Putting Yourself in Someone Else's Shoes (or Sandals)

We know from research that: there are two types of empathy - cognitive empathy and emotional or affective empathy, different parts of our brain are activated when we are using one versus the other, and each has a different impact on our behavior.

For example, Gilin et al. conducted some studies to determine the specific impact of each of these two types of empathy.  They defined cognitive empathy as perspective-taking, while emotional empathy is “the affective capacity to emotionally connect with others and experience sympathy and concern for others.”  Their hypothesis was that these two different types of empathy would work in different situations.  When you need to understand an opponent’s strategic intent, then cognitive empathy would be more effective than emotional empathy.  With tasks that require collaboration with others, on the other hand, emotional empathy would be more effective.  Their findings support their hypothesis and they conclude:

“ … Perspective-taking and (emotional) empathy can each promote understanding that can lead to individual and joint competitive gains, but only when the underlying structure or content of the task requires that particular competency.”  (p. 11)      

  

For global managers, both types are critical; in this piece, I’d like to focus on cognitive empathy.  Cognitive empathy, the ability to recognize and understand another person’s point of view and emotional state, is (as mentioned above) sometimes called “perspective-taking.”  When we are in a different culture, understanding how people from other cultures view things is obviously important.  Goleman has suggested that cognitive empathy is an outgrowth of self-awareness, and I think that makes a lot of sense.  For global managers, this also means being aware of how one’s own culture impacts your own behavior.  Managers who tend to be ethnocentric, and who believe that their style of managing is superior to other cultures’ styles, will find it hard to develop cognitive empathy because they may not even be aware that their style is at least partly driven by cultural assumptions.  

Specifically, cognitive empathy helps global managers by:  1) decreasing stereotyping, 2) helping to promote prosocial behavior or willingness to help, and 3) improving their ability to understand accurately the thoughts and feelings of others.

Let’s take the first benefit.  Research by Galinsky and Moskowitz has shown that perspective-taking might be a more effective strategy than stereotype suppression for decreasing stereotyping.  In an interesting set of experiments, here is what they did and what they found.  In their first experiment, participants were shown a photo of an elderly man and asked to write an essay describing a day in his life.  One third of the participants were given no explicit instructions, one third were asked to suppress any stereotypes, and the remaining third were told to take the perspective of the individual in the photograph when writing their essay.  The second group was told that “previous research has demonstrated that thoughts and impressions are consistently influenced by stereotypic preconceptions, and therefore you should actively try to avoid thinking about the photographed target in such a manner.”  The third group was told to “imagine a day in the life of this individual as if you were that person, looking at the world through his eyes and walking through the world in his shoes.”

Then they were asked to write an essay about a second elderly man whose photo they were shown.  As a third task, the participants were shown a photo of a young African-American man and asked to write a third essay.  The researchers wanted to find out not only whether perspective-taking or stereotype suppression was more powerful, but also whether the experimental instructions would generalize to a different social group.

Raters who did not know which of the essays came from which experimental condition rated both the overall stereotypicality of the contents as well as its overall valence.  The former is a standard measure used in research on stereotype suppression.  Valence was measured to determine how positive the participants rated the evaluations of the target.  What they found was that perspective-taking not only reduced the expression of stereotypical content, but also increased the expression of positive content, while stereotype suppression only affected the former and not the valence.  For the second photo, both perspective-takers and suppressors wrote less-stereotypically based essays than did control participants, while perspective-takers expressed more positive evaluations of the target than did suppressors and control participants.  No differences in stereotypical content were found for the third photo, because, as the researchers learned in a debrief, participants were sensitive to stereotyping by race (wishing to be politically correct, perhaps).  However, perspective-takers expressed more positive evaluations towards the African-American target compared with the elderly targets.

The researchers conclude that “ … perspective-taking is a successful strategy for debiasing social thought.  Perspective-taking tended to increase the expression of positive evaluations of the target, reduced the expression of stereotypic content, and prevented the hyperaccessibility of stereotype construct.”  (p. 720)

Now, let’s take the second benefit of cognitive empathy.  Based on several research studies, what happens in perspective-taking is that by considering another person’s perspective, we see that we and the other person are not so different after all:  “Perspective-taking results in the target becoming more ‘self-like’; after perspective-taking, the cognitive structures for the self and the target share more common elements, resulting in a merger of self and other.” (Galinsky and Ku, p. 596)

