[00:00] Jia: The famous hot topic nowadays, probably in Germany or in Europe, is so-called China speed. Because from outside look you do everything super quick. But I have to say it's not only speed alone, it's about how each system optimizing for the things. 

I think it has been for me always the one question: How do you make things happen when different parts of the business think, work, and making decisions differently? Leadership is not only about getting everyone to work and think in the same way, but it's about helping different people move towards the same business outcome. 

[01:00] Gerrit: Dear listeners, a warm welcome to a brand-new episode of Second Crack - The Leadership Podcast. If you're new to the show, this is where we explore complex leadership dilemmas and paradoxes and where we invite you as our listener to self-reflect. I'm Gerrit Pelzer. I work as an executive coach, and I bring to my coaching a combination of Western science and Asian wisdom, which may be of particular relevance for today's episode.

Joining me today, as always, is my dear friend and business partner, Martin Aldergard. Martin specializes in driving change and transformation within organizations, and what we both have in common is that we always put people at the center of our work. Hi, Martin. I'm curious about another interesting discussion today.

[01:55] Martin: Hi, Gerrit. Yeah, today we have a very special guest, and we're going to talk about leadership of course, but also specifically leadership across cultures, across borders. You and me, we have experience from living in Asia for many years, but today we're gonna turn the perspectives around. So I'm really looking forward to this. 

[02:19] Gerrit: Yeah, and when we talked about cultural differences or intercultural leadership effectiveness, it was always through the lens of two Western men, who spent quite a lot of time in Asia. And today we have the opportunity to introduce a female Chinese perspective from Jia Hou, who has spent a lot of time in Germany and worked with one of the world's largest automotive suppliers in Germany. Jia, a warm welcome to our podcast.

[02:55] Jia: Thank you both for having me here. 

[02:58] Gerrit: Most welcome. So, Jia, you are originally from China, as I mentioned already, and you have been living in Germany for the last 14 years, if I'm correct. You have built here a exceptional international career, and what has impressed me is the diversity of the roles you had. You have worked across user experience, customer projects to business development, executive office, organizational transformation, and now global market expansion.

And you reflect a lot about leadership, different ways of working and understanding and what it takes to navigate uncertainty in today's business environment. you put a lot of these in your articles on LinkedIn, and that is how the two of us met in the first place. And yeah, we connected and we both said we have a lot of things that we can discuss on the podcast. Maybe one episode is not enough. And before we go into this discussion, is, is there anything that you would like to add or anything that I've missed in the introduction?

[04:12] Jia: Yes. Thank you, Gerrit. I think you have really well captured everything about my career so far really well. And the, I think the only thing I want to add is, yes, it's indeed from the outside perspective, it looks like I had a really unconventional, untraditional career. But to me, it has never been really about changing roles or functions.

Looking back, I've been always working on the same topic or same challenge, so to say, um, which is building something new by bringing different parts of the business together. Sometimes that means connecting simply the headquarter with the local markets. Sometimes it's bringing together the technology, business and, people, and sometimes it's simply just helping people move together towards the same direction, same business outcome, even when they start from very different priorities. So therefore, for me, whenever I changed the roles, I never felt I was starting new. I was simply just approaching the same challenge from a different angle, different perspective. Therefore, I think that's probably the perspective I would like to bring today to this conversation.

[05:42] Gerrit: And that make, makes perfect sense, right? So when people change roles and work in areas that sound on the outside very different, people make all these assumptions. And I get that a lot. How could you work as a chemist and then become a coach? It's totally different. Well, but I just changed from a leadership role, which was not very technical, it was always more about people, to now working with leaders in maybe similar roles. So the, the inside perspective is often very different and then makes perfect sense for, for the person themselves. I'm, I'm just wondering how did that all start?

