Susan Shirley, Global View Founder, Featured in The Leadership Project Podcast
Here’s a description of the episode:
Susan Shirley is the founder of Global View Leadership and a cross-cultural leadership coach. She works to increase the effectiveness of multicultural teams both by supporting expatriates as they transition to positions abroad and staff hired by international organizations in their own countries as they adapt to a new organizational culture. By helping individuals improve their emotional and cultural intelligence, they become more effective leaders.
Implicit or unconscious bias leads us to be hardwired to be have some level of bias from when we are born. A key step for leaders is to acknowledge that this bias exists, become aware of your biases and have techniques for how you will notice, process and respond appropriately to biases as they come up. Whether that be your own biases or noticing any biased behaviour and actions by your team and others around you.
Expat assignments are prevalent in many multinational companies. These Expat assignments can serve a great purpose but can be a hit and miss affair. These assignments can go very well or they can be a cultural disaster. We explore this from the angle of both the locals at the receiving company and the challenges and emotions that the expat also goes through.
We discuss that inclusion is not the same as assimilation. A leader’s role is to create an environment based on equity where everyone has opportunity to thrive and be their best, where they can show up and be their authentic self; where their background, culture and heritage is embraced and celebrated but never in a discriminatory way.
Susan shares with us some practical tips on how to establish effective team charters and working arrangements across borders with a key focus on communication and learning from each other.