What Does Global Leadership Really Mean?

Andy Goram (left) and Crispin Thompson (right) discuss the key traits required to successfully lead global teams

What Does Global Leadership Really Mean?

Global leadership is often misunderstood.

Many leaders assume it simply means managing teams in different locations. But the reality is far more nuanced. Leading across cultures requires an entirely different level of awareness, adaptability, and emotional intelligence.

🎧 Listen to the full episode here 

📄 Prefer to read instead? The full transcript is available at the end of this blog.

In this episode of Sticky From The Inside, global leadership coach Crispin Thompson shares lessons from more than 25 years working in multinational organisations.

And his first lesson is surprisingly simple: global leadership begins with listening.

Listening unlocks understanding

When leaders operate across cultures, assumptions become dangerous. What works in one context may fall completely flat in another.

Communication styles vary. Attitudes towards hierarchy differ. Expectations around feedback and challenge change depending on culture.

Listening allows leaders to uncover those differences before they create friction.

The hidden risk of tokenism

One of the most powerful insights in the conversation is Crispin’s warning about tokenism in global leadership teams.

When organisations include leaders from different regions but fail to genuinely involve them in decision-making, the result is disengagement.

People stop speaking up. Ideas go unheard. And the diversity that should strengthen the organisation becomes little more than symbolism.

True global leadership ensures every voice carries real weight.

Cultural intelligence matters

Another theme running through the episode is cultural intelligence.

Great global leaders invest time in understanding the cultures they work with — from communication styles to local context and traditions.

Even small gestures of curiosity and respect can strengthen relationships and trust across international teams.

Leadership that travels

Perhaps the most powerful takeaway from the conversation is that global leadership isn’t really about geography at all.

It’s about awareness.

Leaders who listen, adapt their communication, and create environments where people feel safe to contribute unlock the true potential of global teams.

And in a world where organisations are increasingly international, those skills are becoming essential.

Full Transcript

[Andy Goram] (0:11 - 3:08)

Hello and welcome to Sticky from the Inside, the podcast that explores how to build stickier, competition smashing, consistently successful organisations from the inside out. I'm your host Andy Goram and I'm on a mission to help you turn the lights on behind the eyes of your people, light the fires within them and help more of us lead successful, fulfilling work lives. This podcast is for anyone who believes that's worth going after and is curious about what really drives people, culture and performance.

Each episode we dive into the ideas and conversations that help create what I call stickier businesses, places where people thrive and love to work, and where customers stay, recommend you and love what you do and why you do it. So, if you want to take the tricky out of being sticky, listen on. Okay then, let me ask you something.

What does global leadership actually mean?

When you hear the term global leadership, what does that actually mean to you? Is it about having offices in different countries? Is it about building diverse leadership teams?

Or is it about something far more subtle and perhaps more difficult? The ability to genuinely understand difference, cultural nuance and adapt your leadership accordingly. Because for me, being global isn't just a matter of geography, it's about awareness.

It's about recognising that what works brilliantly in one context may feel absolutely flat on its face in another. That communication styles vary, that expectations around hierarchy, feedback, challenge and collaboration differ. And that high performance across cultures requires leaders who can flex, listen and adjust, not just apply a very simple single leadership template everywhere.

Now, my guest today is Crispin Thompson, global leadership coach and founder of the Leadership Studio. And with over 25 years experience working across multinational environments, Crispin helps organisations develop leaders who don't just operate internationally, who understand how to adapt across cultures to unlock brilliant performance. So, in this episode, I'm hoping we'll get to explore what global leadership really looks like in practice.

From understanding cultural nuance and adapting across contexts to developing talent you don't physically see and recognising how communication can either bridge those gaps or unexpectedly widen them. So, if your teams span time zones, languages and cultures and you want leadership that truly travels, I think this episode is just for you. Crispin, welcome to the show, my friend.

 [Crispin Thompson] (3:09 - 3:10)

Happy to be here. Yeah this is great topics, I think.

[Andy Goram] (3:10 - 3:45)

I hope so.

It's one of those things that, if I'm honest, in my career, in my experience, I didn't see a lot of this. But today, the world's smaller. People are working in far more diverse teams culturally, internationally.

And, you know, I've not had tons and tons of experience of leading teams like that. So, I'm fascinated to speak to you, my friend. Before we get stuck into these, as you say, I think fascinating topics, please do me a favour, can you just introduce yourself to the audience, tell us a little bit about your background and why this topic is fascinating for you too?

Crispin Thompson’s multinational leadership journey

[Crispin Thompson] (3:46 - 7:14)

Yeah, my pleasure. You know, for me, my journey across corporate America and kind of multinational corporations really let me see a lot of this, like this notion of what works and what doesn't. When are you leading global teams versus really, truly, you're a global leader.

So, I spent 25 years at Hewlett Packard and then stayed with HP until it split 10 years ago. And I went with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and then went to a company called Taskus after that. I went to a company called QSC after that.

And here I am kind of running the leadership studio. But my journey was interesting, right? Because when I started with that first company, they were only in the US.

And then the second company was only in the US. And then Compaq bought us and Compaq was everywhere, right? They were huge, giant, global.

And about a year after they bought us, I rotated to Europe. And like a very classic American story, I didn't have a passport. I raised my hand and said, I'd like this assignment.

And then everything happened very, very quickly. I had to rush a passport and kind of blah, blah, blah. But I was suddenly in a different place.

