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Journal of Strategic Management Studies Vol. 7, No. 1, 19–34 (May 2015)
MICHAEL J. STEVENS
Eccles research fellow, Professor of Management, and department chair at the Goddard School of Business and Economics, Weber State University
WENDY FOX-KIRK
Assistant Professor of Management at the Goddard School of Business and Economics, Weber State University
BRYANT THOMPSON
Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the Goddard School of Business and Economics, Weber State University
AMYDEE M. FAWCETT
Assistant Professor at the Goddard School of Business and Economics, Weber State University
STANLEY E. FAWCETT
The John D. Goddard Endowed Chair of Global Supply Chain Management at Weber State University
Abstract
We introduce a model describing four barriers to personal change and growth that have emerged from our work in training and coaching managers to develop the interpersonal and intercultural competencies needed for their success in a global work environment. The four barriers are: cognitions (knowing), behaviors (doing), affect (feeling) and values (being). Our model argues that these four barriers are governed by an iterative interdependence, and that successful long-term personal growth and change comes from training and development activities that work to minimize the effect of all four barriers. Strategies for implementing practical methods to overcome these barriers are also presented and discussed.
Keywords:
Barriers to change, intercultural competencies, leadership skills development
INTRODUCTION
For more than a decade, we have been directly involved in coaching managers to help them develop competencies needed to carry out their leadership responsibilities in a diverse and global work environment. In the early stages, we focused on developing leadership effectiveness through people skills. More recently, our attention has turned to helping global managers develop essential intercultural competencies—including both interpersonal skills and cross-cultural competencies.
Competency development, however, has progressed slowly. What we have found is that specific personal barriers to change and development appear consistently across multiple competency areas. As managers are increasingly deployed in a more complex and interconnected global work environment, we need a better (that is, a more complete and robust) understanding of the barriers to personal change and development.
In this article, we describe the nature of four specific individual-level barriers (as opposed to organizational or systems-level barriers) that typically impede the growth and development managers require cross essential competency domains needed for their success. To begin, our analysis draws on the framing concept of individual managers as being socially situated.
Socially situated persons cannot be fully understood without reference to their communal or cultural context. In this sense, we refer to culture as the shared values, norms, assumptions, beliefs, and sense-making paradigms that are manifest, whether explicitly or implicitly, by a given group of socially situated people (DiMaggio, 1990; Erez & Early, 1993; Osland & Bird, 2000). Culture is deeply embedded and even taken for granted by members of any given cultural group. Two paradigms explain cultural inculcation:
• Socialization. Culture can be programmed into individuals through early childhood socialization of unquestioned routines and processes. From this view, culture initially resides external to individuals. Very little room exists for contextual variation, cognitive dissonance, adaptation, and choice (Erez & Early, 1993; Hofstede, 1980; Lonner & Adamopoulos, 1997; Rokeach, 1973).
• Cognitive Processing. Culture can emerge internally as a product of individual cognition, wherein individuals utilize a mental “tool kit” or “repertoire” from which they have agency as to the prioritization or activation of certain values in the development of problem-solving routines (DiMaggio, 1990; Sewell, 1992; Swidler, 1986). In this view, culture can cease to have national boundaries and instead emerge based on similar cognitive processing rather than geographic proximity or background similarity (DiMaggio, 1990).
For most individuals, socialization and cognitive processing will interact to determine acculturation. Importantly, symbolic interactionism “considers the possibility that individuals create their environments” and assumes that “situations are as much a function of person and vice versa” (Bateman & Crant, 1993: 103104; Stets & Burke, 2003; Stryker & Statham, 1985). Thus, we argue that the development of intercultural competencies is contingent upon individualized responses to cultural cues. In this view, cultural values are a means rather than an end.
Culture is both a constraint and an enabler of thoughts, feelings, and actions (Sewell, 1992; Swidler, 1986). Indeed, learning a new competency (and other forms of knowledge/skill acquisition) are reliant upon the malleability of one’s cognition, affect, behavior, and core values—all of which are mutually constitutive in shaping intercultural competencies (cf., Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Mendenhall, Arnardottir, Oddou & Burke, 2013). This is similar to the constructionist approach to culture wherein knowledge is constructed through the interaction of individuals, as opposed to being objectively transferred by leaders (Armstrong & Mahmud, 2008).
