How to overcome communication barriers to exploit China's entrepreneurial dynamism

Let us now look at the second 'prize' for those who can break the cultural barrier. However, this requires an effort of humility, since it is something we all believe we already have in abundance: intelligence.

Every year China produces a number of graduates comparable to the entire population of Naples, almost one million. Compared to the rest of Asia, I have seen in China much more participation of young people in meetings: intelligence, drive and expertise count.

Speaking English, however, is no longer a requirement for a career in China. Perhaps it was, but it is no longer. More and more often I was confronted with very experienced young people who quietly declared that they did not speak English. In one of my recent partnerships in China, the distributor categorically refused to include in the contract the guarantee of a local brand manager who spoke English. It was too limiting a commitment to find talent. I accepted this limitation: it was based on reality and I knew I could overcome it, thanks to prior experience.

The discovery of this 'secret' started when I was then head of Asia Pacific for a cosmetics brand which, although very successful worldwide, was struggling to get off the ground in China. We were in yet another meeting looking for solutions with the Chinese team when I realised that only part of my speeches were being translated to the sales manager. It had seemed to me for some time that she lacked energy in the face of the enormous challenge we were facing. Instead, she mostly lacked the bandwidth to participate.

I realised at that moment that it was too difficult for the Chinese colleagues to translate everything and stay in the flow of the meeting at the same time. I had an intuition and asked them to reverse the dynamic of the meeting, i.e. to continue in Chinese and translate for me, aware of the risk of losing pieces.

More things happened that I did not expect: the number of interactions and the tone became instantly higher. The sales manager lit up, got up and started writing on the blackboard (almost) with the anger of someone who is finally free to speak his mind. The team continued to translate the topics discussed to me in bits and pieces, but from the body language alone I could understand much more than before.

From this day we never went back, and my partner and now Chinese friend Mark remains, to this day, convinced that the seed of our turnaround was this very meeting.

I reused this practice whenever I had the opportunity, in a more systematic way, as follows:

- have presentations and materials translated into Chinese;

- establish that the meetings will be in Chinese, requesting that Western participants be assigned an interpreter;

- let the meeting go until the goal is achieved.

Such an approach undoubtedly requires more effort, especially of humility, but the return will be much higher than a western-centric approach.

And so, by taking ourselves out of the centre of the relationship, yes we will leverage Chinese dynamism!

*Beauty & luxury business executive, board member Babe Invest