Some recent research has shown that perspective-taking helps to improve overall attitudes and evaluations of the target person’s group.  For example, in follow-up studies also using the photo of an elderly man, Galinsky and Ku found that those who were primed to take the elderly man’s perspective also started to evaluate the elderly more positively than a control group.  As the researchers pointed out, however, these findings may not generalize to collectivist cultures where individuals are “more likely to engage in outgroup derogation and intergroup bias … and more likely to be (overly) generous when dealing with friends.” (p. 602)

In another series of experiments conducted in Singapore and the United Kingdom, Wang and her colleagues (2014) built on this research and found that perspective-taking increased willingness to engage in contact with negatively-stereotyped targets, such as an “Ah Beng” (or local hooligan, in Singapore) and the homeless in the United Kingdom.  In one of these studies, participants were shown a photograph of a homeless man; those in the perspective-taking condition were asked to “take the perspective of the individual in the photograph and imagine a day in the life of this individual as if you were that person.” (p. 3) Participants in the control condition were simply asked to write a brief passage describing a typical day in the life of the individual in the photograph.  After this task, they were then shown a photograph of a different individual.  In the same-target-group condition, participants were shown a photograph of another homeless man.  In the different-target-group condition, they were shown a photograph of an African-American.  Consistent with results from previous research, they found that those who were primed to the perspective-taking condition were more willing to engage in contact with the target group (although not necessarily with a different target group).

A third benefit of perspective-taking, especially critical for global leaders, is the improvement in the accuracy of one’s understanding of what the other person might be thinking or feeling.  Ickes and his colleagues have even developed a methodology to study what they call empathic accuracy.  They first videotape target participants while they talk about some event, topic, or problem.  Then these participants watch their own videotape, stopping the tape when they remember some thought or feeling while they were talking.  They write these thoughts or feelings down and the times when they actually took place in the videotape.  Perceivers then watch the video, which is stopped at the times when the target had recalled the thought or feeling.  These perceivers then write down what they believe the target was thinking or feeling that these specific times.  The researchers then compare the perceivers’ responses to what the targets wrote down to obtain a measure of empathic accuracy.

Ickes and his colleagues found that the perceiver’s accuracy in understanding another person is not always a function of familiarity with the other person or his or her experiences, but also on the perceiver’s motivation.  This is somewhat reassuring for those of us working globally, for it suggests that our desire and interest in the other person are strong predictors in how well we can accurately assess their thoughts and feelings. 

One implication here is that global managers who believe that being empathic is important in their role may actually be more motivated to be empathic and can in fact be quite accurate in their perceptions of others’ thoughts and feelings – certainly a key advantage for succeeding as a global leader!

Are there limits to perspective-taking, especially when the person you are interacting with is very dissimilar to you in so many ways?  For example, say that you are a highly-educated, young Dutch female executive dealing with an elderly Nigerian male working in an oil pipeline.  How likely is it that you would be able to take the Nigerian’s perspective?  In my experience, with some effort, this can still work.  And in fact, some research supports this.  Lamm et al. used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine how subjects would react to patients under different conditions.  They found that empathy can be achieved, although with more effort from their cognitive executive functions.

So let’s say that you are faced with a cross-cultural situation that you may not fully understand, for example, individuals who are strangely quiet at a meeting you are conducting, or a team from a subsidiary who is continually late in meeting deadlines.  You could of course ask them questions to try to determine what might be causing the problem.  But you could also switch on your cognitive empathy mind-set by using some of these trigger questions to prime your perspective-taking: 

·      Imagine looking at this situation through their eyes and being in their shoes – how would you view this situation?

·      What might this situation look like from their point of view?  How would they explain this? 

·      What might be going on in their minds that could explain why they are behaving this way? 

·      What might some factors be in their situation that might drive them to behave in this way?

REFERENCES

Galinsky, A. & Ku, G.  (2004).  The effects of perspective-taking on prejudice:  The moderating role of self-evaluation.  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30(5), 594-604.

Galinksy, A. & Moskowitz, G.  (2000).  Perspective-taking:  Decreasing stereotype expression, stereotype accessibility, and in-group favoritism.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(4), 708-724.

Gilin, D. et al.  (2012).  When to Use Your Head and When to Use Your Heart:  The Differential Value of Perspective-Taking Versus Empathy in Competitive Interactions.  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39(1), 3-16.

Goleman, D.  (2005).  Emotional Intelligence.  New York:  Bantam Books.

Ickes, W., Gesn, P., & Graham, T.  (2000).  Gender differences in empathic accuracy:  Differential ability or differential motivation?  Personal Relationships, 7, 95-100.