Leaders within a given culture nevertheless may provide tools for knowledge transference that help individuals construct their individual interpretation of cultural norms and facilitate learning and internalization of cultural expectations (Leidner & Jarvenpaa, 1995). Construction occurs as learners pass through tangible episodes, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, active experimentation, and group collaboration (Kolb & Kolb, 2005; Miriam, Alon, Raveh, Ella, Rikki & Efrat, 2013).
Individualized responses are also facilitated by situated identities, which refer to identities that arise as a result of salient behavioral cues (Dierdorff & Morgeson, 2007; Mead, 1934). Individuals are able to describe themselves somewhat differently in different contexts (Farmer & Van Dyne, 2010) and selectively activate identities that are tailored for the specific situation while also adhering to core dimensions of self (Swann, Johnson & Bosson, 2009).
As such, we discuss an individual’s barriers to change in terms of their values (being), cognitions (knowing), affect (feeling) and behaviors (doing). We understand these to be shaped, in part, by the social world—and the social world is shaped, in part, by them. Thus, our model of barriers to growth and development disaggregates these aspects of human experience and engagement while simultaneously placing a strong emphasis on their mutual interdependence (see FIGURE 1).
In this sense, our model does not present any of the aspects as privileged over the others, but are rather governed by an iterative interdependence (Ostrom, 1969).
Considering human change and development in terms of cognition, affect, behavior and values has occurred across a variety of disconnected domains, such as changes to decisions and behaviors in health (Fishbein, 1995; Pachankis, 2007), to climate change (Lorenzoni, Nicholson-Cole & Whitmarsh, 2007; Sheppard, 2005) and therapeutic counseling (Linehan, Goldfried & Goldfried, 1979). Of par- ticular note is the research and practice found in the field of intercultural counseling, especially the Multicultural Counseling Competency Assessment and Planning Model (MCCAP; Toporek & Reza, 2001).
This model, in agreement with our own, ad- vocates for a multidimensional understanding of personal and professional change in the context of developing intercultural competencies. While these views hold that learning and change are comprised of cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes, the contribution of our research is that we bring the no- tion of culture and values explicitly into our change model, while simultaneously applying it directly to intercultural competency learning. Desired changes are thus best achieved through educational practices that are designed to address all four aspects.
FIGURE 1 A Model of Interactive and Interdependent Personal Barriers to Change
THE PERSONAL BARRIERS TO CHANGE: COGNITION, AFFECT, BEHAVIOR AND VALUES
In this section, we provide a more detailed overview and examination of each of the personal barriers to change identified above. Failure to confront them in substantive ways gives rise to the individual intransigence that will impede managerial growth and development. The success of our coaching and training activities motivates an iterative focus on this individualized level of analysis and argues for the deeper awareness of these obstructions as well as their interactions and limiting effects.
Cognition: Barriers of Knowing
Cognition refers to the inner conceptual life of the individual—what one knows and how one knows. Cognitive perspectives provide our conceptual paradigms and include schema, scripts and heuristics, such that individuals develop mental models, tool-kits, and repertoires from which they draw to understand their environment, interpret and make sense of the world, and respond effectively by making appropriate decisions (DiMaggio, 1990; Sewell, 1992). Within the intercultural domain, the dynamic constructivist perspective posits that individuals have access to similar mental models and scripts, but such scripts may be more salient for certain individuals than others—based on the subtle differences between cultures, the individual’s internalization of cultural norms, and individual differences and competencies (Chen, Leung & Chen, 2009).