And I was living in Scotland where English was spoken, but to my ear, that was a tough accent, especially Glasgow. That was a tough accent in my beginning days. And just, you know, very subtle differences in phrasing and words and tone.

And I felt more foreign probably in the first days and months than I should have. But I also got to see how do these international teams come together? Where do we find common ground?

And as my career grew, I was able to kind of see and do more things across different regions. And then eventually, as I achieved different levels of success within Hewlett-Packard and beyond, my own teams were elsewhere. And for sure, at the end of my career at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, I didn't have any employees in my organization that were in the US.

Every single employee in my whole organization, other than myself, was somewhere else. And what was very interesting about that was just, like you said, kind of learning, like, how do you adapt? What works?

What doesn't? How do you make these things functional in ways that are beyond just some metric on some scorecard? And I think there's a lot for us to follow there.

But I became very passionate about this. I felt that, you know, for budgetary reasons, I was building teams maybe in some of the other places in the beginning. But then I felt like I was seeing this sort of amazing, untapped market of talent.

And the different backgrounds, different perspectives were actually really, really beneficial in a lot of ways, because it helped us, especially from a change management perspective. Like, if you're rolling out something globally, it really helps to have people that are a little more local to where the things are happening that can explain, here's a pitfall that might happen, or here's something to consider. Or, God help me, if there's legal things to consider, that, you know, there's a lot of traps around that all around the ways I felt made me learn a lot about how to be a better, truly effective global leader.

Yeah, that's kind of the journey that sort of led me here today. And now I spend my time, like, helping leaders kind of bridge potential to performance and kind of find their voice. And if there's a global element to that, all the better.

I feel like I have a wealth of just personal experience to talk about in that realm.

[Andy Goram] (7:15 - 8:13)

I think that's why I was fascinated and really pleased that you agreed to come on this show, because we talk a lot about leadership and culture from various perspectives. And only to this day, I think a couple of conversations have really dug into the sort of the global element of it. Because I think as we look forward, it just stands to reason that you're going to be dealing with people who aren't in front of you, and most likely are in a different time zone to you more and more often.

I mean, that's not a new thing. These teams have been operating for years and years and years. But in our kind of new evolving workplace, I think it's become more common.

And so it's going to be something more and more people have to try and understand. And you've unpacked a few bits already. But if I was to ask you how you would define global leadership, what are the sort of characteristics?

What are the sort of key behaviours? What are the factors that we should be considering and maybe that we're going to pick out in today's conversation?

Why listening is the starting point for global leadership

[Crispin Thompson] (8:14 - 9:28)

A few things that I think about a lot are one is in order to be effective as a leader of global teams, in the very beginning, it really just starts with listening. We need to listen to what's going on, what's working well, what's not. It's also about kind of engagement and inclusivity.

But I mean, inclusivity in the sense of making the people feel included in conversations and creating an environment where they feel that not only can they be honest, but they should be. Because unfortunately, sometimes when you've got the leader from the headquarters country talking to the people somewhere else, there's a maybe self-imposed barrier. But there's a barrier sometimes where the audience doesn't tell you the correct answer or the accurate answer to the question you're asking out of some fear of reprisal, some unimagined thing of, oh, they want to hear what they want to hear.

But you can't really improve things and therefore you can't really have an organization that's going to feel connected to you that you kind of believe in their own needs too. And so you kind of start off on the wrong foot if you don't create that environment right at the beginning where people feel included and heard and seen and all these things.

[Andy Goram] (9:28 - 9:44)

Yeah, I think that psychological safety is really, really important. I suspect it is even more of a minefield when you're dealing with international waters and, uh, and cultural nuance within that, you know, what, what, what works in your own backyard may not necessarily create the same feeling somewhere else.

A leadership lesson from managing teams across Mexico and India

[Crispin Thompson] (9:45 - 11:04)

Yeah. And, and it just, you know, you just, because you talk about this kind of these like little minds that sometimes we plant ourselves and I'll give an example here. So prior to me taking on like truly, truly massive global teams, I'd always had teams, but most of them were elsewhere, but most of them hadn't usually been in Mexico.

And so for maybe eight or 10 years, I had been working with the sites in Guadalajara and I had a strong familiarity there. I speak enough of the language to, to feel very comfortable and just a good affinity with the culture and attitude and everything. And, and so that I felt like that was giving me a nice air of kind of credibility to go and engage other places.

But very quickly when I was engaging with, with India, what I was kind of getting the feedback was, was that maybe I'm just talking about them too much. And it was kind of almost creating like a, like I only care about the, you know, the, the folks in Mexico. And so what that told me was this thing that I thought I was bringing this credibility, I could talk about having managed, I would, I was over-indexing and back to this notion of listening and creating the environment.

I myself, because I was trying to kind of evoke the right thing was in fact creating the opposite. If I hadn't been willing to kind of stop and listen and ask for, for feedback, I think we, I think whatever attraction I felt I was making in the beginning, we would just have lost.

[Andy Goram] (11:04 - 12:06)

I mean, that's great though, that a team is willing to sort of like give you that open and honest feedback. But like you say, it does come from the environment that we create. And I guess one of the things I've heard you mention in the, in the research that I have done into you, it just sounds very creepy.

Understanding the tokenism trap in global teams

Whenever I say that to a guest, it's not made in a creepy way, Crispin. It's just been out of respect, I think. And I've heard you talk about tokenism when it comes to sort of like global leadership.

