Multicultural gems hidden in the ranks

A recent survey of management talent in Asia observed "Westernised" Asians and, to a lesser extent, "Asianised" Westerners occupied most senior executive positions in multinational companies in Asia. But beyond the experience of living in different countries, what do these profiles bring?

Many of them are multicultural and most can play five critical roles in how they work and the distinctive skills they bring:

• Making creative associations and drawing analogies between geographical markets, allowing them to develop global products and build global brands while remaining sensitive to local market differences;
   
• Interpreting complex knowledge - which is tacit, collective and culture-dependent, hence impossible to simply "explain" - across cultures and contexts;
   
• Anticipating cross-cultural conflicts, and addressing them, a critical contribution to the effectiveness of global teams;
   
• Integrating new team members from different cultures into teams that quickly develop their own norms of interaction and a strong "in or out" identity that make joining the team once it has been in existence for a while particularly difficult; and
   
• Mediating the relationship between global teams with a high level of cultural diversity among their members and the senior executives they report to, or their interaction with local subsidiary staff they collaborate with, who are often monocultural.

As international companies in Asia increasingly need to balance subtle forces of globalisation and localisation at the same time, and to transcend the conflicts they may create, these multicultural skills are increasingly important to succeed in the region.

Underlying all these skills is intercultural cognitive integration (one's ability to simultaneously hold and apply several culturally different schemas and thus to think as a member of one culture or another depending on need and context, or to think simultaneously as member of several cultures) as the key to creative, adaptive and leadership skills fostering their career success and that of the companies they work for.

The paradox we observe, though, is that despite the rather obvious benefits their unique skills bring, multicultural managers often languish unrecognised in the ranks and files of their employers. International human resources practices have not always caught up with the potential multicultural managers offer. Beyond simply lagging behind good practice, there are deeper reasons for this.

First, multicultural executives are not a universal panacea: not all are equally skilled at integrating across cultures. Personality plays a role: being extroverted, assertive and sociable contributes to effective multiculturalism. A balance of identification strength between cultures is also a required condition for effective bridging, and the stronger the various cultural identities, the better. If in the self-image of a multicultural person one cultural identity "wins" to the detriment of the others, the person cannot be effective as a multicultural executive.

Second, how one truly becomes multicultural is not entirely clear, and not easily captured in the simple demographic indicators still often used in recruiting and promotion decisions. Some individuals are visibly multicultural by ethnic background and early childhood experiences, but that does not guarantee they will be well integrated in a balanced fashion in their multiple cultures.