Reflections on a Personal Anniversary – How Country Cultures Influence Our Leadership Styles

Yesterday evening, I went for a walk with my dog.

As I was stepping out of the stairwell into Prague’s mild evening, I found myself thinking about today’s newsletter. How could I bring you two things that are tremendously important to me today?

You see, today, September 5th, 2024, marks exactly 20 years since I immigrated from Romania to the Czech Republic—a move that completely changed my life.

Twenty years ago, I was a fresh journalism graduate. When I decided to follow my Czech boyfriend to Prague, I thought I was saying goodbye to journalism forever. I couldn’t imagine finding a job in media in a foreign country.

However, a few months later, I started freelancing for Czech Business Weekly, the only English-language business magazine in Czechia. In March 2006, I joined full-time, and by January 2010, I became its deputy editor-in-chief.

That was four months before the magazine shut down, ending my business journalism career.

We Are Shaped by the Cultures of the Countries Where We Live

As I was walking the dog, reflecting on what I wanted to share with you today, something magical happened. The streetlights turned on.

And I smiled.

This is exactly what happened to me when I moved to Czechia. It was as if the streetlights went on. I couldn’t see the whole journey ahead, and the road was far from easy or safe, but I could always see the next step.

Often in life, that’s all we can ask for.

Step by step. From working as a consultant on EU funds at ACCON GROUP—thanks to my knowledge of French and English, which helped me secure my first work visa as a non-EU resident—to business journalism, and finally to entrepreneurship, I look back on the last 20 years of my life and can’t help but wonder how my mindset has been shaped by Czech culture.

We are always shaped by culture. Whether we want to lead, work, or simply live in a culture, by stepping into that system, we agree to be shaped and transformed by it—both for better and for worse.

Here’s how Czechia has transformed me and my leadership:

1. I’ve discovered how much I appreciate hard work, substance, and reliability in people, systems, and organizations.
2. I’ve become an early bird. In Czechia, (almost) everyone goes to work between 7:00 and 8:00 am. I am more productive here because my biorhythm is in sync with the natural rhythm of the local culture.
3. I love quality and depth, and Czechs are all about quality and depth. This is one of the hardest-working nations in Europe, and I admire the daily work done by so many people, often without recognition.
4. I love—simply love—how quiet Czechs are. From the morning metro, where the only loud voices are those of tourists, to my peaceful flat where I enjoy quiet day and night, this environment nourishes my creativity and mental health.

And there’s more.

Czech culture has shaped me and my leadership by helping me focus on the fundamentals: infrastructure, processes, and work done well. Substance, not fluff. Quality—I hold myself and my team to the highest standards.

Genuine service.

However, Czech culture has also shaped me and my business in a more painful way. After all, this is a small market, and it’s also the most discount-driven in Europe.

When you run a service-intensive people and organization development business that clients expect to be delivered in Czech, at high quality, in person, and tailor-made for discount prices, you can find yourself in a trap.

Scalability and predictable cash flow management are challenging; so is talent management in a country with the lowest unemployment rate in Europe.

But these constraints have also helped me. They’ve made me:

1. Realize my desire to scale.
2. Insist on developing and deploying a remote-first business model that allows me to source talent from anywhere.
3. Grow curious and eager to build a pan-European business that now serves leaders from Norway to Kazakhstan.

Yes, we are all shaped by the cultures of the countries where we live. Like a fractal, the patterns of the system we choose to embrace will become part of our leadership and mindset.

So, my question for you today is: How is your leadership mindset shaped by the culture of the country where you live—with all its good and bad? Do you have enough critical distance to see this shaping taking place? And how does this shaping limit or expand you, the CEO, and your business?

As I reflect on today’s anniversary, I sit with these questions—for myself and for you. Every choice we make transforms our journey. And even when we can’t see the whole path, sometimes it’s enough to see the next step.

Here’s to you, my readers, to Czechia, my adoptive Motherland, and to my soul that never gave up. To leadership shaped healthily by culture and to a life well lived!

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