“Being Real” Isn’t Always Ideal: Transparency Through a Cultural Lens

If being transparent as a leader is to your professional disadvantage, why would you do it?

Many Western leadership thinkers emphasize the value of transparency as a universal good. Leaders are urged to be open about their reasoning, honest about their mistakes, accountable for their decisions, and receptive to feedback. In these frameworks, transparency leads to trust, engagement, and psychological safety.

But what if, in some cultural contexts, these very behaviors produce opposite outcomes?

This is not a theoretical question. It is a lived one for any global leader who assumes that transparency is always the high road, only to find it erodes confidence, disrupts team cohesion, or undermines their authority.

Let’s take Taiwan as an example.

Why Transparency Lands Differently in Taiwan

Taiwan scores high on cultural dimensions often described as relationship-oriented, group-oriented, and concentrated in power. These orientations shape how people interpret a leader’s credibility, intentions, and competence.

In this context—especially in industries such as semiconductors and finance—the leader is expected to be someone who:

• has weathered uncertainty before

• knows how to protect the team

• takes responsibility when things go wrong

• maintains stability in ambiguous situations

A leader who openly shares doubts, failures, or the messy details behind a decision may unintentionally signal the opposite:

• Is my boss unsure?

• Are we safe?

• Do they really know what they are doing?

• Should I be worried?

Instead of building trust, transparency may trigger anxiety, hesitation, or a loss of confidence.

I took this photo while facilitating a leadership workshop on developing psychological safety (Taipei, 2025)

“But don’t we build trust by being personal?” … Not always

Leaders from individualistic cultures often build trust through personal disclosure: sharing weekend plans, talking about hobbies, offering opinions, even being vulnerable.

But in Taiwan, trust often emerges through roles, responsibilities, and reliability, not personal stories.

One senior leader recently shared with me why he avoids discussing his private life with his team. He referenced The Art of War:

“The more people know about me, the more they can use it against me.”

This is not paranoia—it reflects a cultural logic. In many East Asian societies, interpersonal trust for those outside your in-group tends to be lower than in task-based, individualistic societies. Trust is built slowly and maintained through consistent behavior, not open self-disclosure.

Why Context Matters More Than “Honesty”

Richard Nisbett’s research in 'The Geography of Thought' highlights a key difference: East Asians see behavior through context—role, timing, relationships, and situational demands. Western cultures tend to view honesty as fixed and context-free, rooted in an ideal of objective truth.

But in East Asia, knowledge is understood as flexible and relational. What is appropriate to share depends on maintaining harmony and collective stability. This means a leader who “shares everything openly” may be seen as neglecting their role, not being more authentic.

So what should a global leader do instead? 

The key is not to apply one “right” style of transparency, but to build cultural intelligence: adapting how you lead to the expectations and norms of your context.

Transparency still has value, but it must be expressed in ways that align with how credibility and trust are interpreted locally.

If your team spans multiple cultures, this becomes even more essential. Invest early in creating shared norms and a sense of inclusion so that everyone understands how the team communicates, makes decisions, and resolves concerns. Psychological safety grows not from a single cultural model, but from clarity, consistency, and trust built together.

The Final Takeaway

Transparency still matters, but it is not universal in form. One senior leader in Taiwan recently shared with me that psychological safety is universal in its consequences—when it’s missing, everyone suffers—but the way you build it is deeply culture-specific.

Instead of asking, “How open should I be?” ask: “What kind of clarity best supports my team in this context?”

Culturally intelligent leaders adapt their transparency to local norms: building trust by respecting roles, relationships, and situational expectations, rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all ideal of authenticity.