I was talking to a client recently who was looking for a behavioural assessment to identify people and behaviours that would be successful in managing their global matrix organisation.<\/p>\n
Our approach is to offer assessments around the situation to identify the context and the challenges that people face. However, we are sceptical about anyone\u2019s ability to define in detail the behaviours that are necessary for success in a global or international context.<\/p>\n
We know for example that different cultures respond to hierarchically differently. Whereas challenging your boss is expected in countries with low power distance such as the Netherlands or the Nordic region, the same behaviour may be distinctly career limiting in Asia.<\/p>\n
If companies define successful behaviours as \u201copenness\u201d or \u201cbeing challenging\u201d they can expect that these will be interpreted very differently around the world. This is fine when operating within your national culture but, as businesses become more integrated globally and as teams have more diverse membership, then it becomes a challenge to evaluate whether people are meeting behaviourally defined criteria.<\/p>\n
Imagine a Dutch manager, who expects to be challenged directly, evaluating a Korean subordinate who values politeness and respects the hierarchy. What score will they give them in their appraisal on openness?<\/p>\n
If we are recruiting people to be successful in an international context \u2013 do we imagine that the same characteristics correlate with success in Japan as in California? Should we be recruiting against a fixed global profile; choosing people for their fit to a local culture, or emphasizing flexibility to deal with a variety of different contexts? Each of these answers will give us a very different behavioural profile.<\/p>\n
Many organisations define their values at a high level to allow for some flexibility in local interpretation. However, this just leads to different interpretations locally.<\/p>\n
A memorable example was when we were running a corporate values workshop in India for a multinational client. One of their values was \u201cintegrity\u201d \u2013 a very common one. An Indian participant became annoyed when discussing this \u201chow can this company claim to operate with integrity when it stopped me from employing my cousin?\u201d<\/p>\n
The European representatives of the company was surprised at this. In Europe or the USA nepotism (employing family members) would be seen as lacking in integrity. The Indian employee explained \u201cIn India how would anyone trust you to look after a customer or a stranger if you don\u2019t even look after your family?\u201d<\/p>\n