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How to Argue Across Cultures

Do you tackle problems with colleagues, partners, and customers head-on? If so, chances are you’re from Western Europe or North America and, our research suggests, vulnerable to blind spots when working with people from other parts of the world. And if you’re from an East Asian culture, the subtle cues you rely on to signal your disagreement may be sailing right past Westerners.

In much of the West, it is considered maddeningly inefficient to talk around an issue, whereas East Asians tend to view direct confrontation as immature and unnecessary. That difference amounts to a frustrating cultural divide in how people solve problems at work.

Westerners prefer to get issues out in the open, stating the problem and how they’d like to see it resolved.  People don’t expect their logically constructed arguments to be taken personally. Often, they describe problems as violations of rights and hold one another accountable for fixing them. In fact, they consider such behavior “professional.” But that same approach is an anathema throughout East Asia, where the overriding impulse is to work behind the scenes through third parties to resolve conflicts, all the while maintaining harmony and preserving relationships. When there is no third party to intervene, the professional approach to confrontation is to subtly draw attention to concerns through stories or metaphors, placing the onus on the other person or group to recognize the problem and decide how to respond. To convey disapproval, an East Asian might say, “That could be difficult,” without explaining why.

Why It’s Hard to Meet in the Middle

Although common sense tells us we should move past our own cultural preferences in a global business environment, it’s not easy to do. And many people don’t realize how pronounced the cultural differences are until they find themselves perplexed by a colleague’s behavior.

Recently, a Western manager spoke to us about the mysterious (to him) behavior of a high-potential East Asian he had been assigned to mentor during a three-month assignment at the company’s U.S. headquarters.  He said, “Every time the East Asian manager disagrees with an American marketing manager he’s working with on a project, he comes to me to resolve the disagreement! Is he doing this because the marketing manager is a woman?”  Gender probably has nothing to do with it, we explained.  More likely, the East Asian manager worries that direct disagreement will damage their working relationship, so he’s involving a higher-level manager to preserve peace by adjudicating.

In avoiding direct confrontation, East Asians can appear to Westerners as unresponsive or even passive-aggressive.  At the same time, Westerners who confront directly may come across to East Asians as aggressive and disruptive to traditional status hierarchies. And neither side recognizes its unintentional affront to the business relationship. The result of all this? Discord that could have been resolved escalates into a major conflict in which everyone stands to lose: Deals and long-term business relationships fall apart. Take, for instance, the now-defunct joint venture between French-owned Danone and Chinese owned Wahaha. Based on the results of an internal audit,  majority owner Danone publicly accused the head of Wahaha—and his family— of siphoning off $100 million from the JV. That direct confrontation was followed by an epic corporate battle that ended, after years of public and legal fights, with the dissolution of the joint venture.

Here’s an example with a much better outcome: A Western entrepreneur had a contract to supply a German buyer with bicycles that he was having produced in China. When the bicycles were ready for shipment, he went to the plant to check on quality and discovered that they rattled.  Rather than telling the plant manager that the rattling had to be fixed before shipment, he suggested that they take a couple of bikes off the line and go for a ride in the countryside. At the end of the ride, he mentioned that he thought his bike had rattled; then he left the plant and anxiously awaited news from the German buyer.  Had he relied on his own cultural preferences, he would have told the plant manager up front that the rattling bikes had to be fixed before shipping. But because he was attuned to East-West variation in approaches to conflict, he knew that a direct confrontation could cause loss of face and retaliation might very well result in a shipment of rattling bikes. The plant manager apparently picked up on the entrepreneur’s culturally sensitive cues and assumed ownership of the problem, because the German buyer received a satisfactory shipment of bikes.

Adapting Your Style

The most effective global managers, like the entrepreneur in the bike story, develop the focus and control to shift from one style of confrontation to the other, depending on the situation. If you have little experience managing conflict beyond your cultural comfort zone, here are some suggestions for adjusting your style.

If you’re most familiar with the West:

Look for subtext. If you suddenly realize you’re listening to a story or a metaphor, that’s a signal. Think: Why this story? Why this metaphor? If you’re stumped, you might say, “How interesting. Why do you think the person in the story did that? What was she expecting others to do?”
Suggest a tentative solution. Express it as a question—“Could this be done?”—and not as a given. Listen for “that might be difficult” or a noncommittal “yes,” which may really mean “no” and certainly suggests that your approach isn’t optimal.
Don’t be put off by third-party intervention. Understand that by not confronting you directly, your East Asian colleague is treating you with respect, even while disagreeing with your approach.

