Quickly
When you enter a new work environment, you quickly learn the accepted way to behave. Behaviour that does not align (or appears to not align) with the so-called ‘accepted culture’ can be shunned and ridiculed. We see this at play in the animal kingdom as well.
In the early 1970s, a primatologist – Hans Kummer –worked in Ethiopia with two baboon species. The first species were Savanna baboons, which lived in large troops. The other species were Hamadryas baboons, which had a more complex and multi-level society.
When confronted with a threatening male, the females from the two species reacted differently: a Hamadryas baboon placated the male by approaching him, whereas a Savanna baboon would run away to avoid injury.
Kummer took a female from each group and released them into the other tribe in his experiment. He found that initially, the two females carried out their speciestypical behaviour. But, the socialisation to the accepted way of behaving was swift, around an hour.
Source: Image by master1305 on Freepik
While the workplace differs from the jungle (or so we hope), and we are another species, there’s no doubt that this process of what I term ‘culturalisation’ happens frequently and fast.
As tribal creatures, sadly, we quickly categorise people who don’t conform to what we deem as the accepted way of behaving. We send signals – sometimes subtly and other times explicitly – to express our thoughts about the person’s behaviour. So much so that, over time, they learn how they need to show up and what they must do to ‘fit in’ and be part of the culture. This organic approach to culture isn’t good for them, you or the workplace.
The problem with letting organisational culture grow organically is that it doesn’t create a workplace based on belonging – where people are valued for their uniqueness and different needs are accepted.
Belonging Matters
As tribal creatures, we are genetically wired to be part of a group. To survive, we need to feel like we belong, and being part of a team is good for us. It can also motivate us to go beyond what we think is possible.
In his book Emotional Success, American Psychologist Professor David DeSteno explains how being part of a team – even a team made up of strangers – can lead people to persevere longer than when they weren’t part of a team.
He recounts a study by Stanford psychologists Gregory Walton and Geoffrey Cohen, who researched how being part of a team impacted perseverance. In their research, they used students as the study participants. David wrote, “Knowing they (the students) were part of something – having a goal that they knew was shared by a group and to which they could contribute and be valued – pushed people to work hard and resist immediate pleasures”.
Teams are created on the premise that we can achieve more together than alone. I’ve frequently seen how one person’s ideas are improved by another and how
we generate, debate, and secure our best ideas when we are in a group. Often, it’s when we come together that we perform our best.
When you reflect on the past years and ask people what they miss about work, it’s not the commute or the need to get dressed up to go into the office. What they miss are the connections and interactions—the banter, the laughs, the conversations with their friends at work, and the opportunity to come together and create, design, and debate ideas.
Bringing belonging and meaning to your work matters, so paying attention to how your team forms and connects is critical. You want to consciously create the culture that enables you and your team to be their best.
Good Culture is Deliberate
Organisational culture is the collective patterns of behaviour of people at work.
One of the world’s leading culture experts, Edgar Schein, defines it as: “Culture is a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think and feel in relation to those problems”.
Having an effective culture takes time and effort. It starts with identifying the current state and detailing the desired future state. From there, you can determine the gap and institute the steps to secure the optimal team culture.
Remember, when you are immersed in an organisation’s culture, you can easily overlook its negative impacts because, for you, it’s just ‘the way things are done around here’.
It’s essential, therefore, to dig into the culture and be open to seeing and hearing from your colleagues and team members as to what’s working and not working.
Build Daily Habits
Changing culture doesn’t happen overnight. It is built slowly over time. Consequently, your action plan needs to focus on the long term, and you will want to have activities continuously happening. The best progress is secured when you are deliberate and consistent.
In team meetings, you can use reflective practices to identify where and how they have progressed. Also, establish core rituals in the team where team members are encouraged to focus on what they can do for others and share learnings, opportunities, and challenges.
A crucial part of this is cultivating an environment where relationships matter. To make this happen, embrace the opportunity to lead by example. For example, engage with team members and colleagues, find genuine ways to connect, and devote time to strengthening and building relationships every day.
Above all else, make the connections at work meaningful and help your team find meaning in their work.