Thus, one’s cognition not only shapes his or her interpretation of scripts and likely subsequent actions, but will also constrain the vision and understanding of possible scripts and behavioral repertoires. This is consistent with the theory of planned behavior, which states that cognition forms our behavioral intentions, which in turn, shape our behavior (Ajzen, 1991; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Individuals engage in cognitive processing to learn from each other through observation, imitation, and modeling (Bandura, 1977). As we observe, imitate, and model, a reciprocal relationship between cognitions and behaviors is formed—that is, we engage in the process described by social learning theory (Bandura, 1977). However, cognitive barriers can impede learning, change processes, and competence development in the following ways:
• Cognitive barriers to change can be manifest when social cognitive processes (such as the fundamental attribution error, stereotyping, and prototyping) work to confound our ability to engage in constructive sensemaking and rational decision making (Martinko, Harvey & Dasborough, 2011).
• Cognitive limitations can also impede learning and change processes by creating blocks to new ideas and practices that do not fit into our existing conceptual schemas. When this occurs, managers will have difficulty envisioning the possibilities that may be achieved and instead will default to what is known, thus thwarting growth and development before it has a chance to even be considered.
• Self-awareness bias, which is an active process of selective attribution and meaning ascription, occurs when managers believe themselves to be more competent than they in fact are. This phenomenon can be influenced by self-justification as well as the expectations that underlie self-fulfilling prophecies (Ford, Ford & D’Amelio, 2008). The effect of this cognitive limitation is that it works to undermine the manager’s openness to the genuine acquisition of new competencies, which leads to the careless conclusion that change is something that is simply unnecessary, and thus unwanted (Hepper, Gramzow & Seikides, 2010).
The net effect of these forces is that an individual’s world view can be shaped through a combination of past experiences and positive or negative outcomes through channeled direction and focus (cf goal-setting theory, Locke & Latham, 1990) and expectations of achieving a particular outcome (cf expectancy theory, Vroom, 1964). For example, if an individual is raised in a racially homogenous culture, then certain racial stereotypes can become more “real” than actual experience with people from the minority group who defy the stereotype.
A cognitive bias (e.g., confirmation bias) can thus develop, resulting in the phenomenon whereby we give too much weight and attention to anything close to an expected negative behavior from members of the racial minority, while actively minimizing the weight and attention given to any unexpected positive behaviors. Through this cognitive mechanism, minority stereotyping is reinforced rather than questioned, especially when use of such stereotypes is positively reinforced with valued outcomes.
Even where positive behaviors by the minority person are noticed, managers will frequently invoke the “exception to the rule” heuristic (i.e., the minority person is not typical of his or her ethnic group) rather than reject the heuristic itself as being flawed or inconsistent with actual experience. A manager’s stereotypes and ineffective mental models thus persist and change towards greater intercultural competence is undermined.
Working past cognitive barriers is a relatively straightforward proposition. The transformation can easily be initiated through traditional instructional and training methods, such as direct instruction, classroom lectures and discussions, assigned readings, and so on.
The vast majority of traditional educational pedagogies are aimed at eliminating the barriers to growth and development that arise through limited mental models—or cognitive barriers (Dodge, 1993; Oddou & Mendenhall, 2013). However, experience has shown us that reducing the cognitive barriers is not enough for a manager’s competencies to grow and develop in such domains as interpersonal and cross-cultural effectiveness—that is, addressing deficiencies in mental models as well as mental-model formation is necessary but not sufficient. In addition, we also need to address barriers that derive from our behaviors, emotions, and values.
Affect: Barriers of Feeling
Affect refers to an individual’s psychological feelings and emotional states. Emotions can act to block change through a number of mechanisms and can negatively impact the constructive expression of one’s cognitions, behaviors, and values. Affective events theory (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) examines the consequences of affective experiences at work and notes that affective responses are discrete events that, although brief and variable, are ongoing and accumulate over time into comfortable emotional events such that current and past emotions profoundly influence future cognitions and behaviors.
Frijda (1993) suggests that affective responses establish a “control precedence,” in that they redirect one’s focus to deal with the stimuli that triggered the uncomfortable emotional responses in the first place.
