Now we started our conversation about leadership 

with some basic principles 

that you want to consider as you think about 
your own leadership development. 
Number one, there's no simple formula for 
leadership, you need to develop your own style. 
Number two is that, 
followers and leaders are in an interdependent relationship. 
That's why I want to really focus on that relationship as a leader. 
Number three, you need to be adaptive and flexible as a leader so 
that you can actually react appropriately to all kinds of different challenges and and situations. 
that you can actually react appropriately to all kinds of different challenges and and situations.
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Those are the three principles. They give you a general direction as we 
think about leadership development, but they don't really point 
out concrete steps that you can take to enhance your leadership competencies. 
Now in this course we'll identify those opportunities for development and 
those competencies that you want to develop as a leader 
based on organizational behavior research. 
Since that area of organization behavior research is really the foundation, 
Since that area of organization behavior research is really the foundation, 
is the bedrock for what we do in the course, 
I wanted to talk to a member of Bocconi faculty to talk a little bit about 
the advantages and the value that that perspective can offer to leaders. 
Thank you, Franz, for joining me for this segment. 
You bet, no problem.
Play video starting at 1 minute 16 seconds and follow transcript1:16
How would you summarize the OB perspective in just a few words? 
How would you summarize the OB perspective in just a few words? 
Basically OB scholars are trying to explain individual and 
collective behavior in organizations with social science research. 
There are a number of scientific disciplines involved in this enterprise: 
There are a number of scientific disciplines involved in this enterprise: 
Social psychology; sociology; behavioral economics, 
which is very strongly influenced by social psychology and psychology in general; 
and communication studies, and increasingly also neuroscience.
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Now to put it very simply, what these scholars are generally 
interested in is a realistic depiction of behavior and organizations and 
of the cognitive and the emotional processes that come with it. 
They are not just interested in some idealized economic rationality, but they want to understand 
what is really the behavior that is going on, and they place a strong emphasis 
on explaining why that behavior occurs. That's a question of the mechanism; 
on explaining why that behavior occurs. That's a question of the mechanism; 
so what are the triggers for behavior? 
They employ rigorous scientific methodology to get to those insights. 
They employ rigorous scientific methodology to get to those insights. 
It could be laboratory experiments or field experiments; it could be surveys; 
It could be laboratory experiments or field experiments; it could be surveys; 
it could be ethnography out there in the field. 
By and large there is a fairly high standard for actually formulating generalizable 
knowledge based on those empirical findings to really make sure that we have a robust 
explanation of why that behavior occurs. 
explanation of why that behavior occurs. 
That scientific approach is relatively novel. 
That scientific approach is relatively novel. 
It’s existed for one hundred years, give or take;
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And the focus on the international aspect of that, so 
the international leadership dimension, it’s scientific study of that is even younger. 
the international leadership dimension, it’s scientific study of that is even younger. 
Now people have thought and written about leadership for a long long time. 
Now people have thought and written about leadership for a long long time. 
The Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks, the Chinese: they have all written about this 
even before Christ was born, extensively! but a lot of these 
early writings were based on anecdote. They were looking at and 
analyzing big leaders, both good and bad, and 
that's what they derived their insights from. 
To some degree, even today, most of the popular leadership literature 
actually has that same anecdotal approach. We still look at great leaders 
and try to derive insights from that. 
You emphasize that there is a strong emphasis on solid scientific methodology. 
You emphasize that there is a strong emphasis on solid scientific methodology. 
Is it very dry and do you need a PhD to 
make it through the first paragraph of a paper or a publication out there, 
or is this literature something that is actually approachable and digestible to practitioners? 
or is this literature something that is actually approachable and digestible to practitioners?
Play video starting at 3 minutes 56 seconds and follow transcript3:56
When I mentioned the scientific and empirical approach to leadership that 
the OB perspective brings, I do not say that to push you away or to make you disinterested 
the OB perspective brings, I do not say that to push you away or to make you disinterested 
in engaging with the literature. 
I think, actually, it is a very rich and fascinating literature. 
If there is one fault with it, maybe it is that it is a little too rich because there are many competing 
theories and there is not necessarily a lot of closure. 
However, it is very approachable. 
It is very accessible because it is about subject matters 
that we can all relate to, something that we can all experience. 
that we can all relate to, something that we can all experience. 
That makes it intriguing for all those who actually have engaged it. 
