Good things happen when you believe

When I first landed in Scandinavia (Denmark), I was reeling through a painful time in my personal life. Work, the amazing Danish people and Denmark at large kept me going through those rough times.


There is something about the Danes that I instantly fell in love with. To be more accurate, it was my first Danish manager. He is a super amazing, super humble, inclusive and caring individual with loads of competence and skills. And he became my Danish family from the day I landed at the super-little airport in that quaint Danish town at Jylland, the southern island in Denmark.


The love around me and the peace around me was exactly what I had needed. I started to meditate and got my feet wet with Nichiren Buddhism in that tough time, and magically life started to change. 


Fast forward 8 years, I have continued to live in Scandinavia with my absolutely amazing life partner, having achieved the dream of doing an MBA from a top university and working in an area that I love. I did change my country of residence and work - moved to Sweden five years ago. Nonetheless have always stayed connected to Denmark in all these years.


When I came to Sweden five years ago, almost naively I expected people to be the same. I believed that people would still have the same habits, the same or at least similar culture and certainly they must understand Danish. Boy! I was so wrong. I still vividly remember the blank faces of my Swedish colleagues when I tried to say something in Danish. Initially I thought it was my low competence in Danish, but soon enough I discovered that Danish and Swedish are quite different despite many similarities. The same was true about the people. In my five years at my Swedish company, I came across a plethora of people. I was almost spoilt by the love I received in Denmark, and thought that it would be the same in Sweden. It was different.


Some of my colleagues in Sweden have always loved and cared for me, are super humble and super competent people. I tend to believe that people who are confident and are comfortable in their own skin are also inclusive. The first group of my colleagues fall in this category. Then there were the dire opposities. I came across some colleagues who seemed to elbow hard from day one. It felt strange, given it was Scandinavia and given my expectations from this land. Nonetheless, life kept moving with the good ones being by my side always.


Over the years though, a new kind of thought started to breed in my head. A thought that many non-Swedes actually say out aloud. It said, "If you are not a Swede yourself, it is very difficult to climb up the responsibility in a deeply Swedish-managed organisation".


Somewhere I started to believe this. Until one day we got a new manager for our team followed by a new manager for our business unit. Put the two together, these two new managers have set such an exemplary example of leadership for me. I simply adore their style of leadership and work. And I felt so privileged when I was given and almost handpicked for new and challenging assignments within the department.


And that is all it took to break the old perceptions that had started to grow like a mould in my little head. It is a cliche, but truly good leadership can do wonders.


Good leaders promote inclusiveness, trust people, and build condusive learning-environment around teams such that every single individual can grow and develop new skills and competence. That is all it took - Good leaders.




Good leaders I love to work with, and am super grateful for.

Communication in a multi-linguistic and multi-cultural workplace

Five years ago, I took a big life decision and made two big changes to my life. I changed my country of residence and work. I changed my profession. These were positive and happy changes in my life.

However, back then little had I known about the transition journey this change will take me on. Fast forward five years, I am with the same company, the same team, the same country and continuously learning new skills and new life-lessons everyday. While there are many stories to tell from the past five years, today I will share with you one that is a particularly big learning for me. If my story can empower even one single reader/writer out there, then it is worth-it to tell this story.

The story I am sharing with you today is my story of learning to communicate effectively in an international, multi-linguistic and multi-cultural workplace.

To set a context, let me tell you a bit about myself and a bit about my company and my work.

I have been brought up, and educated for most of my life in India. I have studied English language from day one of my school years. I have studied a masters in business administration in Scandinavia. I moved out of India approximately 15 years ago, living and working across various different countries. The company I work for today is a Scandinavian company with a strong international presence. It is also the world leader in retail and home furnishing business. The job I have has many different elements to it - with one of the crucial elements being executive management reporting. In simpler terms, our team pulls together reports detailing the current state of the business, with recommendations on the way-forward. The primary audience for these reports is top management and company boards who need to have an unbiased and true picture of the company performance. The secondary audience is the wider organisation who are mostly curious to know about the company and the direction it is progressing in.

Read that context again. Did you start to get a picture of the challenge that this context brings? Let us break it down together.

First and foremost, our reports had a very diverse audience. People ranging across an almost paradoxical spectrum in many ways. In other words, people who read our reports ranged from those who loved text reports to those who loved graphs and tables; those who easily understood business jargon to those who had no idea about typical business-language (for instance the type of language used in annual reports of international firms); those who were super skilled at English language to those who used google-translate to understand the language: those who liked running text to those who liked bullets. And this is far from an exhaustive list, but you get the point!

Second challenge? - Our reports were written by us. 'Us' who are a team of people belonging to at least six different nationalities with each one of us skilled and trained in business analysis, management accounting and business reporting. With each of us bringing their own style of writing to the table.

Two together took our team on a journey of norming and forming, before we could finally crack the code of effective communication.

So what did I learn? 

1. Use the simplest and most basic words to communicate. Eloquent and verbose is hardly effective.

2. Be critical to your own writing. Ask yourself what would the reader make of my sentences.

3. Be ready to strike through. Can your sentence be interpreted in two different ways? If so, strike it out and start writing again.

4. Use numbers in an intelligent way. Do not overuse, and do not underuse. Find a balance for your audience.

5. Gather feedback regularly and keep adopting to the new demands.

6. Cut through the chase and come straight to the point.

7. Practise, Practise and Practise until it becomes a habit.

What's in it for you? 

Are you one of those who works in an international firm with many different nationalities, many different cultures and many different languages? Do you communicate with other people? If so, then here is a brief exercise that might help you take that leap forward in improving your own communication style.

1. Think about one incidence where you were able to communicate a complex matter in a simple and effective way. Write down three things that you learnt from this experience.

2. Think about one incidence where you failed at communicating with your workplace colleagues. Write down what did not work, and what could have been done differently.

3. Discuss with a friend, a partner or your colleague about what you have learnt from your own experience. Keep an open mind and take all feedback. If needed, repeat #1 and #2 above after you have had discussed your initial learnings with someone.