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Look inside ‘The Mindful International Manager.
How to Work Effectively Across Cultures’

Download a sample chapter: Chapter 8: Feedback

Here are some insights from the book:
Chapter 1: Home and away - Surfacing expectations
“When they are working in an international environment, mindful managers do not assume that their teams and other stakeholders understand their expectations.”

Chapter 2: Differences and common ground - Competing values?
“ … values guide the behaviour of members of a group. They help them to deal with the problems and opportunities which the group faces.”

Chapter 3: Individuals and groups - Stereotypes
“…we tend to use stereotypes, regardless of whether they are accurate or inaccurate, to help us to make sense of the world, especially when we have little information about the situation we are in and when we have little time.”

Chapter 4: Direction - Best practice: Top-down or bottom-up or something else?
“International managers need to get their international teams all moving in the same direction but, from the intercultural perspective, the mindful manager needs to be flexible about how to do this.”

Chapter 5: Organization and change – Attitudes towards change
“The mindful international manager must therefore understand what the drivers of change are in cultures and in people, and what the blockers of change are.”
Chapter 6: Roles - The role of the connecter
“Bringing people together across all kinds of cultures – acting as a connecter – is a key role of international managers. In this role, they can help to break down the silo mentality.”

Chapter 7: Communication –Best practice:
Speaking transparently and listening effectively
“Speaking transparently also means structuring and labeling your communication as clearly as possible. For native speakers of English, it means avoiding idioms and jokes that non-native-speakers may not follow, and remembering how hard it is for your colleagues to communicate in a foreign language.”

Chapter 8: Feedback - Culture and feedback
“Performance management and the role which feedback has to play in this are a cultural minefield. There are several key cultural dimensions which can affect the nature of the feedback people give and how people receive it.”

Chapter 9: Conflict - Personal attitudes towards conflict
“At the heart of this picture of orientations to conflict is the question: Are you more interested in satisfying your own interests (self-centred) or those of the other party (other-centred)?”

Chapter 10: Cooperation – Best practice: Cooperating in international teams
“Having understood your differences, you then need to build a common culture that allows you to cooperate successfully and leverage the differences. Your empathy enables you to see things from other viewpoints and to recognize that the cultural diversity present in a group offers the potential for high performance.”

References
Browse the list of books and articles we have drawn on in writing The Mindful International Manager.