I have worked with a number of organizations that have actually, 
on their own initiative, started communities of practice where managers and leaders 
come together and read and discuss current research in OB. 
come together and read and discuss current research in OB. 
This is not some kind of popularized version of that research or a summary. 
This is not some kind of popularized version of that research or a summary. 
They actually look at the research itself. 
They do so to improve their practice. 
When you think about it, that is what lawyers and doctors, at least, many of the better ones 
do; they stay abreast with current research. 
do; they stay abreast with current research. 
I think leaders should do the same. 
This behavioral research has really been popularized in the last few years, 
maybe the last ten or so. 
If you have read any of Malcom Gladwell's books: Bling, Tipping Point, or another one that was
popular 
was, Thaler and Sunstein's Nudge; 
this is mostly behavioral research. It is very fun to read, 
that is why it finds a very popular audience to some degree, because it is 
that is why it finds a very popular audience to some degree, because it is 
seemingly strange behavior in some cases, irrational behavior. 
But we can all recognize it, we all know it from our daily experience. 
What the research shows is that often 
unexpected triggers or unexpected outcomes from that behavior. 
My own training has been in OB, so that is why it is my intellectual home base. 
My own training has been in OB, so that is why it is my intellectual home base. 
I am very positively predisposed towards it. You could misconstrue me 
for being biased towards it if you will, but I do think that it is really 
helpful for leaders to understand and to engage the literature, because it 
helpful for leaders to understand and to engage the literature, because it 
avoids recipes to a large extent. It does not provide any great formula 
avoids recipes to a large extent. It does not provide any great formula 
for becoming a better leader, 
but it teaches you about the fundamentals of human behavior and organization. 
You understand the ingredients, right? 
You do not get a recipe, but you understand the ingredients. 
If you like to put it metaphorically, 
that's what great cooks do. 
They understand the ingredients, 
and based on that knowledge they can create great recipes by themselves.
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So that's the general OB approach. 
Now what is special about about international OB?
Play video starting at 6 minutes 45 seconds and follow transcript6:45
The international OB literature tries to identify the commonalities 
and the differences of individual and collective behavior in organizations. 
It builds on the great insights that anthropology and 
sociology predicted; and cultural sociology has 
shown that our behavior is not universal. 
It is not programmed in us the same way everywhere around the world. 
It is actually shaped by the cultural context in which 
we are embedded. 
That's the starting point for the literature. 
What it has ultimately done is, 
since it is a more recent area of research, but is flourishing a lot. 
is that it is making things making those research findings a lot more 
globally appealing and less ethnocentric; 
because most of the OB research has been, and still is conducted in the U.S. 
and in Europe. 
Clearly they provide explanations for 
behavior that may be very culturally biased. 
So acknowledging those cultural differences, having that international 
perspective, really makes it more relevant to a broader international audience.
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Now traditionally people have taken what we could call a macro approach to this. 
They kind of get a country level or sometimes regional level analysis. 
This is to say that they have basically looked at what the beliefs and 
values in a particular country region are. 
For example: Germans value efficiency, 
Americans value independence, that sort of thing. 
That is actually an old intellectual tradition from 
anthropology in the 1920s. What people did a lot in anthropology 
is identify and classify every culture that they encountered. 
That was the approach. 
This has been extremely popular. You can imagine 
it is nice to teach, 
“You classify culture you A, and if you are in culture A, 
not culture B, then do X.”
Play video starting at 8 minutes 32 seconds and follow transcript8:32
That is why it has been very widely used also for 
leadership development. 
Clearly there are some problems with it though. 
One of the key players in that area 
in the macro approach to international would be Geert Hofstede. 
He recognizes this is a key problem, 
he says that there is an ecological fallacy. 
What he means by that is if we have the property of a population, 
of people in a country or a region. 
and we know they are individualists or collectivists for example, 
then we might over-generalize that insight to individual behavior. 
Individuals, though, have many different influences 
on their behavior so somebody who lives in an individualist 
country might still have a particular more collectivist orientation. 
That's one of the problems. 
The other problem is that 
culture also is more than just values. 
You cannot only focus on the values and beliefs, 
that is not all that cultures is about. 
There is some problems with that approach.
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Given these problems with the macro perspective 
that you highlighted, 
what is an alternative a micro perspective? 
Exactly. 
The micro approach focuses on the on the individual. 