Affective responses can be deliberately exhibited, suppressed, or feigned based on cultural norms. They can also be uninhibited, spontaneous, or involuntary based on individual dispositions (Manstead, Fridja & Fischer, 2004).
Affective responses are thus both socially constructed and individually derived (Eid & Diener, 2009). As individuals act in a manner inconsistent with natural affective responses, this may evoke emotional dissonance (Hochschild, 1983; Zapf, Vogt, Seifert, Mertini & Isic, 1999) and will likely lead to adverse outcomes over time such as burnout, stress, decreased performance, and diminished wellbeing (Baumeister & Scher, 1988; Zapf et al., 1999).
Affective responses “do not disorganize behavior as much as they reorganize or redirect it” (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996: 54). Both negative and positive affective responses can thus emerge as distractions to favorable cognitive expressions. Consider the following four ways that affective barriers impede competence development and skill acquisition:
• Strong negative emotions that result in high levels of stress will adversely impact memory retention, which is a crucial aspect of learning (Bower, 1981; Broadhusrt, 1957).
• Emotions such as boredom and confusion also have an impact on learning. Specifically, boredom can act as a block to attention and memory levels while confusion is linked to minimized retention and
more shallow learning (Craig, Graesser, Sullins & Gholson, 2004).
• In the intercultural context, navigating through interpersonal interactions is especially complex because divergent cultures may elicit varying expressions of emotional responses. In the workplace, cultural norms dictate when, how, and how much emotion may be appropriately expressed to colleagues (Hall, 1976).
• New behaviors, skills and ideas can often be a source for considerable dissonance, discomfort and even a sense of awkwardness and social embarrassment. As a result, this discomfort can induce a distressing and unwanted internal psychological state, such that managers embarking on a journey of change may retreat from the voyage even when they may fully believe the change makes sense and holds promise for improvement. In such instances, the affective discomfort proves too overwhelming and the change effort is thus derailed.
The mechanisms through which emotional responses operate can make working past affective barriers a more challenging proposition than working past one’s cognitive barriers (described above) or behavioral barriers (described below). Explicitly, with regard to growth and development of intercultural competencies, affective distress often creates a barrier that can get in the way of a manager’s attempts to practice and master new skills and behaviors. By way of illustration, a Japanese expatriate manager working in Mexico may feel a significant degree of emotional discomfort engaging in the traditional behavioral customs that are expected and displayed by local Mexican colleagues.
For example, the typical Mexican abrazo (or hug) that takes place at the beginning and closing of many common social events may create anxiety—even though the behavior of a simple Mexican abrazo is well within the scope of behaviors the Japanese manager can cognitively understand and behaviorally engage. Nevertheless, the affective discomfort can act to create vulnerabilities and hesitations that, over time, may become too emotionally burdensome for the Japanese expatriate manager to effectively overcome.
Rather than using traditional training methods such as direct instruction, classroom lectures, assigned readings, or skills practice, efforts to minimize affective barriers often demand a higher level of experiential rigor. For example, use of emotionally inspirational appeals (e.g., intuition, subjectivity, and ideals) may have particular influence on our affect whereas rational appeals (e.g., use of logic, facts, and data) may have the most impact on our cognitions. Grant and Hofmann (2011) refer to these two distinct types of appeals as the “hot” affective system and the “cool” cognitive system (see also Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996).
Further, overcoming affective barriers often calls for the guidance of an expert coach or facilitator. This is often the case because typical affective barriers often display themselves as feelings of anxiety, fear, dread and even panic. Careful thought and consideration must be used by coaches and trainers to ensure that a healthy and supportive environment is created wherein trainees can experience and sort through their emotional distress in ways that do not overwhelm (and possibly even provoke withdrawal or shut down) but instead help the trainees to confront the triggering events that cause their distress (Oddou & Mendenhall, 2013).
According to recent research, the practice of cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) has proven to be an effective instructional methodology for leveraging both knowledge and behavior-based training and development activities to assist trainees in strengthening their affective and emotional response patterns for improving intercultural competencies (Mendenhall et al., 2013). The CBT approach has found significant success at minimizing the affective barriers to growth and change by focusing on helping managers develop constructive behavioral skills and response patterns, which we describe next.