And I'm wondering whether it links to some of the things you've just sort of said here, because I guess the credibility in which you sit within that global team at the time, the amount of belief that people have that you are listening to me, you are hearing me, you haven't got your pre-design ideas about things. You're not just going to bring in your way of things. And that's, that's all we're going to see.

I'm wondering whether that is linked to this tokenism trap that you've mentioned before. And if you would kindly unpack that for us as to what that means, how that shows up, and actually maybe how that you've found ways, I guess, to avoid that trap.

[Crispin Thompson] (12:08 - 17:56)

Yeah. I, you know, tokenism is a, it's a charged word, right? Because we're, when you were talking about it, you're talking about you, you put someone in a place almost like not necessarily or observationally and potentially not because of merit, just because you needed someone in, in that box or, or from that location to kind of be at this level.

And, and whether, whether or not that happens as often as people think it happens, the impression is out there. But, but then, you know, you can also see really, really bad like leadership behaviours. I, one example I saw was I was being asked to kind of look at an organization and kind of do some assessments around what's working and what's not.

And one of the things I saw was that at the staff level, let's say there were eight people or 10 people who were at the direct staff level to the senior leader. But in fact, there was, there was like, there was staff and then there was staff. And there was the, the people that were kind of organizationally really closest to the leaders.

They were the ones that made all the decisions. And there were the other ones who felt like they were on the staff because there just needed to be a fixed number of people. And, and otherwise you couldn't, you couldn't host an organization or some other kind of HR mathematics that sometimes rule things.

And, and so when I, when ultimately that organization kind of rolled to me, there were two things that I saw. One is that the people that had been a part of that kind of inner circle, their expectation was that they, by default, there was going to be an inner circle and that they were it. And then secondarily, because not only were there people that I was kind of keeping at the staff while I was bringing some other people up, they, they, they just naturally felt that there was like a junior senior thing.

And this whole thing about the, maybe that's even the first time that I heard someone actually kind of herit that word back to me that, oh, I'm just here as the, as a, as a token. And I was like, oh my gosh, what a, what a horrible way to describe yourself, let alone this, this kind of decision making you're ascribing to me now. And so what I believe is if, if we want to be really effective global leaders and we need to truly build a global team, which means having leadership from multiple places around, around the world at that kind of senior staff level, then we have to make sure that we're, we're telling everyone that each voice matters.

Now, ultimately the leader is going to make the decision they make. Right. But, but we need to show kind of good collaboration and, and allow for, for the diversity of thought that comes from the magic of having global teams together truly gets, gets played out.

And if you're hitting a stumbling block, the there's a one particular tool in my toolkit that I don't try to bring out too often for, for a lot of very obvious reasons is every once in a while, there's going to be a very unpopular decision. Something has come down, there's some budget cut or some new thing we have to do. And it's in whatever the answer ends up being will be unpopular.

I would see this sometimes where I could, I could just tell by knowing the people who worked for me, where their kind of opinions were likely to be and who was likely to be the, the voice on one side or the voice on the other. But, but it's like a jury, right? You don't, I don't need a, I don't need all 12 to say yes, but I need them pulling toward the same direction.

And so once or twice in my career, and I will never, I'll never tell the people who worked for me when I did this, but once or twice in my career, I would come to the staff and say, listen, I know this is, this is going to be unpopular, but this decision has come down and here's what we're going to do. And I would just put all my weight behind basically the worst choice. And like, there was a bunch of different ways to do it, but this is the worst one.

But I'm just saying, this is my idea. We're doing it. And then let the team kind of implode a little bit for emotionally implode for a second and say, gosh, this is terrible.

We can't do this. And let them kind of rally together because then they'll, they will collectively come together. They will help kind of create the better alternative.

They'll kind of push me off of my, my idea, which in truth was never really my plan. It's just, it was a way to kind of pull this, this team of people who, who none of them, by the way, we're in the same room with each other. Right.

Bringing distributed teams together around decisions

So, so getting them all kind of emotionally and intellectually together, but also showing them that, that their voice matters here. And so in their eyes, they, they changed my mind. They dissuaded me, but for me, there's no loss, right?

I don't, I can, I can take an arrow once in a while to say, oh, Chris had a bad idea. I can, I can deal with that. I'm, I'm, I'm sufficiently confident in my own, my own intellect to accept that I have dumb ideas.

It's fine. Sometimes there's some, you know, not everything that comes out of my mouth is great. And I'm okay with that, but, but we get to the great ideas together.

But also this, this helps me see like, how do people think? And I think as a, if you want to talk about what's a great aspect of a global leader, it's really identifying how do the people who, who work within your organization, how do they think and how do they learn? Because if you don't know those two things, then you're likely to, to kind of apply a one size fits all type model, which won't work.

Or you're likely to, to pick one or two styles that may be indexes in one or two directions, but again, you're going to leave others feeling out, left out. And then you're, then you're back to tokenism, right? You're back to part of this team now feels like I'm here because of mathematics, or I'm here because someone decided that we needed someone from India or Mexico or China or Romania or wherever the country is to be at staff level.

Not because I necessarily kind of earned my way in there. And if, and if they themselves believe that they're, they're part of this token trap, then guess what? They're not going to speak up.

And even if they do speak up, they're not going to feel like their voice is being heard. And even when their voice is heard, they're going to feel like it was luck, not, not merit. And so it's a, not only is it a bad look for the leader, but it, it creates this kind of emotional paradox, right?