If you’re most familiar with the East:

Brace yourself for direct behavior. When your Western counterpart directly challenges your assumptions, offers solutions, or asks you to take responsibility, it is unlikely to be an intentional attack on you. He is probably not questioning your status or authority, but rather questioning the situation. You’ll reduce the risk of losing face by arranging for a private meeting to discuss issues.
Ask follow-up questions to test for understanding.  What seems clear to you may be lost on those more familiar with Western communication styles—even when spoken in their language.
Recognize that your counterpart will be surprised and possibly offended if you communicate your concerns through a third party rather than directly.

Of course, you don’t have to make all the concessions yourself. But you’ll need to make some if you want to resolve more cross-cultural conflicts than you create.

Ten Essential Tips for Hiring Your Next CEO

Selecting a new chief executive is critical because so much rides on a positive outcome.  Is this the right person to lead the company in this particular business, at this particular time?  Will he or she collaborate with the board, or fight it?  Is there a process in place for cultivating, identifying, and appointing not just this CEO, but the one after that?  From directors, executives, and specialists whom we have witnessed, worked with, and interviewed, and from our own search and consulting experience, we draw ten principles for executives and directors to guide the executive-succession process.

1. Remember that people set strategy.  American baseball legend Yogi Berra warned, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.” Berra was famous for his “Yogi-isms,” but this one contained an essential truth: inchoate strategies and ineffectual leadership generally go hand in hand.  Conversely, directors and executives who know where the company should be going will be best equipped to guide it there.

2. Implement an evaluation methodology.  Use an evaluation system that links the company’s strategic requirements with the prospects’ individual capacities and performance, with the latter focusing on their integrity and ethics, team building, execution excellence, shareholder return, and personal gravitas—and ability to work in the boardroom.

3. Include in the current CEO’s evaluation an assessment of how well the company is building a succession plan for the next generation of company leaders.  When we asked the chief human resources officers at a number of major companies whether they had a coherent system in place to evaluate and compensate the CEO’s succession performance, most reported that their firm had none.  And even those who did said that the reward system was still too weak to effectively guide the CEO’s actions.  Do this now.

4. Place the board leader in charge.   By tackling the job in partnership with a still-effective chief executive, the board leader can help root the process deeply in the company’s management development, preventing succession from becoming an event-driven crisis.  It is also helpful to consider both short-term disaster scenarios—are one or two lieutenants ready now to replace the chief executive if an accident or illness suddenly disabled the top executive?— and long-term outcomes—will a handful of executives be ready candidates to replace the CEO after a planned exit five years in the future?

5. Retain a high-performing chief executive, but also work to keep capable successors.  Able executives who have learned how to run an enterprise are likely to be itching for a CEO opportunity.  Effective succession requires offering incentives to these potential chief executives—including extra compensation—to retain their presence as CEOs-in-waiting if a well-performing chief executive still has ample energy in the battery.

6. Seek candid comparative data on inside CEO candidates from those who had worked with all of them.  GlaxoSmithKline’s 450-degree assessment, which confidentially vetted the views of all company executives who had worked with the three final candidates, is a useful illustration of this data-seeking process.  Administered by either a trusted insider or a third party, the 450 yields comparative data on finalists, all of whom are obviously very strong leaders in their own right.  Using such data sometimes yields surprising results.  At GSK, the dark horse emerged as the best choice by a wide margin once the additional comparative data was compiled.

7. Make direct contact with both sources and candidates to verify information.  Even when engaging a third party, boards cannot fully hand off the vetting process.  Directors will want to personally check on referencing.  A few trusted sources can yield far more useful data than a large number of less certain sources.  In the absence of a trusted relationship, references can sometimes reveal limited inside information and even false information.  As an example, one source claimed that a top candidate was an alcoholic, but when further vetting with more trusted sources confirmed no such behavior, the company chose the falsely accused candidate as its chief executive.

