Why Thought Leaders Must Learn to Lead Across Cultures | Jane Hyun

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The Hidden Barrier to Engagement and How to Break Through

This episode unpacks how cultural fluency drives stronger teams and better business results. It focuses on practical ways leaders can recognize and leverage human differences to lead more effectively across cultures.

What if cultural fluency was the leadership skill no one taught you—but every global leader needs?

Today I had the pleasure of sitting down with Jane Hyun—global leadership strategist, executive coach, and author of three books including “Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling“—to explore how high-performing teams thrive on difference, not in spite of it. Jane shares how her early years moving to NYC from Korea shaped a lifelong commitment to helping people lead across cultural lines with authenticity and impact.

We unpack her concept of “cultural fluency”—the skill of working effectively with people who don’t look, think, or act like you. It’s not about checking boxes. It’s about making the invisible visible and using difference as a leadership advantage. Jane explains how organizations often overlook deep cultural factors that influence trust, motivation, and team dynamics—and what happens when they start to notice.

From keynotes to executive coaching, Jane builds frameworks that help leaders and organizations lead better, sell better, and grow smarter—especially in a world that’s only becoming more complex and connected. We also talk about the emotional and intellectual work of carrying an idea like “breaking the bamboo ceiling” for over 20 years—and how thought leadership evolves when it’s lived, not just taught.

If you lead teams, create culture, or want to sharpen your edge as a communicator—this conversation is your wake-up call. Cultural fluency isn’t optional anymore. It’s mission-critical.

Three Key Takeaways

Cultural Fluency Is a Learnable Leadership Skill Cultural fluency—Jane’s signature concept—isn’t innate, and it’s not just about surface-level etiquette. It’s the ability to recognize, respect, and leverage human differences to drive better business outcomes. Leaders who develop this skill are more effective at collaboration, innovation, and navigating global complexity.

Difference Drives Performance—When It’s Understood Multicultural teams only outperform homogeneous ones when leaders understand how to harness cultural differences. Suppressing difference creates friction and missed opportunity. Embracing it—with intention—unlocks trust, engagement, and results.

Thought Leadership Is a Lifelong Journey, Not a Title. Jane didn’t set out to become a thought leader—she followed her curiosity and passion to solve a problem she lived through. Over time that experience evolved into frameworks, language (ie cultural fluency, bamboo ceiling) and a platform that empowers others. The best thought leadership emerges from lived experience, not just expertise.

If today’s episode sparked your thinking on cultural fluency and leading across differences, you’ll want to dive into our conversation on “The Intersection of Leadership, Business, Culture, and Spirituality” with Eboni Adams Monk. It explores similar themes—like authentic leadership, navigating complexity, and creating inclusive spaces—but adds a powerful lens of purpose and spiritual alignment. Both episodes offer insight into what it really takes to lead with intention in today’s diverse, fast-changing world. Don’t miss it.

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Transcript

Bill Sherman Today, I want to explore how the work of thought leadership can align with both your purpose and your business goals. Meet Jane Hyun, global leadership strategist and author, who has focused a career on helping people lead across differences. As you’ll soon hear, Jane speaks, consults, and even does executive coaching and one-on-one work. All of it focused on helping individuals and organizations build high-performing. Heterogeneous teams. Jane even coined terms such as cultural fluency to help businesses see the connection between the work and business outcomes. In today’s conversation, we explore how her work aligns with her purpose, how she crafts her messaging, and what keeps her going. We also explore the challenge of making the invisible visible. I’m Bill Sherman, and you’re listening to Leveraging Thought Leadership. Let’s begin. Welcome to the show, Jane.

Jane Hyun Thank you, Bill. Thank you for having me. It’s wonderful to be here with you.

Bill Sherman So you and I have been working together for quite a while, and I’ve come to know your story. And you started with a corporate career before thought leadership. How did this evolve? How did you get into thought leadership?

