Translating Cultures Across Continents: From Operational Leadership to the Boardroom

For Shaun Westcott, leadership has always been about navigating complexity — across industries, countries, and cultures. Born in South Africa, a country with eleven official languages and a tapestry of identities, he grew up immersed in diversity. That early exposure to difference would go on to shape his career— from mining and manufacturing to FMCG, and forestry. 

Amid growing economic and security challenges in South Africa, his personal circumstances prompted a bold move: he immigrated to Australia without a position waiting, starting afresh in a new country and industry. From landing a role as the CEO of a robotics and automation company to rising to lead Mitsubishi Motors, Shaun demonstrated that strong leadership skills and a cross-cultural perspective translated seamlessly across sectors and geographies.

At Mitsubishi Motors, Shaun found the most fulfilling part of his role in strategic, long-term planning—anticipating market trends, consumer needs, and vehicle design several years ahead. Equally rewarding was leading a highly diverse workforce: although Australia is often seen as a monoculture, Mitsubishi employed people who spoke thirty-six different languages as their first language. 

The role also came with challenges. Australia’s automotive market is hyper-competitive, with over seventy brands competing in a market of twenty-five million people. Coupled with the ongoing shift toward electric and autonomous vehicles, Shaun navigated multiple layers of complexity, finding opportunity in the very challenges the market presented. Today, he has embarked on the next chapter of his career: transitioning from operational executive roles to non-executive director positions.

His breadth of experience made Shaun a natural fit for INSEAD’s Leading Across Borders and Cultures programme. He attended the programme after being awarded a highly competitive scholarship from South Australia’s Industry Leaders Fund, an honour recognising leaders with the potential to drive business growth and broader economic impact.

Walking into the amphitheatre at the start of the week, he was immediately struck by the diversity of participants and the energy Programme Director, Professor Erin Meyer brought to the room. “She’s very dynamic, knowledgeable, and incredibly engaged — she puts her heart and soul into the programme. It’s energising to be part of a class where the presenter brings that level of enthusiasm and engagement,” he recalled.

“Before attending the programme, I understood there were cultural differences, but I didn’t have a framework to map them,” Shaun reflected. The programme provided him with an archetypal framework of eight cultural scales, giving him practical tools to analyse and engage with diverse teams. The programme also challenged Shaun’s assumptions. “Many of the management styles I had learned were very American-oriented — the way you motivate people, achieve consensus, or communicate,” he explained. “Going through the programme, I realised that approach is only one way of doing things. In other cultures, things can be far more nuanced. It was confronting at first, but it really opened my eyes and changed the way I think about leadership.”

Professor Erin Meyer encouraged participants to challenge the theory and contribute perspectives from their own cultural and professional backgrounds, drawing everyone into discussion without intimidation. Shaun found this approach both stimulating and practical, enabling him to take away insights that he could directly apply to leading diverse teams.

The Leading Across Borders and Cultures programme included lecturers who brought practical business insights to the participants. “It gave us other dimensions to bounce ideas off and test how these methodologies could be applied in real organisational settings,” Shaun explained. The combination of theory, practical tools, and the opportunity to learn from experienced global leaders made the programme highly impactful—something which Shaun immediately applied at Mitsubishi Motors.

Working with the People and Culture department, he used the taught frameworks to plot different employee groups and refine organisation-wide communications, tailoring messages to the ways various subcultures received information. Additionally, at a managerial level, he worked with senior leaders to improve engagement with the company’s Japanese parent and expatriate team members. This included preparing presentations and conducting meetings following a process of nemawashi (laying the groundwork to build consensus before formal discussions) and balancing a hierarchical orientation from Japan with Australia’s more egalitarian culture — helping ensure smoother collaboration across cultures.

For Shaun, with decades of business experience, he found there was still so much to learn. The Leading Across Borders and Cultures programme has provided both a framework and practical tools to engage effectively across national and organisational boundaries — capabilities he now carries into his future board engagements.

Shaun also shared advice for getting the most from the experience. “The programme can be confronting, but that’s part of the value. Erin describes it like a fish swimming in water — because it’s immersed in water, it doesn’t know it’s in water. Similarly, we are all immersed in our own primary culture and may not see our assumptions or understand the lens through which we view the world. It takes willingness to challenge yourself, your own stereotypes, and your own prejudices to really benefit from the programme.”