8. Review outside consultants carefully to prevent conflicts of interest.  Intentionally or not, executive search consultants hired to help with a CEO search can sometimes offer an overly affirmative view of a candidate they have sourced or an overly skeptical view of one they have  not had a hand in finding.  In one instance, a board’s external search led directors to identify an executive at a Fortune 100 company who was ready to accept the job.  As a final step in the process, the board retained an outside consultant to make one last evaluation of the candidate that the board had identified.  The consultant, however, reported a serious defect in the candidate and urged against the executive’s appointment.  When the board then turned to one of us, we found no evidence of the alleged shortcoming and recommended the executive’s appointment.  We also found reason to believe that the first consultant had hoped for a new CEO search assignment if the candidate he opposed was rejected.  The company finally went with its initial preference, and the new chief executive performed exceptionally well over the next five years.

9. Maintain confidentiality.  We have seen stellar CEO candidates drop out of consideration when their identity is inadvertently revealed, especially if they are serving as a chief executive elsewhere.  Journalists inevitably circle during a high-profile external search, and communicating orally and avoiding media contact can help preserve confidentially.  One way to prevent a damaging revelation is to ask outside references for guidance on a candidate not for a CEO position but rather for a board seat.  Now that boards increasingly partner to lead the enterprise, not just monitor management, many of the same leadership qualities that make for an effective director also make an effective chief executive. Thus, board-seat evaluations can provide a veiled but useful appraisal of CEO-related competencies.

10. Embed succession planning in corporate culture.  Creating a culture entails many steps, including performance incentives for executives to build the system, a development capability that repeatedly reaches large numbers of managers, coaching and mentoring by both directors and executives, and an openness to both inside and outside candidates.  Above all, it requires an active partnering between the directors and the chief executive to preemptively ensure that their pipeline is full and its occupants are developing in the upward direction.

When determining suitability to be CEO, companies will want to remind themselves of an obvious premise:  No candidate is perfect.  The goal is to understand the relative trade-offs among the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses, and to ensure that the prospects’ deficits are not in areas that are especially critical for company performance.  The fate of the enterprise depends upon it.

Ram Charan, Dennis Carey, and Michael Useem are co-authors of the book Boards That Lead: When to Take Charge, When to Partner, and When to Stay Out of the Way, (HBR Press 2014).

Talent and the New World of Hiring

An HBR Insight Center




Hiring and Big Data: Those Who Could Be Left Behind
How to Use Psychometric Testing in Hiring
A Fairer Way to Make Hiring and Promotion Decisions
Why HR Needs to Stop Passing Over the Long-Term Unemployed

How Black Friday Lost its Mojo

Black Friday 2013 turned out to be, well, a bit more like a Grey Friday. The National Retail Federation estimates that consumers spent $57.4B over the four-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend, a 2.7% drop from last year’s $59.1B shopping spree. This slide in sales is causing anxiety about the economic recovery possibly sputtering.

But retailers should forget about drawing conclusions based on Black Friday purchases.  As a sales event and barometer of consumers’ fiscal health, this former indicator of holiday sales is losing relevance.

Last weekend’s sales drop shouldn’t be shocking –customers are simply shifting more shopping to the web. This results in a substitution effect: fewer sales on Black Friday and more on Cyber Monday. In contrast with the tepid Thanksgiving weekend brick-and-mortar numbers, IBM estimates that sales on Cyber Monday jumped by 21%. It’s not a big stretch to predict that buying on Cyber Monday will increase next year too, again at the expense of Black Friday.

While the rising popularity of Cyber Monday is one reason for Black Friday’s poor showing this year, another reason can be squarely laid on the doorsteps of brick-and-mortar stores themselves. They made the mistake of thinking that more was the same as better. This year, with Thanksgiving being so late on the calendar, U.S. stores started their “Black Friday” sales days or even weeks ahead of the actual Black Friday Some, such as Hugo Boss, hosted brief “private sales” claiming to offer the same discounts that would be available on Black Friday. Why fight the crowds if the same discounts can be garnered a few weeks earlier? These early sales caused yet another substitution effect – they siphoned off Black Friday purchases.

I’m reminded of some close friends of mine who host an annual, no-holds barred summer party. It’s a great party and because of its success, this year they decided to make it a three-day celebration. The idea sounded great in theory (more party! More friends! More food!)  but it didn’t work out well in practice. While everyone was happy to see each other on Day 1, we all held back because we knew there were two more days to enjoy. Then by the time Day 3 rolled around, everyone was just tired. Spreading out the fun over three days had not resulted in more net fun — just fun diluted.