As part of this, embrace and value the team’s diversity. Sure, you want connection, but you don’t want to lose the benefits of your team members’ different perspectives and backgrounds. Research shows that organisations with greater leadership diversity are more than twice as likely to outperform their competitors.
Work with Strengths
People are more engaged at work and more motivated to do their best when using their strengths.
Over the last 30 years, research has shown that a strengths-based approach leads to greater work satisfaction, engagement, and productivity. In their book, Strengths Based Leadership, Tom Rath and Barry Conchie detail how working with strengths helps leaders be more productive.
Leaders are crucial in bringing strengths to life – for themselves and their team members. It starts with the leader understanding their strengths and using them at work.
The next step is for the leader to help their team members appreciate the strengths they bring to their role and recognise and value their colleagues’ strengths too.
When your team uses their strengths, individually and collectively, it contributes to a sense of progress, elevates connection, and positively impacts the team’s culture.
Think Long-Term, not Short-Term
The working world is challenging for many people on many fronts. So, as you focus on building your team’s connection and elevating its culture, recognise the emotional load that your team members may be carrying.
You want to encourage your team members to manage their energy and to give themselves time to rest, reflect and recharge.
To make sustained progress and have a healthy and thriving culture, you will want to ensure your and your team members’ health and well-being come along for the ride.
This was first published on michellegibbings.com
MICHELLE GIBBINGS
Michelle Gibbings is a workplace expert and the award-winning author of three books. Her latest book is ‘Bad Boss: What to do if you work for one, manage one or are one’.
From Misunderstanding to Mastery: Four Dimensions to Transform Your Cross Cultural Leadership
BY KARIN HURT,DAVID DYE
CROSS CULTURAL LEADERSHIP TO BUILD BETTER TEAMS
Cross cultural leadership is a fantastic chance to broaden your impact and develop teams that excel in performance and innovative problem-solving. You can achieve these outcomes when you recognise the challenges and focus on four dimensions of team collaboration.
THAT WASN’T A COMPLIMENT
Early in my (David’s) career, I worked in a very culturally diverse organisation. A few months into my work there, a man named Jack took me aside and said, “David, I noticed that when you come into our all-hands meeting, you walk straight up to the front row, sit down, open your notebook and are ready to take notes.”
Happy that he’d seen my focus and preparation, I answered, “Jack, thanks for noticing.”
He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Brother, that wasn’t a compliment.”
Jack explained that when I entered the room and sat down, focused on the meeting and the work, I was not greeting my colleagues and engaging in pre-meeting
conversations. “To us,” he explained, “that comes across as either you don’t like us or you think you’re better than us. And I don’t think that either of those is true — I just don’t think you know any better, so I wanted to tell you.”
It was an early lesson in cross cultural leadership, and I am so grateful for Jack having that conversation with me.
CROSS CULTURAL LEADERSHIP CHALLENGES
Recently, we were working in the Philippines when a leader asked me (Karin) how to help their team speak up with ideas or identify problems and potential solutions. The heart of their question was a cross cultural leadership challenge. Their team is from a culture that prioritises respect for elders and authority figures and minimizes direct confrontation or criticism.
We’ve had many leaders, managers and clients around the world approach us with different cross cultural leadership challenges, including:
• “In my culture, we need sound and music to do our best, but my office is silent as a graveyard. It’s so depressing and hard to feel energy for anything.”
Source: Image by Freepik
• “I don’t “care” or want to be friends with my team. Culturally, this does not work for me.” (This leader WAS invested in her team’s success—the words “care” and “friend” meant something different for her than they do for others.)
• “In my culture, when someone offers you a favour or food, you decline. They offer again, you decline. They offer again, and then it is polite to accept. But in this country, I must be rude and say ‘yes’ the first time or they stop asking.”
• “When I ask the team for status updates, they tell me everything is good, even when I know it can’t possibly be going well.”
These are just a few examples of the many cross cultural leadership challenges you might face.
THE PRICE OF CROSS CULTURAL CONFLICT
There are so many benefits to leading a cross cultural team (better problem solving and performance are just two examples), but failing to lead intentionally can also cause serious problems, including:
1
Erosion of Trust and Respect
Ignoring cross-cultural challenges can lead to a significant erosion of trust within a team, as team members may feel the team undervalues or misunderstand their backgrounds and perspectives. This erosion of trust undermines team cohesion and can significantly affect morale and productivity.