Jane Hyun Yeah. Well, I think I can speak a little bit to that. I think it’s, for me, it’s been very much a organic journey, even before I left corporate America. So it has always been about following my heart and getting to know myself better with each passing year and with each new assignment. It came down to the belief that I can’t do a job 100% well unless my heart and values are in it. And that is really who I am. And then once I do decide what that is, I’m gonna devote myself to an assignment or a project or to a new vision. So, you know, after spending some time working in the business and also as an HR leader, I really saw that my goal was not to be like the head of something that was really not my motivator. I really wanted to help other organizations and people become better, right? Become more effective at being good at their leadership or being better at motivating and engaging their teams or effective at advancing their careers in some way. So I think I just took that desire and step at each step of the way. And again, I didn’t think about this as I’m gonna become a thought leader. I just really took every different thing and followed it. And then it got me here.

Bill Sherman So we’ll get into your body of work in a moment, but you said you started down that journey and following your passion. When did you realize you were practicing thought leadership? Was there an aha moment or did it take a while? What was that experience?

Jane Hyun Yeah, I don’t think I actually had like a moment where I crossed the border, right? Where I thought like, this is what I’m right. I never even get your passport stamp. I don’t think so. I don’t think so and you know, as I was doing it, I probably wasn’t even aware. But as I kind of looking to do the next thing or learn a new skill, learning how to manage different things, I think throughout my time, whether it was in corporate America or working with clients, I realized I was always learning something new, right. And I was always. All those things that I was learning how to do, that I doing it a little differently than others. And so as I started doing coaching, as I starting doing some of my work, I realized I need to talk about what that difference is and help others to understand that there are cultural elements, cultural differences that come into how we build relationships, how we do well, how we advance our careers. So again, I don’t even know if I… Even like the term thought leader, but it’s something that I guess I’ve kind of fallen into. I think what really helped was when I started doing executive coaching that led to working deeper into issues that affect the Asian American community that I was working with, which happened to be very closely linked to my own experience in corporate America. So then my work as an interculturalist again deepened in how I was doing my work, as well. And I was seeing that companies were really missing some important things and lack of understanding, lack of deep understanding about people who look like me.

Bill Sherman So tell us a little bit of your story. I know it, but how you came to an exploration difference because it really started in childhood, didn’t it?

Jane Hyun Yeah, it did. It did. Yeah, I spent the first eight years of my life in South Korea. I went there. I was in school for a few years there. So I grew up in a very different system, right? And where you were punished, right, for asking too many questions, because that was seen as disrespectful. And so when I moved to New York City, right. Because that’s where I landed and started living here and attending school here. It was a, you know, I just was awakened to a whole nother. Cultural way of being a good student, right, of what that meant, you know, and even though I had moved physically, right? Culturally, I hadn’t really shifted. I didn’t have the skills to know how to navigate in this new system. And so I spent my lifetime learning how to do that, right? How to be myself, but also engage with this new culture that I had to understand while being someone from the outside as well. So that’s the skill that I really learned. You know, I spent my whole working life figuring that out by struggling through. And, you know, as an interculturalist, as someone who helps people with leaders and helping organizations see it, I’m trying to help them develop those skills. Cause it’s not skills that you really learn in school. It’s not something that you are given a class 101 in. And I’d like to teach that, right? I would love to help people understand how to do that, especially if they That skill to learn how to do it.

Bill Sherman So there’s something that you touched on your desire or curiosity to understand a cultural that was different from the one that you were born into, but that led you on a journey as an interculturalist. You could have picked up a few books and maybe read or improv’d along the way. You’ve really tried to… Not only understand difference, but also advance the conversation in those who are doing the academic research, those who you’ve been on the faculty of some of the top assessments as well. So my question is, how did that curiosity go from, hey, I need to figure this culture out.. I want to understand how difference works because that’s a much bigger question.