[06:22] Jia: Yes, actually it's everything also unexpected. So I have never planned to be abroad or planned to be in Germany now over 14 years. So the life goes on. So actually, I think it's all started when I came to Germany to Stuttgart in 2012. That was also my first time living abroad. That time I couldn't speak any word of German. That is, you can imagine, pretty tough, yeah. And my English skill was also very limited that time. I had to build everything basically from scratch, to figure out everything how it works. Basically to build a new life, a new career, relationships, and also most importantly, as I said, learn how different things or different systems works in a totally new country.

[07:25] Gerrit: And did you say coming to Germany was the first time living abroad or even traveling abroad?

[07:32] Jia: It's also even traveling abroad. I mean, I grew up in Beijing and it's a mega big city, and then I have never really expected that life goes dramatically this change.

[07:46] Gerrit: Wow. I mean, that is, that is very impressive. I mean, your first visit to another country, not just as a, as a tourist or something short term, but really making this decision this will be for an extended period of time, and then with the challenge, yeah, not speaking the local language, maybe also not English so well, which is perfect by the way now. So, yeah, no, I can imagine coming as a young woman to a very different country, people recognize you as a foreigner eventually or they will make the assumption you are a foreigner just from your looks, the way I was identified as a foreigner in Asia as well. W- what were the challenges you were facing or what were differences you noticed?

[08:35] Jia: Actually, they still feel I'm a foreigner, so that's, that's by definition how I looks like, right? But, uh, I have to say at beginning, I really thought the biggest challenge is, uh, a-about the German language, because I couldn't speak a word of German and, if you go to bakery or train station, so people not really used to talk with you in English, a-at least at that time back to 2012. So, um, but then the later I realized it was not really about the language. The real challenge, it was always about to understand how people can have completely different assumptions about how things gets done or how things works, in Germany or in China or Europe and Asia. I still can remember very clear, the first, or one of the first German word I learned is about, is so-called Termin, it's appointment. Because when that matter what you do and where you go, you always need a Termin in Germany. So going to see a doctor, changing your tires, or cutting my hair or, yeah, Gerrit, you just mentioned having a hand worker to home. So this is, um, quite uncommon, I would say, that I had to learn and adapt and to gather the e-essential ways like this. Because I'm actually a very direct and proactive person. Usually, if I have a quick question, in my brain or instinct, I will just go there and ask, because I think that's easy and effective. But I quickly learned when I go there and then always, I got first sentence was, "Haben Sie einen Termin?" So how do-- do you have a, an appointment? And I have to say, at the beginning, I was feeling really frustrated because I think that's add to a kind of degree ultra complicated. Yeah. maybe I just ask for two minutes question, but I need to make and, wait for a Termin for maybe another week. But indeed over the time, I realized that is reflect a lot on the different understanding how the things works or should happen here. Because this is kind of for planning, create a kind of structure and clarity to the people. And this clarity automatically build this reliability that people feel what does things make sense and what is the things make it trustful. And that automatically build the trust. But then few years later, I became a customer project manager, work a lot with different Chinese OEMs, and of course I experienced the totally opposite way of, handling, right? Basically, customer will send me message through WeChat. This is the most effective channel nowadays in China. So they basically expect that I answer within minute and bring a solution in couple of hours and resolve this issues on the same day. 

Therefore, now I bring the famous hot topic nowadays, probably in Germany or in Europe, is so-called China speed. Because from outside look, you do everything super quick. But I have to say it's not only speed alone, it's about how each system optimizing for the things, right. I never want to judge which way is better or wrong. That's also what I strongly write in my LinkedIn post, that, I don't, I don't think we should distinguish that. It's just a different system trying to solve different problems.

But once you understand that, what exactly people are aiming for, and then you stop trying to change the people, instead you start thinking about how I could reach them or make this system works and, that work create most value together. .