Similarly, retailers’ extended sales have dimmed the excitement of shopping on Black Friday – the chum that used to incite buying frenzies at malls. It’s hard to get jazzed about the Black Friday sale of “30% off everything in the store” at Ralph Lauren Outlet stores, for instance, when that sale had already been running for at least a week. This ho-hum shopping experience ushered customers home from the mall early.

But does it matter if Black Friday fades if the shopping season gets peanut-buttered around over several other days? I think it does. One side effect of all of this discount jockeying is that customers lose a call to action. In past years, shoppers could be confident that Black Friday deals were likely to be the best of the season. But this isn’t the case anymore. Dire discounts and once-taboo discussions over how early to open on Thanksgiving revealed that retailers are hungry. Rather than marking the starting point of the shopping season and the best deals of the year, this year Black Friday marked a “meh” sort of midpoint to a season that many consumers believe will yield better discounts by year-end.

Will retailers change their ways after learning this year that more is not better? Probably not. Retailers are now stuck in a discounting prisoner’s dilemma. It’s in the best interests of retailers to return to the practice of making Black Friday weekend a once a year blow-out event that provides the best discounts and generates purchase-propelling excitement. However, each retailer also has an incentive to “cheat” by offering discounts in advance. As a result, while Black Friday weekend will always be an important sales weekend for retailers, its mojo is fading.

This Is What It Looks Like When a Google Manager Gets Feedback

Using a rigorous, data-driven hiring process, Google goes to great lengths to attract young, ambitious self-starters and original thinkers. It screens candidates’ résumés for markers that indicate potential to excel there — especially general cognitive ability. People who make that first cut are then carefully assessed for initiative, flexibility, collaborative spirit, evidence of being well-rounded, and other factors that make a candidate “Googley.”

The thing is, many of those who make the cut are engineers, who typically view management as a distraction from “real” work, not as a useful activity. And that presents a challenge: If your highly skilled, handpicked hires don’t value management in the traditional sense, how can you run the place effectively? How do you turn doubters into believers, persuading them to spend time managing others?

By applying the same analytical rigor and tools that you used to hire them in the first place. For Google, that has meant using its own data to prove the importance of management, as well as surveying employees and conducting double-blind interviews to identify key behaviors of effective managers — and then providing individuals with concrete, useful feedback in those areas. Below is a fictitious, interactive example based on the type of feedback a Google manager would receive.

 

For much more, including how Google gets its people to embrace the key behaviors, read my December 2013 article “How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management.”

A Problem Shared Is a Company Aligned

It’s seldom easy to achieve alignment around challenges in any business.  Even agreeing what the challenges are can be far from straightforward. Companies are complicated places; the different stakeholders all have different agendas and are motivated by different norms and incentives.  Sometimes a strong leader can through force of will create alignment among these warring factions, but in my experience a more consultative approach that respects the legitimacy of everyone’s position achieves better results.

A number of years ago, my family company won the Greek franchise of a leading US confectionary manufacturer.  The American company was very dynamic and provided us with a steady stream of new confectionary products to distribute.  It all looked very promising at first.  But we quickly became aware that our salespeople were reluctant to sell the company’s products.  The steady stream of new products, they complained, was too much for their retail clients to absorb.

The problem, I realized, was that the US company’s strategy of constant new product development was not aligned with what motivated our salespeople.  We needed, therefore, to bridge the gap between the interests of our client and the interests of our salespeople and their retail clients.  I doubted that there was a feasible way to force such an alignment and even if there had been I would probably not have taken it.  Instead, I decided to work on getting our salespeople to understand what the US company needed and to bring them in the discussion on how to help the Americans achieve their goals, and thus be able to keep their distributorship.

I started by educating them about our supplier.  Getting the sales team together in one room, I played a video describing the company, its basic principles and policies, its competitive advantages, its sales volume, how it had already successfully penetrated a number of non-US markets, and its vision for the future.  A key takeaway from the video was that the company’s products were not only good to eat, but that from composition to packing materials they were also the most environmentally sensitive sweets in the market.  The video managed to make our salesmen feel proud that they belonged to an “international family” selling the best-tasting and most environmentally friendly confectionary products in the world.

After the video I explained the tangible and intangible gains our company would derive were we to be able to keep this franchise as well as our loss of prestige in the market were we to lose it to one of our competitors.  In view of this, I said, and given that we recognized the difficulty of placing so many new products with our clients, my firm was prepared to double their commissions on the American company’s new products, and to finance a visit to its headquarters in the US of our most successful salesman.