Jane Hyun Yeah. I mean, I think the first, I always think like the first part of your career is, you know, figuring out who you are, right? And what you stand for and you’re just having experiences, right. I think first part, part of our life is going through your first couple of jobs, learning what you like, learning, what you’re not good at, learning how to do that. And then learning to survive within that system. And then, you know. Very much so as I started to do coaching and advisory and really digging deeper into these cultural issues for companies, I started to see that I needed to find frameworks that worked with my approach to working with these organizations that went beyond just, well, do you just kind of bow or hug or kiss, right? Like when you meet someone from a different culture and it involved a very sense of deeper self-awareness. A deeper cultural self-awareness, right? That’s a different level than just having an awareness about who you are in personality, right. And that led me to discover these different ways of assessing and understanding how people think and do. And that’s really how I got there. And really part of the work that we do is really helping people to see what they don’t see and pay attention to them. Right? They may experience it and it just sort of, they gloss over it and it’s like, oh yeah, whatever. But I think the work of cultural fluency, if they take it seriously is stopping and saying, you know, that’s going to make a difference in how engaged my team members feel, right? Or that is going to makes a difference and how we sell a certain product and the approach that we take with those clients and customers.

Bill Sherman So I often describe thought leadership as the work of making the invisible visible to specific people.

Jane Hyun Oh, that’s a great way to put it.

Bill Sherman And that parallels very much like what you were saying in terms of seeing difference and then knowing how to respond, right? And so this is one of the reasons I’m excited for this conversation because there’s this dual layer. Not only do you have to expose people to an idea to introduce them to the idea, but then encourage them to put the idea into practice. In a way in a space where they may not feel initially comfortable.

Jane Hyun Yeah, that’s right. That’s right, yeah. And even people who look like me, right? People who are from non-dominant cultures who have had to learn how to succeed in a new culture. You know, we haven’t had to think about this necessarily. And we haven’t given the skills and I’m helping them have the skills, right, to be more self-reflective as well. So it’s absolutely true what you just said. It’s something that most people don’t see, but once you bring it to the surface, they can start to engage around it. They can start notice more. They can start to. Ask more questions so that they can get to a different end.

Bill Sherman So we’ll talk more throughout this conversation about cultural fluency, which is one of the terms that you coined and use, but I want to stay on this. How do you help people see for the first time to see with new eyes? How do help people have that first moment of realization? And especially when they haven’t, like you said, whether in the dominant culture or the non-dominant culture of wherever someone lives, how do you get them to see difference in a new way?

Jane Hyun Well, as a true interculturalist, it depends on the people I’m talking to. It’s not a one-size-fits-all, because if I said that this is the magic answer, then that wouldn’t work for 10 other people, right? So I try to connect them to things that they might care about, that they’re thinking of changing, they’re think of moving, they’re thing of growing. And, you know, one thing, for example, the multicultural teams do better than homogenous teams only when they can understand those differences and leverage those on their teams, not suppress them, right? That gets people’s attention. Usually when, um, they’re trying to figure out how to grow globally, right. And how to be more collaborative across those differences, or it could be that it’s about growing their sales for the next quarter, you know, is it retaining the women on their team? Is it understanding how to collaborate? You know, with a different office or a joint venture that they’ve created. Each one of those teams has a cultural component, right? Every one of them has, you know effective connection and communications at the core of it, core of, right. I just came back from Korea about a month ago and, and I was just thinking, you’re the people here are not walking around, you know, the subways and getting to work thinking that everything is cultural, right, they, they have a kind of a default way that they’re operating as acceptable. You know, they don’t think about power distance, right? They don’t about all these things. They just think this is the way it is. And so just like that, you know, in the U.S. We don’t thing about the fact that, you know everything we do is cultural as well. So think about the that we jaywalk when we cross the street and you know it’s just accepted, right, you as well, so yeah. So that’s one of the things that I’ve, I’m trying to help people to understand. Because it’s hard to do it yourself, that kind of understanding. You can only go so far. You can have self-awareness, but you need someone to kind of guide you through that, someone to kinda shepherd you through those awakenings and to know how to tap into some of those insights.

Bill Sherman So in some ways, it’s almost holding a mirror up for the self-reflection, but also showing what’s to your left, what’s your right, and asking people to look with new eyes.

Jane Hyun Absolutely. And, you know, if you think there’s a difference to a 10-2, there probably is. There longfully is. And you shouldn’t gloss over it or ignore it.

Bill Sherman So you’ve been at this work for 20 years now, more or less. What keeps you going, Jane? What are the moments that in this journey as an interculturalist, as a practitioner of thought leadership who has three books and knowing that when you’ve done the first one, you have an idea of what you’re getting into for book two and book three.