[13:40] Gerrit: And, and, Jia, what you just said was so rich. I just want to pick up a couple of things. I think what is very important, what you said in the beginning, that people make different assumptions which relates to it's neither right or wrong. Which reminds me of a quote by, Shakespeare in Hamlet was something like, "There's nothing either right or wrong, only thinking makes it so." And you were very polite about, about saying that, do you have an a- appointment, the famous Termin, that you felt initially it's unnecessarily complicated. I think a lot of it is unnecessarily complicated. I came back from Thailand where I had my own business, then I wanted to continue this business here in Germany and I thought, well, being now a German in Germany it will be much easier than a foreigner in Thailand. And it wasn't. And I think it is, you said about, uh, one aspect how people make sense of things, how they plan. I think it's also an, an expression for a need for control .

[14:57] Jia: Mm-hmm 

[14:58] Gerrit: Which in turn is an expression of fear as well. So I think there are the positive aspects of it but also sometimes the idea of wanting to control everything which leads then to over-controlling. And I think we need to find the golden mean where it's best. And I like that, I think that was one of the last sentences you said: thinking about how different ways of working can create more value together. 

And I said initially in my introduction, I say it all the time, that I use an approach grounded in Western science and Asian wisdom. When I talk about Western science, it's about applied neuroscience and how the brain functions and how this impacts behavior. But I've also come to realize, well, in the Western world, I may be overgeneralizing now, but there's a tendency to analyze everything, to have evidence, to explain things scientifically. And if we don't have the scientific evidence, well, then probably it isn't true. And I have this wonderful example of evidence for how meditation works. we have found this evidence through, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Well, but you know, in Asia this was done already over thousands of years ago just through introspection. And how can we then combine this Western scientific analytic approach without forgetting the introspection and for instance, listening to our body. I feel I'm getting a little bit sidetracked here, but this is what came to my mind just listening to you.

[16:48] Martin: When listening to this, I'm also wanting to add not only the scientific or the system, the process approach that from the Western perspective we trust so much. And then, Gerrit, you mentioned also the introspection, but I'm thinking very much about the relations. 

[17:04] Gerrit: Hmm. Oh, yes

[17:06] Martin: And what I've learned as a Westerner working in Asia, it's, it's so much about the relationship. 

[17:13] Jia: Mm-hmm. 

[17:14] Martin: And so again, there's no right or wrong. There's just different ways. As a Westerner, if there is a process, follow the process, and we trust things will go right. And as a project manager in Asia, I was immensely frustrated when people did not follow the process. I wanted to structure everything, and people didn't do it. 

[17:38] Jia: Mm-hmm. 

[17:40] Martin: They did it, for instance, through relationships. And just like the example you mentioned, Jia, why don't I just call you, I don't need an appointment. I just call you, and we fix it. And one small anecdote I had from, from China, I was a very young project manager and I had a contract signed for a workshop. And there was some issues around the contract, and I thought everything was ready. And my senior mentor, my senior consulting mentor, he said, "Martin, the contract is just the start of the negotiations." "You, you need to focus on building relationships with your counter partner." 

[18:27] Jia: Yeah, that's really great you bring a really large topic about trust building or relationship. I think many, many people write and talk about as biggest cultural difference between East and West. Because what I see is East is really relationship-based country, where it's framed in China that everything and every people are kind of connected. If you want to make business, you have to have a certain network and relationship. And maybe you have also heard, yeah, there are deals not really made in the meeting room. It's made in the in the dinner session. But I really want to bring back, that's, that's something what also Gerrit sparked me a lot regarding on this control and we want to know everything in Germany because I think that is people want to know and understand deeply the truth. And, and this is different than the Chinese way, which is more like, you don't know really the ways. You have to try out, you have to do many, many actions and create this kind of momentum or movement that you do this pragmatic way. So if there is no way and you build your way, and you try out and go for it. And that's probably explain a little why it's, this kind of for China speed happened.

Um, but I also think Germany is very famous for great quality, and that is still that people appreciate the product from Germany because of that. That is the engineer quality, and that is a deep for seeking for the truth that you really create innovation at the end because you never give up to seeking for the truth.

