The 6 Western Leadership Secrets: What Easterners Should Be Aware

I have written an article entitled “The 5 Eastern Leadership Secrets: What Westerners Should be Aware” and promised to write a follow-up article concentrating on the reverse side (i.e. Western leadership) particularly for Eastern audience’s benefit. The wait is over and the time has now arrived. Here it is.

The main difference between Western and Eastern Leadership style lies in the fact that the Western Leadership has the tendency to focus more in individualism as opposed to collectivism in the Eastern world.

To represent the best of Western leadership, I have chosen Steve Jobs, as an example of a Western leader. With enormous popularity of the iPhone, iPod, Mac Book, iTunes & Apple App Stores, and “Toy Story” and every Pixar movies, hardly there isn’t anyone on earth not familiar with his name. In his lifetime, he has truly helped to transform 7 industries: personal computing, animated movies, music, mobile phones, tablet computing, retail stores, and digital publishing. In one of Apple’s “Think Different” commercials, there was a line saying, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” There is no doubt that Steve was in fact referring to himself when he helped to write the line in the advertisement. Indeed, Steve Jobs belongs right up there with America’s great innovators like Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Walt Disney. There are 6 secrets, in my opinion, that makes him one of the great innovators and business leaders of the Western world:

1.      Finding Your Passion

“Without passion, any rational person would give up!”, Steve once said. Look at his life and will see just how passionate he was. He dropped out of college to pursue his passion in calligraphy to the dismay of his parents. He then went to spend some time in India to find his inner self and his true calling. The experience had lasting impression on him. He returned from India as a Buddhist with a shaved head. More importantly the trip has strengthened his faith in human intelligence, technology, and humanities. Steve was also a believer in Zen and regularly attended meditation after his return from India. He strongly believed the philosophy of following his heart as a key part of leadership when he said, “you must have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.” Simply said, to be a good leader, the very first step to take the time to find your true passion. For without it, you would have given it all up from the hard work and difficulties along the way. Not only he believes in it, he also recommended other leaders like Mark Zucherberg to follow his example. At the end, he has spent time to discover his true passion in life and lived his life pursuing his dreams to the fullest. And the world is truely grateful for all his achievements.

Take-Away For Easterners:

One of the traits that us, Easterners, can learn well to emulate our Westerner friends is the respect for individuality. Too often, children would feel obligated to obey parents regardless of how they feel inside. As a result, there are too many cases of kids dropping out of college as they eventually realize that their true passions are not in line with their parents’ wishes at all. This is indeed an expensive lesson for parents and kids alike. Parents in the Eastern world need to appreciate this and allow their children to discover their passions on their own and not imposing their own desires upon them.

2.      Defining The Vision

After Steve Jobs discovered his true passion in life, he then spent many years defining and articulating his visions to the world. His biggest strength was his ability to see better things for tomorrow. On the invention of the original iPhone, he once remarked, “We all had cellphones. We just hated them, there were so awful to use. The software was terrible. The hardware wasn’t very good…” and that’s how he developed his vision of a better thing. He said, in a challenge, to his team designing the iPhone, “Let’s make a great phone that we fall in love with. We’re going to do it. Let’s try.” The rest as they say, is history. But Steve’s brilliance and main difference from others, is his ability to crystallize and articulate his visions to others so effectively. He becomes legendary in doing this and his presentation style and skills is being studied and emulated until today. As a matter of fact he is one of great leader not because he has a vision but he can truly articulate his vision so effectively to others.

Take-Away For Easterners:

Easterners do have visions but, unlike our Western counterparts, we hardly communicate this to others. To be a successful leader, you need to articulate your visions to your followers using effective form including modern means of communication methods. Instead of ‘status quo’, always think ‘how we can do it better?’ Then share your ideas with others with equal passion. Learn and practice all necessary skills to present your ideas effectively to others.

3.      Focusing On Critical Few

When Steve Jobs returned to lead Apple the second time, the company was producing array of computers and peripherals. After a few weeks of product review, he told his team to “stop the madness. Let’s focus making only 4 great products. All other products should be canceled.” With that decision, he saved Apple from certain bankruptcy. He often said, “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.” It seems that focus was ingrained in his personality and belief systems. He would relentlessly “filtered out” what he called “distractions” and only pursued few things that are really important. In his words, “focus means saying no to the hundred good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.” Jobs was clearly focused on a few key products that will truly “make a dent in the universe and went after them with laser-like attention.”

Take-Away For Easterners:

As focusing on critical few means the ability to say ‘no’ to other things on your plate, Easterners sometimes have great difficulty in doing just that. To us, saying no, may ‘offend’ others (or ‘Kreng-Jai’ in Thai). This feeling needs to be overcome if you want to be a good leader. There are ways to say ‘no’ to people without hurting their feelings. As a strong leader, you must learn to say ‘no’, sometimes. Learn this lesson from Steve Jobs.

4.      Putting Products Before Profits

When he designed original Macintosh, Steve told his team, ‘Go make an insanely great product. Don’t worry about price, just specify the computer’s abilities and don’t ever compromise!’ As it turned out the machine ‘put a dent in the universe’ but costed too much resulting in his ouster from Apple. But, in the long run, the Macintosh revolutionized the home computer industry and Steve finally got to prove his point: Focus on making great products first and the profits will follow later. Another word, when in conflict, he chose to be a great inventor instead of a great businessman. Always put quality above anything else, that was exactly what he believed in all through his life.

Take-Away For Easterners:

Through the quality movement actually got started in Asia (Japan to be exact), most Easterners have not consistently adopted this principle in their thinkings even until today. We could do very well in realizing this timeless principle before it’s too late. It may costed Steve Jobs his job the first time but, at the end, he was proven right. Quality is indeed ‘king’ in any society!

5.      Pushing For Perfection

There is no better example of anyone insisting on perfection in every aspects of whatever he does than Steve Jobs. He is indeed a perfect perfectionist! He always insisted on every product he created to be perfect and was always ready to stop the development process until he felt satisfied. His perfectionism also extended even to the parts unseen by most people. ‘A true craftsman uses a good piece of wood even for the back of a cabinet’, Steve often quoted his father’s saying. He would remain that way and demand the same from his people until the last days of his life.

Take-Away For Easterners:

Saying no is not an easy thing to do for most of us in the Eastern world, but there are certain times that you must put your foot down and make the stand for what you truly believe in with no compromise. But we can do this in the way that will not offend other people unnecessarily. Just remember that there is no middle path between right and wrong – it’s one or the other only! Something just cannot be compromised, period.

6.      Combine Humanities With Sciences

There is no one on earth a more shining example of how one can combine those two very distinctly and important traits into one seamless human being. “I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics. Then I read something that one of my heroes about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.”, Steve used to say. Boy, how he did just exactly that so well throughout his entire life. It was the essence of his life on earth, literally! Everyone now realizes that how well he connected the humanities to the sciences and arts to engineering. His famous slide was a picture that shows a sign at the intersection of Liberal Arts and Technology Streets. And that's exactly how the world will remember him by!

Take-Away For Easterners:

Most of us realize the importance of humanities to leadership but very few of us realize the importance of combining the sciences in our thinking as well. The two must somehow walk together like a newly wed, hand-in-hand, and never one without another. After all, it’s a new world!

There you have it, the 6 Secrets of Western Leadership that all Easterners can do well to study and appreciate. The next logical question you may ask is, which leadership style is more appropriate for this new globalized world we now live in? Stay-tuned for my next article for my answer.