Behavior: Barriers of Doing
Behavior refers to an individual’s actions aimed at interacting with the environment and with others. Language, speech, and skills that can be practiced are all considered part of behavior as it constitutes action through influence on the thoughts, feelings and actions of others. Specific behaviors can be triggered by tailored cues sent from individuals within the person’s environment. Inasmuch as the cues are consistently sent, are clearly articulated, and aligned with the person’s values, an individual’s behavior will become increasingly responsive to the tailored cues (Wrzesniewski, Dutton & Debebe, 2003).
Behaviors are perpetuated through reinforcement of desired behaviors and punishment of undesired behaviors (Hamner, 1974). The classic behavioral approach assumes that individuals simply respond to reinforcements rather than internalizing and contemplating one’s potential actions. Effective reinforcements are powerful, reliable, and contingent upon the occurrence (absence) of the desired (undesired) behavior. Further, use of skill sets and performance routines can be a positive mechanism by which desired behaviors are perpetuated. Routines are repetitive actions aimed at generating automatic action that occurs with little conscious thought and very little autonomy (March & Simon, 1958).
Organizations will often rely on routines to standardize behavior, create coordinated collective action, suppress conflict, and maintain organizational memory. The reality is, however, that prescribed behavioral routines do not always fully determine behavior—especially given increased use of cognition and affect to determine our actions. Behavioral barriers to change and learning manifest themselves in the following ways:
• Individuals cleave to routines to avoid uncertainty, establish continuity, and account for bounded rationality. In fact, Baum and Singh (1994) suggest that routines serve as “genealogical entities” in that they are self-perpetuating, which can lead to inertia (March & Simon, 1958), especially since individuals have an initial tendency to conform their behavior to the behavioral norms of their salient environment (Schneider, 1975). Ultimately, routines often lead to habituation and threat rigidity, thus fostering an aversion to change (Cyert & March, 1963).
• Behavioral approaches can create the false impression of real learning. That is, although rapid learning appears to take place, such learning may be subject to rapid extinction (Luthans & Kreitner, 1974). Unless cognitive and affective elements are also employed to reinforce the acquisition of new behaviors, or unless powerful new routines are established, then behavioral adaptation and learning will likely be temporary.
• In relation to skill development, routine behaviors or habits are likely to be resistant to change. When this is combined with the feeling of awkwardness or ambiguity due to learning the new behavior or skill, the result can easily be a reversion to the default behavioral routines that were in place prior to the training or coaching intervention.
Routinization can be used effectively to work through and overcome behavioral barriers. Specifically, as new routines are adopted and enacted in a loosely coupled fashion, this flexibility can bring about change. In fact, new routines tend to emerge even when slight behavioral modifications are repeated over time. These modifications occur because of varied cognitive scripts and divergent affective responses across individuals (Howard-Grenville, 2005). Perlocutionary acts in particular can create behavioral responses in others (Austin, 1975). For example, a manager’s behavior towards others from (or within) different cross-cultural settings can signal respect or contempt, such as when a culturally insensitive comment is likely to set a tone of disrespect that results in a subsequent lowering of trust in the relationship.
An essential part of new behavior and skill learning is to ensure that there is plenty of opportunity for practice and feedback on skill acquisition. It is therefore necessary to create conditions that signal psychological safety to reduce the fear of making errors and increase the potential for openness. For the learning of new behaviors and skills, the path from novice to expert is regular practice, feedback on errors (both task feedback and mentor feedback), and a willingness to talk about task conceptualizations, frustrations and worries about the impact of change (Osland, Oddou, Bird & Osland, 2013; Schein, 1993).
