East-West Leadership: Lessons from Successful Expat Executives with Gabor Holch

Wealth Without Borders Podcast

How do you open yourself to working with different nationalities in your workplace? Do you think you’ll be able to adapt to cultural differences?

China is a huge, productive, and progressing country. We cannot avoid the fact that we have to be open to change and new ideas coming from different people whether they are of the same nationality or not. It is crucial to expand our businesses, to find more buyers and market businesses in different countries and locations. With this in mind, it is important for us to learn how to be adaptive and open-minded to our surroundings and the people around us. If we are able to venture out, adapt, and be open to new opportunities, as well as different cultures and nationalities, then we will be able to grow both ourselves and our business.

Gabor Holch is an intercultural leadership consultant. He's also a coach, an author, and a speaker.

In this episode, Gabor shares how understanding culture and nationality are crucial in the workplace, principles that are not limited to working in China. He also shares his insights on how you can adapt to an intercultural workplace, give comfort to yourself, and show acceptance towards others.

What you will learn from this episode:

• Discover the value of understanding cultural differences between you and other people in your workplace

• Learn how you can remove a “blueprint” mindset of sticking to your own culture and how you can be more open to others

• Know more about how you can adapt to change, and how to deal with cultural differences amongst your colleagues and in different surroundings

"That is the absolutely amazing aspect of intercultural relations because it comes from personality, the culture that we inherit, and the culture that we build."

- Gabor Holch

Topics Covered:

01:32 - Gabor defines his ideal client

02:01 - The wrong expectations, the precise problem that Gabor solves for his clients

02:47 - Inability to understand other’s nationality or culture, being angry and blaming the other person because of differences are one of the symptoms being experienced

03:18 - One of the mistakes is keeping a blueprint from your own culture and pushing it through, the lack of fusion between nationalities and culture

04:10 - Gabor’s valuable free action: “Culture and leadership and the values that we use when we communicate with each other are we would think they are not measurable, we would think that they are extremely intangible, but what they can do for themselves, to do themselves a favor, is get some facts.”

05:02 - Gabor’s valuable free resource: Go to www.holch.biz/ to learn more about how to work and adjust to an intercultural workplace

05:47 - People Alert: Erin Meyer’s Culture Map, Csaba Toth’s Global DISC Assessment, and Mai Nguyen’s Cross-Cultural Management Book

08:13 - Question that should have been asked to Gabor: How do I know all this stuff?

Key Takeaways:

“Just because yours are right, it doesn't mean that the other is wrong.” - Gabor Holch

“When you find yourself in a cultural conundrum with one or more of your colleagues, then either grab that colleague for a cup of whatever your poison is, a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, some beer or wine and make them talk about how they do things in their culture. If that would be too sensitive, then do a lateral move and grab somebody from the same culture that you have a trustful relationship with.” - Gabor Holch

“Culture and leadership and the values that we use when we communicate with each other are we would think they are not measurable, we would think that they are extremely intangible, but what they can do for themselves, to do themselves a favor, is get some facts.” - Gabor Holch

“If you work in a cultural constellation of two or three different cultures, how are they different from each other?” - Gabor Holch

“This is why a book cannot actually tell you how to solve a cultural-related leadership problem because you have to build awareness about your own personality, the culture that you, let's say, benchmark yourself to, like nationality, or your family values, and so on, and the culture- cultural construct that's around you, even the corporate culture of the company, where you work and the constellation of the cultures that people bring into the team.” - Gabor Holch

“There is no right or wrong way to do it. You have to come up with a fusion.” - Gabor Holch

People / Resources Mentioned:

• Erin Meyer’s Culture Map
• Csaba Toth’s Global DISC Assessment
• Mai Nguyen’s Cross-Cultural Management Book

Ways to Connect with Gabor Holch:

• Website: https://www.holch.biz/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaborholch/

Ways to Connect with Howard Whiteson:

• Website: http://www.wealthwithoutborders.net
• Podcast: https://wealthwithoutborders.net/podcast/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/howardwhiteson