I then opened the floor for discussion, asking people one by one to speak up and freely express their views so that we could together work out a plan to address the challenge of meeting the requirement of our supplier while keeping our retail clients satisfied. Many expressed their concern that if they insisted beyond a certain limit we might well lose important clients altogether.  So I focused the discussion on how best to establish this “limit”.

It quickly became clear that we also needed to offer our retail clients special incentives to compensate for the risks of taking on the new products.  In the meeting we reached an agreement on what the incentives could be and specified the ways in which we would track, monitor, and learn from our sales progress with the new products.

Of course, it took more than a single meeting to achieve genuine alignment.  We followed up with weekly review meetings to discuss progress, analyze problems, and hammer out solutions.  With time, perseverance, and mutual respect between managers and sales staff, sales of the new product started to grow, slowly at first but before long at rates that made everyone very happy.

Looking back on the experience, I believe that what made the difference was the fact that we made a transparent effort to bring all the parties into the discussion. This wasn’t about forcing changes in behavior through bonuses and coercion, but rather about taking our people’s comments and suggestions seriously and frankly sharing our problem.  In this context, we created a positive atmosphere in which to conduct an open and fruitful exchange of views and experiences, reach feasible decisions, and win commitment from our sales force to implement them.

How to Get More Value Out of Your Data Analysts

Organizations succeed with analytics only when good data and insightful models are put to regular and productive use by business people in their decisions and their work. We don’t declare victory when a great model or application is developed – only when it’s being used to improve business performance and create new value.

If you want to put analytics to work and build a more analytical organization, you need two cadres of employees:

Analytics professionals to mine and prepare data, perform statistical operations, build models, and program the surrounding business applications.
Analytical business people who are ready, able, and eager to use better information and analyses in their work, as well as to work with the professionals on analytics projects.

In Analytics at Work, we call the latter group “ analytical amateurs.” That doesn’t mean amateurish – only that you’re not a professional, that analytics isn’t your main occupation.  You can be a scratch golfer or ace tennis player while still an amateur. Amateurs can be very accomplished analytically – in using analytical applications, envisioning additional opportunities for using analytics, and participating as business staff on analytics projects. You’re in luck if your CEO, executive team, and general managers across the business are all accomplished analytical amateurs.

There is widespread recognition of the shortage of analytical professionals. Lesser appreciated is the fact that most organizations are also way short on analytical amateurs. A May 2011 McKinsey Global Institute study on big data analytics predicted a coming shortfall of around 150,000 people with deep analytical skills – and a shortfall of 1.5 million business people with the know-how to put big data analytics to use.

The key to overcoming these shortages is to develop talent in both cadres together. In other words, the most important question may not be, “How can we hire more analysts?” But rather, “How can our analytical professionals best work together with our business people?”

The most effective employee development happens on-the-job, day-to-day, often one-on-one. The way to expand the business acumen of analytics professionals is to have them spend plenty of time working with business colleagues. The way to expand the analytical capability and appetite of analytical amateurs (a.k.a., business managers and professionals) is to have them work directly with analytics professionals on both analytics projects and simply meeting their own information needs.

By spending time “in the field,” professional analysts gain greater familiarity with business operations and pragmatic appreciation for how analytics are used in management decisions and employee workflows. What do the business people learn?

To be more aware of the data they use and their own decision processes. They get better at evaluating and improving their data and adjusting their decision processes depending on the quality and sufficiency of data at hand.
To serve themselves with data and analyses. They become more adept at finding data and using business intelligence and visual analytics tools, more rigorous in using established tools like spreadsheets, and thus better able to meet many of their analytical needs independently and immediately.
To understand the logic and methods behind the analytical models, applications, and outputs they use. Will they pick up some statistical methods? Perhaps, but the real goal is to learn enough to understand and trust their analytics – and develop a sense of the limitations of analytics.

Analytical amateurs accomplished in these ways not only make better use of analytics in their decisions and work, but also make greater contributions when serving as subject matter experts or otherwise participating in analytics development initiatives.

In analytical organizations such as Procter & Gamble, professional analysts spend a lot of time in the field, including “embedded” in business units. And there’s an active rotation program getting business people into analytical roles (many of which don’t require PhDs in statistics or deep data scientist skills). Analyst talent may be in short supply, but the solution is to kill two birds with one stone and develop the two cadres together.