For example, we know that people have different expectations 
of leadership: what leaders are supposed to do in different countries and 
different cultural settings. 
Now the point is that is does not always have to be based only on values. 
We buy into the belief that collaborative or 
participative leadership is good and, and hierarchical is bad. 
Often it is actually more subtle. 
Our ways of thinking and perceiving the world can 
influence what we ultimately then judge as good or bad leadership. 
There is the study that showed for example, that when Japanese followers 
evaluate their leaders based on a logic of appropriateness. 
They ask themselves if the behavior appropriate 
based on the situation and certain principles. 
And when U.S. Americans evaluate their leaders, 
they do it based on an evaluation of the consequences. 
In other words, “how effective was that behavior?” 
Regardless of whether it was kind of appropriate or based on principle or whatnot. 
That is a fairly fundamental kind of cognitive difference in seeing 
the world. 
That is ultimately what the micro approach emphasizes. 
Culture is not just beliefs and/or values, 
it very fundamentally influences our cognitive and our emotional processes. 
Which can be really helpful for leaders to understand. 
Now the one area that I find absolutely fascinating 
that is really burgeoning right now is cultural neuroscience.
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It takes this idea and runs with it and shows that 
over generations the different ways of interacting in a particular culture 
actually shape your neurological development in a certain way; 
your brain actually gets wired in a different way. 
That a really exciting and fascinating kind of research. 
Bruce Weller has written a fascinating book that I heartily recommend.
Play video starting at 11 minutes 37 seconds and follow transcript11:37
All this fascinating research, all those wonderful insights, how is, 
that actually practically useful and usable for 
a practically minded international leader?
Play video starting at 11 minutes 50 seconds and follow transcript11:50
Understanding human behavior is the foundation for 
being able to influence human behavior. 
That is what international leaders in one way or 
another have to do to be effective. 
The million dollar question, 
of course, is how can you influence behavior effectively.
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I want to be realistic here: 
the international OB research domain 
is fairly young; and particularly the group of scholars 
that take this micro approach 
the one that tries to avoid this broad-brush generalization of cultures, 
is even younger, in its infancy you could say. 
That should be a warning sign of strong 
normative statements and claims that if you are a U.S. 
American and you are dealing with a Japanese, then you have to do X. 
We do not know. We do not have good solid empirical evidence 
at this micro level. 
Understanding what really goes through people's heads; what is 
their cognitive and their emotional experience of this intercultural 
international kind of experience?
Play video starting at 12 minutes 55 seconds and follow transcript12:55
We don't have that. 
We do not have all the answers from that research. 
What we do have is a really good orientation of what issues are critical 
and what matters. 
That’s what we should be paying attention to as international leaders, 
and how you want to use it. 
So that it points you to points of difference, 
that you know that different cultures perceive and 
evaluate different leadership behaviors differently. 
So that you're aware of those differences. 
We also know that if you stress cultural differences, 
especially in very diverse, very heterogeneous teams, that, 
paradoxically, actually help people bring together. 
If you acknowledge, those differences in a group 
that is how it can be helpful. 
And the other benefit of international OB research 
can be that it actually does point to some commonalities. 
That research has shown and has suggested that some areas actually do 
react very similarly or exactly the same across cultures. 
So this is a safe space for 
leaders to some degree, where the complexity is reduced a little bit. 
But there's also something that you can stress 
You can stress to followers that look, we all care about this, 
we all think that this is important, to create a common ground as well. 
One of the godfathers of the, of behavioral research and 
the OB area generally was Kurt Lewin. 
And he famously said that there is nothing as practical as a good theory. 
That is how I feel about international peer research. 
It does not have all the answers, but 
it does point out the issues that matter. 
That really can help leaders navigate 
in the increasingly complex and global settings where they operate. 
The practical value of a good theory. 
Thanks very much. 
It was a pleasure, a pleasure having you here. 
The pleasure was all mine. 
And good luck with the course. 
Thanks.
We talked about general leadership challenges 
and foundational principles for leaders to consider. 
We talked about the usefulness of adapting an organizational behavior and 
an international organizational behavior perspective to help with 
leadership development and develop your competencies as leaders. 
Now I want to talk about the concrete leadership challenges that 
uniquely apply to international leaders. 
I want to do it with an example, so I want you to just focus on this guy. 