[20:30] Gerrit: Could, I come back to the China speed, because I think this is how our connection started. I think we both saw an article written by our common friend, Rüdiger Müngersdorff, about China speed, and then I, I think you wrote another article on that. And I think for me, on the surface level, and maybe not knowing so much about China specifically, China speed is something to me, it looks incredibly fast. One example was just I was still studying at university, and my professor showed a picture of, I think it was Shanghai,a photo of the skyline with, I think it was just a 10-year difference and how many buildings came up. And I think that is something that you would never see happening in, Germany. So, tell us a bit more about your perspective on China speed. What, what is it really when it's not just about the speed?

[21:31] Jia: Mm. I, wrote on my first post about China speed I said, "China speed is not speed itself, it's about how you're managing uncertainty." And I think that uncertainty topic is extremely important nowadays because the only certainty is uncertainty actually. Because everything is just running too fast and, people has to adapt and then to think about what can hold as a certainty. But that's what I wrote about, maybe you just, go for the way and then try out and not trying to find a certainty point that, until everything clarified or until we found a 100% solution, you just do it. And then by doing the iterations, especially in the product, the development cycle, you just do iterations to iterations. And actually, I think the most, uh, parts is built within the first 80%, and then you do the refinement. And this is somehow the essential to bring this kind of speed up. 

[22:55] Martin: I'm thinking about what do we need from the leader in, in this environment that is so complex and uncertain? As a leader, I'm typically viewed as having to be the one that making sense of what's happening very quickly so that I can tell my team, so I can provide clarity to my team. But what if the uncertainty is so big so the leader cannot by him or herself process all of this? 

[23:26] Jia: Mm-hmm. Yeah. This, now bring a large topic about leadership, right? So, um, 

[23:32] Gerrit: That's what the whole podcast series is about.

[23:35] Jia: Of course, of course. I mean we start about how we see the situations, but actually at the end, it's all how we are-- who we are, and then also as a leader, how you lead. So I truly believe, the role of the leader is currently really changing. In the past, probably many leaders were super successful because they have the right answer, expertise, they are engineer background, and they know everything. But today, I don't think that it's enough anymore, because, there is no single leader could understand every market, every customer, every operational realities or every systems.

 I think the real job for a leader today is no longer to have all the answers, but to create an environment where different perspective can actually create a decision or work together. And that means, for example, asking better questions before you even giving an answer by yourself, understanding the different teams, what they are optimizing for, for example, why Germany is working like this way and why China is working like this way. And ultimately also translating strategy into something that really makes sense in the different business reality. That's I think for me, leadership is not only about getting everyone to work and think in the same way, but it's about helping different people move towards the same business outcome, same direction that we achieve the same goal at the end.

Yeah.

[25:36] Gerrit: That actually reminds me of Ron Heifetz, a Harvard lecturer. And he was talking about the difference between, what was it, a technical problem and an adaptive challenge. So a technical problem may still be something highly complicated, but an answer is available. So in this case, the leader or an expert may have the right answer. But for these adaptive challenges where everything is in complexity and the answer may just emerge, he says something like, "The leader's job is not to have the right answer, but to ask the right questions for which answers are developed by the collective intelligence of the people." And I, and I feel your approach to leadership or what leaders need today is, is very similar.

And even it fits in my definition of leadership, and, and I relate this to my coaching, where I say "leadership is, or my w- job as a coach is to help leaders create the conditions in which people can be their best, not only do their best, but be their best." So I think we're, we're perfectly aligned there. Makes perfect sense to me at least.

[26:52] Jia: Mm-hmm. 

[26:53] Martin: When, when I hear you talking, it's like understanding or coping with complexity and uncertainty, this word around sense-making is so critical. I mean, what's going on, what's happening? ... Should we react, do we change our plan, do we stay our course? And this process, like Gerrit's saying, do I, do I have an expert that can find the right answer, or is it something that needs to emerge? And in my experience it's much more of a group process. It's not an individual process, when we're dealing with complex, unknown challenges. As a leader, I'm, I'm always trying to get the right people in the room. I'm just trying to get the smartest and the right people in the room. But how can I get a smart conversation to happen among those people? Jia, you have been in rooms with a lot of smart people and you're bringing together people from the different perspectives from the business. How, how do you create good conversations, and ... or what are, what are your takeaways from creating great conversations among smart people in the room? 

