It was the prospect of a global career trajectory that inspired Eric Herbelin to work for Zurich Insurance Group in their international division. During his role, the assignments came rolling in and Herbelin was ready to show that he was up to the challenge.
“I started with improving the process efficiency of international businesses, then was promoted as the head of strategy,” says Herbelin.
Aside from demonstrating his ability to lead the organization through immense periods of change and expansion, Herbelin proved his ability to effectively lead the team towards business growth and success.
Officially, as the Head of Strategy and Operational Planning, Herbelin managed and organized European business units that were writing large commercial and corporate risks for the largest multinational companies in the world. These responsibilities put his leadership skills and business acumen to the test, and after excelling, Herbelin was then assigned to perform various other functions for the organization.
“I was in charge of the transformational aspects,” says Herbelin, who was asked to grow new business relationships from the ground up, launching new products in Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America and other regions. This, according to Herbelin, was one of the most rewarding aspects of his role, eclipsing his desire for an international career.
Over the years, Hereblin says his role has taught him key lessons about effective leadership and business growth, especially when it comes to working for a large organization with ambitious expectations. Not only is it about driving the desired results, but it’s about ensuring everyone is on the same page, in charge of their own departments and can leverage their unique experiences to make the shared vision a reality.
“Fundamentally, I was exposed to different cultures and behaviors – new ways of thinking.”
Herbelin says he learned that the same project may not lead to the same outcomes in different regions. This means that he had to consolidate his understanding of various business models and analyze how they might perform in different markets, taking into account deep cultural understanding, behavioral economics, and customer personas.
Understanding regional differences and buying decisions is one of the keys to effective leadership and business growth. Often when approaching business transformation or scaling an organization, whether it’s through product expansion or through the growth of operations, it’s essential to calculate the global impact to forecast success.
Facts support that behaviors between international markets shift immensely, especially when it comes to buying decisions. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory often highlights the individualism predominant in Western cultures. For example, Western consumer behavior often contains underlying individualistic consumer choices, both on the customer and the enterprise level. Many U.S. customers perform a web search, look at customer reviews, BBB Accreditation or for B-Corp certifications to name a few examples.
Eastern buying decisions, on the other hand, can be more collectivistic: 70 percent of consumers in China rely on social recommendations and word-of-mouth over individual reviews and accreditation from larger regulatory entities is not as important unless the enterprise is attempting to expand to Western markets. Interestingly, in that case, many Eastern enterprises develop comprehensive Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategies to appease Western markets and their stakeholders.
To lend another example, high-income countries often look for quality over price, while lesser economically developed nations look for price over quality, and while this may not always be the case, even with the nuance involved, many of these aspects ring true and need to be considered when planning a global expansion of any organization.
Eric Herbelin had the opportunity to work in many different markets, which gave him the ability to understand the various levels of detail and nuance in customer behaviors. Rather than applying big-picture generalizations to global expansion, Herbelin was able to develop comprehensive and holistic plans to make market expansion hyper-profitable and expedient.
“I had to realize people were thinking differently and acting differently. This was a great learning opportunity for myself. I could see how some teams performed better than others when I perhaps thought initially that the other team was a bit more proactive,” says Herbelin. This further informed Herbelin’s knowledge of global markets, revealing that teams also operate in different markets. By synthesizing this information, Herbelin was able to drastically add to his leadership acumen and deliver tremendous value to the organization.
For Eric Herbelin, value is generated by results and by action. This is how he holds himself and his team accountable and facilitates collaboration between various departments and members of any organization.
“I’ve learned various ways to invest in teams over the years,” he goes on to say. “Most importantly, I’ve learned that it’s essential to lead through people.”
Leading through people means empowering teams to work without obstruction in their own unique areas of expertise. It also means clearly communicating and enabling the team to ask for assistance and seek new professional development opportunities.
“When you’re an individual contributor, you have to perform your work. You still have to look left and right to the people who are dependent on you, but you typically have a central task at-hand, says Herbelin.
Eric Herbelin says everything changes once you become a leader of an organization or a CEO. You are expected to lead the organization through periods of immense growth and change. To become an effective leader, you need to set the vision of the organization and ensure everybody is aware of the goal and working towards it. It’s about clear communication, alignment and momentum.
“I’ve become a natural delegator,” says Herbelin, which has helped him in many different facets of international business expansion. There are times when it’s impossible to do all the work yourself, and it’s essential to empower teams to be able to execute on a clear vision without the need to be prompted or reminded.
To share more timely and pertinent information about leadership and change, Eric Herbelin has launched his own official website where you can learn more about Leadership and Change, Growth and Innovation and Data and Analytics.
