The Art of Persuasion in a Multi-cultural World

Effective leadership often relies on your ability to persuade others. If you manage a team whose members come from different cultures, learning to adapt your persuasive techniques is crucial. When Kara Williams, an American engineer, began working as a research manager for a German automotive company, she didn’t realise how different her approach to persuading

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Leading Across Borders Takes More than A Multi-cultural Background

I recently had a phone conversation with Cosimo Turroturro, who runs a speakers’ association based in London. Simply on the basis of his name, my assumption before the call was that he was Italian. But as soon as he spoke, starting sentences with the German “ja”, it was clear from his accent that he was

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Are you a Holistic or Specific Thinker? It may Depend on Where you Come From.

Originally published in Harvard Business Review, April 2014 It was Friday afternoon in Paris and I had spent the morning teaching a group of Chinese CEOs how to work effectively with Europeans. I asked the class: “What steps should the team leader in this case study take to manage different attitudes towards confrontation on the

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How To Say “This is Crap” in Different Cultures

Originally published by Harvard Business Review, February 2014 One Thursday in mid-January I had been holed up for six hours in a dark conference room with 12 managers participating in my executive education program. It was a group-coaching day and each executive had 30 minutes to describe in detail a cross-cultural challenge she was experiencing

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