Page 115 - Harnessing the Strengths

98 ■ Servant-Leadership in the Intercultural Practice

Double Focus

For a Chinese or northern European, a good leader will
rarely show his or her emotions, raise his or her voice, or use
extravagant body language. But for the Kuwaiti or Italian
leader, showing emotions in these ways indicates a level of
involvement. To ensure that these two very different cul-
tures can work together, it is necessary that people do their
best to learn how to interpret the other’s signals and to mod-
erate their own behavior.
Uncontrolled emotions lead to the perception of neu-
rotic behavior, while a completely controlled person can
come across as an automaton. Normally, both emotional
and rational thinking are naturally more or less combined
in some ratio. The servant-leader has both capacities within
him or her and combines them. The emotions give depth to
thought, and rational thought gains “life” by being tied to
feelings. First rational thinking, and then emotions at the
right moment to actualize the thought; or fi rst feeling, and
then pondering an effective way to share your feelings: both
ways are examples of integration.

The Benchmark

In order to measure how open different cultures are to
expressing their emotions, people from different countries
were asked:
What is your opinion on the following remark?

In my society, it is considered unprofessional
to express emotions overtly. In retrospect, I quite
frequently think that I have given away too much
in my enthusiasm.