Finally, focusing on mitigating behavioral barriers is typically a very potent way of driving change to overcome the other barriers as well. As Mendenhall and his colleagues note, “the behavioral dimension of CBT holds that changing an individual’s behavior is often a powerful way of changing the individual’s thoughts, feelings and [even] physical reactions,”
which keep them from the acquisition of new competencies that would help drive effective growth and development (Mendenhall et al., 2013: 442). The main reasons for the strength that comes from behavior-focused change are derived from the practical nature of the objective practice and feedback that can come from an emphasis on behavior and skills-based practice. When combined with traditional goal setting methods, the result can often be a robust professional development planning process whereby personal growth and change can be managed with objective ease and clarity.
Core Values: Barriers of Being
Values refer to guiding principles. Values reveal the drivers of belief and behavior, and embody what people consider to be genuinely important. Values are also cognitive structures (Schwartz & Bilsky, 1987) and mental representations (Maio, 2010) that are central to who we are as persons (Brewer & Roccas, 2001) and often operate without conscious thought (Schwartz, 1992). In addition to guiding behavior, motivating behavior and defining desirable outcomes, values can also influence the goals and manner in which individuals pursue those goals, such that values can directly shape both the ends we pursue and the means by which we pursue them (Rokeach, 1973). In other words, values define the relative strength of conviction that a given mode of conduct or a given outcome is preferable to some other mode of conduct or outcome (Rokeach, 1973). In a sense, values identify the emotional bonds that connect people with the world in which they live (Fawcett, Brau, Rhoads, Whitlark & Fawcett, 2008).
Because they “guide what people do and how they make sense of each other’s actions,” values that are shared compel specific beliefs and behaviors (McDermott & O’Dell, 2001: 78). When value congruency exists, the need for extrinsic governance and external motivators to drive change is greatly diminished. Values instead can become a source of self-governance as people pursue that which they desire. Conversely, when a required change is inconsistent with one’s underlying values, those values can become the most deeply entrenched and invisible barrier to change that an individual can face. Values, therefore, can either constrain or compel the displayof specific behaviors and competencies, as well as the very question of whether it is even a desirable thing to pursue their acquisition.
Inculcating values is difficult because values tend to be individually and personally held. Inherently, core values emerge from individuals and their broader cultural contexts rather than from the organization. Changing a manager’s core values is thus very challenging. For this reason, many companies will therefore work to advertise their positive core values in an effort to attract people who share their common set of values. Companies will then further strive to reiterate and reinforce their core values in an effort to retain people with congruent beliefs and behaviors.
The very nature of values, however, makes them potent barriers to change. Consider these two vital realities:
• Values are quite stable and enduring, and communicate inherent judgments about what is right, good, or desirable (Bardi, Lee, Hofmann-Towfigh & Soutar, 2009; Rokeach, 1973). When people are asked to change their views about what is good and right, it can potentially be seen as asking them to abandon their principles. Stability, of course, can have a positive role in business life, but when the environment dictates rapid change, values-based stability actually becomes a source of rigidity threatening adaptation, agility, and even the organization’s very survival.
• Values are often unspoken—they are part of the implicit fabric of the organization. Members of an organization are expected to know what the organization’s values are. However, the danger is that which is unspoken can easily become invisible. Efforts to drive learning and change can be undermined when they run up against the invisible values barrier. Values can thus constrain the acquisition of new behaviors and skill sets (doing), emotions and attitudes (feeling), and cognitive frames (knowing) that are otherwise essential to support the development and deployment of new managerial competencies.
Articulation of values is foundational to overcoming values-driven barriers—otherwise the deepest motivations of individual behavior remain invisible. When new competencies are needed that run counter to core values, it is not enough to share a new strategy or to merely change a few behavioral measures. Some form of significant emotional event is typically required to create receptivity (Fawcett, Andraski, Fawcett & Magnan, 2009; Fawcett, Magnan & Ogden, 2007). Sometimes it may even be necessary to fire managers who will not evolve their incongruent core values.
This stark reality requires an honest assessment of the desire for change and new competencies. On the other hand, frequent and repeated efforts to change core values suggests there may be no real core—that is, the values are superficial rather than core. When new competencies are truly desirable, the case must be made that they are either consistent with core values or that they supersede and improve on previously held values. An extended period of deep reflection and introspection may hold promise for change in one’s deeply held values. Ultimately, a manager’s values play a strong role in determining competence-based aspirations, which raises the very question of whether it is even a desirable thing to pursue acquisition of new competencies or not.