Jane Hyun What keeps you going? Yeah, that’s a question I ask myself every day, if you can believe that, because I think every day we have to re, we commit to what we do every day. Even if I have a six month plan or a three year plan, I think everyday has to be something you bring yourself to. Like you gotta be present in where you are. Because our mindset changes, our health changes, the things in our lives change. So you asked about what keeps me going. I really believe I’ve begun to dig into the surface just now. And just like we’ve came out of the pandemic and we’re entering into all these different phases of the workplace, I really feel that I have a lot of work to do with heads of organizations, whether they’re working in Fortune 500 companies, whether they are running schools, hospitals, social enterprises, and startups around the world that really want to transform organizations by taking this work seriously. So I think that keeps me going. I have something that I want to contribute to the society that is very unique and that I’ve been, that my life has brought me this far and that it has meaning in the work I do and that am uniquely positioned to do, right? So, you know, I’d love to have our school systems, every single new manager of a global company. You know, complete some understanding of how to lead better with cultural fluency and in a way that makes a meaningful difference in the organization. So that is a desire for these organizations to be transformative, right? And so I don’t think that’s something that even if I did something else completely, like I left being a consultant and working with this, that would go away. That I would wanna do that in some other fashion to drive that forward. So I feel like it’s a life mission for me. It’s more than just a job, it’s more than just something that I wake up and say, okay, I gotta put on my work suit and do this, you know? It’s, it more than that. It’s my life.

Bill Sherman Right, right. So you’ve talked about cultural fluency a couple of times, and you just mentioned it. Let’s give the listeners just a quick definition of what that is, and then I want to talk a little bit about how do you create it. So first off, let’s define cultural fluence.

Jane Hyun Yeah. So cultural fluency very simply is working very effectively with people who are different from you across a variety of human differences that they bring to the table. Yeah. So it’s not any one thing. It could be culture. It can be ethnicity, could be gender, could be age. It could give variety of different experiences that make us different. So everybody has something different, right? That they can bring up from some differences matter more than others. And some differences are more apparent than But I’m helping people to understand and learn how to engage around those differences.

Bill Sherman You’ve said this before, it takes intentional effort to actually improve in navigating difference. But it is a skill. It’s not something that you’re either born with or not born with, right?

Jane Hyun It is definitely a development tool. Uh, so, you know, most of us are born into societies or communities and we can’t choose that. And, and, but throughout our lives, whether it’s school or because we move or because of our careers, you, we’re thrust into these environments that are different from the way that we’re socialized, you from an early age. And so, um, so it becomes a necessity later on. And I guess sometimes we get people who are like, well, we’ve, you So we’re in a very… You know, homogenous kind of a setting. We don’t see a lot of difference here in that kind of thing. But I bet if I talk to them more and I try to understand their experience more, they might start to see that maybe their experiences actually are a little bit more expansive than that. But in essence, it’s something that we’re not taught and we need to work on it in order to know how to engage around that.

Bill Sherman And you’ve talked about getting people talking, whether that’s through a keynote or through a fireside chat or a workshop or even executive coaching, like you said, which was one of the things where you realized, hey, I’m influencing how leaders think and act and that influences the organization. So talk about… Those modalities and, you know, some of the impact that you’ve seen. So working with people at scale in a keynote or a fireside chat is obviously different than someone who picks up a copy of a book and that. But I know you’ve also done book launches, for example, on your books.

Jane Hyun Yeah, I think there are different ways that people have been exposed to the concepts and the fireside chats and the keynotes, the larger events that I’ve been invited to speak at, that that actually reaches lots of people, right? Hundreds and thousands of people that are present and or tune in if it’s a virtual and a hybrid thing. So I think that’s one way of doing it. But I’ve also worked with organizations where We’ve done leadership off sites, that we’ve done retreats. We’ve, I’ve spoken at internal sales conferences. There are different places where they want someone to infuse a very particular audience with that. Or maybe even smaller team. Like here’s my leadership team of 25 people that’s really looking to drive change across the global enterprise. And we want you to come in and we want to you to diagnose how we’re doing. And then we want them to equip them one-on-one, but also Um, as we work together, uh, more effectively, because they’re grappling with it, right? They really are. And they need some of these intercultural skills and tools to know how to do it better. And then of course, one-on-one, right. The one-in-one that that’s where I wanted to go. That’s something that my team and I also lean into because yes, you could talk about it conceptually, right, and you can see how the group is doing. You can certainly learn the concepts and tools, but you really have to change and demonstrate this on an individual level.

