Many managers and executives continue to approach international management using the same benchmarks as those that underpin their legitimacy in a national context. This automatic transposition is based on beliefs that are widely shared but rarely questioned, often inherited from the days when globalisation was simply a matter of exporting processes locally. These preconceived ideas blur our understanding of what is really at stake when we manages teams in an international environment.
In this article, I propose to examine six 'myths' that are commonly accepted, but which do not work in practice. And I outline the contours of a posture more suited to the realities of international management and leadership. The aim is not to reinvent the fundamentals, but to situate them in a more demanding framework: that of the plurality of reference frameworks and the need for a detailed contextual reading.
Contents
- Myth no. 1: good leaders in their own country are bound to be good leaders internationally
- Myth 2: International leadership means being neutral
- Myth 3: English is enough to solve everything
- Myth 4: Global processes guarantee performance
- Myth 5: The diversity of multicultural teams is a natural source of performance
- Myth 6: Managing international teams is better remote management
Myth 1: "Good leaders in their own country are bound to be good leaders internationally".
Wrong! Leadership practices are highly contextual. An effective leader in Germany, for example, will value precision, planning and expertise. Transplanted to Brazil, he could be perceived as rigid, distant or insensitive to the group's relational dynamics. National charisma melts like snow in the face of intercultural complexity; without adaptation, the international manager becomes a leadership tourist. According to a McKinsey study in 2023, 70 % of existing international projects fail partly because of poorly managed cultural differences.
This myth is based on a fundamental confusion between management skill and contextual relevance. This ignores the reality of international leadership, which requires much more than a simple transposition of skills or managerial styles.
Studies of intercultural dimensions, notably those by Geert Hofstede and Erin Meyer, have shown that leadership styles are profoundly influenced by cultural dimensions such as hierarchical distance, the management of uncertainty and the degree of individualism. What we think of as 'good management' is in fact a cultural construct.
In practice, leadership in an international environment relies on specific skills: adaptability, intercultural intelligence, active listening, humility and curiosity about others. Whereas a national leader can rely on implicit codes, shared references and explicit interpersonal communication, the international manager must constantly decode, adjust and reinvent his or her stance. Past successes are no guarantee: a directive style that is valued in France or Germany may be perceived as brutal or disrespectful in Japan or India.
Success on the international stage therefore requires the acquisition of a "global mindset", i.e. an openness to the diversity of viewpoints, practices and expectations. It's about gaining the trust of your teams and finding a cross-cultural consensus. This requires humility, questioning and the ability to learn continuously, including from mistakes. To develop your international management and leadership skills, you cannot replicate your own personal recipes. You need to unlearn, observe, adjust and develop contextual agility, i.e. the ability to adapt your behaviour while maintaining strategic consistency. This means investing in understanding your company's local frame of reference, practising active listening and co-constructing the rules of the game with your local teams.
In short, this means abandoning the logic of model transfer and adopting a logic of managerial "translation". It's not your management style that counts, but how it's received.
Myth 2: International leadership means being neutral
Many managers and international leaders try to be "neutral", thinking that this is an inclusive, "universal" stance. Choosing a leadership style means taking a stand. And to avoid doing so is to run the risk of becoming invisible or ineffective, because of a stance that is perceived as blurred, inconsistent or even opportunistic. In a complex multicultural environment, this neutral stance often results in decision-making ambiguity, a dilution of leadership and a loss of confidence because neutral leaders are perceived as less committed and less charismatic.
The "in-between" trap - that "soft" leadership style that is supposed to suit everyone but satisfies no one - is a common one. Trying to please everyone ends up convincing no-one: true international leaders dare to be colourful, not transparent. Because leadership is never neutral, it carries implicit values: those of your culture, your training, your company. With or without international mobilityThe problem is not that these managers do too much, but that they don't take their management style seriously enough. Pretending to be neutral means ignoring these anchors, instead of making them explicit and putting them into dialogue with those of others.
Goleman's 6 leadership styles
Daniel Goleman identifies six leadership styles based on emotional intelligence:
- Coercive: "Do as I say".
- Authoritarian / visionary: "Follow me".
- Affiliates: "Teams first
- Democratic: "What do you think?
- Tip: "Try this
- Exemplarity: "Do as I do
In an international context, these styles are neither equivalent nor interchangeable. The affiliative style, for example, works well in collectivist cultures (e.g. Indonesia, Mexico), but may appear too informal in more hierarchical environments (e.g. Russia, Saudi Arabia). Conversely, the authoritarian/visionary style may be welcomed in certain countries where there is a strong expectation of clear direction.
You therefore need to master the strategic alternation between these styles, depending on the cultural context (degree of hierarchical distance, individualism, etc.), the hierarchical level of the team, the organisational maturity, the type of good collaboration and the common objectives of the moment.
Influence, authority, consensus: a geographical balance
Being an international manager means learning to switch between several forms of power. Firstly, influence, which is essential in collaborative cultures such as the Nordic countries. Then there is statutory authority, which is necessary in hierarchical contexts (West Africa, Middle East). And finally consensus, sometimes vital in Asia, where collective harmony takes precedence over perceived efficiency.
You will probably have to alternate between these postures several times a week, depending on the region, the person and the situation. This is not a great leap, but an art: contextualised leadership.
Powerful international leadership is therefore always assumed. It is clear, adaptable, but never lukewarm. So you mustn't erase your identity, but put it at the service of an open dialogue with local cultures. The better to orchestrate tensions: between global and local, between standardisation and adaptation, between authority and listening. Far from being neutral, it is useful to cultivate a mediator's stance, aware of differences, without being a captive of one of them.
Myth 3: "English solves everything".
