Culture in Action: Being a Good Sport

Hundreds of spectators watched the live video projection screen as one of the Blue Planet Run relay runners ran along Main Street and headed into the staging area for the baton exchange. The enthusiastic crowds gathered in Midland, MI on a Saturday afternoon in August to cheer on the international team of 20 marathon runners carrying a message about the need for accessible, safe drinking water for the 1.2 billion people in the world who don’t have that access.

The runner was accompanied by a local cross country team and, interestingly enough, a middle-aged male whose physical appearance in no way resembled the slender athletes loping alongside him. Huffing and puffing his way along the street and up onto center stage was The Dow Chemical Company’s CEO Andrew Liveris. Without chagrin, Liveris took the microphone, his breath still heaving from his one-mile jog. He welcomed the round-the-world relay runners to Midland, thanked all the volunteers, and praised the mission of the Blue Planet Foundation before turning over the microphone.

Watching the event with me was Ben P., a Dow manager from Hong Kong. “You would never see an Asian CEO doing this,” my Cantonese friend told me. What we had just witnessed before us was an example of leadership, American style. Liveris, though pot-bellied and far from marathon condition, stood in front of press and public in sweaty teeshirt, sneakers, and running shorts as a leader willing to participate in this athletic event which his company was supporting with both its name and its finances.

While a CEO from China would be more interested in looking “leaderly” (by being dignified and in control), an American leader expresses leadership by jumping in for the good of the cause, to show subordinates that he or she is one of the team, a “regular guy,” and not a snobby elitist.

“You have to be able to work with peasants and walk with kings,” my father told me as a boy growing up in the manufacturing town of Detroit. Americans who see themselves as superior are not thought to be good leaders by those beneath them.

Traits to keep in mind when training multicultural teams to work with Americans:

• Making oneself vulnerable
• Ability to “roll up one’s sleeves and get one’s hands dirty”
• Willingness to “be a good sport”