Cohesive cultures in global teams
Client: The IN Group
Paul Mullins speaks to Kate Hodsdon.
Paul Mullins is an Executive Director at The IN Group and Investigo. Joining as a graduate recruitment consultant in 2010, Mullins now leads Investigo's US business and our global consultancy, strategy, and private equity business. Splitting time between the UK and our offices in San Diego, New York, Miami, and Philadelphia, Mullins has built recruitment teams in different specialisms and internationally. Mullins shares his personal reflections on how values shape culture, and culture shapes commercial growth.
Starting points
Over the last thirteen years, I've seen leadership trends ebb and shift, and seen firsthand the impact of culture on international growth. For me, having a set of values that binds an organisation or a team together cannot be underestimated. Leaders who invest time and genuine care when developing those values is fundamental to the culture that follows. Simple as this sounds, it isn't always simple to put into action when growing rapidly and expanding internationally.
When I discovered Erin Meyer's research on cultural relativity it made me stop and think. I agree that culture is always relative, and we can never know if the way we intend to be seen, will be the way we are actually seen by others. At the same, before an organisation can begin determining their values, or mapping how those values might drive its cultural evolution; there's a basic starting point that I believe is often over-looked, yet is universal to us all. Above and beyond all other values is respect, because without it our fundamental human needs cannot be met.
Respect - the universal principle
Our need for respect is fundamental to being human. The definition of respect that I like most is "to accept the importance of someone's rights or customs and to do nothing that would harm them or cause offence". To me, respect preempts qualities such as compassion, kindness, and care, because it starts with our universal right to be as we are as an individual. Full stop. When I accept someone's basic human right to be themself, with the uniqueness that they bring. it is a given I strive to be kind, compassionate, open-minded, and patient, etc.
Cultural nuances when reading others
I cannot place enough importance on respect when trying to read others. Whether in a personal relationship on a first date, or as a leader, manager, or fellow colleague, trying your best to read others means accepting there is no "right" interpretation of a situation. Respect leads to shared interactions being valued as subjective, deeply personal, and nuanced, which both requires and empowers a sense of genuineness.
Meyer's thoughts on cultural relativity as a shared experience of hearing and seeing others as individuals and as a collective, I believe is critical to this. It may be that I feel as if I've read someone and understood where they're coming from, and yet someone else who's sharing that same experience, may read the situation completely differently. It comes back to what Stephen R. Covey famously wrote in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change: "How you treat the one reveals how you regard the many, because everyone is ultimately a one." This is how I've witnessed cultures that grow person to person, and then go on to support an organisation.
Being aware of intersubjectivity when reading others
Intersubjectivity is the appreciation that in any social encounter we bring conscious and unconscious biases as two people, or subjects. When respect and empathy underpin our interaction then we can explore what's happening between us without feeling a need to objectively find who is "right" and who is "wrong". So, when I talk about reading people. I don't mean assessing what you personally experience there and then; it starts before that as a direct result of the environment which you set to ensure everyone feels safe enough to be open.
When difficult conversations are needed in business, reading someone doesn't mean taking the high ground and coercing someone into responding so your preconceived belief is vindicated. It is the opposite. In an environment where honesty is respected and there is no fear of judgement, reading people is something that we can all do. It is not a technical skill but rather a way of connecting embodied by humanity, compassion, and authenticity. As we can easily fall into fear- driven defensiveness, reading others takes concerted effort, humility, and practice. because there's a comfort in familiarity and often an initial discomfort in what's not.
Authenticity - easy to talk about, harder to live by
I tried to find out how many organisations state that authenticity is one of their values. gave up after finding percentages varied so massively it was futile. Suffice to say, most companies will have in their corporate message somewhere that empowering their people is central to their culture. At The IN Group we too have authenticity front and centre of ours, in case you wondered. This didn't come from a branding exercise, but rather from a survey about how our people felt about working with us. Various words were used, but the essence of authenticity cropped up time and time again.
The reason I believe it did, is because our need to be ourselves and not hide who we are, is something that anyone, anywhere, and at any stage in their life, values when they feel it. Authenticity to me is about being ree to be human. It encompasses our faults, fears, and fragilities, as well as our strengths and a feeling of pride and contented acceptance in who we are.
In my personal experience working within Europe and the US, I have not found a single person who does not appreciate that they can show up as they are and with all the differences they bring still be part of a shared vision and key part of how that translates into culture.
If I sound a little idealistic here then forgive me. I am not disregarding that some cultures might lean towards humility, a respect for authority, or constraint over authenticity, and is why respect always drives cultural harmony. Nevertheless, feeling that your fundamental goodness and goodwill is respected and accepted on a human-to human level, I stand by as the universal glues that holds together our need to connect and feel belonging in our tribe.
Without a measurement system, values are meaningless
As a complement to Investigo's values. I developed the C.I.A., which stands for commitment, intensity, and attitude. These felt apt for a high-performance sales culture, and offered a mode of measurement that was fair, easily understood, and that sales consultants anywhere seemed to naturally demonstrate. As such they have bound us together as we've grown our team and entered new territories.
Commitment asks for a mutual accountability. Intensity reflects the dynamic pace that sales demands. And attitude is a demonstrable way of working that helps to reduce the toxicity that hyper-competitiveness can spread in sales teams. What I like about each of these is the way that they support both continuous improvement and high-performance.
Sales is a high-commitment and high- intensity world. It requires commitment to ride the many ups and downs within sales: integrity so you think beyond the next deal and seek to develop long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships. Essential to both is an awareness of your attitude when balancing both. Someone may be Italian, English, American, or Mexican, but C.I.A.'s values seem to be inherent in any sales culture, from my experience of them at Investigo, and with clients.