From Data to Action An HBR Insight Center




Big Data Demands Big Context
How a Bathtub-Shaped Graph Helped a Company Avoid Disaster
Can You See the Opportunities Staring You in the Face?
Use Your Sales Force’s Competitive Intelligence Wisely

Who’s Managing Your Company’s Network Effects?

Much as war is too important to be left to the generals, the business of network effects is too valuable to be entrusted to the CMOs and CIOs. Network effects make Google Google, Facebook Facebook, Twitter Twitter, Netflix Netflix and  Pinterest Pinterest. Network effects are the not-so-secret sauce profitably flavoring Amazon’s recommendation engines and Apple’s App Store. They’re destined to transform the “Internet of Things” from a post-industrial aspiration to a trillion-dollar sector.

But who “owns” them in the C-suite?  Who should be accountable for identifying, cultivating and coordinating network effects inside the enterprise and out? The opportunities are clear; the responsibilities are not. Your organization needs a CNEO—a Chief Network Effects Officer—to integrate and align how your enterprise gets value from “harvesting collective intelligence.”

IT may understand the underlying software, algorithms and digital media. But managing network effects as technology byproducts is a bit like treating cars as extensions of internal combustion engines; technically accurate, yes, but missing the larger purposes and points. Similarly, marketing loves the virality that social media and network effects facilitate. But the potential impact and influence of network effects goes far beyond unique selling propositions and user experience. Comparable challenges exist for supply chain management and external partnerships: their collective intelligence may be ripe for algorithmic harvesting, but how well will it link to the rest of the enterprise?

Network effects are media and mechanism for making colleagues, customers, clients, channels, partners and suppliers more valuable. Network effects, not unlike risk management, transcend traditional enterprise functions and silos. Essentially, that design sensibility assures that the more people use these services, the more valuable they become. (The first use of the word “more” in the previous sentence does double duty—representing both the number of users and the quantity of use).  Seeing that sensibility as a series of tactical opportunities rather than a profoundly strategic organizing principle is a huge mistake.

In other words, opportunistically managing collective intelligence is not enough; smart leaderships need to rethink how to collectively manage collective intelligence.  How should organizations design and manage their networks of network effects? These are, arguably, the dominant design and business model issues for the Googles, Amazons, Apples, IBMs, Samsungs and General Electrics of the world. Reaping the network effects benefits of customers and clients is no longer good enough for sustainable value-added differentiation; tomorrow’s organizations need to better capture network effects-enabled value from their channels, partners and suppliers, as well. Monetizing network effects demonstrably makes for a helluva business model. That requires top management commitment and oversight.

The sweet spots will emerge not just from better identifying and addressing network effects opportunities with customers, colleagues and channels, but the intersections between them. For example, what kinds of recommendation engines would be of greatest interest and use for both customers and key suppliers? How might Kickstarter-like innovation initiatives facilitate new conversations and collaborations between clients and employees? Can the challenge of maintenance and upgrades be crowdsourced in ways that create communities of channels and customers who willingly share best practice?

Marshall W. Van Alstyne, a Boston University colleague and collaborator who’s pioneered breakthrough research in the economics of two-sided networks, argues that these are exactly the kinds of questions that organizations need to be asking as their own operating processes become digitized, virtualized and networked. Tomorrow’s organizations are going to give as much thought and care about investing in network effects as they do to new products and services.

Indeed, network effects investment will enable new product and service innovations, as well as new interpersonal capabilities and insights. Effectively managing the network effects portfolio will become one of the most important challenges tomorrow’s management will confront. Training and educating technologists, marketers and innovators alike to both design for and exploit network effects will become an essential core competence.   Can your organization do that without a Chief Network Effects Officer?  Start by asking: Who owns the challenge of network effects management today?

Don’t Give Consumers Too Many Visual Choices

Online shoppers love seeing images of products, but when the number of choices is high, visuals become confusing and presentation of the options in text form helps consumers make better decisions, say Claudia Townsend of the University of Miami and Barbara E. Kahn of The Wharton School. A high number of visual options can also prompt consumers to give up trying to choose: Asked to select among 27 types of crackers, participants in an experiment were 5 times more likely to pick “none of the above” if the choices were presented visually rather than in words. Text prompts a slower, more systematic mental-processing style, the researchers say.

