CASE STUDIES FOR AUSTRALIAN ORGANISATIONS OPERATING OVERSEAS

Why are cross cultural services so important for leadership?
What happens when a mining manager with global experience is placed in a remote location? Why isn't his team achieving their targets?

Ian T
Director of Exploration, China & Mongolia
International mining company

After working all around the world, I was posted to Beijing to look after exploration activities in China and Mongolia. To help me do this I had a team of Chinese and Mongolian geologists and engineers, all highly qualified and very experienced. My Chinese team was fine. We met at the start of each year to decide on targets and then every fortnight we would meet to discuss progress on targets. I would not see them between meetings while they worked together to meet their targets. The Mongolian team however was different. Time and again they had not progressed with their work and they did not meet their targets. I couldn't work it out. I knew it was not that they were less capable! Nothing would happen unless I gave them clear instructions. They seemed to need more supervision and direction.

After mulling it over for some time, and feeling increasingly frustrated, I decided to speak to a leadership coach from Leadership Strategies. My coach made me see that as Mongolians they had different cultural expectations about how a good team member should behave. For me a good member of a team would take initiative, and have a go at solving problems. For them a good team member should wait for the leader to decide what to do. Indeed taking action without the leader's knowledge or approval is regarded as impertinent. It was such a relief to have this explained to me. I am not out of the woods yet, but with the help of the coach I am getting better at developing strategies to work with this group. We have opened up our lines of communication and that is a great help. Now we have a better understanding of each other.

Development and Support

Why is selecting personnel for their cross cultural capabilities so important? Surely the fact that they are technically competent should be enough! We are all human beings after all. It doesn't matter where we come from - does it?

Are there tools that can help me select appropriate personnel to work in cross cultural situations?

Eloise P
Director International Programs
Engineering company, international development

In my part of the business I am responsible for sourcing and implementing multi-million dollar bi-lateral aid programs on behalf of my government. In one such program I was recruiting highly experienced and qualified Australians to work in senior positions in various African governments. The Australian government and host African governments were keen to ensure that the appointments were successful.

Having worked for many years in Africa, and several Asian countries, I know that success will depend not so much on technical expertise but on the quality of relationships established between the Australians and their African partners. I learned this the hard way, but I did not want these candidates to make the same mistakes. In fact there was little room for mistakes in this program.

So I decided to speak to Leadership Strategies who suggested that I need to identify people with skills to build sound relationships with people from different cultural backgrounds. To do this they suggested that I take a look at a questionnaire called the Global Competencies Inventory (GCI). This is an easy to use and very reliable instrument which can quickly tell me which candidates are most likely to enjoy living in Africa, will enjoy developing great friendships and achieve outstanding results. I am very happy with the GCI.

Recruitment and Candidate Selection
Development and Support

Why do I need support while working overseas? I am highly qualified in my field and have 20 years practical experience in my field which is electoral reform? Surely I am going to be fine?

When the ‘tried and true' strategies used in other parts of the world don't work in a new country, what is the answer?

Peter J
Team Leader
International development agency

I worked in South Africa for many years before I took up a position as team leader in a large Pacific country to assist the Government to implement electoral reform. Professionally I was very excited by this new challenge plus I also felt that I was doing something worthwhile.

I did a lot of preparation before I got to the new country and mapped out ministers and senior public servants that I would contact in my first week there. But when I arrived, it was not how I imagined it to be. Everyone was polite and friendly, but I could not get any decisions made especially by the key minister to whom I was reporting. This was very frustrating as I had not encountered anything like this before.

I decided to speak to a coach from Leadership Strategies who helped me understand how different cultural expectations were causing difficulties in communications. As a female in a male environment, this was an additional challenge. The "tried and true" strategies that worked for me in other parts of the world had little or no impact in the Pacific. I had to learn a whole new way of operating in this environment. It took me a while but with the help of my coach I worked it out. I used a network of both men and some influential women to get things done. In this part of the world, it is important to identify the key people in the informal networks and work with them in a respectful manner.

Development and Support

Coming back to Australia should be easy shouldn't it? This is what I thought until I had to do it.

When a banking executive and his family relocate back to Australia, things go don't go as planned. Leadership Strategies helped this family iron out the bumps!

Nicholas C
International merchant banker

After five years based in Singapore I thought it was time to return home to Australia. My children were growing up and would be starting high school soon and I wanted to be close to my family and friends. My wife was also ready to come back and wanted to re-enter the workforce. It was the right decision for all of us, and I thought that coming back would be very easy! Wrong!!

Melbourne has changed so much since we left in 2005. We have changed so much. We kept getting lost going to places that we thought we knew. There were new shopping complexes, suburbs and restaurants and the transport system has changed. Our children started new schools and had to make new friends. My biggest challenge was work. Basically, they just ignored me when I got back. Half of them did not know me. Many of my friends and colleagues had moved on and I did not have a history with the current staff. Worst of all, on my first day, my new boss pointed me to a desk and gave me a pile of papers to look at. There was no recognition that I had spent five years in Singapore let alone that my experience may be valuable to the bank. All of these things together started to feel insurmountable.

I knew the bank had an arrangement with Leadership Strategies to provide coaching support for people like me. They were chosen because their coaches not only have a background in psychology but also have a deep understanding of business and for people who live and work in different cultures. I engaged a Leadership Strategies coach who helped us resettle back in Australia. We had weekly meetings where the coach listened carefully to our stories. She asked questions from time to time but mainly we did all the talking. We felt good that somebody was listening to our experiences and was interested in what we had to say! We also found that with our coach's assistance, we worked out effective strategies for dealing with our challenges.

Repatriation