The gentleman Kofi Annan, you all know him as the former Secretary General of the UN: 
a highly decorated individual. A lot of really important initiatives at 
the UN are accredited to his name. 
He changed leadership and the management system in the UN and 
then development goals, Global Compact and the Global Fund. 
Many of those really important inititives are credited to his name 
where he was a driving force in making that happen. 
We can imagine anything that is that global and 
that ambitious as the product that he tried to advance is not easy. 
What do you think the challenges are that 
somebody like him, who tries to really advance such a global agenda faces?
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There are so many different agendas from different countries. 
Yeah. 
It can get more complex because there's pretty much all the countries 
represented here. 
Yes.
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It's not only agendas maybe it is also 
priorities, goals, and approaches too. 
That is right, yes. 
So it could be there are those interests. 
It could be these different agendas, different priorities but 
also different ways of thinking, different mindsets that you have to 
contend with, that you have to try to get to understand 
to how are people even thinking about why things are important? 
Not everybody has your same conceptualization 
of what the issues really are, what the environment is like. 
Wrapping your head around those different 
mental morals that people have around the world is a 
big intellectual challenge. 
It really increases the complexity of what you have to face 
as a leader. 
Now Kofi Annan had a really good starting point; 
education-wise, to deal with some of this, 
he has a Degree in Economics, International Relations, and 
Management. 
He can already relate pretty well to different domains of society, 
be it business or politics or civil society. 
Again though, all those, domains operate differently. 
In some cases, extremely differently around the world. 
Understanding those nuances, 
Understanding those complexities can be really tricky. 
These differences between countries 
even if you just think about management that was always striking to me. 
Possibly because my own management education at Bachelor level completely 
ignored those cultural differences. 
Pretended they did not exist, that everybody was doing management the same 
way: for example the German at least as I have experienced it is 
to think about management in a very Economics and operations research driven way. 
It is all about rationality, efficiency, 
“the German way” and once I started working 
as a consultant and actually started working abroad that I was shocked. 
I was totally unprepared for the differences. 
Kofi Annan was better prepared than I was, clearly, 
when he started started working. 
That is the challenge that he faced, and 
that all global international leaders ultimately face. 
You cannot stop at just embracing the different leader. 
You have to bring different positions together. 
A pure pluralism, and saying, “Oh yeah, that's wonderful.” 
We all think about these things differently. 
Clearly you do not get anywhere building a global compact, or a global fund, or 
nearly globally accepted development goals. 
You have bring people together for that 
That is the big challenge: to have respect for local logics 
and local mindsets. 
To build a community and bring them together towards a global orientation. 
A global vision, if you like. 
These differences in thinking and doing not only 
create complexity; 
But they also can create uncertainty as you interact with others. 
Why would that be?
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Well, then they could not predict people's behaviors. 
That's right. 
We are already complex animals to 
start with but if you think about an international context where 
there are language barriers in the first place
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You have misinterpretation that really becomes even more 
difficult then to anticipate how others may react to what you do as a leader: 
your leadership practices
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It becomes particularly problematic if that complexity and that uncertainty 
come together because when situations are very complex, what do we usually do? 
Try to make them simpler? 
We try to simplify. 
In the way that often works, 
cognitively fallback on heuristics rather than fallback on some simplifications.
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Now those heuristics are of course based on your own culture and 
in many cases they work to simply things for 
you quantitatively in your own culture, 
but as soon as you enter into other cultures they often 
lead you astray. 
They actually create problems rather solve them. 
I discovered that myself that, 
You develop certain habits when you are embedded in a particular culture. 
that you then have to painfully discover they are no longer appropriate. 
I went to boarding school so I learned about the 
the art of understatement. 
Then I went to Germany and discovered that that is actually very useless in 
a conversation 
with other Germans.
Play video starting at 5 minutes 24 seconds and follow transcript5:24
I had a lot of experience teaching in the US. 
And the first time I taught in China I thought naturally 
you want to be relatable and open with a joke. 
That’s all they had as I had developed in the US. The first couple of times 
I wondered why nobody was laughing about my opening jokes.
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Maybe they were bad jokes, but he point is that it is just a very different 
context where people do not want that 
relatability in their teacher. 
It does not mean that they do not ever share a sense 
of humor.
Play video starting at 5 minutes 55 seconds and follow transcript5:55
The Chinese have a great sense of humor but 
in that situation that is not what was expected. 