Lamm, C., Meltzoff, A., & Decety, J.  (2010).  How do we empathize with someone who is not like us?  A functional magnetic resonance imaging study.  Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22, 362-376.

Wang, C., Tai, K. Ku, G., & Galinsky, A.  (2014).  Perspective-taking increases willingness to engage in intergroup contact.  PLOS One, 9(1) pp. 1-8.

Leading Authentically in the Global Workplace

Between our coaching calls, Naveen, an Indian vice president of a technology company based in Bangalore, diligently read the handful of articles I had asked him to look over.  In our next call, he seemed perplexed by the term “authentic leadership” that he had seen in a couple of the readings.  What does it mean to be an authentic leader, he asked me.  He had looked up the dictionary definition of authentic and its synonyms, which included genuine, real, not a fake.  Well and good, he agreed.  But he seemed a bit confused.  To be genuine and real with your team, how much do you have to “self-disclose” by letting them know about your strengths and weaknesses, your likes and dislikes?  And does being genuine and real imply behaving and only using a leadership style that comes naturally to you?

Take a recent article by Goffee and Jones in Harvard Business Review.   In that piece, they write that one of the qualities of inspirational leaders is that they reveal their weaknesses.  “When leaders reveal their weaknesses, they show us who they are – warts and all.  This may mean they’re irritable on Monday mornings, that they are somewhat disorganized, or even rather shy.  Such admissions work because people need to see leaders own up to some flaw before they participate willingly in an endeavor.  Exposing a weakness establishes trust and thus helps get folks on board.”  

Part of Naveen’s discomfort was a particular concern about the cultural appropriateness of such self-disclosure, especially in countries where the expectations of what an effective leader is may not tolerate such complete transparency, at least initially.  In fact, a couple of more recent articles in Harvard Business Review suggest such caution in this regard.  For example, Rosh and Offerman urge leaders to understand the organizational and cultural context before they self-disclose.  Similarly, Ibarra writes that many models of authentic leadership are particularly American, especially in the advice to tell a personal story about a hardship they have overcome.  He points out that these are based on Western ideals of individualistic triumph over adversity.

In a recent study, two researchers examined how different cultures perceive “authenticity” in others based on their self-expression.  The countries representing these cultures, Germany and China, are on different ends of the spectrum in terms of their individualistic and collectivistic orientation.  An important facet of collectivism is contextualism, the extent to which the context is crucial in understanding other people.  Easterners more than Westerners tend to consider the context when explaining behavior.  On the other hand, in individualistic cultures such as Germany, dispositional information, such as the person’s personal preferences, is more important.  Therefore, according to these researchers, a person expressing both his likes and dislikes will be perceived to be more authentic by Westerners. They predicted that Germans learning about a person who expresses only his likes (culture-incongruent) would seek more dispositional information (culture-congruent), whereas Chinese learning about a person expressing both likes and likes (culture-incongruent) would seek more contextual information (culture-congruent) to better understand this person.  Their sample consisted of 73 German students and 87 Chinese students in universities in Germany and China who were randomly assigned to two scenarios.  In one scenario, they read about the likes and dislikes of a certain person named George (in Germany) or Yong (in China).  In the other scenario, they read about his likes only.

The participants were then asked how much each of 12 statements described George (or Yong).  These statements were based on a scale of authenticity developed by other researchers.  A sample item was the following:  George is true to himself in most situations.  Finally, participants were asked how useful they would find each one of six additional pieces of information to get to know George better. 

What did they find?  In brief, the Germans found the person expressing both likes and dislikes to be more authentic than the person expressing only likes, whereas the opposite was true for the Chinese.  They also validated their prediction: that Germans reading about a person expressing only his likes (culture-incongruent) would seek more dispositional information (culture-congruent), whereas Chinese reading about a person expressing both likes and likes (culture-incongruent) would seek more contextual information (culture-congruent) to better understand this person.  The Chinese rated contextual information as more helpful to better understand a person expressing likes and dislikes than a person expressing only likes  

So in answer to the first of Naveen’s questions, the choice for a leader is not necessarily whether or not to self-disclose, but how much.  Authentic leadership, as one of its pioneers Bill George has stated, is about practicing your values and principles.  It’s also about being honest.  In their surveys of over 75,000 leaders globally, Kouzes and Posner have pointed out that honesty is one of the four characteristics of admired leaders selected by their respondents in over 50 countries: “We simply don’t trust people who can’t or won’t disclose a clear set of values, ethics and standards and live by them.”