Bill Sherman And make it real and relevant to the person and their experience, right? Right, that’s right, that right. And create a safe space for them to ask questions. That’s right. To say, hey, what do I do here? Or… And how do you navigate the tension between that work is so high touch and personal?

Jane Hyun Yes, it is.

Bill Sherman And at the same time, you know, you talk about your life’s work and there’s a planet of eight billion people, right? So how do you balance the scale versus the high touch?

Jane Hyun You make it so difficult, but like, you know, you know, we do what we can and I’m thinking about different strategies and thoughts for how do we reach more people as well. So I don’t have solutions yet that I’m going to share with you, but I do think there are different ways that we can reach more people as. Well, right. That’s beyond the books and the workshops and the fireside chats and the keynotes. So I think there are different opportunities to do that. To see everyone obviously, but there are different ways to reach different people within organizations.

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Bill Sherman So what does it feel like to carry an idea for 20 years and be an advocate for it? Gut answer. What’s the first thing that comes to mind?

Jane Hyun Carrying an idea for 20 years. Again, I didn’t think about it that way, right? Like, I think these questions are, you know, stimulating a different way of thinking about my work. I feel like it’s evolved. You know, even when I wrote Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling, it was such a new term that it was almost like a manifesto. Uh, at the time, because people kind of, and I think people still do like that. They consider Asians as sort of this model minority group. And so it’s like, what is that about? I think I received that, that immediate embrace when it came out. And yet the issues were kind of percolating the whole time. You know what I mean? So, so I felt like it took time to take wings, right. And, and, and really to kind of take it on and people to kind of talk about it and, uh, it became part of the vernacular cultural fluency. Work that I’ve been doing, obviously the concept of cultural training has been around and people traveling, expats going to other countries, you know, we have Peace Corps volunteers that that have been, you now, going to the cultures as well. That really bringing it to a different level in the space and connecting it to different populations of people in your organization. I think that also took some shape as well and I’m still looking at how these concepts are living, right, inside these organizations too. So I feel like it hasn’t been the same over 20 years. Certainly hasn’t, oh, let me just rehash this concept to different people for 20 years, right? It’s been framed differently during COVID. It had a different meaning, particularly when there was a spite of anti-Asian bias incidents, right against the Asian community. I think it became a different conversation How does this awareness of how it affects the Asian-American community now get shaped? And how do we bring this concept of being invisible, of being marginalized into the leadership conversation of companies? So that wasn’t the case 20 years ago, right? It was even something people wanted to talk about. So I think it’s taken on different meaning. And I think just even… The fact that we are all connected, you know, technology is increasingly becoming a big part of the conversation. And so you need cultural fluency to really know how to build relationships with people in your organization and across those differences. And so, you need this skill more than ever in a way that has to go beyond just sending an email, right? And I want to really help people understand how to do that.

Bill Sherman So I love that answer. And I also love the description of the journey, right? Where you were first trying to make something visible that people weren’t talking about and now you have people who are using your language to describe context, whether bamboo ceiling or cultural fluency. My question is, how did you coin those terms? Both of them have… A stickiness to them, but you originated them.

