Connect, Inspire, Grow (eBook)

Introduction

“I’m not telling you it’s going to be easy. I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it.”

—Art Williams

If you’re holding this book, you’ve likely been offered an exciting opportunity to further your career in an immersive global leadership role. You’re here because leadership is a responsibility you value highly, and you’re looking to start the next chapter of your life on the right foot. If this is the case, I’d like to begin by congratulating you on how far you’ve already come. Like many people, you may attribute the success you’ve achieved thus far to specific accomplishments. In reality, the quality of your thinking has brought you to where you are today, at the precipice of a bold chance to help shape the future of your organization and change the lives of everyone you touch. To arrive here is no small feat.

This book was written primarily for executives gearing up to embark on a new global role. My goal is to help set you up for success so you can make the most of every step of the experience. By following the 100-day Connect, Inspire, Grow framework I teach in my work, you’ll learn what’s required to lead your new team effectively, how to avoid the pitfalls encountered by those who came before you, and where to focus your attention throughout the process. With the average cost of an expat assignment totaling around $311,000 per year, it’s in the best interest of you and your company that you enter your new role well prepared.

Research from the INSEAD business school estimates that 40 percent of all overseas deployments fail. That’s a staggering number no executive entering an international position can afford to ignore. The most common reasons for failure include an inability to adapt to the new culture, a lack of support from one’s organization in the host country, and personal challenges related to living abroad. If you’ve already stepped into a global leadership position and are finding yourself in the thick of such problems, this book can be beneficial for you as well. You may have lost your initial enthusiasm after not making the progress you anticipated, not getting the results you hoped for, or not having the impact you would’ve liked so far. You may feel stuck, lost in the fog of the process, and desperate to change the trajectory your team is currently on. There may be unexpected aspects of your new role that differ greatly from what your previous role entailed. This can all be discouraging and frustrating, but none of it has to be a death knell. The power to change your situation is in your hands and available to you today. This book will provide you with direct guidance on how to harness it.

Being an effective leader in today’s global environment is certainly challenging, especially for those who are stationed abroad or leading distributed teams. If mastering this process hasn’t come naturally to you thus far, you’re far from alone. Over the years, I’ve seen many qualified people who, despite enjoying immense professional success prior to moving overseas, found themselves struggling soon after arrival. One of them, Alex, had been a senior sales executive for a top global consumer products brand. He moved to Shanghai with his wife and three children, energized and bursting with a sense of adventure. He arrived well prepared, having already found a home to rent and good schools for his kids to attend in China. He’d taken a number of cultural training courses and read books on local business etiquette. For all intents and purposes, he was poised to thrive in his new role.

Six months down the road, Alex felt himself hitting a wall and began to wonder whether he’d made a mistake. The members of his team seemed to agree with him on business goals and strategies but weren’t delivering the results they needed. Customers were making buying decisions at a glacially slow pace. Worst of all, Alex didn’t feel properly supported by the local Chinese staff at his organization. Explaining all the nuanced details of this situation to his bosses at the company’s headquarters in the US seemed impossible. Isolated and defeated, Alex lost interest in his work, void of the enthusiasm he’d initially brought to the table. He started complaining frequently, making sweeping generalizations about Chinese people to deflect attention from his doubt and insecurity over his ability to succeed. Eventually, Alex made the decision to move back to his home country with his family, long before completing his contract.

The uncomfortable truth of the matter is that international transitions are bound to get messy regardless of how well you’ve prepared. Rather than getting derailed by the challenges that arise throughout your assignment, it’s better to expect the unexpected prior to departure. With new leadership tools, a framework for action, and a variety of best practices under your belt, you’ll be able to shift out of negative mindsets and avoid getting stuck in the weeds of frustration. This book can serve as a valuable resource in such moments, one you can turn to when you feel the need to troubleshoot and steer yourself back in the right direction. Your ability to pivot toward effective solutions in times of difficulty will inspire trust among your team, your organization, and its stakeholders, demonstrating your worth as a valuable asset to their mission.

Many organizations make the mistake of selecting executives to lead teams overseas based solely on their technical competence, but this alone isn’t enough to deliver results. Developing skills like self-awareness, open-mindedness, emotional intelligence, and the ability to build trust while connecting with others is equally crucial, if not more so. This is not a book about business strategies or the technical skills necessary for effective leadership. Instead, you’ll find in these pages a book about the mind. Your mind. In my work, I talk with leaders and observe how they use their minds to achieve amazing results. I also notice how their minds can work against them and stand in the way of progress, to the detriment of themselves and those who follow them.

As I mentioned, the quality of your thinking is what brought you to this point. Everything we say and do starts with our thinking, making our minds the most powerful tool at our disposal. This book is based on the real-world learnings of people who have been deep in the trenches, and who learned the “hard” way. I had to learn the hard way too. Why? Because these kinds of lessons aren’t taught to us in business school. At least, they weren’t when I got my MBA. Our education systems and business schools spend little to no time on curriculum related to our mindset, behavior, or skills related to communication, emotional intelligence, and trust. However, these elements are the very glue that holds organizations together. Learning to master them will make or break your experience. I’ve seen far too many talented leaders who, like Alex, were forced to abandon their roles stressed, exhausted, and demoralized. The good news is that this unfortunate outcome is completely avoidable and unnecessary.

In Part 1 of this book, I share mental-performance practices you can use to lay a foundation for success in your new role before your assignment has even begun. We’ll cover introspective work related to your strengths, values, and mindset. In Part 2, I introduce my three-step framework for the first 100 days, which is designed to help you Connect with your new team members, Inspire them to succeed, and Grow their individual and collective capabilities. The average expat contract lasts a short period of two to three years. These assignments entail an inherent sense of urgency to produce results quickly. Chapters three, four, and five will provide you with the strategies needed to hit the ground running. Finally, in Part 3, I discuss the seven major challenges leaders encounter while leading global teams. You’ll learn to navigate tricky situations involving generation gaps, culture clashes, frustration related to past leadership failures, and other common sources of conflict.

Having spent fifteen years working abroad, I’ve not only seen others make the mistakes described in this book, but have also made several of them myself. One especially pivotal point occurred early on in my career in 1998 while I was giving a presentation in a conference room in Germany. I was twenty-eight years old, had held a management position for four years with an American company based in Europe, and was no stranger to leadership in my work. My task was to lead the integration of the German market’s sales support function into my existing team. Though I had already lived in Germany for over two years, this was the first time I was confronted with challenges related to working in a foreign culture. That day, as I presented the flowcharts I’d prepared and laid out my plan for the new internal sales organization, I felt a cold, hostile energy permeate the room. People exchanged skeptical glances. Eyes rolled. I knew then that my attempts to prepare hadn’t resulted in the buy-in I would need.

When I finished that presentation, the German sales team tore it to pieces. They vocally expressed their lack of confidence in my abilities, specifying that I seemed to have no clue how the local market actually worked. I was shocked by their emotional response, only to realize later that these men were still processing the pain of the changes taking place in our organization. When my team took over internal sales support in Germany, their local colleagues in sales, some of whom they had worked with for over twenty years, were made...