[28:07] Jia: That's really a good question because I'm really a fan of having a meaningful conversation. And, I like to have open dialogue, and that is also during my culture transformation project, we did such a large format that was with our dear friend Rüdiger Müngersdorff together. That's, uh, so-called Future Camp format that we really brought 70 people from different background, different functions, different roles, to have this open dialogue. Talking about leadership, international collaboration, culture difference, or simply just about purpose, who we are, why we are here, and, what drives us together. And I think to have such environment is super impor- important and essential for nowadays, complexity or super fast changing environment because, everybody has limitations. I like to get sparked by different point of view or angles that, you collect a different perspective and getting different informations that you make at the end your own judgment. And then you can proceed with making a decision. And such environment also reinforce that people open up themself. people feel get to know, for example, the leaders or other broader functions, especially when you talk about large organization. Probably they have never worked together, they have never met, and then they barely have some touch point.But when you bring to this dialogue, then people felt emotionally connected because you are in a common goal and common purpose. And this what I felt so beautiful because this kind of emotional attachment, that drives people. That is something where I can see the spark in the eyes of our engineers. So that's, this is some moment I felt, "Wow," you bring people together and that's something where really create this momentum that people feel emotional attached. And that's the real transformation and that's the real momentum or movement will happen. 

[30:56] Martin: Is it like a deeper level of alignment? I mean, alignment, we talk about alignment all the time in organizations and, and I have a sense that many times we are s- we are not spending enough time for the deeper conversations because there is no time. And we are kind of aligned very quickly because we're reading the same PowerPoints and we say, "Yeah, Yeah this is true." And then we still uh, interpret it totally different, so execution will go in totally different directions.

[31:22] Jia: Exactly. Yeah 

[31:24] Martin: Because, uh, sometimes leaders say, "You know, we don't, we don't have time to gather 70 people for one day or two days to talk." 

[31:33] Jia: Alignment is very essential, especially when you are even handling the different stakeholders across border, like joint ventures, everybody has different priorities In many, many cases what I observe is, we often felt we are aligned in the meeting room, and we felt that we have a common setup, but everybody could have different interpretations on their own way. That's the strong belief I always had, um, about strategy, because I work a lot on business development and strategy topic. I recognize actually every company has really great strategy slides, yeah, in PowerPoint. 

[32:30] Martin: Yeah. Yes. 

[32:32] Jia: But I think the most effective at end is how you execute the strategy, that's a deciding thing. But also to say, "Okay, we have a meeting aligned each party," but that's also not enough because everybody will interpret a strategy on their own way by what they understand from their assumptions or from their optimizations. Therefore, I think it's also essential for a leader who early enough to recognize these different assumptions and then to step into and care about that we are finally really, really aligned and also really execute in the same direction. 

[33:28] Gerrit: Yeah. if I can just add on a few things that you mentioned. So this last example, uh, we had once Paul Lawrence on the podcast, and we spoke with him about complexity and complex systems, and he had exactly the same example: there seems to be alignment in the meeting room, but then people leave the meeting room, and then the side discussions start, and these different interpretations are expressed. And then it leads to completely unexpected results, but the person who led the meeting says, "Well, everything's perfect. We are, we were all aligned," and is then surprised a couple of weeks later that things are not going in the right direction. 

And I also experience a lot that you said, especially in technical environments, we try to leave the emotions aside. But there are neuroscientists who often write emotions as e-motion, indicating that emotions provide the energy for action. And that is then, as you said, when you see the sparkling in the people's eyes, that's the emotion expressed as, as energy, I would say. And, also there are a lot of studies, and it's also my personal experience, that diverse teams are more effective than highly homogeneous teams. The homogeneous team may look faster in the beginning because they seem to all agree. And with the diverse team, you may have a lot more discussions in the beginning, and it looks like they're off to a slow start. But then in the longer run, the diverse team is usually much more effective.

