The Culture-Savvy Leader: Humility

Leaders face all manner of obstacles in culturally complex environments. Our home cultures provide us with many resources for overcoming obstacles — including a sense of self, born of belief in the values of the culture. When confronted with different values, though, that sense of self can feel under threat. Humility is a powerful antidote, because the reactive sense of self — the ego — is quieted down. Reactions will happen, but the humble leader is able to remind himself of the enormity of the world, and his insignificance in it.

By “insignificance” I don't mean smallness or inability to affect the world. Those could be disempowering. I mean a sense that the world is a large and complex place — a rich place — and “my” way is but one way. This nourishes in the culture-savvy leader an abiding sense of abundance. While those more susceptible to arrogance tend to feel they're being robbed when things go wrong, the culture-savvy leader's eyes bend toward gratitude. The “strange” and “maddening” habits of “others” that are unfamiliar are transformed into a smorgasbord of options for solving problems. Problems might even cease to be “problems” in his eyes: they are, instead, opportunities to learn, and to expand his repertoire of ways of seeing and responding to the world.

Perhaps ironically, the culture-savvy leader's sense of his own insignificance allows him to play big in the world. The voices of hubris in his mind reduced to a whisper, he is able to listen to his colleagues — those from his own culture and those from other cultures — with a genuinely open heart. Around him, people feel understood. Even if they don't get what they want in the end, they respect his decisions, because they sense that he is serving a purpose larger than himself — a purpose which they share. The culture-savvy leader is thus able to accomplish more.

In our most difficult cross-cultural moments, when the “other” culture seems most bizarre and just plain wrong, our egos will try their hardest to inflate themselves. Westerners in China face this all the time. Western leaders in China, given their organizational reach, run the risk of creating and perpetuating a reactive mindset among a large group of people, subtly sabotaging the organization's efforts. In this setting the importance, and power, of humility is magnified. By cultivating humility in yourself, you will cultivate it in others, and improve your chances of success in the challenging cultural environment that is China.