In many international companies, English is the language of choice. working language. People often believe that mastering international business English guarantees clear and effective communication. It's a comfortable illusion, but a risky one. Experience shows that most misunderstandings in international teams occur despite communication in English, due to differences in style, tone, cultural unspoken words and implicit interpretations.
The problem is not English as a language.
It's the false transparency it creates. We think we understand each other because we use the same words, but we forget that each culture means something different. For example, a Japanese "Yes" may mean "I have heard", not "I agree". An Indian "Let's discuss later" can mean a diplomatic "No". Erin Meyer, in The Culture Map, illustrates this phenomenon of "Low-Context vs. High-Context communication": in some cultures (e.g. USA, Germany), everything is said explicitly. In others (e.g. China, South Africa), the implicit takes precedence. In these contexts, the unspoken is more important than the spoken. English does not neutralise these differences, it masks them.
Speaking English does not mean understanding each other. English is one of many communication tools, not a magic wand; it does not convey intentions or unspoken words, particularly in difficult situations. The right reflex: learn to decode the invisible, to read silences, gestures and hesitations. This requires active listening, tolerance of ambiguity and sometimes... the humility to use cultural or linguistic mediators.
If you want to manage well in an international context, you need to do more than just "speak English well". You need to develop a rarer skill: the cultural intelligence of communication, which goes far beyond words.
Myth 4: "Global processes guarantee performance".
In the age of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), OKRs (Objectives Key Results) and unified dashboards, the reflex is simple: impose global processes to 'align' everyone. It's rational, but it's a strategic mistake in the multicultural management. These tools presuppose the same relationship with time, hierarchy and individual responsibility. In practice, however, processes are always interpreted locally. The same reporting protocol can be seen as a transparency tool in Sweden... and as an intrusive control tool in India.
It's not the processes that are important, but their ability to take root locally.
How many international projects fail partially or totally because standard tools are poorly transposed to local realities? Procedures cannot be imposed; they have to be adapted, negotiated and embodied. The effectiveness of processes depends on the cultural context. For example, collective decision-making, which is valued in Nordic countries, may be perceived as a lack of leadership in more hierarchical cultures.
We therefore need to move away from a "one-size-fits-all" approach to hybrid governance, where global standards serve as a compass, but are modulated according to the field, the type of project management and the associated financial risks. It is useful to co-produce steering tools with local teams, not impose them on them. This means accepting that a certain amount of "do-it-yourself" is not only inevitable, but desirable. Because your role is not to maintain a rigid coherence, but to promote a living coherence, capable of changing according to the global environment and the context.
Myth 5: "The diversity of multicultural teams is a natural source of performance".
It is often said that diversity is an asset. This is true - but only if it is actively orchestrated. Without attentive international management, diversity can also generate misunderstandings, conflicts and inertia.
The more diverse a team is, the more it is confronted with discrepancies in terms of time, speaking up, expressing disagreement, perception of quality, etc. If these discrepancies are not made visible and regulated, diversity slows down decision-making and weakens trust. If these differences are not made visible and regulated, diversity slows down decision-making and undermines trust.
Diverse teams have greater performance potential, provided they are well managed. Otherwise, this potential becomes an obstacle, particularly when teams in multicultural environments are not supported, due to a lack of suitable integration mechanisms.
So it's important not to see diversity as a self-evident virtue, but as a raw material to be actively worked on. This means building common, explicit working frameworks that are regularly reviewed. It also means treating diversity as a strategic issue, not just one of human resources or intercultural communication.
Become a productive friction facilitator
As you will have realised, intercultural management is not about "tolerance" or "respect for differences" in the soft sense of those terms. It's about orchestrating productive frictions, in other words, daring to confront worldviews, methods and expectations in order to bring out new solutions, such as contradictory debates, pairings of opposing cultures on strategic projects, or cross-mentoring.
Teams that know how to transform cultural conflicts into learning opportunities perform better. To achieve this, it is useful to encourage the analysis of conflicts not as dysfunctions requiring crisis management, but as revelations of creative tensions.
Myth 6: "Managing international teams is better remote management".
The pandemic has blurred the boundaries between teleworking, hybrid management and international leadership. Many people still confuse "managing remotely" with "managing internationally". But while geographical distance is a challenge, it is not the only one, or even the main one. To reduce international management to distance is to forget that the real frontier is culture. Because it's not physical distance that makes things more complex, but mental and cultural distance.
International management is above all about managing cultural, emotional and symbolic distance. It's not enough to master new technologies and collaborative tools or to juggle time zones. You need to know how to create links, build trust and give meaning to collective action, beyond visible borders. It means integrating divergent managerial expectations, different social calendars and incompatible conceptions of power and the collective.
The McKinsey study of 2022 shows that multicultural teams spread over several time zones require 40 % more coordination time than homogeneous teams. Not because of physical distance, but because of the fracture in representations. In a global context, it is important to go beyond the logic of connectivity to enter into a logic of constructing a common mental space. This implies shared routines, chosen synchronous moments, and a collective narrative that links members beyond the tools. We could say that international management is the art of human synchronisation!
In conclusion
International management is not just a question of geographical distance, tools or best practice. It involves deeper mechanisms: perceptions of authority, implicit representations of collaboration, divergent temporalities, and culturally rooted models of trust. The six myths discussed in this article illustrate the blind spots that weaken the position of many international managers. It is not technical errors that put project performance at risk, but biases in perspective, often unconscious.
Managing teams on an international scale requires two things: the ability to question one's own managerial reflexes, and the ability to build a new working environment adapted to heterogeneous cultural logics. It's a practice of nuance, listening and regulation. It is neither standardisation nor improvisation, but a strategic skill in its own right.