2
Reduced Innovation and Creativity
A failure to address cross-cultural leadership challenges stifles the creative potential of a team. When team members from various cultural backgrounds don’t feel included or understood, they are less likely to contribute their unique insights and ideas, leading to a homogenisation of thought that can stifle innovation and limit problem-solving capabilities.
3
Increased Conflict and Miscommunication
Cross-cultural challenges often manifest in misunderstandings and misinterpretations, which can escalate into conflicts and ultimately lead to a toxic work environment.
4
Reduced Global Competitiveness
Failing to address cross-cultural challenges compromises your ability to operate effectively across different markets. You can struggle to attract talent, collaborate with partners, and serve your customers.
FOUR DIMENSIONS OF CROSS CULTURAL LEADERSHIP
There are four dimensions of team collaboration that will help you lead cross culturally and bring out the best from your team.
We know one another as human beings. 1
CONNECTION
Leadership is a relationship, and that’s never truer than when you lead a team of people from different cultures—especially when their culture is different from your own.
Building that relational knowledge for yourself and everyone on your team will help prevent misunderstandings and give you a platform to bring out the best in your team.
There are many ways to build cross cultural connection, but you don’t want to leave it to chance. People will certainly learn about one another slowly over time, but why wait?
Facilitate sharing and model with your listening and learning. The time you invest up front to help a crosscultural team connect and understand one another will pay huge returns in saved time and innovation. Here are a few activities you can incorporate into your meetings to help build connection (these should be shared activities where everyone can participate, with you leading by example—avoid pressuring one person to educate a group about their culture):
• How do you… – Invite your team to pick a different subject from time to time – for example: How do you offer to do someone a favour or food? Politely say “no”? Celebrate birthdays?
• Colourful metaphors – Invite team members to think of a fun or colorful metaphor, cliché, proverb, or saying that they grew up with and then explain its meaning. (A favourite of ours we learned from our Swiss clients is “Put the fish on the table.” It means “have the conversation about the uncomfortable subject.”)
• Myth-busting – Invite team members to share one myth or stereotype that they believe people sometimes think about their culture. Then they ‘bust the myth’ by clarifying the reality as they know it.
After connection, curiosity is a vital dimension of cross cultural leadership. An attitude of learning, flexibility, and ability to look at issues from different perspectives will help you bring your team together. This means approaching your leadership and coaching with questions and seeking genuine understanding.
One of the most important aspects of leading with curiosity is to avoid judging and instead ask, “How can we?”
For example, you might be tempted to judge a team that prizes respect for authority and think, “They won’t ever tell me the truth and I can’t count on them.” That attitude limits your creativity and automatically puts you in opposition to your team.
Instead, asking a “How can we?” question will help you reframe the challenges your team faces.
One practical application is to ask, “How can we reframe this issue in terms that support, rather than erode, cultural norms?” For example, if you have a team member who prizes peaceful coexistence or deference to authority and doesn’t speak up with problems they observe, you can reframe the issue as one of peace or respect for authority. For example:
“In our team, the best way to create peace or to show respect for your teammates or leader is to bring up issues which can cause us harm.”
Clarity
As you build connections and learn one another’s styles and cultural preferences, the next dimension to help you lead a cross cultural team is clarity.
Specifically, you want to invest in clarity about the culture of this team or organisation. This is an open discussion about the norms and ways in which the team will operate. The goal is to define (and continually redefine) a shared culture.
This starts with your mission and values. What are you here to do? How will you commit to doing that work with one another? Two of the most important clarity conversations you can have about values are:
• “What does this look like in practice?”
• “What do we do when these values conflict with one another?”
Ask these two questions regularly. Share your own stories. Occasionally, invite other leaders or executives to share their stories and examples. If culture is “what people like us do,” then story-telling is the engine that drives your team’s culture.
Commitment
We have a clear agreement. 4
The final dimension of your cross cultural leadership is to make it all happen. Commitment is the alchemy that transforms the Connection, Curiosity, and Clarity into performance. There are three aspects of commitment that will carry your team to new heights.
