I was the president of my high school Spanish Club during my sophomore and senior years; I was as excited about being a first-time leader as I was in exploring the Spanish-speaking countries of the world. During my term as president in my sophomore year, I introduced a fundraiser the club that involved selling addresses to pen pals from countries all around the world.
It was a success for the club, and it funded our field trip to Little Havana in Miami. I personally took on 38 pen pals in 1974 that I exchanged post cards, aerogrammes, and parcels with for the next several years. The trip to Miami’s Little Havana and the correspondence that I shared with my pen pals opened me up to the possibilities of experiencing different cultures in the world.
During my 30s, my career involved a considerable amount of domestic travel. I became a proficient road warrior making airports like LAX, ORD, EWR, and ATL feel familiar and manageable. The lessons that I learned as a Domestic Road Warrior, would later support me in my career when I traveled globally on a consistent basis.
My career, in my 50s, took a dramatic turn when I worked for two global companies in roles that had me traveling to Europe, Asia, and Latin America frequently. It did not take long for me to see that I had become a Global Road Warrior.
While working for both of these companies, I held senior-level executive roles. As an executive with these companies, I was expected to conduct business in other countries with either colleagues or customers. In some cases, I was participating in knowledge transfer and sharing best practices with my colleagues in Europe or Asia; while in other situations, I was attending meetings with customers or business partners, conferences and conventions, or visiting other offices within the companies I was working for at the time.
As a result of traveling globally for more than nine years, I had done business on five continents and in 20 countries. The adaptability that I developed throughout my travels served me well in each and every situation. I was confident when I showed up for a meeting or a conference knowing that I knew the cultural customs and norms for conducting business.
I most often traveled to China and the UK, which are completely different in almost every way when it comes to doing business across the table. In China, business has a very personal component to it. The expectation is that you will build the relationship slowly with time spent doing things like having very long meetings together with massive amounts of alcohol. My experiences in the UK were more subdued with the expectation of being more formal while working together, with little if any expectation of developing a personal rapport.
The pace of business is clearly very different in various part of the world. The time it takes to do business in South America is completely different than the time it takes in Asia. My experience in countries like India and China taught me that once the rapport had been established, business would be conducted at a brisk pace. In South America, there must be a considerable investment of time in developing the relationship up front before business can be conducted and closed. The pace of business is slower.
With all of those experiences, what I reflected most on when looking back over those years, as a Global Road Warrior, are the ways in which I navigated the global executive role as an openly gay man. The benefit of those reflections are the three lessons learned as a Global Gay Executive.
The three lessons that stand out the most for me are to be Discerning, to be Discrete, and to be Driven. Learning each lesson supported me in achieving successful outcomes in a variety of countries in the world.
To be Discerning for me was to have good judgement, appear cultured, and be discriminating. This meant that in countries like China, where there were laws against being homosexual, I was not going to engage fully in the relationship-building process. To be aware of the cultural norms of a country, empowered me to act in ways that supported my role and the business I was representing. I was discriminating in how I showed up and built the relationships with my business colleagues and partners. In some parts of the world, I was completely open, while in other parts I was completely closed about being gay. Both strategies worked well in the end.
I found that while being Discerning was critical, it had to be supported by also being Discrete. This usually came in the form of the pronouns I would use when talking about my personal life with others in meetings or over meals. I was able to avoid conflict and actually gain an advantage in the parts of the world where it was not prudent to not be opening out. When I knew I could be open with my colleagues and business partners in countries like Spain, I was able to reveal more about myself and my personal life.
Becoming a successful Global Gay Executive, in many ways, was the result of my Drive to be successful in my career. My work ethic was text book Baby Boomer with long hours, hard work, overachieving, and exceeded expectations. This was another area that I learned about when it came to showing up in other parts of the world. Being highly Driven is the norm and expected from everyone in Asia, no matter their role or age. Drive shows up differently in places like the UK, where it is more about status and position and showing how one has arrived at a successful pace in their life.
While I learned these lessons as a Global Gay Executive, they seem to have applicability to anyone who is a Global Road Warrior, Global Executive, or Gay Leader. The lessons learned around Discernment, Discretion, and Drive are applicable globally and domestically.
Leaders who reflect on their experiences and behaviors learn more about how to show up in their meetings and conferences anywhere in the world.
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