I propose the following principles for leader self-disclosure.  The first principle is to inform honestly.  Whether you are talking about your accomplishments or your failures, embellishing them with exaggerations or half-truths will not work in the long term.  We have all read about leaders who have padded their resumes or told stories about their past that, with a bit of fact-checking, turned out to be distorted.  This does not mean that you cannot tell a good story about your past or frame your experience in a way that helps you send a clear message to your team.  Just don’t play fast and loose with your facts.

A second principle is to consider organizational and cultural norms in selecting what to disclose.  Pay attention to these norms and make sure you do not violate them for they can quickly undermine your effectiveness as a leader.  The research study cited above is simply one example of how different cultures react to what they perceive to be authentic behavior.   I know of several organizations with very formal cultures – where employees dress very conservatively, managers and executives are addressed with their last names, and where meetings are run following strict guidelines.  As a new leader coming into such an organization, you may think that behaving this way is not being authentic, but behaving counter-culturally, at least initially, will not make you an effective leader.

A third principle is to consider your audience and, specifically, the relationship you have with your team and colleagues.  Imagine calling a meeting with your new team, most of whom have been with the company for a while, and confessing to them your skepticism at the extent to which people who have been in their jobs for a long time can adapt to change.  This is what happened to Marty, an executive from outside the company who was brought from the outside to head a business unit that had seen its profits and market share shrink.  He had a hard time recovering from his misguided attempt at being authentic. 

These principles should address Naveen’s two questions above.  Fundamentally, authentic leadership starts with having a deep understanding of yourself and how people perceive you.  Bill George and others written about the importance of self-awareness, and the challenges of arriving at this self-knowledge.  However, knowing your reputation, what others think about you, is also important.  You may believe that you are being genuine, that you are acting as an authentic leader, but if others do not perceive you that way, then there is a gap that you will need to address, and not simply dismiss it by saying, “I don’t care what others think of me.”

George, B. et al. (2007).  Discovering your authentic leadership.  Harvard Business Review, February.

Goffee, and Jones, G.  (2000).  Why should anyone be led by you?  Harvard Business Review, September-October.

Ibarra, H.  (2015).  The authenticity paradox.  Harvard Business Review, 93, 52-59.

Kokkoris, M. and Khunen, U.  (2014).  “Express the real you”:  cultural differences in the perception of self-expression as authenticity.  Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 45(8), 1221-1228.

Kouzes, J. and Posner, B.  (2007).  The leadership challenge (4^th edition).  New York:  Wiley.

     

Rosh, L. and Offermann, L.  (2013).  Be yourself, but carefully.  Harvard Business Review, 91, 135-139.

Practicing Mindfulness as a Global Leader

A recent New York Times Sunday magazine article featured the work of Ellen Langer, Psychology professor at Harvard and one of the pioneers of the concept of mindfulness.  This term is almost a buzzword these days, and is used often by those who lean towards meditation and Zen philosophy.  For example, Chade-Meng Tan has developed a meditation course that he offers to Google employees (Mr. Tan himself works at Google) and has written a book about his approach called Search Inside Yourself.  According to the New York Times (April 28, 2012) more than 1,000 Google employees have taken his class, which is offered four times a year.  Each class has 60 people and runs seven weeks.

            Professor Langer’s approach is different, and in her book Mindfulness, she herself writes that “My work on mindfulness has been conducted almost entirely within the Western scientific perspective.”  In the Times magazine article, she states clearly that her approach is different from the popular mindfulness meditation techniques in vogue today.  According to the article:

“Her emphasis is on noticing moment-to-moment changes around you, from the differences in the face of your spouse across the breakfast table to the variability of your asthma symptoms.  When we are ‘actively making new distinctions rather than relying on habitual’ categorizations, we’re alive; and when we’re alive, we can improve.”

Nonetheless, Langer admits that there are some parallels between her approach and the more mystical approach advocated by Tan and others.  What makes Langer’s work so important is that it provides a way to counteract the powerful unconscious biases we have that Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel-prize-winning behavioral economist, recently summarized in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow. 

So what is mindfulness and why does it matter for a leader working across cultures?  In re-reading parts of Professor Langer’s book, these are four take-away’s on how global leaders can improve their mindfulness.  I’ve summarized her suggestions and re-phrased them in ways that can be applied to the work of global leaders.

