15 May

The full logic (and context) of yes and no

Hero banner: dark blue gradient with concentric rings and a gold 'yes' at center, title 'The full logic of yes and no' on the right.
A yes from Beijing and a yes from Amsterdam can come out of the same mouth in the same meeting and mean radically different things. A reference-grade walk through the four cross-cultural frameworks — Hofstede, GLOBE, WVS, Schwartz — and the two psychological theories underneath that explain why.
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10 May

What is my colleague’s salary? I have the right to know!

Infographic titled 'Same work' showing salary bars for three senior managers: €87,500, €105,000 and €128,000 with figures and icons beneath.
The EU Pay Transparency Directive shifts the burden of proof onto the employer. A pay difference will now require an objective, documented justification, or a correction. "She negotiated harder when she joined" is not a defence. "He's been here longer" might be — if your tenure logic is documented. The leaders who navigate this well will be the ones who do the work before the questions arrive. Conversation by conversation, fairness becomes a leadership problem.
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23 Apr

Leading in the Waiting Room: How to Hold Your Team Together When the Organization Hasn’t Decided Yet on Organizational Changes

Abstract illustration of golden human figures forming a crowd under a spotlight inside a stylized arena.
When four of your twelve team members may be made redundant — but nothing is official yet — leadership becomes something different. It becomes the art of holding people together in uncertainty. This post offers six practical principles for leading through the wait: with honesty, focus, differentiation, and the kind of steadiness that people will remember long after the decision is made.
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19 Apr

How One Person Can Change the World

How does one person actually change the world? Not through grand gestures, but through shifts in thinking and behavior that ripple outward. This article explores the science behind societal change, from evolutionary psychology to systems thinking. It shows how mental models shape behavior, how small choices scale into cultural shifts, and why institutions tend to follow rather than lead. For leaders, the implication is clear: real change starts with how individuals see their role in the system. When enough people act differently, culture moves—and with it, performance, policy, and outcomes.
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17 Apr

Getting Influential: Getting More Things Done

icons of people connected in various way and circles representing various levels; by salomons.coach
Most managers have two default tools when they need something to happen: tell people what to do, or escalate to someone who can. Direct communication and the chain of command. Both have their place. But if they are your primary or only tools for getting things done across an organization, you have a problem. Not because they don't work, but because they work less and less the higher you climb and the more complex your environment becomes. The managers and project managers who consistently get things done are not the ones with the biggest title or the loudest voice. They are the ones who understand that in most modern organisations, influence is the currency that actually moves things. Directives produce...
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12 Apr

Your Cross-Culture Leadership Compass

Most cross-cultural leadership problems don’t look like cultural problems, until they cost you performance. Misaligned expectations around trust, feedback, hierarchy, and decision-making silently undermine teams, delay results, and create friction that leaders misread as personality or competence issues. The Cross-Cultural Leadership Compass translates decades of academic research, including Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions, GLOBE Study, World Values Survey, and Schwartz Theory of Basic Values, into precise, actionable leadership insights. Instead of generic awareness, it gives you a data-backed map of where cultural gaps actually impact your role, your team, and your results.
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12 Apr

The Cross-Cultural Leadership Compass: A Practical Guide to Its 11 Leadership Dimensions

Every leader who crosses a cultural boundary carries two operating systems at once. One was installed in childhood. The other was acquired through years of professional adaptation. The real skill — the one that separates effective cross-cultural leaders from merely well-travelled ones — is knowing which system is running at any given moment, and whether it is serving the situation. The Cross-Cultural Leadership Compass is built around exactly this challenge. It integrates four validated academic frameworks — Hofstede, GLOBE, the World Values Survey, and Schwartz — and translates the data into eleven specific leadership dimensions where cultural gaps play out in practice. This post unpacks each one.
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