Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Dedication

CHAPTER 1: When Asian Leaders Are at Their Best

The Leadership Challenge Around the World

The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership

The Five Practices in Action

CHAPTER 2: Model the Way

Find Commitment Through Shared Values: How Values Guide Us in Deciding to Engage . . . or Not

Teach the Values: Affirming Shared Values Through Education and Action

Walk the Talk: Showing Others How to Model the Way in Hard Times

Confront Critical Incidents: Leading Through Shared Values

Teach by Following Through: How Being Consistent with Your Values Builds Trust

PRACTICE: Model the Way

CHAPTER 3: Inspire a Shared Vision

Envision a Better Future: Showing There’s Opportunity in a Crisis

Find a Common Purpose: Helping Others to See Themselves in the Picture

Appeal to Shared Aspirations: The Way for Others to See How a Common Vision Serves Their Interests

Listen, Learn, and Follow Through: Enlisting Others by Connecting to Their Interests

PRACTICE: Inspire a Shared Vision

CHAPTER 4: Challenge the Process

Encourage Initiative in Others: Making It Possible for Others to Lead and Learn

Be an Active Learner: Letting Mistakes Teach Valuable Lessons and Point to a Better Way

Accept Coaching: Learning from Others’ Experiences

Seek Advice: Having the Courage to Ask for Help

PRACTICE: Challenge the Process

CHAPTER 5: Enable Others to Act

Build Trusting Relationships: Showing Concern and Interest in Others

Be the First to Trust: Letting Others Know You Care, One Small Action at a Time

Develop Cooperative Goals: How Managing a Friend Resulted in Leading a Team

Appreciate Differences: Seeing Things From Others’ Perspectives Improves Relationships and Performance

PRACTICE: Enable Others to Act

CHAPTER 6: Encourage the Heart

Expect the Best: How Believing in Others and Small Gestures Make a Big Difference

Be Clear About Goals and Rules: Rewarding Progress Requires Systems and Celebrations

Show Appreciation—or Put Your Own Success at Risk

Show You Care: Learning How to Appreciate the Work of Others

PRACTICE: Encourage the Heart

CHAPTER 7: Make a Difference

You Are the Most Important Leader in Your Organization

Leadership is Learned

First, Lead Yourself

Leadership Is a Choice

Notes

Acknowledgments

More on the Leadership Challenge

Cover image: Shutterstock

Cover design: Adrian Morgan

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YOU ARE A LEADER. You make a difference.

This is true no matter what country you’re from, what title you hold, or what function you perform. You make a difference wherever you are. You make a difference in how engaged people feel, how effectively they perform, and how successful they and the organization will be.

What is very important, however, is what you do. Just listen to Caroline Wang, formerly vice president and the highest-ranking Asian female executive for IBM globally, with more than twenty-five years of working experience in the United States and across Asia Pacific, and currently on the board of directors for three multinational companies in China. “When it comes to leadership,” she says, “it is not about the leader’s personality; it is all about how that individual behaves as a leader.”¹ That’s exactly what we have found in our research over the last thirty years. Leadership is not about your position, personality, power, genetics, or family heritage. It’s about how you behave in your relationships with others.

When you look up the word lead in a dictionary—whether the language is English or Chinese—the meaning is the same. In English, the origin of the words lead, leader, and leadership come from the word leden, which means “to go, to travel, to guide.” When you look the word up in Chinese (ling dao), the characters refer to ling, to take someone forward, and dao, to guide somebody. It’s about taking people to places they have never been before. Two very different languages but two very similar definitions. At its core, leadership is about guiding people on journeys to places they have never been before. How you guide them along this path—what you do to lead them—is extremely important to your and their success. That’s what we discuss in this book: how you can most effectively lead others to make extraordinary things happen.

