Good leadership is a prerequisite for any kind of organizational success, but how exactly that leadership manifests itself is not set in stone. Different people and cultures promote different attitudes toward business management, but a number of fundamental characteristics underpin leadership approaches across all sectors and around the world.

In this interview, Zhao Xinjin, author of The Odyssey of Self-Discovery: On Becoming a Leader and a resident of the United States for over 30 years, discusses the need for leaders to generate credibility and trust, effective leadership strategies and the similarities and differences when managing across cultures and business scales.

Q. What would you say are the key principles of effective leadership?

A. Obviously, different people have different interpretations of effective leadership. Some emphasize how to get things done, others highlight the importance of how to influence organizational decision-making, and others focus on the ability to inspire or motivate people. So you can interpret effective leadership in many different ways.

In my view, long-term effective leadership is ultimately centered on people. It is about how you create a vision that inspires and motivates people, leading by example and developing the next generation of leaders. I think the most crucial aspects of effective leadership are both credibility and trust, which require knowing how to be authentic as a person, transparent and consistent. All of these things manifest differently, but all center on building credibility and trust. This often means being authentic, transparent, and consistent.

Authenticity demonstrates that you are human and helps create a culture of psychological safety, allowing others to share their perspectives.

Transparency fosters trust within the organization and empowers people to make decisions based on the most current and accurate information.

Consistency cultivates a culture focused on long-term goals rather than short-term results. The more consistent you are, the more likely you are to have a greater level of credibility within an organization.

From a different perspective, you can also view effective leadership as requiring a willingness to take ownership. Whether that be a willingness to make a decision, to take responsibility for something or to drive change, these can all be crucial aspects of leadership. But whichever viewpoint you take, you need to be able to motivate and inspire people.

Q. Can you provide an example of effective leadership strategies?

A. Many companies have leadership frameworks or leadership principles, but one of my favorites is Amazon’s leadership principles. They are simple, clear and have very little chance for misinterpretation. The very first item on the list is ‘customer obsession,’ and what I like about this is that there isn’t really a way you can misinterpret it. It’s not customer satisfaction, it’s not about making a customer happy, it’s a customer obsession.

Another item is that leaders ‘are right, a lot.’ Obviously, leaders are not perfect, but you are expected to be right, and often. They expect leaders to have good judgment and good instincts, and while they draw insights from data, there is also a level of personal interpretation and action required. In this age of information age with a massive amount of data, this is critically important.

Q. To what degree does effective leadership look different depending on the cultural context?

A. As a topic, there is no clear consensus, with different people having very different viewpoints. Having traveled around the world for business, I have seen first-hand that different countries have their own unique cultures, business environments and business practices.

On the other hand, if you take a closer look, there are many more similarities than differences. At a human level, we all want respect and to work with honest, consistent and transparent people. So the fundamental principles are the same, but how approaches to achieving business objectives are leveraged, are likely to be different.

For example, in certain cultures, people will trust you until you prove otherwise, while in others it is the exact opposite, with you needing to earn their trust. But at the end of the day, it’s all just a different way of achieving the trust and credibility required to do what you need to do.

There are also marked differences within a single cultural context. If you look at the different generations in China, say comparing 30 years ago to today, the younger generation looks at leadership completely differently from their predecessors. Because of differences like this, I would say focus on you as an individual and recognize that everyone is different, rather than focusing on the fact that you are an American or Chinese which tends to lead to more stereotypes.

Q. What are some of the key considerations for developing leaders and good leadership practices?

A. I conducted a leadership survey in the process of writing the book, and it produced some interesting results from two questions in particular. Have you ever asked yourself why you want to be a leader? And has anyone in your organization ever asked you why you want to be a leader?

Around 82% of respondents said yes to the question have you asked yourself why you want to be a leader, but only 39% said yes to the question of whether anyone in their organization had asked them why they wanted to be a leader. That means that around 60% of people have never had anyone ask them why they want to be a leader, and if nobody has ever asked that, how can you expect the organization to motivate and inspire you to be an effective leader?