The intractability of core values indicates that it is generally better to start with a change strategy that focuses on competency-development that targets cognitions, affect and behaviors. If engaged consistently and successfully over time, managers may begin to see ways in which their experiences may rightly lead them to question the values they previously held, thus concluding that a given mode of conduct or a given outcome is in fact not as preferable as they may have implicitly assumed in their unreflective prior state. In other words, managers must have a profound and compelling reason to exchange an old value for one that promotes new competency acquisition.
CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have focused on the way in which cognitions, affect, behaviors, and values can impact our acquisition of greater interpersonal and intercultural competencies. We have also emphasized the types of training, interventions, and reinforcement strategies likely to result in positive outcomes. Central to the understanding of these barriers are occasions when individuals have incongruous thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and values that confound their sense of being. For example, a lack of harmony among an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior is referred to as cognitive dissonance. Similarly, displaying emotions that are inconsistent with felt emotions is referred to as emotional dissonance.
Both cognitive dissonance and emotional dissonance can be uncomfortable and even harmful over time (Festinger, 1957; Hochschild, 1983). In addition, managers may find that intercultural situations prime (or make salient) values that are often relegated to inferior status in other contexts, which can be the source of “values dissonance.” Although this concept of values dissonance has not been introduced previously in the literature, its impact and thoughtful consideration are a natural extension of the barriers we have explored. In sum, as managers experience these various dissonant states, they will typically endeavor to retreat from the dissonance and learning will therefore be hindered. However, constructively engaging the dissonance can be a great catalyst for enhanced learning and development when it helps disabuse us of our pervasive biases and faulty perceptions.
We have also emphasized the way in which the four barriers are deeply interconnected and can act iteratively to impede needed personal change and development (Greenberg & Padesky, 1995; Mendenhall et al., 2013). To illustrate this point, we can examine the dimension of “Interpersonal Engagement”—one of 16 essential intercultural competencies defined and measured by the Global Competencies Inventory (Stevens, Bird, Mendenhall & Oddou, 2014).
Interpersonal engagement is defined as the degree to which a person is aware of and interested in people who come from other cultures, and has a “willingness to take the initiative to meet and engage others in interactions, including strangers, from other cultures” (Stevens et al., 2014: 123). Research shows this to be an important intercultural competency because reaching out and developing constructive relationships with people in a new culture (i.e., acquiring access to “cultural insiders”) is often one of the most effective ways to learn about the invisible aspects and hidden nuances of the new culture. Thus, if managers on a new expatriate assignment wished to increase
their level of interpersonal engagement, they could practice behavioral scripts aimed at developing open and friendly relationships with local staff in the new office, thereby facilitating more open conversations that would invite opportunities to richly explore and understand the invisible reality behind the customs, traditions, and practices of the managers’ new intercultural environment.
By way of contrast, managers who have embraced the value of high “Power Distance” would find that this value could actually work as a barrier against the acquisition of greater interpersonal engagement. Power distance is a value that describes the degree to which people are willing to accept (or conversely reject) large inequalities in status or class between members of different social groups.
As a result, if a new expatriate manager believed in the value of high status differences between management and local staff, this would predictably lead to the manager acting in ways that create impediments to the local staff’s attempts at interpersonal engagement with the new manager, thus limiting the manager’s access to potentially valuable and important local cultural insiders. We would also predict that the manager would engage in distancing behaviors from local staff, which would also be reinforced by both the affective barrier (because acts of interpersonal engagement would feel awkward and psychologically uncomfortable for the new manager) and the cognitive barrier (because the new manager’s mental model of correct behavior would be such that acts of fraternization with local staff would be nonsensical).