While the focus of this book is on leaders and leadership, keep in mind that leadership is not all about the leader. Leadership is not a solo act. It’s not about doing something all by yourself. There has never been a leader who’s gotten anything extraordinary done alone. Never. Leadership is always a team performance. Strong relationships with your constituents—your co-workers, direct reports, and other key business partners—are key to making things happen in your organization, and are essential to your and your organization’s success. The reason that so many managers and executives fail to lead is not so much that their vision and strategy are inadequate or off-track. It’s not because they’re incompetent in their functional areas. It’s because they have not built the kind of collaborative relationships that enable everyone to succeed together. It’s because they aren’t able to mobilize others to want to struggle for shared aspirations. In this book you will see how leaders work with others to liberate the leader in everyone.

The Leadership Challenge Around the World

One of the leaders we studied once described himself as an “Indonesian Cantonese, carrying a German passport, working for a Mexican company in the Czech Republic.” He represents five different cultures all by himself. Now one school of thought is that you have to lead differently in different countries. So if this were true, this leader would have to learn at least five different approaches to leadership. That’s a nearly impossible challenge for anyone to undertake. And it’s entirely unnecessary.

While we have to be sensitive to each and every person and organizational environment, one of the most intriguing results of globalization is that it has actually increased the search for leadership concepts that are relevant and effective across various cultures, environments, settings, and populations. Indeed, experts say global managers “need universally valid leadership theories and principles that transcend cultures.”² Technological imperatives, worldwide industrial and supply chain logistics, boundary-less marketplaces and currencies,ubiquitous communication and social media platforms—among other factors—are serving to harmonize and homogenize leadership, management, and organizational practices. The process of leadership is quite universal, even though particular applications may be context-specific and appropriate. Culture matters, but its impact is not as strong as commonly thought.³ Global leaders from Asia echo this viewpoint.⁴ David Kim, senior operations manager with Siemens Ultrasound, echoes Carolyn Wang’s assessment: “Everybody is a leader whether you supervise a group of people or not. Titles don’t make you a leader. It’s how you behave that makes a difference.” Thinking along similar lines, Rajeev Peshawaria, CEO of the ICLIF Leadership and Governance Centre, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, says that no matter where he is in the world, his “leadership style never changes.” He maintains that “the assumption that people are motivated differently around the world—especially in Asia—and that leaders must adapt their behavior accordingly is wrong. Having led and managed people in eight countries across three continents, I have found the exact opposite to be true. Regardless of geographic location or culture, what drives people to the highest level of engagement is innately human and universal. Thus, great leadership looks the same wherever you are.”⁵

This perspective is echoed by Mike Osorio, global vice president for learning & development and chief learning officer at DFS Group (Hong Kong), when applied to developing leaders. They have a leadership development program for managers at DFS, and it doesn’t vary much across the many countries around the world that they do business in. Why? Because, Mike says, “People are people.” Jean-Andre Rougeot, CEO at BeneFit Cosmetics, also leads a global enterprise with operations in Asia, Europe, and North and South America. He’ll tell you that “laughter and fun are essential to the DNA of the company” and this doesn’t change depending upon location. Jean-Andre will acknowledge that what’s considered funny does vary around the globe, but he won’t concede that there’s a place on earth where leaders don’t have to be concerned with applying “laughter and fun” to the way that they conduct business in their companies.

Our empirical studies back up the experiences and claims of these executives. More than 26,000 people from eleven Asian countries (China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam) responded to a series of questions about the extent of their commitment and engagement in their workplaces. In addition, they provided demographic information about themselves and their organizations and indicated how frequently their managers behaved as leaders. The statistical results were remarkably clear: what explained their commitment and engagement was the extent to which their managers provided leadership. Factors like their age, gender, educational background, hierarchical level, functional field/discipline, years with the organization, organizational size, and industry, taken together, explained less than one-half of 1 percent of how people felt about their workplaces. How their managers behaved, or not, as leaders, accounted for nearly 32 percent of how these constituents felt about their workplaces. The impact of how those Asian managers behaved as leaders was sixty times more important than any personal or organizational characteristic of their constituents.