Where they believe they're not there for the right reasons. Therefore, the things, even the good things that happen, aren't happening for the right reasons.

[Andy Goram] (17:56 - 18:34)

And then I think the belief thing is absolutely critical, right? Critical within that a hundred percent. I just, just what you just sort of said there about that listening and involving thing without wanting to sound like an idiot.

I mean, that's no real difference from being a good leader per se, right? I mean, there's more, I guess there may be more nuance to how things are going to work and a proper understanding about different cultures, different countries, the way things operate. So understanding how these people think and act and, and behave is really important, but that's a generalized leadership skill, isn't it?

What's the complication that we're dealing with here, do you think?

[Crispin Thompson] (18:34 - 23:22)

Well, so I'll give you a couple of responses because I think for sure, yes, I would hope that that is a general leadership. Hope's a very good word there. Yeah.

And I would hope that it is applied frequently, but it's, it's kind of like you're driving at night. It's not very busy. You come to a stop sign.

There's no one there. Do you come to a complete stop? Probably not every single time, right?

Even though, you know, like the rule was there and you should do it. And so I think even good leaders forget. And I think particularly if we have strong people around us who are maybe covering up our own gaps, we, we continue to fall into patterns.

And so I go back to that hope piece, right? I would hope that that's a normal part of the way that leaders lead, but I think creating intent there is, and, and, and truly I use this phrase a lot with post COVID world when we're so virtual is listening for intent. Yeah.

Because that's where, this is where things, little cracks can, can emerge and cracks can become fissures and fissures can eventually become canyons, right? Canyons that cannot be bridged. And even if we've got a team where everyone is speaking the same language, it doesn't matter what that language is, but if, but if they're from different places, it's very likely that we have nuance to our speech or we have different affectations or patterns, or we have just personalities.

And so one thing that I would see is that sometimes if I, if I could go back and look at a transcript of what was said, I would come away thinking, wow, that was a really tough conversation. Look how focused and abrupt and just to the point to an aggressive way this person was. But if you go back and listen to the call or better yet, if you could even see video recording, you could understand that there's ways to kind of manage around.

And so back to kind of, if you know how a person thinks, if you know how your team is likely to lean in certain ways, then it allows the leader to truly listen for, for the intent of the, of the message rather than the exact explicit way that message was being delivered. And, and so culturally, some areas are more blunt than others. Culturally, some areas are more like obsequious or like, you know, too praiseworthy sometimes than, than we want.

And so we have to kind of understand what's that nuance there and tease it out. And it's all the more so when the people are not right in front of you, right? Yeah.

When we're, when we're all in one room, we have a fighting chance of reading faces, reading body languages, hearing the person to the right sigh that you cannot see on Zoom or Teams, especially if they're muted, right? You're never going to know. No.

And, and so we have this, the, these, these cues. Now, when we're global, when we're, especially if we're global and virtual, the, not only does the leader need to listen, but the leader needs to slow down a little bit. I think we, we, we should prioritize precision over speed.

And because speed, you know, the, the, the overused metaphor of you're turning the oil tanker or turning the, you know, the aircraft carrier, truly, yes, these things take a while to turn, but more accurately, like we won't always see how things are turning if we're, if we, if we're trying so fast to turn, right? So we need to slow down a little bit. It's very good practice to make sure we're, we're kind of delivering messages in digestible chunks.

So if you've got something complex to deliver, it's better to kind of plan that out. That's going to be delivered over one meeting, three meetings, five minutes, whatever it is, so that everything can be, can be digested and the, the various teams around earth can consume it and kind of understand where we're going versus this. We're just going to lay it out right now.

Here's how it is and do it. Speaking of the other side of the mouth, I understand sometimes we have no, we have no control over the timeline and we have to, we have to deliver that message. But if we've taken that time to kind of build that rapport and kind of understand like the belief systems, like I said before, of, of the individuals and kind of cultural nuance, then even when we have to have that hard, fast do it this way or no way type message, it can land easier if the leaders is better able to kind of explicitly say, here's how, here's how it is in a way that they believe that their audience can understand. And maybe that's just, you say it one way and then say it another way and say it another way, even on the same call, knowing that you might sound repetitive in mass, but to individuals, you'll sound like, oh, this is how I needed to hear it. So it's kind of that, this is a really long answer to kind of agree with you to say, yeah, that's a, this at the core, this is something that every leader should do.

Why global leadership amplifies normal leadership challenges

But I think it's, it's kind of like it's tenfold when it's truly global and you're trying to get it right. And you actually have to do it.

[Andy Goram] (23:22 - 24:35)

Yeah. I think it's complex. It was a deliberately daft question because I, because I think whilst again, use the word intent, intentionally good leadership behavior to listen, right.

To understand and to adapt and flex your message to somebody so that they receive it in the best way. We hope that standard, when you're dealing with different languages, different cultures, that isn't necessarily going to be interpreted in the same way. If you deliver that message once that, that, that is not being flexible.

Right. I get that. I also love the idea when you talked about playing back the transcript of a conversation to me, that would allow you to properly interpret and respond to what we're thinking about intent, maybe, or at least having an idea about intent when, when you're living it in the moment, you're in a far more emotionally reactive state.

