Diversify your leadership

Marty McQuade, general manager, DuPont Automotive Systems

Marty McQuade, general manager of
DuPont Automotive Systems, believes
it is important for the senior leadership
team of any business to be composed
of a diverse group of people — not
only in business matters but culturally,
as well.

An ethnically and culturally diverse
leadership team can assist you in a big
way if you are in the process of taking
your business global.

“You do not want your leadership
team to be only of the native tongue of
the country of your headquarters,” he
says. “If you have a diverse group, your
senior leaders will speak multiple languages and can help you with that
translation.”

Translation skills are highly valued in
the people who manage the international communications pipeline at
DuPont Automotive, whether they are
on-site managers or marketing or public relations managers.

Poor translation of company messages can stall a company’s growth. If
messages aren’t effectively reaching
the ears of those who need to hear
them, McQuade says it’s as bad as not
communicating at all.

“We take a view that, although English is the world’s business language, if there is an important message
we’re trying to get out to the organization, we’ll invest the time to translate it to the local language, recognizing that
there is a very large percentage of the
organization that won’t understand the
message otherwise,” he says.