Jane Hyun Yeah. And we actually have programs that are, you know, branded under the, you know, breaking through the bamboo ceiling leadership series too, right? And so, and developing cultural fluency. So, so yeah. So I would say that the first term, the bamboo ceiling came about because as I was writing my book and I was talking to my agent and editor about what we should call this book, I had come up a couple of different options, actually, I think we had about three different options and I did some focus groups and conversations with some local business school students and I gave them some options and say, Hey, I’m writing a book about this content. What resonates with you? You know, when I think about the topic that I’m writing about and I had a lot of different responses, but breaking the bamboo ceiling always came up as sort of the top. The reason for that was they felt that it was kind of a nod to the glass ceiling charm, barriers that women face, but it definitely was specific to the Asian experience. It was also something that not just Asians would read, it would be something that would resonate to people outside of our community too. So I think that just continued to come up in that place. And because it was new at the time, Like it wasn’t something. Asians were not talked about in the diversity conversation, not in the way that it was. So when I wrote the book, it was 22 years ago, actually, because it takes a while for the publisher to get it right. We were still a smaller percentage of the US population and so forth. So it became that. And the cultural fluency thing came out of wanting to go deeper. And we were looking at developmental models of going from. Not understanding culture at all, and not seeing it to knowing how to adapt and engaging around difference and saying, we want people to be really good at it. Like we don’t want people just to be average, and seeing it on the surface. We want really people to really good at it so that they can be effective in their organizations. And I really believe that if you are culturally fluent as a leader, you’re gonna be better at leading. You’re gonna better at selling your products and services. You’re going to be better at being a collaborative. Project manager, you know, working across different borders. And so I just saw there was just so much application to it beyond just competence. I didn’t want to be just competent. I want them to be really fluent. Just like if you were speaking a foreign language and you were fluent in three languages, you can really be effective with them too, right? Cause there’s so much culture in language actually, right. In whether you use honorific terms, you know, again, I was just in Korea. As so. There’s a certain way that I address different people and formal versus informal and formal, understanding indirectness and directness. Uh, there’s a lot going on there, right? Beyond what we just see.

Bill Sherman So what I hear in both examples, and I want to call this out, you make a nod to the language of ideas that’s already out there in both of the terms that you’ve coined. One bamboo ceiling makes a nod two glass ceiling and cultural fluency really builds on the concept of language fluency. So people say, oh yeah. Did I learn enough language to be able to go into a store or buy a train ticket versus I can carry on a conversation? And fluency being something that people want to aspire to and know that it takes work. So whether that was conscious or not in crafting in that, I don’t know, but I hear those echoes and some very effective choices.

Jane Hyun Yeah, I’m glad you think that, right? And I really just see it as a need everywhere we go, and it’s as simple as, because it’s not just getting into the sophisticated cultural terms, right, it’s a simple as you meet people and you might meet new people that you’re working with and you’re having lunch with them, and they haven’t had a lot of multicultural experiences, and so it’s just simple as them assuming that they know what Asian people or people from um, Latin America or people from Germany are like, right. And then they’re saying things like, well, this, this is what I know about them. And so this is that. And so it’s, it’s that. It’s that kind of minimizing those differences and thinking about them and knowing, thinking you understand them and then, and then going forward and making decisions around it that is, that is kind of dangerous, I think, right, that, that sort of surface oriented kind of knowledge that can really. Can actually be not so helpful, right? In that conversation. Cause a person on the other side, who is from that background is thinking, I don’t think so. You know, I don’t think that lands on me. You know- Right, right. I’ve told, you know, whatever background person that you’re thinking of it is. But that’s the kind of thing I see all the time. Like people are making decisions, making assumptions about people from my community and other communities that they don’t understand. And it’s just not landing, right, and it’s not landing. And so. That’s the stuff I wanna work with too, not just about how do you work more effectively with the people in that other country, right? How do you more effectively with people who are in your team that are different? I really wanna work on what kind of skills you need to have so that you do lean into inquiry, right. You do lean in to asking those questions and remaining more curious before you make statements like that. You get absolutely, you can’t.

Bill Sherman So as we begin to wrap up, I’ve got a couple of last questions. One, you’ve written three books. You said you have several more in your head. You work with clients and ranging from executive coaching down to the one-to-one debriefs from assessments to workshops. How do you balance the creation of new ideas and content? With the challenge of running a business and getting the idea out into the world. How do you balance that?

