Steve Sargent Foreword: My Leadership Coach for Cultivating a Global Mindset
I first met Gary Ranker in 1993, a year after I had joined General Electric in New York City. I had a 22-year career with GE, working in leadership roles in businesses across the U.S., Europe and Asia. My career in GE culminated in serving on the Corporate Executive Committee and as an Officer in the General Electric Company. In early 2015 I left GE with a personal goal to reduce the air travel and spend more time with my family. I am currently a non-executive di- rector on a few ASX listed company boards in Australia. At the time I met Gary, he had been working with several senior GE executives who, to use a Jack Welch phrase, had a bit too much edge . They were terrific at driving operational performance and execution, but their people leadership and influencing skills needed improvement. These were often task-oriented operational managers who left you feeling a little bruised after every interaction with them. They were considered to be difficult to work with by their peers and subordinates. The company valued their strengths and wanted to help these leaders improve into well-rounded leaders who collaborated well in teams and inspired their people. So GE brought in Gary to coach them. During that time, Gary was coaching a peer of mine a really good guy, incredibly talented, but he was quite difficult to work with. I was one of his stakeholders, so I was having 360-degree conversations with Gary regularly. After three or four conversations with Gary I went to my boss and said, I don t have all the difficult issues these guys have, not that I m aware of anyway, but I really do think I could benefit from working with Gary for a little while to improve my own self-awareness and to be a better leader. So I started working with Gary. The initial feedback I received was that I was an indefatigable optimist, always upbeat, always moving at a million miles an hour, often moving ahead without the necessary buy-in and support from the rest of the team. People liked the high energy and enthusiasm, but some people thought it was false. When I was presenting deals or presenting business results, my upbeat style was often perceived as over-selling and lacking authenticity . For some folks in our finance teams they simply didn t trust me. Gary made me aware how important it is to understand the way my audience perceives me. The reality is, in every interaction, whether it s a one-on-one interaction, a team meeting, or hundreds of people, people are developing a perception of you. Gary taught me that you might as well ensure that you develop the perception you want them to have and adjust your style accordingly. I learned that if I was talking to an audience of highly analytical financial analysts, I should change my presentation and delivery to eliminate the adjectives and use more data. I changed my style and approach to ensure I connected and engaged in an authentic and trusted way with the people I was working with. I vividly recall Gary telling me that I was a bulldozer and that in my desire to get things done quickly I would run over people in the way. He told me how to imagine I was in a sail boat and imagine that all the people I was working with had different objectives, agendas and goals. He told me to imagine these different goals, objectives as gusts of wind and that in my sail boat I would need to work to get their gusts of wind in my sail. In doing this I learned a great phrase to use with peers and team members ... how can I help you help me? That ensured we were aligned to a common goal and I was bringing everyone along accordingly. Through this learning I became much more situationally aware and I learned to flex my style ...

Global Mindset Coaching

Business & Money

Dr. Gary Ranker

Marilyn McLeod

Management & Leadership

Executive Excellence Publishing

Marshall Goldsmith Foreword: Global Mindset Leadership: Navigating China and US Business Cultures is a book written by three very skilled professionals. It goes deeper than the surface level of cultural differences and talks about historical and generational factors that come into play when working in China. If you come from a Western culture, it will help you understand the Chinese ways of doing business and to see the world from their point of view. It can help you successfully navigate in your journey to build a global enterprise. It can also help you develop transferrable skills that go beyond China and apply to any international assignment. I invite you to read this book and to apply what you learn. A wise person learns from experience. An even wiser person learns from someone else s experience! China is becoming increasingly relevant to everyone in the West. It is becoming more relevant every day. Learning how to work across cultures will become one of the most important qualities for the leader of the future. Gary Ranker Preface: We define global mindset as the willingness and ability to step outside one s own base culture, and to respectfully understand there is no universally correct way to do things. From that perspective, some interesting observations can be made. Certainly there are great differences between Chinese and U.S. cultures. There are also many similarities. Surprisingly, going beyond surface appearances, we find that some things which seem to make us different, are actually quite similar. And some things which seem similar on the surface may have very different connotations within each culture. For instance, both cultures have within their traditions the concept of a dragon. To the Westerner, a dragon conjures up images of a fearful creature that needs to be conquered. By contrast, Chinese embrace the dragon as a benevolent creature that symbolizes strength, wisdom, good luck and power. We invite you, within the pages of this book, to set aside any preconceived notions of either the U.S. or Chinese culture, and learn from our exploration of each other s ways. From the vantage point of the other culture, you may even learn some new things about your own. The payoff of having a global mindset is greater awareness that will help you navigate more effectively through business interactions and strategies on your way to a successful initiative with the other culture. Developing a global mindset means accepting that our values and our ways of doing business don t have the same meaning, or perhaps even work, for our counterparts in other cultures. To have a global mindset is to get beyond the trap of believing that what has worked for us and our organization in our country, will work to the same degree in another country. It may or may not. But it won t work to start with the assumption that we will be successful forcing our ways onto the other culture. Positive reviews by 39 CEOs, senior managers and professionals in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai China, California, New York, Virginia, New Jersey, Illinois and Phoenix, United States, Singapore, Sydney, Australia, Tokyo, Japan, Dubai U.A.E, Bangkok, Thailand, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and India. Chapter 1: Understanding Global Mindset Chapter 2: Tracing History Chapter 3: Confucian Ethics and Politics Chapter 4: Generational Differences in Chinese Society Chapter 5: Cultural Dimensions Chapter 6: Context and Rules Chapter 7: Developing Cultural Competence Chapter 8: Merging Business Cultures Chapter 9: Joint Ventures in China Chapter 10: Global Mindset Applied Resources: Assessment Tools: Global Mindset Inventory, Relationship Strategy Tool

Global Mindset Leadership: Navigating China and U.S. Business Cultures

Donny Huang

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Books by Dr. Gary Ranker