Discovering as a leader that your habitual ways of doing things 
and relating to others by communicating, solving problems, 
solving conflicts 
no longer work can be devastating. 
I mean really emotionally devastating to look at it 
all of your tools are useless all of a sudden.
Play video starting at 6 minutes 20 seconds and follow transcript6:20
That can be that can be a big challenge, 
re-learning some of the basic things. 
How do you do that in a different context? 
That can be a really steep learning curve. 
We know that it is not just what leaders think and what they 
do that is important. 
We said, we emphasized that what may be more important is? 
Relationships. 
Exactly. 
Relationships between the leader and followers. 
In Kofi Annan's case, 
what could be some relational challenges that he encountered? 
People might not have accepted him as a leader. 
Yes, why would that be?
Play video starting at 6 minutes 50 seconds and follow transcript6:50
Maybe they see that they do not know if this outsider can offer them anything? 
Yes, wants to or cannot offer them anything. 
He is an outsider and so he has this legitimacy discount. 
What what followers often ask themselves when 
they evaluate leaders is they ask themselves, “are you one of us?” 
Clearly the leader's going to be slightly different but the, the question 
at its heart is ultimately, do you care about the things that we care about? 
Also, can you actually deliver? 
Can you help us achieve the things that we really care about? 
It is a tall order 
for somebody like Kofi Annan 
to really deliver that to that wide of an audience. 
Being an outsider to so many cultures and countries. Clearly he is 
a diplomat. 
Even negotiating with businesses to contribute towards the 
the projects that he had pushed. 
That is really tricky.
Play video starting at 7 minutes 42 seconds and follow transcript7:42
Okay, so we know it can be tricky 
to overcome those barriers and to be accepted 
as a leader and an outsider, 
and it’s particularly tricky when you are interacting with different culture groups 
at the same time. 
You don't want to pretend and pander. 
If I speak with you as an American for 
example, I could say I lived there for seven years so I feel like an American, so 
that could be my connection; 
but if I interact with Europeans at the same time and claim that 
at heart I'm a European, 
then it becomes obvious that I'm not 
truthful to either one of the parties. 
The question is who are you really? 
Who are you, and 
can we really trust what you're claiming what your interests are? 
That's the big challenge for leaders: 
not to just pretend and pander, 
not to just resort to this pure pluralism 
that you're trying to embrace and fully adapt to each individual country, 
but to find a connection, a common ground that's really global 
to really align people under that global vision. 
Arguably that's something that Kofi Annan did exceptionally well. 
Now, I talked to Bocconi alumni and 
I wanted to hear how they are dealing with those, with those challenges. 
they have worked around the world in many different industries. 
So let's see what what they had to say, what their experiences were.
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Thinking about it I guess I guess I limit it to to theory things, 
and of course, there is always more than that. 
I think leaders set a vision and a context and they make sure that 
people can follow and will follow. I think that’s a first.
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I think leaders coach, and that means providing the right support, the right 
direction, and the right opportunities for people who work for them to learn. 
Then what I find is more and more important especially 
in this context is leaders integrating.
Play video starting at 9 minutes 31 seconds and follow transcript9:31
I'm fairly passionate about it.
Play video starting at 9 minutes 34 seconds and follow transcript9:34
It is the whole premise of working in a world which is more and more global. 
And actually even companies that believe are fairly local companies, 
if you look at the supply chain, if you look at a number of aspects, 
you're more and more reliant on things that happen outside of your close limit. 
One of the big tasks and big challenges that leaders 
have is to integrate and take different people coming from, 
whether it's different cultures, or different genders, or 
different education and actually ensure… and that's all about diversity, 
but diversity is nothing unless you can take teams and actually ensure that 
people can work together and make the best out of that difference. 
To me, whether it's integrating different technical backgrounds, 
different cultures, at each layer and level of organization and 
complexity, I think that that is probably more and more important.
Play video starting at 10 minutes 35 seconds and follow transcript10:35
Usually, we spend a lot of time to discuss, what winning is,
Play video starting at 10 minutes 42 seconds and follow transcript10:42
but we don't discuss which game we want to play. 
It’s critical for a leader to define what is winning. 
You can define winning in terms of market shares, it terms of the size of your business, 
in terms of cash, in terms of profit, or in terms of sustainability. 
I learned through the good and the bad experiences that 
while I was spending all the time trying to be better than someone else, 
I was not spending enough time to define what the definition of success was. 