[35:11] Martin: I have a story from my consulting work in China. It is more than 10 years ago, so I think it's not so much a secret anymore. I worked with a big German chemical company and, and they were in the hygiene industry, and they producing the material that goes into diapers. It's called the super absorbent polymers. And back at that time, the manufacturing of diapers was predicted... It was more than 200 diaper manufacturers and of course the trend in the industry was that that would be shrinking, consolidation. are you going to sit in the head office and having a lot of, so to say, homogeneous thinking producing the market expansion strategy, or are you going to bring in a lot of diverse perspectives and go slow? So the decision was really to go slow in the beginning, and having people from the retailer, from all the different Asian retailers, from the diaper manufacturers, from the component manufacturing, that means SAP, adhesives, textiles, everything, even from the machine manufacturers, everybody coming together and starting to talk about where is this industry moving? And, we discovered things, like the assumption was that, "Oh, we need the big packaging size," one guy was saying. Another lady was saying, "No, no, no, we need small packaging sizes," and, they discovered they were from two totally different markets, and they both felt, "I was right." All these assumptions that actually would have, like you said, Jia-- the, the strategy on paper looks solid, but without understanding the thinking and the assumptions we're making under the surface, it's not going to fly.

[37:03] Gerrit: And Jia, if I c-just come back to one thing that you mentioned before, because you talked a lot about the importance of communication. But I also recall in one of our earlier discussions, you said, "Well, sometimes it's less about communication, it's more about translation," could, could you elaborate a bit on that?

[37:25] Jia: Yeah, that's exactly... I want to add this point. Because, I don't think it's really about communicating, it's about the translating. But not translating of the words itself, it's translating of the value system, the business logic. This is going to much deeper that you have to understand what every market, what every system, what every people or organization they are optimizing for. For example, when we talk about market, maybe in China it's more optimizing for speed or market capture, competitor pressure, is, uh, really high and then this lead to a really short product cycles. But for the European companies, maybe it's optimizing for risk control, brand protection, or long-term positioning. Especially for the family, midsize company. So, it's again, not wrong or right, it's just simply responding for different, business logic or value system.. 

[38:42] Martin: In order to be able to execute the strategy, everybody got to understand the two different perspectives and how do we combine the two things. There is, again, like you say, there's nothing right or wrong. We need to have the best combination of these viewpoints, and everybody understands both ways so execution can be aligned. 

[39:02] Jia: Yeah 

[39:03] Martin: And I, I cannot only run away from the meeting and executing the part that I like 

[39:09] Jia: Yeah, e-e-exactly. And also you cannot just apply your strategy to the market where you are in Europe to the market in Asia because there are different business logic there. 

[39:23] Gerrit: So if I think about our discussion today, and you made this point that leadership is changing. Nowadays leaders need to have different skills and competencies than even maybe a couple of y-years ago. You mentioned the uncertainty and this working across markets and regions, and thus also working with different cultures. So th-there are a lot of changes in leadership. I was wondering, you know, in our, our podcast, we never want to oversimplify things, but what would be perhaps some of the qualities that you think leaders need in the future to be effective?

[40:12] Jia: Mm. I, I think when our initial talk, we had a-- we said, we definitely don't want to be like, uh, giving you five recipes

[40:23] Gerrit: Right, exactly

[40:24] Jia: because I don't think there are recipes for each cases or we don't want to tell you this is, fit for all. But I indeed reflect a lot on what the qualities or capabilities for a leader nowadays, what I truly believe.

 First of all, I think very important to have curiosity. Not only the curiosity about different cultures, but also why people or business or market works differently. So basically, this kind of "why", and this is what I really like to ask a deeper question. Because if you are curious, you ask better questions, and this better question will lead to better understanding. And that's actually bring back to what we just discussed before about a leader have not the answer, but asking question create the dialogue and environment that you at the end can make the best judgment, and make the right decision. 