A richer understanding and simultaneous consideration of the four barriers to change and their interactions upon each other can help us in our attempts to guide managers and other trainees in their journey to develop greater competencies for carrying out their leadership roles and responsibilities. FIGURE 2 uses systems diagraming conventions to depict the dynamics companies encounter as they strive to develop the interpersonal and cross-cultural competencies of their management teams. When the strategic imperative is to become more globally competitive, then one obvious means to accomplish this is to invest in intercultural training and development, which in turn increases commitment to new skills and improved competencies (see left-hand loop). If the reinforcing loop remains uninterrupted, momentum builds and an ever more competent management team emerges to help the firm achieve its desired global competitive positioning.
FIGURE 2 The Dynamics of Intercultural Competency Development
Unfortunately, as participants in the training begin to understand that the new global strategy requires uniquely different skills—some of which create role ambiguity and others of which place managers in emotionally draining and uncomfortable learning environments—the four types of barriers to personal change are activated. The right-hand balancing loop shows that resistance to skill acquisition manifests and commitment to new competencies diminishes.
The typical and natural response is for leadership to push harder on the left-hand reinforcing loop and invest in more training. Yet, the harder leadership pushes the reinforcing loop, the stronger the four bar- riers in the balancing loop push back (Senge, 2006). To enable progress toward skill development and truly develop a more capable management team, lead- ership needs to direct efforts to mitigate the sources of the barriers that compose and enliven the balanc- ing loop. A deep and nuanced understanding of each barrier type and how they interact with each other to limit learning and competence development suggests the two following complementary approaches.
• Opportunistic Mitigation. As the four barrier types affect and amplify each other, any effectual reduc- tion of one of the barriers can mitigate the limiting power of the others. In other words, identifying and mitigating the so-called easy barriers can generate accelerated progress toward skill development.
That is, picking low-hanging fruit does more than initiate momentum—it helps remove the fuel that keeps the fires of resistance burning. Thus, the ac- tual return on investment of these initiatives can be far greater than estimated if only the direct effects are measured.
• Holistic Mitigation. However, because the four barriers reinforce one another, managers must take a longer-term, more holistic approach to barrier mitigation. As one manager in a change initiative noted, “You have to understand all of the things that can kill you.” That is, mitigating individual barriers is necessary, but it is never sufficient. The reinforcing interactions mean that the temporary improvements gained through opportunistic miti- gation will risk quickly becoming extinct if more holistic efforts are not pursued. To return to the fire metaphor, removing the fuel of easy barriers leaves a “hotspot” that can and will reignite if the sur- rounding area is not also cleared of fuel (i.e., other sources of barriers). Thus, effective inculcation of intercultural competencies requires simultaneous consideration and mitigation of the four barriers root causes.
Another way to constructively frame growth and development opportunities is to consider the extent to which managers are able to thrive within a given intercultural context. Thriving is present when in- dividuals have high levels of learning and vitality (Spreitzer, Sutcliffe, Dutton, Sonenshein & Grant, 2005).
Learning and vitality are both essential because high levels of both are required for thriving to emerge and persist. Individuals need to acquire and apply knowledge while also feeling energized and en- livened. Thriving is of particular relevance because it “highlights the importance of simultaneously con- sidering the affective and cognitive foundations of human growth” (Porath, Spreitzer, Gibson & Garnett, 2012: 251).
Although learning can be heightened through instruction, modeling, experiential activities, induced dissonance, and so on, vitality may be di- minished by these same practices (i.e., they are likely to produce at least some dissonance). Scholars and managers should further consider examining ways to validate the sense of self through self-verification and self-enhancement tactics (Swann, Johnson & Bosson, 2009), while simultaneously helping managers put off unproductive thought processes, emotional states, behaviors, and values.
The existing literature on barriers to personal change has recognized that different types of bar- riers exist. However, the literature has not fully disaggregated the barriers to examine their nature as first-order impediments and second-order re-enforc- ers of one another. Moreover, the co-mingling role of core values has been neglected. Given the interactive nature of the barrier types, these two deficiencies in our understanding have significantly limited our ef- forts to develop managers capable of thriving in a global setting that demands high-level interpersonal and intercultural competencies.
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