Sometimes market share or 
growth can be a very false definition of success, because then you end up 
with an unprofitable business growing very fast, but 
structurally not attractive. That is the part of a visionary leader. 
In the end, you need to try to see what is the end point 
that you want your business and your organization to achieve. 
There is no leader that can achieve anything by themself. 
I don't believe in supermen or superwomen that just parachute into a 
situation and are able by themselves, because of their skills, 
to do better than anybody else before. 
Usually it is about putting together the right people, the right team, but 
it's also about leveraging them in the right way.
Play video starting at 12 minutes 6 seconds and follow transcript12:06
I have seen the same people be very dysfunctional in certain situations, and 
all of a sudden under the right guidance, the right leadership, 
it become a real team. 
The real team is about getting the best out of everybody. 
If you define winning in the right way, 
if you make the right choices, because you cannot do everything, 
in the end, 
you need to choose a few things that are more important than others. 
You need to accept that there are some things that you will not do
Play video starting at 12 minutes 40 seconds and follow transcript12:40
Then you put together a team, which is a team with 
people with great strengths that is working very well together. 
Usually these three steps bring you to glory.
Play video starting at 12 minutes 54 seconds and follow transcript12:54
I always thought that leading by example is actually going to 
get the message out to my management boards that it's okay for 
the leader to say, “I don't know,” 
“What do you think about it?” 
or, “I don't have an answer to that question,” 
“Help me get to that question,” et cetera. 
I think you really need to say, you know what, I'm not in this position, 
and it's true, 
no leader is in a position of leadership, or 
no leader should be in a position of leadership because they know everything.
Play video starting at 13 minutes 25 seconds and follow transcript13:25
People should be in a position of leadership because they can get 
other people to actually contribute, 
and that sum of the individuals is much better than… 
you know, the individuals together are better than individually. 
I think that leading by example is a good one. 
The second is just about rewarding behaviors that 
are more towards dialogue incorporation, 
that behaviors that are more towards conflict and antagonizing and 
proving that you have a better way of doing. 
I think the two are very much related. 
If you can get two individuals to talk about an issue and 
solve it together, not only will you find that they both learn, they both might say, 
“Oh, look, you know more on this topic than I do, so help me get better.” 
But also you minimize the potential for conflict.
Play video starting at 14 minutes 20 seconds and follow transcript14:20
You should always work on priorities 
because sometimes, a small problem is, 
you always have to have your priority list in your daily work, 
because every day there is a new issue. 
You should understand which one is the most important. 
I think that 
takes a lot of time of the leader. 
Hm. 
To establish priorities? 
Yeah, establishing priorities, making sure that people really don't get lost 
in too many things, 
but give a priority and follow that priority. 
Sometimes you also get into bottlenecks. Things don’t get solved, 
nobody is answering, nobody is giving a signal that things are progressing. 
Then I'm usually called in but I tell my people, 
call me when you really think it’s the last resort, that 
I am the only one that can help you reach out to solve the bottleneck, 
but I want you to make the effort first. 
Don't always call me in, otherwise you’ll never grow, 
you’ll never establish your ability to influence, 
so use your influence power first, and then call me in. 
This is not always easy because I'm very execution-oriented. 
I try to help all the time. 
I'm very generous in that, and 
that becomes a problem because people call me in too many times, 
so you have to really learn how to limit your availability 
and leave the issue on the table to make sure people follow up, 
otherwise you’ll solve the problem and next time they will come to you again. 
They have to experience it, and you have to be patient and 
wait until the thing is solved, which, in my case, is not always easy. 
The patience part? 
Yeah. 
Yeah.
Play video starting at 16 minutes 7 seconds and follow transcript16:07
What makes leadership in that kind of international context particularly 
challenging, but maybe also rewarding? 
What is different about international leadership that 
domestic leaders don't experience?
Play video starting at 16 minutes 19 seconds and follow transcript16:19
Yeah, I think it's a matter of you have to understand so 
many ways of thinking and styles you know?
Play video starting at 16 minutes 27 seconds and follow transcript16:27
The Norwegian style is very cooperative. You ask for 
input from everyone, to a certain degree search for consensus a lot of the times, 
but at least consult your ways and 
you worked with some people that really don't understand that 
because they're used to orders and more hierarchies. 