Practice
It takes time to build a new culture, to incorporate our understanding and new relationships, and to learn how to reframe cultural values for team performance. You will have missteps and misunderstandings. Use these as opportunities to circle back to connection and curiosity and build new clarity. Practice your team norms and values when the stakes are low.
Celebrate
As you build a new culture together, watch for moments of commitment. When someone recognises their teammate’s values, celebrate. When a normally silent teammate raises their hand, encourage them. Build in time to “look down the mountain” and see how far you’ve come as a team – what understanding do you take for granted now that was very different ten months ago?
Use Yourself for Accountability
Often, one of the more challenging aspects of cross cultural leadership is building a culture of accountability. And one of the most effective ways to create the psychological safety and model what success looks like is to use yourself as the subject of accountability.
For example, when you don’t follow through on your word (even if it’s for a justifiable reason), and someone mentions it, stop everything and celebrate. That’s a huge moment and exactly what needs to happen! And if no one says anything, ask your team if they noticed your dropped ball, and use it as a moment to invite their accountability. You can even use the moment to practice using the specific words. For example, “I noticed that we don’t have what you mentioned.”
When you help people practice accountability ON you and celebrate when they do, you make it safe for everyone to learn, grow, and practice accountability with each other.
YOUR TURN
Cross cultural leadership is a wonderful opportunity to expand your influence and build higher performing teams who solve problems creatively. You’ll get these results when you invest in Connection, Curiosity, Clarity, and Commitment.
And, we’d love to hear from you—what’s one of your most effective approaches for leading diverse teams and helping everyone succeed together?
This article was first published on Let’s Grow Leaders
KARIN HURT
Karin Hurt helps human-centered leaders find clarity in uncertainty, drive innovation, and achieve breakthrough results. She’s the founder and CEO of Let’s Grow Leaders, an international leadership development and training firm known for practical tools and leadership development programs that stick, and the author of four books including Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of MicroInnovators, Problem Solvers and Customer Advocates.
DAVID DYE
David Dye helps human-centered leaders find clarity in uncertainty, drive innovation, and achieve breakthrough results. He’s the President of Let’s Grow Leaders, an international leadership development and training firm known for practical tools and leadership development programs that stick. He’s the author of several books including Courageous Cultures and is the host of the popular podcast Leadership without Losing Your Soul.
Source: Image by Freepik
Redefining Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Malaysia: A Shifting Landscape
BY LIZA LIEW
Where Do DEI Practices Stand in Malaysia?
Yesterday marked the start of my 5th year with LeadWomen and having the space change from Diversity and Inclusion --> Inclusion and Diversity --> Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (some cases, Belonging), it is time I reflect on the journey so far.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (“DEI”) - the three new buzzwords since ESG. What does it mean exactly? Is it another thing companies need to report on? Is it another awareness campaign and roadshow that is the new HR KPI?
The past two weeks has had me involved in different levels of discussion on “DEI” that got me really reflecting on what we mean when we say “DEI is good for business”, especially in Asia or South East Asia as we are seeing all sorts of backlash, burnout, divestment, de-prioritisation of this in the Western part of the world. Since most of the multi-nationals here with Western HQs are operating on their directive to push for DEI, are we at the beginning of the end? If so, that will put me out of a job very soon.
Call me an optimist but I think DEI is taking a life of its own here in Malaysia and the region, regardless of what’s happening on the other side.
But first, the bad..
Advocating for Equality at Work is not a walk in the park. As good-natured, purpose-driven and intentional
the cause is, money money money will always come first.
This is why all the research is focused on identifying the ROI and putting a monetary value to the impact - but how does one even begin to quantify sense of belonging and relating it to productivity?
The voice in my head shouts “Maybe let’s not see money as the main objective!” Like how Bhutan measures their country’s growth based on wellbeing rather than money. Can organisations operate on purpose and people first, profit later?
If not, then DEI will continue to be a numbers game, constantly answering the question “Lets build inclusion to drive profitability” when ideally it should be “Lets build inclusion so everyone enjoys coming to work”.