And if something doesn't quite land with you or makes, makes you feel edgy because it's been delivered in a way that that's not how I like to receive, or that's not how we do things here in this, in this country, I'm not even going to hear you at that, at that stage. So I think that, that flip from the sort of subjective stuff to the objective stuff, I think that's, that's quite a big difference maybe.

Emotional intelligence when delivering tough messages

[Crispin Thompson] (24:35 - 27:05)

Yeah, let me, let me react to that. So we're kind of hemming a little bit around emotional intelligence, right. Which is a absolute core needed attribute of any successful leader, especially if you want to be successful in kind of global organizations.

But let's say, let's say I'm a leader and I'm delivering a perceived to be tough message. It doesn't matter what that message is, but perceived to be tough message. And the audience is new to me.

And so I don't know, like in, in your country, how this would be received. I don't know, I don't have enough, I haven't had enough time to kind of build rapport and understand that maybe I have no, no particular prior experience in that country, that region to, to kind of give me cues. But the emotionally intelligent leader is, is going to deliver the message and, and know that this is, this, this is likely to be perceived as tough, no matter, just, just in general.

Like, and, and so what I would do in that case is I would, I would deliver a message and I would say, now, I know what I just said might be, might be tough to hear and might even be, might even be seen to be unnecessarily blunt or whatever the, whatever that description is. And I said, so let me say this differently. And I would try just another path, even, even if it feels completely duplicated to the message, say the same thing in a slightly different way.

And so this, this notion of, of, I always call it persona, but changing the message to the audience. This notion of persona is super, super important to, to leaders that really want to be effective. And, and this is to any kind of big organization, whether it's like right in my backyard in San Antonio, or if it's, you know, across the, across the globe, it's understanding how to tailor that message.

And so this back, this notion back to emotional intelligence, you, you, you're going to land that message in a slightly different way and then pause and say, I know this was a lot. And I know I said it slightly, you know, the same message slightly differently. What is your feedback?

What did you hear? What is your reaction? And let people, let people give responses and, and make them understood that they're allowed to say within reason they're allowed to say whatever, whatever is, is in them right then.

So that we can, because if someone says, oh my gosh, I can't believe you spoke to me that way that, you know, no one would ever say that here. I would say, first of all, let me apologize because that was not my intent, but please help me understand what was the component of it that, that most frustrated you or most angered you so that we can talk through it. Or was it just the message itself?

Because there's, there's also a degree of, we cannot get past this. That also has to kind of, you know, work through there as well.

[Andy Goram] (27:06 - 27:50)

I would imagine. And again, this is my complete ignorance. So there are people listening to this going, you are an idiot, Andy.

Yeah, I am maybe on this particular topic and which is fine, which is why I'm trying to find out more. But if you're inexperienced, maybe there's a temptation to segment the team, right? So if for this lot, I'll talk to this lot on their own and I'll, I'll give it this way.

And for this lot, I'll talk to this lot and I'll, I'll do it in the, in that way. And there's a trade-off there of the sense of team of delivering these messages, right? So you might have a culturally diverse group in front of you and to make things easy for you, right?

I'm just going to segment the team up and I'll do four different types of message and we win. So then you lose that sense of team, right? I mean, that must be a trade-off somewhere.

[Crispin Thompson] (27:50 - 30:49)

Yeah, but, but let me give you a slightly, let me, let me counter that a little bit too, because that's just a, that's just a tactic, right? So if the strategy is I need to land the message so that everyone understands that one tactic is you get everyone together and we, we talk about another tactic might be, let me meet you where you are. Yeah.

And, and if I was going to do that, if I was going to segment by geography and, and deliver messages like that, I would also want to show that I'm doing it kind of outside of my normal time zone, right? So it's not just about, I'm talking to this country and then I'm going to talk to this country because then you're right. Someone's going to see this as, are we really a team or, or, and, and even worse, someone somewhere would think, what did they hear?

Yes, exactly that. And we don't want that. And, and so what I would, what I would do is I would create multiple meetings across, you know, some of which were, were maybe painful to me from a time zone perspective.

And then of course I would say, here's what I want here, but then I would also add others. If you also want to join this one, that's, that's more in the European time zone, but you're in, in Japan or China or India, wherever, feel free, right? So that we're also showing that there's transparency that, yeah, this is not about the message is any different.

It's me trying to, to meet these individuals where they are and, and kind of come outside of my normal, very comfortable time zone, kind of aspect. So I think there's a, there's a piece there, but the other way to do that is if you, if you don't want to have, you know, the four calls, they're going to maybe all be huge because everyone decides to attend every call. The other thing you could do is you could, you could set up, let's say that the calls by geography without including anyone else, but then you do a follow-up later to get everyone together to discuss, okay, now we've, we've each had these sessions.

I thought we had great feedback. I would lead off with, here's what I heard from Eastern Europe. Here's what I heard from India.

Here's what I heard from South Pacific or Mexico, wherever, and, and let people kind of surface that I'm, that maybe there's some commonality, maybe there's some difference in nuance. And then let's, we could, we would start with what was different. Okay.

This was brought up in the UK, but not in Mexico. Let's talk about why, when this was brought up in, in Germany, but not in Kansas. Let's talk about why like, so, so these sorts of things.

And that way you're, you're getting past that piece of he's treating us different or he's segregating us in some way. And you're, you're getting to, understanding of, okay, I understand now why the messes were delivered this way, but now we're, we're allowed to kind of see and talk to each other and, and continuing to create that, that team environment and, and foster the right, the right collaboration. And also hopefully see that the leader put a lot of time into, and notice this is a lot of work for the leader, right?