Then you realize that, okay, I have to get that person to 
I need to explain how I operate and maybe I need to adjust a little bit too. 
Then maybe you adjust a lot of that. 
I think that that’s the think, you need to: one, 
share how you operate, once you get conscious about that, 
because in the early days I wasn't even aware of that. 
Then you get aware of it, so then you explain. 
But you also adjust a little bit. 
You always have to work on becoming clearer.
Play video starting at 17 minutes 24 seconds and follow transcript17:24
In an intercultural setting I think that that would be a life long thing. 
You can always become clearer. 
I also realized that I've had to 
learn a lot about how hierarchies work, which I didn't know coming from Scandinavia. 
Now sometimes I meet people who come from there and I say “Wow!” 
Now I am surprised again 
because I’ve been out for so long. 
You always learn things, 
but I think this aspect of clarity, 
trying to get conscious about your own behavior so you can explain, 
you can be up front and say, here's how we do it. 
And, you know, I'm open to different ways and, at the same time, 
this is the way.
Play video starting at 18 minutes 9 seconds and follow transcript18:09
Yeah.
Play video starting at 18 minutes 11 seconds and follow transcript18:11
>> The challenge is to make sure people can understand how you, 
contribute to common objectives, 
the interpretation of the local context is very important, 
and also build a common language which is not necessarily your language, 
but is the ability to understand the other people's language, 
and make that kind of cross-cultural bridge in a way. 
Which can be very challenging. 
For me, for instance, living in Italy, a country which is extremely special in many ways, 
and working in an international company, my main challenge has been: 
making my colleagues and my supervisors understand the peculiarities of Italy, 
and act together in order to address difficult situations
Play video starting at 19 minutes 3 seconds and follow transcript19:03
with the same lens. Which is not easy, because, 
especially with American corporations, 
they all think that America is the standard, everywhere. 
But America is not… U.S. is not Italy, is not Europe. 
Europe is not the same. 
So I think the main challenge is really to build a common language, 
and build a trust which also comes from a common language of course. 
You have the whole world, and that requires, 
not only mental strength, but also physical strength.
Play video starting at 19 minutes 39 seconds and follow transcript19:39
I mean after these interview today, I'll take the plane, go to Brazil, 
then from Brazil I’ll go to Mexico and on Friday I'm back in the office, and today's Monday. 
So you can figure out how compressed things are. 
You land in a place, you have to meet the people, 
you want to go in stores to see our products, you see a few customers, 
you have a couple of dinners. 
And, so there is a physical challenge sometimes not to be underestimated. 
The other challenge of the international world is that 
it forces you to make more choices. 
You cannot win with the same intensity, with the same pace, 
at the same time, in every country. You need to accept 
that you want to win 60 or 70% of the matches, 
this is like a football team or a basketball team. 
It would be impossible to win all of that. 
You don't need to get depressed if you lose a few. 
And you need to choose those that are much more important to you. 
This is back to where we were talking about leadership, 
which is the definition of what winning is, includes which countries 
are really core, which countries are really making the difference. 
So that is one of the challenges, and the decision making, the fact that you, 
if you try to be average everywhere, you will have average results everywhere. 
So you need to be the best in some places, and accept that 
you are on a pause in some other countries and you will take care of that later.
Play video starting at 21 minutes 13 seconds and follow transcript21:13
The last challenge of international environments 
is the pace in which things are moving. 
We are used to a certain pace in Europe, 
while when you go to Asia or you go to Brazil, the pace is very different.
Play video starting at 21 minutes 30 seconds and follow transcript21:30
And therefore you need to learn how not to always predict the development of things 
based on your own personal experience, but you need to become versatile 
at the idea that different countries can move at a very different pace. 
It's complex job. 
It's a complex task. 
Part of it is a bit natural probably, 
but most of it, I would say, you grow through experience and through mistakes. 
You want to try and find what's common to 
human beings rather than what's different, in human beings. 
To me there are some things, there are some values, there are some, 
some behaviors that actually translate really well across cultures. 
And so it’s 
almost like “what are those?” because those are the things you can count on, 
and you can actually deploy in the team in the same way 
and then you'll need to 
be different, depending on the person that you talk to. 
But if that difference can be 10% and 
90% you actually adopt a behavior which is consistent, then I think 
you're more predictable but also life is a little bit easier because it becomes more 
natural and it becomes less targeted to different populations.