Jane Hyun Yeah, you ask such good, very insightful questions, Bill, that are not easy to answer. Yeah, I do have some books that I want to write before I go at home and meet my maker somewhere. And I do things that I wanna continue to share and contribute. I think, I don’t think I have a perfect balance, but I just take every year as it comes and try to accomplish the goals that I’ve set for each year. But I do a lot of writing and reflecting. I think since my mom passed away, I’ve been doing a lot reflecting and thinking through what’s important to me and how I think about things. I don’t think I was as reflective as I have been in the last five years. And I think, you know, early on in my career I would, and in my early work as a coaching consultant, don’t I think I as thoughtful about what I was doing and why I was it and deeper. But I do a lot of writing. I write on the subway. I jot down things on the bus, how I’m feeling about things. I’m thinking a lot all the time. And I try to listen to where I am in that stage. And maybe that means I can’t get everything done at once, but I do try to listen to what’s going on in the world. What’s going with my clients. And then what I want of my own life and what I can create in that moment. And try to find that and reconcile those pieces.

Bill Sherman That’s a wonderful answer and I think that self reflection and staying grounded and also staying connected to the world is a great way because the world changes day to day yearly.

Jane Hyun Yeah, and here.

Bill Sherman Here we are, you know? Do you see yourself retiring? You’ve described this as your life’s work. How do you see your relationship with the work going forward? Is there a day that you hang up the intercultural shingle and you’re on a beach somewhere? What do you see?

Jane Hyun Yeah, or the proverbial beach, right? Whatever that looks like, right. Right, right, yeah. I don’t know if I could ever hang up the intercultural shingle, because that’s who I am and what I’ve been preparing to do. And I think outside of work, I’m this way too. Maybe my kids don’t appreciate it every day, but you know, that is who I, who I Am. Like I can’t take that away.

Bill Sherman There’s a whole nother podcast about growing up in the house of a practicing thought leader where they live their work.

Jane Hyun Oh, there’s a whole other thing there. It’s a lot of stuff to unpack, but it’s like, whether I go to the grocery store and I’m operating a certain way, or whether I’m teaching the concepts to a group of executives, like that is who I am. So I don’t think I’m ever going to retire from that. Maybe the way I work will change that right now I’m doing a lot of different things, you know, including going into companies and. You know, doing very customized work, right. As well as writing books and speaking and coaching. So maybe I will. Start to limit what I do in, let’s say, a certain number of years and focus on two things. But I don’t think I’m ever gonna stop being who I am. I don’t see an end date for that.

Bill Sherman And that was based on what I knew of you, something where this is so deeply wired to who you are. It’s not like you can turn a switch and, you know, this is your last day in the office and you’re never gonna think intercultural thoughts anymore, right?

Jane Hyun That’s right, that’s right. Yeah. Yeah, and you know, it that’s not easy, right? So doing this work in my life, it can be somewhat disruptive. If you could, if you can understand what I’m saying, right, because I’m always seek things. And I have to speak about that speak up about things that maybe people may find uncomfortable, or maybe haven’t seen. So they have to redo something, right. Or to connect to something else to get a better solution. So It’s not easy to do this and be this way. So I want to just put that on the table, that it’s not something that’s always comfortable for me, but I can’t help myself. That is who I am, right? And, but my intent is to make something that I’m working with better, more effective, more inclusive, more thoughtful. And I do think that’s going to have a better outcome on the people that we’re trying to reach at the end.

Bill Sherman So if I listen to that, I hear a phrase that stands out is this need to reflect this need to speak. There’s a very philosophical component to this of what is life? How do we live it? And how do we make it better on that, right? That sort of inward looking as well as understanding your relationship to others in the world at large. So Jane, I want to thank you deeply for this conversation, ranging not only on your own work in cultural fluency, the bamboo ceiling, but also your journey as practicing as a thought leader. Thank you for joining us.

Jane Hyun So good to be with you, Bill, and a pleasure.

Bill Sherman Okay. You’ve made it to the end of the episode, and that means you’re probably someone deeply interested in thought leadership. Want to learn even more? Here are three recommendations. First, check out the back catalog of our podcast episodes. There are a lot of great conversations with people at the top of their game, and thought leadership, as well as just starting out. Second, subscribe to our newsletter that talks about the business of thought leadership. And finally, feel free to reach out to me. My day job is helping people with big insights. Take them to scale through the practice of thought leadership. Maybe you’re looking for strategy, or maybe you want to polish up your ideas or even create new products and offerings. I’d love to chat with you. Thanks for listening.