We are all motivated by different things, and unless you understand what motivates people it’s very hard to lead. I think this is why we often find that leadership development programs in many organizations are not particularly effective. They often focus on what the organization or the business needs, rather than what inspires the people within the organization.

The survey results also tell you that people should not wait for organizations to develop you into a leader. Every individual has to take ownership of their own leadership journey and for that I’ve found that self-reflection is a key tool. Learn by doing, and then reflect on how it went. In the last few years of my career I have always set aside time for myself each week to reflect on what went well, what I learned and what I could have done differently, and this really helped me keep learning and improving.

Q. As someone who has worked for a US company in China, to what degree are there different leadership challenges to be overcome here?

A. One of the biggest challenges for a lot of MNCs in China is the disconnect between what is going on on the ground compared to what is expected at their headquarters. On the one hand, every headquarters will have its own business processes and practices, but on the other hand, in China everything feels different.

Bridging the gap is a major challenge, and at the end of the day it comes back to establishing trust and credibility on both sides. Aristotle’s persuasion framework is a good reference, in that you need to appeal to logic, emotion and credibility. Just because you are right, doesn’t mean that people will listen to you, whether you have data or otherwise, you still need to establish credibility. You still need to connect with people at a human level on both sides.

Q. What differences are there in the leadership approaches required between large MNCs and smaller startups?

A. In multinational companies you often hear the buzzwords ‘change’ and ‘transformation,’ but the reality is that while people may discuss it a lot, actually effecting change in an MNC is very difficult. For startups, you have to be more adaptive and ready to change all the time.

In China, companies never really talk about change or have a particular process for managing change, but they do it quite often because they believe change is expected and a part of the process. If the environment has changed, you also need to change. That same framework applies to startups, too. The external and internal environments are changing, as well as business objectives, so they have to be agile and ready for change.

The key link, however, whether you’re in China or the US, or a small or large company, is that leaders have to maintain clarity on what changes and what remains. Leadership values, business purposes and fundamental business principles don’t really change, but what changes is how a company goes about achieving results. And if a leader is able to clearly articulate what has changed and what has stayed the same, they will have more credibility and be better able to guide teams to manage the uncertainties and embrace the changes.

Q. What are the challenges and opportunities presented by the increasing adoption of technology, AI use and the rise of remote working?

A. Technology makes things more effective, but not necessarily more efficient. Digital transformation has been a buzzword in recent years, but a McKinsey study found that over 70% of related initiatives did not deliver the anticipated results.

We’re now seeing similar popularity with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Companies are trying to adopt AI to increase efficiency across the board, but adoption of new technology often requires culture change or business process change in order to achieve the expected results. That is where many companies tend to fall short.

One of the issues may be that in traditional firms, senior management is not always well-versed with technology. In my book, I suggested a reverse mentoring program, where younger, more tech-familiar employees can be used to leverage their knowledge, better inform senior management and also build relationships between levels in the company.

Q. How do you see trends within leadership changing over the coming years?

A. Firstly, I think most Western companies are a lot flatter nowadays than 10 or 20 years ago, it’s much more matrixed and doesn’t use the traditional reporting line structure. There is a lot of multi-team project-based operation, rather than it all being organization-driven, and this means that leadership is less about your position, but more about your ability to influence others, including those you don’t technically have authority over. In the China context, most organizations are still hierarchical and less matrixed, but I would expect that to begin to change more in the coming years.

Second, particularly in the US, the acceptance of remote working is growing, at least in the tech sector and some newer organizations. The challenge here is how to establish trust and credibility in that environment and empower people to work at their best, which is hard if you’ve never spent time in the office together.

There have also been issues with the medium of messaging, ever since we’ve seen PowerPoint take over the business world. Decision-making is more driven by how the message is delivered, rather than its merit, and this is obviously not a good thing. AI technology could offer a way to reverse this trend somewhat, by better capturing and conveying the message to those in a more effective manner.

Finally, information overload is increasingly becoming a problem and will be exacerbated by the complexity of the business issues and matrix organization structures. I anticipate in the coming years AI will play an important role in helping leaders to simplify and maintain clarity in this dynamic and uncertain world.

Interview by Patrick Body