 So the second thing I think is about pattern recognition. Because after really fourteen years working across regions, I work with I think in total now probably fourteen different countries. I have really realized that every sit-situation looks like on surface different, but the underlying logic, the underlying pattern are quite similar. So the faster as a leader you recognize those patterns, the underlying logic, the faster you can make a better decision. 

And the third one is also one of my favorite, is about, sense-making. I think today's leader don't create value because you know more than everyone else, but you create value because you help others to make sense of this kind of complexity. That you bring different teams understand what really matters and what really drives us, what we are aiming for, so that you can make better decisions and turning this strategy a common business outcome and deliver the results at the end. 

[43:00] Martin: I really like all three of these: curiosity, because if I don't have the curiosity, if I'm feeling certain, my curiosity's killed, right, and it stops the whole thing. Pattern recognition, sense-making it's, it's the key, right, if everything is changing so fast, we need to be better in making sense of what's going on to be able to do good decisions. I really like your, your conclusions. 

[43:29] Jia: Thank you 

[43:30] Gerrit: Yeah. And we said at one point in time, sometimes the podcast, what, what's useful for our listeners is to hear different perspectives. But I, I must say I, I also fully subscribe to the idea. I really like when you say, the, the curiosity leads to a better quality of question. Uh, and, and that is so important.

 And Jia, really, I really like the different perspectives you bring in. And while I think at least the idea of the podcast started with bringing to our, Western perspective or two Westerners in Asia, two Western men in Asia, adding a female Asian perspective of somebody who has been working in Europe, specifically Germany, for a long time, I've realized it's less about being Chinese or whatever. I think it's really about you as a u-unique person who brings these different perspectives together, who likes to... B- because you speak also about the action part, but at the same time we rarely see this combination of a person who puts a lot of energy into action, but also reflects on it.

And I think your posts on LinkedIn are extremely valuable, and I think many people will want to follow you on LinkedIn. We will make sure we put, a link to your LinkedIn profile in the session notes. And Martin, I think you were eager to add something.

[44:55] Martin: We seem not to disagree about anything to- in today's episode. My takeaway from today was when we talk about the practical aspects of understanding intercultural differences, cross-border, different ways of working, it's the curiosity needed to understand the different systems, and then be able to put these two different ways of working or multiple ways of working together to create results, to be able to execute. And this means the role of the leader is changing because in this environment the leader cannot have the answers. But still then, how can a leader provide direction and clarity because people are looking up to the leader, right? So my reflection as a leader is then, "So what is my role in all of this, and what kind of direction and what kind of level of direction do I add as a leader?"

[45:52] Gerrit: yeah. And Jia, do, do you have a reflection question or do you want me to go first?

[45:57] Jia: You go first. This time. 

[46:01] Gerrit: I, I struggle putting it into a question, but I think what I found, most intriguing was the difference between communication and translation, and not just translation of words, but translation of, for instance value systems. So in my work as a leader working across markets, regions, countries, cultures, what is it that I need to translate to my employees? Jia, anything that, that came to mind? 

[46:36] Jia: Mm. I think this is something where, I have learned during the last 14 years because I was all the time working in both systems. And this kind of system thinking it's very difficult to learn because you have to put yourself in this constant environment. But also you need a deep reflect on why the things happen in Germany like this, uh-- and how about China, and why, what this meaning at the end. And I think this is the leader could bring to the team and to explain how it work, and how this market works like this way and why it's working like this way. And then we are back to this sense-making again. And this is the, the value really in nowadays, especially when leader work across border, I think the most challenging parts and also the value and the impact you can really bring. 

[47:43] Gerrit: Perfect. Jia, thank you so much for being our guest today. you brought a lot of amazing insights to the podcast that I'm sure our listeners will appreciate. And well, this concludes then today's episode. If you, as our listener, would like our support in improving your, intercultural leadership effectiveness or more broadly your general development as a leader, please do not hesitate to contact us via hello@secondcrackleadership.com.

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