You Can Be a Leader: Leadership Principles to Achieve Excellence

Chapter Eighteen International Leadership

We live in a very diverse country that conducts a tremendous amount of international business. Surprisingly, many business and military professionals are very U.S. centric in their thinking and behavior. Many negotiators have inadvertently lost or compromised contracts due to misunderstandings of language, innuendos, and cultural differences.

A good example of the perils of stereotyping countries is the case of South Korea and Japan. Even though both countries are geographically located in Northeast Asia and share a border along the Sea of Japan, the cultures and business environments are very different. A major difference is Koreans are very forward in the way they conduct business, while the Japanese are very reserved. By the way, if you are Japanese, it is the Sea of Japan; if you are Korean, it is the East Sea. Don't dare call the sea by the wrong name in either country; there are lingering grudges from World War II and national pride at play in the region.

It is impossible for an individual to know how to conduct business in every country and you cannot lump a whole continent into one generalization. So what can you do? Your best course of action is to train your employees in the culture of the country where they will conduct business. This may take time and money, but in the long run, it is well worth the costs.

As an officer, I was stationed in Germany for almost eight years and Japan for three years. When I first arrived in each of these countries, I was required to take a two-week cultural and language course. These classes were very useful to me, since I became a Partnership Officer in Germany working closely with the German Army and a Bi-lateral Officer in Japan working closely with the country's Ground Self Defense Forces. These courses paid huge dividends as I learned the finer points of face and hand gestures, dining manners, greetings, gifts, and other cultural expectations. The classes were essential to my professional development. They enabled me to form good working relationships with my counterparts from the host countries and make lasting good impressions.

I will start this chapter with a light story. For better or worse, this story gives legitimacy to the stereotyping of cultures. While I was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of the large international peace keeping force, I would routinely fly missions in and out of Sarajevo. We would land our helicopter at the UN Headquarters, drop off our passengers, and refuel. While our passengers conducted their business, we went downtown to eat or shop before going back to the headquarters building to wait for our passengers.

On this occasion, I received my weather update and then proceeded to wait in the operations room. Out of the window, I watched a Spanish Army helicopter start up and take off for Mostar. Ten minutes later, I heard the distinct sound of the Huey rotor blades beating the air to death, chop, chop, chop, and watched the same helicopter land from where it had taken off. I assumed the helicopter had some sort of minor in-flight emergency and returned to investigate the problem.

The roar of the engine noise died as the helicopter shut down on the pad. After the rotor blades stopped turning, the pilot leapt out of the cockpit, and threw his helmet on the ground. He opened the rear cabin door and exchanged some strong words with one of his passengers. A few minutes later, the red-faced angry Spanish Army pilot stormed into the operations area. He was speaking around a hundred miles per hour with his hands moving in every direction. I don't understand Spanish very well, but I am sure he was swearing up a storm. Just behind him, an equally red-faced German Army Officer entered the room, except in this case the stoic German was red-faced from embarrassment. The Spanish pilot finished letting off his steam before he entered the OPS office. Through the open door I watched him make some phone calls and refile his flight plan.

Still not being sure what had happened, I asked the German Officer why they had returned to the HQ heliport. The German Officer sheepishly looked at me, "The Italian Captain missed the flight. He is downtown chasing women."