Turning Challenges Into Advantages
Global consultants are looking beyond the spectrum of the traditional cultural dimensions developed by Geert Hofstede, Fons Trompenaars and other well-known intercultural business researchers. They are practicing new trends as they craft solutions to help turn global customers’ vital challenges into competitive advantages. Sreemathi Ramnath, an intercultural training consultant and intercultures’ partner and representative in India under the name of “Vantena” (Telugu for “bridge”), is one of them. She has been invited as a key intercultures consultant to help roll out a global leadership development training for a leading global technology provider that spans the world with locations in 32 countries. Delivery of the program began in 2013, dates are scheduled for 2014, and additional customer locations have expressed interest in participating in the program.
Understanding Leadership in India
The assessment that Sreemathi offers is clear: Leadership in India is complicated. Referring to the cultural dimension of egalitarianism and hierarchy, Sreemathi states:
A “common misunderstanding across the world currently [about leadership in India] is that the leaders are obviously, visibly hierarchy-conscious and they throw their weight about. Much has changed [since the 1990s] when Indians were involved in only manufacturing.” She notes that this has changed the culture of customer service provided by Indian service providers; that the tone of communication between colleagues is now “first name, back-slapping, familiar.” However, “neither [notion]…is true…and that’s what makes it very complex. Today we [in India] are no more occupying an extreme position on the continuum of egalitarianism or hierarchical but are somewhere in the middle. There are spikes in the behavior. The unpredictability of these spikes makes it very challenging. Visibly it is egalitarian, and suddenly it is…coming from hierarchical paradigm…[T]he challenge is that we are living in a transition period. Deep down still the hierarchical version is very much more valid than egalitarian.”
Global Business Culture
Sreemathi is an Indian national, is Chennai-based and works worldwide. She has served as a professional in the field for nearly a decade. When asked if she would describe herself as a leader, she responded: “I would think that I’m in a position where I’m leading change. Any trainer is a change agent and that’s why they are hired.”
Indeed, leadership development and change management are emerging lenses through which global consultants are working to affect change. The work of training emerging global business leaders represents a change process beyond the borders of national cultures and the customer’s organization. Global business culture is the new landscape upon which intercultural business practice is being mapped.
The Global Leadership Development Program
After programs in Beijing and Singapore, in January 2014, Sreemathi will co-lead a continuation of the global leadership development program in Gurgaon, India.
The macro objective in the global leadership development program is to re-train the customer’s top talent to operate from an ethno-relative approach. In other words, the goal is to facilitate a shift in the paradigm from which employees communicate, understand and collaborate with colleagues worldwide. The agenda for the program is to “develop top talent [to] be effective in a cross-cultural context; fortify the regional—in her case Asian—identity so that new synergies can be identified.” For a process like this, a new global business culture is being researched, practiced, and realized. For the purposes of this training program, Sreemathi defines “top management” as the “upper to middle management who have shown talent and are being groomed for global leadership.” Delegates being trained must learn to skillfully balance the value of their own perspective with the equally valid perspective of others. Sreemathi uses a curriculum for top talent that she especially designed for this customer based on their needs and expectations.
Using the Power of „Voicing“
In her capacity as a leadership coach, Sreemathi focuses on the importance of “voicing” in the context of conflict management (a concept developed by Line Jehle, Dr. Marcus Hildebrandt and intercultures for effective virtual collaboration between culturally different teams). Voicing is the act of explicitly addressing a positive or challenging characteristic of others’ communications. “Especially in a cross-cultural context involving collective cultures,” states Sreemathi, “people think that tolerance and empathy are the right approach to take and they never voice their true opinions.” Instead, she is yet another advocate for voicing as one essential piece towards creating a culture in which leaders and others can be most effective in a complex, virtual environment.
As Sreemathi understands the concept of “voicing,” it “becomes a critical behavioural pattern.” For archetypically conflict-avoidant cultures (including India and many of its cultural neighbors in the Asian Pacific), Sreemathi advises that global organizations “make [voicing] an organizational culture, an expectation. Voicing is not to be viewed as something that is unnatural or undesirable; it is something integral and something that releases energy.” Why? Because, “conflicts are an integral part of any matrix organization.”
Exploring New Paths
Leadership practice beyond the figurative borders of research-based cultural dimensions is a work-in-progress. In these past fifty years, the “grandfathers” of intercultural relations theory have provided the field with a path forward. It seems a new path is emerging in the not-so-far distance. Time will tell where we will be led in our experiences and expertise in intercultural management on a global scale. How do you experience the transition of global leadership?
Continue the conversation—Respond with your thoughts on this article to brown@www.intercultures.de.
Meet Sreemathi
Sreemathi Ramnath is a consultant with intercultures. For the past nine years, her work has focused on intercultural management training, particularly within the area of Information Technology, outsourcing and offshoring. Sreemathi is based in Chennai, southern India.
This post is from the Jan. 2014 intercultures e-newsletter.
Photo Credit Title Picture: Getty Images.