Why we need culture carriers
Once you have leaders who serve as C.I.A. "culture carriers", regardless of where they are, they carry your values in a way that contains your core culture whilst allowing for divergent interpretations to be held. Culture carriers take care that the right goals. commitment and attitude are communicated in Monday morning weeklies, one-to-ones, quarterly leadership reviews, and up into annual performance appraisals. This helps me as a leader of international teams notice how our values are playing out day-to-day. In our New York office, for example, some of our people commute from Rhode Island and need flexibility with the hours they work so they can avoid a hellish commute.
In our San Diego office, our team are up and working early so they can leave to work out or go for a run.
Commitment is not proven by the hours someone works, but how their contribution serves the team as a whole. Similarly, accepting various lifestyles supports the intensity and pace someone maintain, as well as the attitude a person shows towards their work and that of their colleagues accordingly. When there is no need to hide or defend cultural differences, so trust can blossom over the need for a cookie-cut culture.
What this means in real life
In one-to-ones, a C.I.A. commitment is not something I measure through someone's pipeline. Nor is intensity through a competitiveness to win new business, or long hours a reflection of your attitude about success. These pitch people against each other and don't show me that my team are truly living by our values.
Through genuine conversations, that start with how you feel about you, then how you feel about you and me, and onto how you feel about others in your team, so early signs of blockers and opportunities come to light. Authenticity is meaningful as a value when it's demonstrated. I care more about seeing someone trying to do a good job, trying to be a good person, and trying to do good by their clients. Any areas of struggle, we work through with training, mentoring, coaching and development. It's a case of being OK with meeting halfway and remembering that respect and trust enable the cultural relativity that collectively drive a team's collective performance.
Through genuine conversations, that start with how you feel about you, then how you feel about you and me, and onto how you feel about others in your team, so early signs of blockers and opportunities come to light. Authenticity is meaningful as a value when it's demonstrated. I care more about seeing someone trying to do a good job, trying to be a good person, and trying to do good by their clients. Any areas of struggle, we work through with training, mentoring, coaching and development. It's a case of being OK with meeting halfway and remembering that respect and trust enable the cultural relativity that collectively drive a team's collective performance.
Good starts, bad middles and happy endings
A friend of mine recently talked about working with a successful, fast growing organisation in the Nordics. The benefits of the experience they brought was undeniable. A first meeting was set up and my friend walked through their initial growth ideas for the company's founders on Zoom. The founders listened intently, and my friend ended the same way as always, which invited completely honest feedback. Complete honesty to my English friend pitching versus what complete honesty to their Nordic client meant was interpreted somewhat differently.
As round two opened on Zoom, my friend was thanked for their time researching opportunities and the depth of strategic thinking that they'd clearly put in. However, one by one, every other idea was pretty much dismissed as wrong. A little taken aback at the directness of the feedback received, my friend was worried that they had missed the mark and the opportunity to work together had vanished in thin air. Yet, in reality, the opposite was true.
What happened was the Nordic founders felt so happy to be being offered a chance to be "completely honest and direct" that they accepted the invitation and did just that. Unbeknownst to my friend was that far larger international agencies involved in the pitch didn't offer that, or give the founders time to reflect before sending regular chaser emails about setting up a second meeting.
After their second meeting online, where feedback was questioned and challenged by their client, after fifteen minutes my friend described the relied that they didn't have to woo their potential new client with lunch or dinner later.
What the invitation to be honest meant - which their client took as a sign of true respect and partnership - was a rapid move into a productive, solution-focused conversation where both could be open, and share valuable insights from the inside out, and the outside in..
The result was a long-standing partnership that went on to bring huge success for the founders and the growth of one business into a group. Their respectful appreciation that what worked in one country, might not work in exactly the same way for theirs didn't mean binning the strategy: it meant leaning in, with both sides asking lots of clarifying questions, and agreeing that by breaking up big pieces of the project into smaller ones. they could explore new ways of working that weren't dependent on one way being assumed right or wrong from the off, but that could be tested and objectively evaluated as they grew.
This was achieved by sharing the thinking behind ideas, and explaining the rationale with a large dose of emotional intelligence and open-mindedness to respect cultural norms that enabled change. That first session felt like a lightning bolt to the Nordic founders, rather than a polite knock at the door. And to my friend, their invitation to knock at the door. felt like a lightning bolt.
Where communication can stop and start is perfectly illustrated with that story. It started so well - let's all be honest and share ideas! But then could have stopped with a sense of both feeling that was nonsense, and said for show. My friend could have pulled back thinking. "Well, that wasn't quite what I meant by direct, that was just rude!" And the client could have thought, "Well, you asked us to be completely honest, which we respected and so were, unless you didn't actually mean that?"
There is no me, you, or us without communication
Meeting people where they are and how they are comes down to communication. How honest you can be will based on many variables. Were you encouraged to speak up at home? Are you more introverted or extraverted? Are you new to a team and still finding your place, or are you experienced in a senior position, and know what's expected of you as a leader?
It feels so obvious to state, but with international growth on almost every organisation's agenda, instilling basic respect for our differences is an essential for leaders planning for growth. Consulting with your Chief People Officers or HR Director offers vital insights when considering the ways in which your values can remain congruent yet flexible enough to allow for cultural variables in their interpretation.
People aren't objects: they're dynamic. complex, unique, and subjects of their environment. The same message might need fifty subtle variations for it to land well. This has never been more true today where local is not local, it's always global.