The unseen effort behind leading global teams

Yeah. The, for every trade-off you get for having someone else to do your slides, the leader has to make the extra effort to, to focus on engagement and building the right cultures and pulling things together and having like strategies that people can kind of understand and align to. And so maybe there is less finger to keyboard work for that leader, but there's a lot more, I would say actual effort that has to go in in order to be successful in these areas.

[Andy Goram] (30:49 - 32:19)

I think that's a super point. And I think that's some of it, potentially the unseen stuff here and another nuance to that global leadership role. There are many parallels we can make to segmenting teams, whether they're at home or abroad or whatever.

But I think it is this, this needs to really intentionally think about engagement on a different level and comes back to your avoidance of the tokenism trap. It's, yeah, I'll meet you on my favorite time at this time. Thanks.

I know it's tough for you, but Hey, I'm a busy man. And you don't really mean that much to me, whereas actually meeting them where they are. I think it's a lovely, lovely premise.

Cultural intelligence and understanding local context

And, and again, fosters more, perhaps more trust, more, more, more feelings of belief and psychological safety and all those sorts of bits over time. I think this is sort of pointing towards something else that I've, I've heard you talk about this, um, CQ, this cultural intelligence stuff, which to me, if, if I, if I think about how I might, might interpret that feels like an added complication and nuance here. So we we've, we've, we've talked about how we might engage, how we might communicate, how we break things up, how we might avoid tokenism.

But when we're really talking about cultural intelligence, I mean, this is where I think some of the biggest challenges come, right? The, the differences in approach to work, uh, approach to hierarchy, respect, uh, language. This must be, I guess, one of the fundamentals, right?

That a successful global leader really needs to get their head around.

[Crispin Thompson] (32:21 - 35:19)

Yeah. And obviously there's multiple approaches and, and I would say that I'm, I'm in the camp of, it helps, it helps me to know more about the area kind of in general, a little bit about them, their culture, their history. That does a bunch of things for me, right?

Obviously it helps me just kind of ingratiate myself with, with the local audience a little bit. If I can understand, oh, this is important or, or, oh, they've got a holiday next week that none of us had heard of, let's hear about it. So we can, we can kind of better understand these little things matter, right?

Because they, they show that, that the leader cares, but, but I think kind of understanding the, the cultural nuance, maybe a little bit of the, the recent history, recent meaning last like 50, 70, 80 years of kind of what's going on there. Yeah. We'll also, we'll also help me in, in terms of like, how do we deliver messages?

How do we land them? How do we, how do we make sure that we're engaging probably this whole like cultural intelligence or CQ kind of piece. Now there's another way to do this.

Obviously there's a, I'm in the headquarters. I understand things are different here, but you have to come meet me where, where I am, right? There's a, there's a lot of leaders and I'm not saying that that's necessarily better or worse.

It creates a very different style and it creates a very different kind of bifurcated culture between how things are in, in the local country versus how they are in the headquarters. You can do a lot of great things in, in those environments. And I think the, the new or the challenge, right, really is going to become when things aren't running as well, because when things aren't running as well, if you've not spent the time kind of building rapport, if the only rapport you have is I am above you higher in the hierarchy, therefore you shall do.

It's very difficult when you're not physically in front of them, when things aren't going well to help kind of motivate them because, because they don't, you know, I've always been a, we're going to create a team. There's a, I'm, my cultural organizations are going to be very flat from a hierarchy perspective, because I always believe that all leaders can and should be able to kind of interact across levels. But it also means that when things don't go well, because those teams have felt seen and heard, they're more willing to run through a wall or run, run to the fire, you know, with the things happen versus having to be told to.

And sometimes those, you know, those days or weeks of, of lapse, because they're not proactively doing it because they're waiting to be told, because you told them how to do everything else. Those things matter, right? You, you will slow down implementations.

You'll slow down fixes, your own external experiences that you're delivering to your own customers or partners those things will suffer in the meantime as well and morale. And it's like a big snowball effect across everything. So I'm obviously I have an opinion, right?

I have an opinion. That's why you're here, my friend. The way to do it and how I would coach others.

But I have seen plenty of leaders be effective doing it the other way. I just don't believe you can be effective in all, in all times when everything else going on in that other way.

[Andy Goram] (35:19 - 36:12)

And I also think times have changed. I, I think people have a different level of expectation. And again, that may be a very culturally myopic view of, of, of things.

And again, not my intent to be an idiot, but often I'll stumble into that territory. Right. But I think today's workforce and the generational shift we're seeing, they, they expect a little bit more.

There's less respect in the Western cultures of hierarchy by title and more by meritocracy. Right. You do what you do and I will come with you.

Um, I'm not just going to obey and report and adhere because you, you carry a title. Right. And then do you, do you see that in your experience, very different culturally, or do you see that as a sort of a more global movement right now?

[Crispin Thompson] (36:12 - 40:20)

I think it's, so there's, there's a couple of prisms, right? Right. So we have the, we have the geographic or regional or cultural prisms, and then now we also have generational prisms, right?

So, so I'm, uh, I'm Gen X, right? And, and if you look at the workforce, right, you've, you probably still have a very small percentage of, of maybe baby boomers, baby boomers that are in the workforce, maybe at, at senior positions, some of whom should, should be going to the next, the next phase of life. You've got a big chunk of folks like, like us, right?

