Achieving a Balance: Control, Harmony and Humility

In his fascinating book, Coaching across Cultures: New Tools for Leveraging National, Corporate, and Professional Differences, Philippe Rosinski explains how to maintain a balance between control, harmony, and humility.

When you have a goal, during the process you follow to achieve the goal, you have the choice whether or not to maintain balance between the three elements mentioned above. First is control. Control is the ability you have to exert your energy to get things done. It has both a positive and negative side. The positive side is your proactive side: your ability to look for ways to improve the situation and make your results better. The negative side is your blindness to the other two elements, harmony and humility, and your insistence that your goal be accomplished even if it harms other people or the environment. Harmony is your ability to listen to your needs and the needs of others and make the best choices to meet those needs, even if it means altering some aspects of the end results of the goal. Humility is your acceptance of the natural limitations you have as a human being and your ability to learn to work with what you have. You learn to work within your current situation to make it the best it can be for accomplishing your goal.

Now, let's look at two scenarios which test our ability to maintain balance.

The first is a physical goal: It involves building a custom home for your family. You have decided to build your home in the countryside, far away from city pollution, noise and crime. Your blueprints for the home include building the house on top of a hill overlooking the city. However, when you meet with the architect, she reminds you of a zoning law which prohibits building in the spot you mentioned. In order to respect the harmony of the land, you must choose to build on a nearby location, so you decide to move the location of the house. Next, you show the architect your ideas for the house, which includes two swimming pools, one outdoors and one indoors. The architect then informs you that in addition to drinking water, the water you will need to supply for both pools will exceed the amount allowed by the city. If you go ahead and build both pools, you will need so much water that you will have to tap a well that is not on your property, but that belongs to another. So, in order to work with your natural limits and achieve harmony, you decide to build only one pool. Finally, your plan is to complete building within 4 months. However, because of several big storms which prohibit the workers from working every day, workers are estimating the completion of the project in 8 months. Using your control abilities, you decide to hire a second team of workers to help the first team. In this way, your project can be completed in 6 rather than 8 months. You have just learned to balance your humility, your natural limits, with control, your ability to make the situation better.

The second and final scenario involves the personal and professional goal of becoming a successful leader. In the process of achieving this goal, you must also balance control, harmony, and humility. First of all, you have control, the power to make big decisions regarding the resources and limits of your projects. You will want your best workers to work for you, and give you their best efforts. You will also want the best technology available as tools. Finally, you would like to complete your projects within a period of time that still allows you to remain competitive and satisfy customers' needs. You will often feel pressure to complete projects faster and to ask more of your workers. You will always want better and better tools. Now, the key to achieving the balance is priority. Every day, you have the power to look closely at the current progress and the situations you are in, and make the best choices available to you. You will definitely encounter obstacles along the way. You may find that your workers are spreading their energies too thin - working on several projects at a time and therefore, only able to work minimally on the projects that are a higher priority. You can either remove some of them from one or two projects, make a high priority for one particular project and have them work intensively on it, or bring in others to collaborate. Your natural limitations of humility will tell you what is possible. You must also maintain the harmony of your workers, by not overworking them to the point of exhausting them. Maybe a new tool is within your budget that may help increase efficiency. If there is a solution that can benefit everyone involved and it is within your budget and other limits, do it. If not, use humility to accept what you cannot change.

Interdependence versus Independence

In an excerpt from Gary Althen's book American Ways: A Guide for Foreigners in the US (p.40) , it states: "People from some cultures are looking for close, interdependent relationships. They value commitment to other people, and they want friendships in which there are virtually no limits to what the friends will do for each other. Americans cause immense frustration for foreigners by their apparent inability to become closely involved with other people in the way foreigners want and expect them to. Americans just don't know how to be friends, many people from other countries say. You never feel that you are free to call on them at any time or that they will help you no matter what." "Americans often seem to fear close involvement with other people. They will avoid becoming dependent on others, and they don't want others, with the possible exception of immediate family members, to be dependent on them" (p.41)

When I read these passages, I said to myself, "Maria, this is you." It might sound bad to admit that I am like the Americans above, but let me explain myself. First of all, I do have sympathy for foreigners here in the US. Having taught English as a Second Language for 10 years to foreign adults in Arizona, I have gotten to know many of my students, and many have become friends. I understand foreigners' dilemmas with American friendships. I have seen their frustration as they try to come closer to Americans, while the Americans pull farther away.

In a personal story I'd like to share, I became friends with one of my former students from the college where I was teaching. This student was trying to start a new life for herself. She was learning to live on her own and needed help with her computer, her car, starting her business, etc. She called almost every day with questions, requests for translations and advice. In the beginning, I did my best to help her every time, but after a while, I starting suggesting things she could do herself to get the information she needed. I wanted her to learn for herself. I felt that even though it was hard to become independent, it would be better for her later on. Now, she can get directions herself, find information on the Internet, call companies to ask about products and services, and many other things. I am proud of my friend and her accomplishments. And she is proud of herself because she knows how to make her life more enriched and fulfilled .

The way I see it, building your life is like making a cake. The way Americans do it is to first add the ingredients that are necessary, such as job, home, school, and then they add hobbies. Finally, Americans add 'friends', people to share in those activities. It's very 'doing' oriented living. Many foreigners, on the other hand, start their cake with the necessities, then add 'friends' and then build in hobbies and activities with these new friends. Neither way is right or wrong, just different.

Being independent can be seen as a positive thing. It allows you to do a variety of things with many different people. You meet a lot of people and learn more skills and hobbies. You can directly improve the quality of your life . However, it's a trade-off because this means you will have less time with each person. But the time you do have with each friend will become more valuable.

