Kelly welcomes Boston University professor David Livermore back to the podcast to discuss the latest edition of his successful leadership book, “Leading with Cultural Intelligence: The Real Secret to Success.”  

Words are important and people throw around the term ‘culture’ a lot. What’s your personal definition of culture? 

“I actually lean more toward this idea that you often hear more with organizational culture: it’s sort of a taken for granted way of the way we do things around here. I think you know from the book that I talk about this notion of figured worlds. And it’s all these different places where I’ve slowly sort of been socialized to figure out how to live. So even in my own work, the default is often thinking culture, as in China versus American. But as you and I have talked about before, the political cultures of blue versus red may actually have far more relevance to what I’m wrestling with in the workplace or with my family members, etc. So yeah, it’s the taken for granted thoughts, beliefs, attitudes that just sort of govern the way we go about life.” 

You also challenge well-worn concepts like vulnerability – since in some cultures, that’s not what employees want in their leaders. 

“I’ve been in settings where somebody who values vulnerability will admit they were wrong publicly, and they will go on and on effusively about how it was wrong. And someone from a more saving face culture is like, ‘Why are they groveling on and on about this? Show me through your actions that you apologize. Talk about it more generically, so we don’t have to feel embarrassed.’ If I were to suddenly, you know, call you up after this podcast taping is done, and be like, ‘Kelly, I blew that.’ Now I’m putting more onus on you to say, ‘No, no, Dave, it wasn’t that bad.’ People want their leaders to demonstrate some humility. But the way in which I want you to show your humility varies according to culture as well as personality and other variables.” 

You have an example story about a French business that opened in Thailand in a space directly above a statue of Buddha. What happened? 

“Yeah. And nobody would come. Because this was a clear disregard for the Buddha by putting yourself above it, and in seniority. In one of those very subtle ways, I think, particularly in Western culture, we think religion and business – we need to keep those two really separate. It’s not the case in the vast majority of the world with Thailand being case in point.”