In Gen X. And some of us are starting to think about next phase. And then you've got, you've got millennial and then Gen Z.

And now at the very edge of the workforce, even Gen A starting to come in. And, and I'll tell you what's interesting is, is I think that, you know, for a while it was very in vogue to, at least in America, to, to kind of mock the successive generations. And, and, but I also think we look at like what we had in our, in our formative years versus each successive generation.

And so it's, it's been very, very different. And, and when you're talking about the, the more recent generations who have always had every bit of information ever created in the palm of their hand and, and folks like myself who had physical encyclopedias that we had to go hook up stuff in that were basically out of date the instant you had them, but you didn't even know that. Ignorance is bliss.

And we were happy. And, and I think that when you layer these things together and then it's, it's a trap, right? Because the instant we try to, to assume one thing is true about this generation or one thing is true about this country, it's, we find so many exceptions.

We know it's not right, but it's a, it's a trap we allow ourselves to fall in because there's a million points of information around us, right? That tell us here's the, this generation behaves this way, this country behaves this way, whatever. And then, and then even if, even if we say we're, we're very intelligent about the, the way the different generations happen, we're going to adapt our styles and do all these things to kind of meet people where they are emotionally.

Then we make the assumption that same, those same generational things are true in other countries and holy cow, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not. And so it's, you know, we go all the way back to the beginning of this conversation. It has to be about intent.

Like we have to listen for intent. We have to just listen period. Like listening is an underappreciated skillset, I think in leaders today.

So true. We should ask good questions. And then the thing that I think is lost so often now is back to expectations is that when we ask questions, even simple questions like, how are you today?

We should care about the response. Now we should care about the response, but not to the extent that, that our colleagues, our employees, our teams feel that, that everything they care about has to be everything I care about, or I have to care about everything they care about. And also that we don't cross that, that line of, of becoming their therapist.

Right. Because that's a, and if you're very emotionally intelligent, mostly engaged leader, that's a, that's a line that you dance on all the time. Certainly I have a bunch of times.

Right. And, and it's great. Like when you feel like you can celebrate successes with a team, oh my gosh, this person, their, their, their son just graduated high school, or they just got this one, the spelling bee in their state.

I mean, these things are amazing, but it can't be about everything. Oh, they got in a car accident. That sucks.

But we can't, we can't talk about this for weeks on end, right? This has to be the thing we move on from. So it's, it's a, it's a line and all of us need to understand where that line for each of us, because it's, it's gray, not black and white.

And, and how far into it can we go? And when are we willing to, to lean in more? Because this is important in this moment to, to engage this, this person, this group of people, this country, whatever, in a certain way.

Versus when do we have to pull back? Because this is now weight that, that if I take on myself, will slow me down as a leader and slows me down as a leader, then the whole organization slows down and that's not, not acceptable. So it's a lot of it is back to, like I said, we listen for intent.

We, we ask it questions. We care about the responses, but we also have to kind of understand where we are too. And it has leaders, right?

It's not, it cannot be exclusively about them.

[Andy Goram] (40:21 - 40:45)

No, I agree with that. I think we're always treading this line and this balance. I mean, in this conversation, even there are nuance, there may be even rules to abide by when it comes to different, different cultures, but you've got to balance that understanding with understanding the individual in the case.

We can't just assume the rules apply to everybody, right?

[Crispin Thompson] (40:45 - 42:41)

Yeah. I think it's one good thing to know is always just what are the rules and, and that, you know, not only can that vary by country, that can even vary by kind of function within a company. I think there was a, an organization that was working with, and there was a, there was a thing we just weren't allowed to say ever for legal reasons.

And objectively, I could understand why someone would argue that the thing that we could not say, people would, would feel like it was, it was true and we should be able to say it. But I also understood the kind of nuance of the words that were behind it and why, and it was always, but eventually you get to a point where you, it's so built into yourself. Like you have this, this kind of, you know, here's a, here's a dating phrase, a Rolodex, like a Rolodex.

And we just know, we know where to go and when, but, but the other thing is, is like humor is a great thing, right? Humor is awesome and I love it. And I think I'm objectively hilarious, but not everyone agrees.

But humor does not cross borders often, does not cross cultures often because so much of humor has to do with the phrasing of words or timing of words. And so it's important to kind of understand these things that work and these don't and the rules. And I think it's also great too, is if you're engaged as a leader and you say something and it doesn't get the response, positive, negative, whatever that you were anticipating that it would, that's the moment you should pause and say, huh, you know, guys, I just said this and I thought that that was going to land a certain way, but I'm not hearing the response.

Maybe everyone's having lunch or dinner or breakfast or all three ways around the world, but, but help me understand what I just said there and what your reaction is. And that it's, it's great to have that in that moment versus waiting a week or a month and asking, Hey, I said this on a call and it responded because they may not even remember what you said or how you said it. So asking for that feedback in the moment, I think leaders should always be willing to ask for feedback.

[Andy Goram] (42:41 - 43:04)

I do like that. I heavily subscribe to that. I think that is, it's, it is like a good leadership trait when something goes wrong with the team, not instantly thinking, well, what have they done there?

I think the really good, strong, confident leader will go, what environment have I created where this can happen and what can we do about it?