Leaders Who Can’t Forgive

I had a CEO in one of my leadership coaching seminars recently who seemed to be quite bitter about life. Whatever suggestion I would make, he would put a negative spin on it. Curious about his remarkable negativity, I asked him to tell more about himself. After a little bit of prompting, he was ready to talk about his life, a narrative that wasn’t very pleasant to listen to.

Clearly, I was dealing with a person who carried grudges, hanging on to grievances that should have been forgiven long ago. Whatever negative experiences he had, he would blame others for his unhappiness. He was not prepared to look at himself, and to take personal responsibility for his part in whatever conflicts, or events he was complaining about.

Mahatma Gandhi once wisely said: an-eye-for-an-eye only ends up making the whole world blind. How true his comment is. And it is especially relevant for people in leadership positions. Leaders have such an important effect on other people’s lives that their lack of forgiveness can create a climate where anger, bitterness and animosity prevent a team, an organization, a society, and even a nation from being the best they can be.

Of course, all relationships with others, whether friends, strangers, or family members, come with the risk of being hurt: your parents may have been tough on you, your teachers may have been unpleasant, colleagues at work may have sabotaged your projects, or your life partner may have been unfaithful. Anytime you let others come close you are vulnerable. And the most logical reaction to an insult or injury is to get even.

In a leadership position, the risks are magnified. Leading others means dealing with a maelstrom of relationships implying an enormous amount of emotional management. As a leader, you are operating in settings rife with strife, which if left unresolved, can become a festering drag on an organization’s effectiveness. People who cannot forgive get stuck into a downward spiral of negativity, taking everyone around them with them.

Good leaders, of course, are aware of how costly it is to hold on to grudges and how an unforgiving attitude keeps people from moving forward.  Unfortunately, for far too many people in leadership positions, revenge comes more naturally than forgiveness. We have an innate sense of justice: we want others to be punished for what they have done to us. A strong reaction to fairness or unfairness seems to be programmed into our brain, making us hard-wired to retaliate and seek justice when others hurt us.

From an evolutionary point of view, this behavior served a critical purpose. Tit for tat has is a way of protecting ourselves, with reciprocity and vengeance being a warning signal to the violator to not cross over that boundary again, or risk escalation and more negative consequences. But it can also open a Pandora’s box of counter-reactions: revenge begets more revenge, which can be costly to your mental and physical health.

When you cannot forgive the people who have hurt you, these feelings become a mental poison that destroys the system from within. As numerous studies have shown, hatred, spite, bitterness, and vindictiveness create a fertile ground for stress disorders, negatively affecting your immune system. And, to boot, an unforgiving attitude is positively correlated to depression, anxiety, hostility, and neuroticism, and associated with premature death.

But why are some of us more likely to forgive than others and what differentiates them from those who remain vindictive and bitter? Taking a psychodynamic-systemic orientation to the study of leaders, I have found three features associated with a resistance to forgiving:

Obsessional rumination: Unforgiving people spend their time obsessing about their pasts. Those subjected to rigid, autocratic parenting and to childhood abuse seem to be more likely to do this, contrary to those who were fortunate to grow up in a more benign and nurturing environment.
Lack of empathy: Empathy is the evolutionary mechanism that motivates altruistic and pro-social behavior. Imagining and feeling what another person experiences- putting yourself in the other person’s proverbial shoes – allows you to consider the motivations of the transgressor, giving you a route to forgiveness. It is a skill that you learn early on. Children brought up by largely absent or abusive parents generally can’t develop the ability. For these people, forgiveness becomes extremely difficult.
Sense of deprivation: Individuals who did not receive much attention and care as children often focus on what they do not have, and how they might get it. But when they get it, they continue to compare themselves to others, envying their success, reputation, possessions or qualities, often expressing this envy towards the achievements of others through emotional explosiveness and outbursts of rage.

I would not say that people who exhibit these behaviors—and are less likely to forgive—cannot be leaders. But they will not be the kinds of leaders that get the best out of their followers. The ability to forgive is an essential capability for any leader wishing to make a difference.

Of course, forgiveness doesn’t mean excusing unacceptable behavior; it is about healing the memory of the harm, not erasing it. When you forgive, you don’t change the past, but you can change the future by taking control of your destructive feelings instead of letting them control you, and creating a new way of remembering. Transformational leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Aung San Suu Kyi have figured this out, refusing to replay past hurts and choosing serenity and happiness over righteous anger.