The Power of Choice


I recently read a blog entry from Arun Kottolli
(http://arunkottolli.blogspot.com/2006/07/soft-skills-for-global-managers.html) about the failed expatriate assignment of one Indian family in America. Here is the story:

T. Subramanian Iyer, a highly successful sales manager from Chennai in India was asked by his company - Prestige products to work as regional sales director in San Antonio, Texas. Prestige regarded T. Subramanian Iyer (TS) as its finest young executives and promoted him to sales director for this new assignment. When offered the opportunity, TS was excited and looked forward for this new assignment and the new challenge. Top management was also confident about its decision of sending TS.

TS is a deeply religious man and had never went abroad. He and his family - wife and two children were exited of this opportunity. On arriving to US, the family’s excitement slowly turned into uneasiness.Adjustment to American life proved difficult. His wife was unhappy - and apprehensive of her children education - The public school where TS had enrolled his children had a substantial Hispanic population and the quality of education was not the same as their earlier school in India. Moreover TS & his wife were constantly worried that their children would eat non-vegetrian food at school - which was very much against their religious beliefs. She also found it difficult to run the household without her usual servants.

At work, TS found things to be very difficult. The absence of a personal secretary - cramped his style. He was angry that he had to do all travel arrangements, type his own letters etc. Moreover many of his customers expected him to have lunch with them at a steak house or at a BBQ place. TS being a religious man never ate meat - and desisted eating at places which served meat. The idea of eating beef appalled him. All this had a negative impact on his performance and the company was worried due to his failure to succeed.After 6-months, TS requested to be transferred back to India and was even willing to settle for his earlier role as sales manager - a demotion.

When I read this story, the first question that came to my mind was, “Why didn’t TS exercise his power of choice?” When he realized that if he did not speak up about which restaurant he and his customers would eat at, they would always choose a steakhouse, why didn’t he suggest a different one?

America, the US, is a land of choices. But if you don’t know that you have a right to exercise those choices, what good does it do? In an article I wrote recently for Prudential Relocation entitled “Acculturation: To Stress or Not to Stress” (http://www.presentationselect.com/prudential/archive/ref/mobility/AcnStrs.pdf), I wrote about the stress involved in relocating internationally. In the article, I talked about self-efficacy:


Self-efficacy is our belief in our personal ability to get things done. It’s how well we think we are capable of achieving results. If you believe you have the power to produce results, to make things happen, you are more likely to attempt the required action. In this way, the way you perceive your abilities can lead to lower anxiety, and therefore reduced stress reactions. Self-confidence can positively effect how we view our environment –safety, transportation, housing, social encounters, and all of the potential stressors mentioned above. It’s beliefs in our capabilities to exert some control over these potential threats, not the capabilities themselves that determine how we judge changes. With increased self-efficacy, you may judge the negativity of daily life events at a lower level and, therefore, imagine fewer problems. When you view yourself as positively being able to cope with the changes that come with international living, you will find the new environment less potentially hurtful. What was once deemed a fear of the unknown or discomfort with ambiguity has now turned into a feeling of adventure, challenge and fun.

Now, this isn’t to say that I am not understanding of someone who has difficulty expressing his or her personal choices when it’s obvious that the majority of the group wants a different choice. But, what I am saying is that there are ways to get around this awkwardness. One way is to lead the decision-making by being proactive. Use communication to gather everyone’s input and make a decision. If you cannot eat meat and would like to have your next business lunch at a restaurant that offers a variety of vegetarian dishes, send out an email the day before with a list of a few choices of restaurants that offer both meat and non-meat dishes. Gather your responses and make a decision that will satisfy everyone in the group. Maybe instead of a lunch meeting, the meeting could be held at a coffee shop or tea house.

Once you know that you have the power to affect the outcome, you can take control. This doesn’t mean you should decide for others without asking them, but you should anticipate the cultural issues and come up with some possible solutions.

Let’s return again the story above to deal with another issue TS and his family had difficulty dealing with: dissatisfaction with the education of their children at school. I am assuming that their children were attending a public school, not a private school. There are a variety of private schools in the US that offer a more challenging and comprehensive curriculum. International schools are one of them. TS and his family could have done a little research into local international schools and found that the class sizes are small and that most of the students are from other countries. These schools also used advanced curricula that challenge the current academic level of their students.

Finally, there is the issue of not having a personal secretary or a housekeeper. If these were necessities to TS and his family’s happiness, could he not have found a way to have them? Now I know it takes some tact when asking your home-based manager in India to provide you with a secretary, but if you make it clear that it is necessary to your effectiveness, then I believe you can successfully negotiate it. Once again, you can be proactive and initiate communication with your home country boss. In this case, you would need to use the style of communication that is most appropriate in your company and in Indian culture, but whatever that style may be, you can still offer some possible solutions that might relieve you of the everyday tasks. One solution could be to have a secretary from another department take on some of the tasks. Another solution might be to hire a part-time secretary. The point here is that there are always choices and in the US, if you wish to change an outcome, you need to suggest different choices.

Again, I believe that if you understand that, in the US, it is OK to exert your influence and communicate your desires, even if they are different from the cultural norm, you will find more satisfaction in your quality of life. Not only is it ‘okay’, it is required that international managers be proactive decision makers on all levels.

If you do what is within your personal power, and you still don’t have things the way you would like them, then you either need to accept the differences or leave. But I guarantee that over time, with even a few changes implemented, you will feel more comfortable in your new home…at least comfortable enough to stay.
Now, while your personal secretary is sending out emails with restaurant choices for your business lunch with customers, you don’t have to stress out -- you can rest easy!