A leadership rule: praise goes down, blame goes up

[Crispin Thompson] (43:04 - 44:14)

You know, I'll tell you one of the, one of the, if I were to just write down like Christian's rules for leadership, one of my own personal rules that, that I have always believed by and I know has been popular with my teams is that phrase goes down and blame goes up. Right. And, and that just has to be true, has to be true because if something goes wrong, then the, the failure, if we want to call it that, has to reside in leadership, has to.

Now, an individual may have done something wrong, may have made a mistake, may have purposely screwed up, may have not followed instructions, but there's an environmental thing that was created. If they didn't follow instructions, we should ask, did they know the instructions? If they didn't follow process, we should understand, was the process clear?

Was the, was there ambiguity here? If they just were bad at their job and they did this, we should understand why, why didn't we notice that before? Like, I don't, how are we doing performance management?

So, you know, the, the negative, the blame should always go up and the praise should always go down. That's just a, not everyone in my experience has lived by that, unfortunately, but, but for big organizations, for me, if there was one thing that I think my people would have, would say nice things about me in, in my absence, it's that. I like that.

[Andy Goram] (44:14 - 45:21)

I like that. Well, what a lovely way to round off this conversation. This has been one of those conversations where it's just good to hear from someone who's had so much experience with this about in the Venn diagram of local leadership and global leadership, which things sit squarely between the two things.

These are, these are the things that actually leadership are about, but also to understand that the nuance around the edges of when you move into a, into a global role, which more and more people I suspect are going to come across, whether it's leading project teams, functional teams, organizations, goodness me, whatever, in the future, I think that's going to become more prevalent as the workforce kind of is more distributed around the globe.

Before I let you go, I have this little bit in the show I call sticky notes, and you have given lots of little sound bitey gems. I would love to get from you, your three pieces of advice that we could stick on three little sticky notes around our screen to remind us. But if we are thinking about building genuinely competent, confident global leaders, what would your three little sticky notes be that you'd leave us with?

Crispin’s three Sticky Notes for global leaders

[Crispin Thompson] (45:22 - 47:22)

The one I always start with is introspection. You as a leader, you need to tell yourself, you need to know where you are good and where you are weak. And because if you don't do that, the, our natural tendency is to create clones of ourselves and our teams.

And therefore the things you're good at will be amplified, but your weaknesses will be too. So if you, if you start with, we know, we know introspection, we know ourselves. I think that's, that's a great one.

The other one, which I've said a bunch of times here is, is you have to listen. And, and I think that's, you know, as, as an American, pick your stereotype for, for Americans, you know, we have a certain perspective about the globe and our position in it and ego and all of these things. But we also have this naivete about English, right?

So we speak English, you speak English and everything we say is completely understood by the other. And, and, and that's not always true. It's very, very not true.

And I think, you know, you and I in the free call even talked about just the word pants, right? The word pants is a really good example. It means something for me that's different for you.

Right. And, and so we should all as, as leaders, we should always listen and where, where something sounds different or nuance or a phrase is being used in a way that we, we didn't anticipate, we should, we should ask, we should just say, here's what I think I heard. And here's what I, here's how I interpret it.

Is that what you meant? So this notion of kind of listening, it's back to listen for intent, but just listen in general. Right.

I think that's, that's a great way. And I think the other thing is, is you have to, have to, have to, if you want to be a successful global leader, you have to be willing to create an environment where people feel comfort. They believe that their, their words will be heard.

Even if they're not always active pun, you have to create the environment where they, their words will be heard because of the back to tokenism. If we don't, then they will not feel like they belong. And if they don't feel like they belong, they will not add good ideas.

And then we may miss something amazing. I love it.

[Andy Goram] (47:22 - 47:36)

I love it. Crispin, it's been an absolute pleasure to meet you and listen to you before I finally let you go. If people would like to find out a bit more about you, about the leadership studio, where can they go?

Where can they track you down?

[Crispin Thompson] (47:36 - 48:05)

My friend, a few places. So first of all, there's always great to start with our website, which is leadership-studio.com. So leadership-studio.com.

And then I think increasingly because of the way the world works, a lot of people just find me on, on LinkedIn. So it's Crispin Thompson, or you can find the leadership studio on, on LinkedIn. And if you want to hear more about just how I think about emotional intelligence, you can search Crispin Thompson on Amazon.

You can go find a book I wrote and those things as well. So there's a, there's a lot of things out there these days.

[Andy Goram] (48:06 - 48:11)

Brilliant. Crispin, it has been fantastic to meet you. Thank you so much for your time today.

[Crispin Thompson] (48:11 - 48:14)

My pleasure. Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

 [Andy Goram] (48:14 - 48:16)

No, absolute pleasure. You take care, my friend.

[Crispin Thompson] (48:17 - 48:17)

Cheers.

 [Andy Goram] (48:19 - 48:58)

Okay, everyone. So that was Crispin Thompson. And if you'd like to find out a bit more about him or any of the things that we've talked about in today's show, please check out the show notes.

So that concludes today's episode. I hope you've enjoyed it, found it interesting and heard something maybe that will help you become a stickier, more successful business from the inside going forward. If you have, please like, comment and subscribe.

It really helps. I'm Andy Goram, and you've been listening to the Sticky from the Inside podcast. Until next time, thanks for listening.

Andy Goram is the owner of Bizjuicer, an employee engagement and workplace culture consultancy that's on a mission to help people have more fulfilling work lives. He's also the host of the Sticky From The Inside Podcast, which talks to experts on these topics from around the world.