So when the value of DEI no longer fits into the profit-chasing strategy, it gets boxed into events and celebrations, mentioned only every March 8 on International Women’s Day or during the multiple ethnic or religious celebrations here in Malaysia. It can happen and has happened.
There have been sessions where I knew we were coming in to just be a tick the box in the company’s sustainability report. You can usually tell when it is a last-minute request and often done pro-bono (because there’s no budget). We tell ourselves ‘it’s a foot in the door’ but often times, the door tends to shut very hard on the foot after the session.
The rays of hope
With all the tough days, there are really good ones. My favourite engagements usually involve two main things: challenging questions and vulnerable sharing where you see true DEI in action - where we all come together to talk about what it means to be a human in this modern world. Where we get asked “how can one support LGBTQ when it is criminalised and condemned in certain cultures?” “why aren’t men more involved in the DEI space?” “how do I speak up when I see acts of discrimination and bullying” and when we get feedback like “i never have seen it in that way before” “it doesn’t work here but maybe we can do XYZ..” “I never knew this about myself and how I interact with others”
It’s sessions when you know you hit home with the narrative, where they see how their actions (or inactions) enable the suffering of others, and you know they walk away aiming to do better tomorrow. To get them to understand that DEI is not about doing it perfectly for one group, it is about doing something so everyone can benefit.
It is also the community and relationships that I’ve built over the years showed me that there are leaders out there who are trying to make things better for everyone. That embracing and institutionalising DEI is possible - but it takes a village and is a marathon.
As someone who loves social psychology, the past 5 years has been a long field research to understand whether or not DEI can be done.
In the DEI space, we say that there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach but I’ve seen that the most successful and sustainable practices typically involve these few things:
1. Leadership Buy-In & Commitment (from middle management to board)
Communication across all levels needs to happen to close the ‘purpose gap’ between top and middle management. Frustration tends to happen when employees see their senior leaders make public commitments about DEI and yet when it comes to getting approvals to run initiatives, attend training, it gets blocked by their upline as ‘it is not businesscentric’ or ‘it takes time away from business’.
2. Purpose-led approach
Every initiative that is introduced and executed has to align to your organisation’s reason of being (aka your purpose). Is it making financial services accessible to all? Then your internal initiatives needs to lead with that purpose in mind. It also helps with getting buy-in at all levels (see #1).
3. Cross-functional teams
DEI should not just sit with HR - ownership needs to sit at a strategic level for it to be sustainable. It also makes it easier to institutionalise DEI across the board so it doesn’t just get seen as an ‘employee engagement activity’ but more of the way you conduct your business. Again, it makes it easier when it is aligned with your purpose (see #2).
4. Data, data, data
What gets measured gets managed right? Find out as much as possible about the acceptability and maturity level of DEI in your workplace. Do you measure inclusion and belonging in your employee engagement surveys? Do you track recruitment, promotion and attrition rates at every level for the key groups you’d like to focus on? Just like any environmental-related campaigns, having baseline data on your DEI stats helps you to track progress and identify areas to prioritise. Note: Saying you have achieved gender equality just because of high % of women in your workforce and board is not enough - dig deeper, what’s your pay equity? How many of them feel safe at work?
So will it sustain here in Malaysia?
It can but we need to first agree and align on the few things below:
1. That what DEI means here is very different from the West - so we need to take ownership of what we want it to mean here (regardless if you are in an multinational corporation, government linked companies, public limited company)
2. DEI is not a zero-sum game, we are not removing access and privilege of the others by trying to include those who are different from us.
3. DEI is about our people and whether or not our process is fair to all.
Malaysia being one of the more diverse nations out there, if our workplaces can truly be inclusive for allwouldn’t our private sector and economy be booming since EVERYONE can contribute their best to the nation? Not to sound too government-linked but isn’t that the spirit of MADANI?
It has been an interesting journey so far and I’m looking forward to see how the space continues to evolve.
This article was also published in Liza Liew’s LinkedIn
LIZA LIEW
Liza Liew is an equality at work advocate, an aspiring writer, and a tech enthusiast, dedicated to helping women reach their full leadership potential while creating safe, equitable, and inclusive workplaces. In her spare time, she enjoys brewing her own kombucha and writing about the challenges of transitioning into adulthood and maintaining mental health.