            First, “re-categorize” as you are interacting with business colleagues from different cultures.  As Langer explains this, what I think she means is that when we are actively taking in new information about others, we should pay attention to the situation and the context.  For example, say that you are meeting a female Argentinian executive on your first visit to Buenos Aires for a possible joint venture.  You have taken some Spanish lessons although you may not be that comfortable in speaking Rioplatense Spanish, which is the kind of Spanish spoken in the part of Argentina where your host is from.  You have an initial expectation of her based on what you know about her company and about her status in the company.  When you meet her, you might notice some other characteristics that might cause you to “re-categorize” your impression of her.  She might, in fact, be speaking excellent English since she went to university in England, you learn.  More surprisingly, you learn that her parents are actually from Spain, and that she goes to Spain quite regularly to visit relatives.  So by being mindful of these different “categories,” you get to shift and adjust your impressions.

            In their book Blindspot, Banaji and Greenwald provide research that shows that we have a category-forming capacity that enables us to think about four to six “identifiers” at any one time (pp. 82-83).  For example, they show that by considering six person categories simultaneously – race, religion, age, nationality, gender, and occupation - we can quickly form a mental image or a description of a person, e.g., white Catholic Polish male factory worker in his sixties.    

            Second, be open to new information.  As Langer puts it, “Mindfully engaged individuals will actively attend to changed signals.  Behavior generated from mindful listening or watching, from an expanding, increasingly differentiated information base, is, of course, likely to be more effective.”

            In psychology, such individuals are said to be “high self-monitors.”  They are aware of cues in the environment, and will not only pay attention to these cues, but alter their behavior accordingly.  In one of my first presentations to a Japanese audience several years ago, I noticed that not even halfway into my talk, about 70% of the managers in the audience had their eyes closed.  What was going on, I wondered.  Was my presentation that boring and uninteresting?  Perhaps they did not have enough sleep last night?  On the fly, I adjusted my presentation and began to ask questions to make my presentation more interactive.  Only later did I find out that closing their eyes is common for Japanese audiences, who want to concentrate on what the speaker is saying, especially if he or she is speaking in English.

              In high context cultures, as well as in cultures where direct confrontation is avoided, it is especially important to “read between the lines.”  This means paying attention to the tone of what individuals are saying, and their body language.  As a global manager, you may be receiving nods from your team but that may not necessarily mean that they agree with you, or that they will follow through on what you have asked them to do. 

            Third, adopt a “multiple perspectives” attitude.  This means trying to understand the situation from others’ points of view.  As a manager going into a subsidiary from headquarters, for example, you might think of yourself as someone who is there to make sure that the local employees understand what is expected from them by “corporate.”  You might think that you should be welcome because you are coming from the mountaintop to “enlighten” the local population.  Well, consider the situation from their point of view.  They might see you first of all as a corporate “spy” who has been sent to check up on them.  They might also see you as an ivory tower, naive manager who has very little idea of what goes on in the country and who is trying to impose corporate-wide solutions that will not work locally.  As Langer suggests (p. 69):  “If we cling to our own point of view, we may be blind to our impact on others; if we are too vulnerable to other people’s definitions of our behavior, we may feel undermined, for observers are typically less flattering of us than we are of ourselves.”

            Nonetheless, this ability for perspective-taking is critical for global leaders.  There is evidence that this is one of the characteristics that distinguish effective negotiators from average or ineffective negotiators.

            Fourth, pay attention to process and not just outcomes.  As a global leader, especially if you are sent overseas, you will no doubt be focused on producing results and on achieving the goals set out for you.  Being mindful means understanding that different processes may lead to the same outcome.  Langer says (p. 34):  “Throughout our lives, an outcome orientation in social situations can induce mindlessness.  If we think we know how to handle a situation, we don’t feel a need to pay attention.” 

            An American expatriate I was speaking with recently mentioned to me that in his first trips to Asia, he was very concerned about getting things accomplished in the short time that he was visiting a few Asian countries that he became impatient with his hosts, who wanted to take him out to dinners and have him meet with various managers in the country.  He was especially annoyed during meetings, when it seemed so difficult to reach decisions and move forward on the actions that he wanted them to take.  Only later did he realize that by focusing so exclusively on “getting things done” in the most efficient way, he was ignoring, and in fact, violating, some processes very important in these cultures.

Banaji, M. and Greenwald, A.  (2014). Blindspot.  New York:  Delacorte Press.

Grierson, D.  (2014).  What If Age Is Nothing But a Mind-Set?  New York Times Sunday Magazine, October 22.

Kahneman, D.  (2011).  Thinking Fast and Slow.  New York:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Kelly, C.  (2012).  O.K., Google, Take a Deep Breath.  New York Times, April 28.

Langer, E.  (1989).  Mindfulness.  Cambridge, MA:  De Capo Books Press.

Tan, C.  (2014).  Search Inside Yourself.  New York:  HarperOne.