Expatriate Debrief While in Berlin, I Visited

Expatriate Debrief

While in Berlin, I visited a large art museum where, as in most parts of Europe, I was surrounded by people from all over the world. Docents guided small groups of people through the museum, talking about the art in the native language of the groups of people. A group of Japanese people were guided by a quiet, polite, and diminutive middle-aged woman. I don't understand Japanese so I couldn't effectively eavesdrop -- but it wouldn't have mattered if I did because she was so soft spoken -- her group members pressed close around her -- that I wouldn't have been able to hear what she said without closing the physical gap in an obvious manner. The group of Spanish-speaking visitors enthusiastically gave eye contact to those around them, gave way to others as they moved about the room, and often linked arms or touched the hands of people in their group. A large, loud-spoken woman stood well away from the German-speaking group. Her group members spread out in front of whatever work of art they were admiring, such that, they took up three times the space they needed to accomplish their viewing and their discussion. The German docent seemed unaware that there were other visitors in the room, her guttural phrases bouncing off the uncarpeted floors and the bare ceilings, in an intrusive staccato.

This is not an exaggeration, nor is it meant to be stereotypical. National personality is regularly manifested, even in these days of a fast, flat world.

East Africa -- Tanzania

Leaders in Tanzania may be a bit pugnacious and duplicitous. Everything is in short supply in Tanzania, except perhaps, hubris. The country is highly politicized and so too is private industry. As an indicator of the potential issues an individual might encounter in Tanzania, the ratings of the Global Integrity Report for 2010 was consulted. There has not been much change in three years time, since the last assessment was conducted. The anti-corruption agency is ineffective and investigations of politically sensitive issues are avoided. A Freedom of Information bill drafted in 2006 has still not been enacted. Elections are generally fair, but no electoral monitoring occurs, and there are no regulations -- or poorly enforced regulations -- for financing of political candidates campaigns or political parties. Political loyalty of police in the execution of their duties in expected and rewarded.

A business leader in Tanzania will have likely been through years (up to 35 years) of socialism, the memories of which are still very salient in the country ("Global Integrity Report," 2011). The business community is still at high risk and is plagued by a number of substantive problems, including bureaucratic difficulties, corruption, poor infrastructure, political weakness, lost organizational skills, high interest rates, and a deficient legal environment ("Global Integrity Report," 2011).

Diversity in Tanzania is represented by the Asian population ("Global Integrity Report," 2011). Indigenous business enterprises tend to look on the Asians living in Tanzania with considerable bias ("Global Integrity Report," 2011). Overt antagonism towards Asians has been based on beliefs that they concentrate their business activities in trade and avoid fixed assets -- in other words, they take assets out of the country -- and that they corrupt the political systems ("Global Integrity Report," 2011). There is a growing empathic understanding of the unfair practices and traumas that have been inflicted on Asians in the past ("Global Integrity Report," 2011). Multinational enterprises have been increasing in Tanzania, and the division between the informal sector and the formal or official sector has been shifting ("Global Integrity Report," 2011). Business ownership shows an enormous gender gap ("Global Integrity Report," 2011). Tanzania business leaders consider the Tanzanian state to be an obstacle in the development of business enterprise rather than a source of information, support, and funding ("Global Integrity Report," 2011). Relationships between business and the state apparatus are replete with mutual suspicion and adversarial encounters ("Global Integrity Report," 2011). Virtually every transaction between a business person and a bureaucrat includes some element of corruption ("Global Integrity Report," 2011).

Western Europe -- Germany

To describe the leadership traits of German leaders, we look to the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) of 2007, which is a longitudinal study conducted on a household basis with a focus on self-perceptions of personality, professional circumstances, and private situations ("SOEP," 2007). The work of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) is empirically-based research on the relationship between personality and leadership ("SOEP," 2007). It is a large-scale dataset using sophisticated psychological constructs and valid comprehensive measures of the probability of a person to be in a leadership position or the probability of promotion to leadership ("SOEP," 2007).

The psychological constructs that are the basis of the personality assessment are taken from the Five Factor Model (FFM) (Costa & McCrae, 1992). The Five Factor Model is considered to be a reliable predictor of job performance and professional success, especially for leaders. The construct is based on the hypothesis that personality difference among people can be identified along five central dimensions. These dimension are as follows: (1) Neuroticism; (2) extraversion; (3) openness to experience; (4) agreeableness; and (5) conscientiousness (Costa & McCrae, 1992). In general, successful leaders tend to be characterized by high scores in the dimensions of emotional stability, extraversion, and conscientiousness, and low scores in the agreeableness dimension. In fact, private sector leaders in Germany self-ratings demonstrate perceptions that they are more open to experience, more extroverted, more conscientious, more willing to take risks, less agreeable, and less neurotic than Germans who are not in leadership positions. From this, we can deduce that a German leader will be a strong and clear goal-setter, expecting subordinates to understand their duties and conduct themselves in a manner that fosters the most efficacious attainment of those duties and responsibilities.

Women make up approximately 50% of the German workforce, but there is not a representative proportion of German women in leadership roles in the private sector ("SOEP," 2007). Culturally, German women are encouraged not to work outside the home, and to care for their school age children. Outside of the major cities, German men may return home at midday for the main meal of the day -- this is difficult to accomplish if the woman of the house is also working. Though Germany does have a female Chancellor, it is fair to assume that traditional gender roles are substantially supported in Germany (Der Spiegel, 2011).

Germans are hard-working, family-centered traditionalists. Labor unions are an important component to the Germany economic-political-industrial landscape. The fiscal solvency of Germany and the country's willingness to take difficult austerity measures in order to recover from the fiscal crisis of 2008 -- 2011, is indicative of the Germany personality: methodical, dogged, determined, and disciplined. Germans tend to be reticent to chat about trivialities and they are not known to be particularly spontaneous. For instance, German friends and acquaintances don't just drop in to visit, but instead schedule meetings, activities, and visits well in advance. This formal introversion is even marked in business situations.