If you ask people around the world what people need to have in order to be good business leaders, you usually get very similar responses. Good business leaders know their industries and their products, have a good strategy, know how to take risks, know how to motivate people, have charisma and know how to negotiate and communicate with people, etc. From this vantage point, you might think a good business leader in one country or culture will probably be a good leader in another country or culture.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a global leadership style that works in all countries and cultures. Consider what would have happened if the 2004 U.S. elections had taken place in other countries. There are very few countries besides the U.S. where George W. Bush would have prevailed over John Kerry. Yet he did, because he embodied, to a greater extent than his opponent, the attributes and skills Americans want to see in their leader.

You will see this difference if you ask people in different cultures or countries to determine the top three skills or attributes they want to see in their leaders. You will see the top three skills expected by Dutch are not the same as the top three skills required by Argentineans, for example.
One key difference is the relative importance of soft skills versus technical skills. Here, soft skills refers to interpersonal / communication / negotiation / conflict resolution / teamwork / managerial skills. Technical skills and soft skills are independent of each other and we can represent them graphically in the following manner:

In this diagram, someone who has high technical skills and low soft skills is in the top left square.

The key question is: what do lines of equal value to the organization look like? The answer is that these lines are quite different depending on the culture or country where this organization has its headquarters. The more hierarchical the country or culture, the more flat lines of equal value to the organization will be. For example, being a good leader in Russia requires, first and foremost, strong technical skills; good soft skills are a bonus, but it does not make a major difference. In Anglo-Saxon countries (which are mildly hierarchical), soft skills matter significantly more than in hierarchical countries, because you cannot force employees to do what you want them to do just because you said so and you are the leader. In these countries, the ability to work well with people is more important. It is even more important in Scandinavian countries, which are quite egalitarian; there, a good leader is primarily someone who has the ability to channel the initiatives and energies of all his or her employees and finds ways to ensure they all move in the same direction.

Keep this point in mind when you work with people coming from other cultures or countries. What they want to see in their leaders may not be what you want to see. Moreover, what they want to see may not be the skills you have been trying to develop throughout your professional life. If you are an expatriate or if your responsibilities include the management of overseas operations, make sure you understand what your employees expect from their leaders – and ask others if you are not sure.

Lionel Laroche, Ph.D., P.Eng., is the President of MCB Solutions, an organization specialized in helping professionals achieve their objectives overseas.