The H2 Leadership Podcast

In this episode, Alan Briggs sits down with Laura Kriska — cross-cultural consultant, speaker, and author of The Business of We — for a conversation about one of the most underestimated challenges in leadership today: the invisible gaps that keep teams from reaching their full potential.

Laura was born in Japan, raised in Ohio, and spent her early career as the first American woman working inside Honda's Tokyo headquarters. What started as a fascinating cross-cultural immersion became a three-decade career helping leaders and organizations bridge the us versus them gaps that quietly undermine collaboration — whether those gaps are cultural, generational, geographic, or simply the difference between how two departments approach a problem.

If you lead a team of any kind, the frameworks Laura shares in this episode are immediately actionable and long overdue.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

• Laura's origin story — born in Japan to missionary parents, raised in Columbus, Ohio, and what that unique upbringing taught her about cultural differences hiding in plain sight
• What happened on her first day at Honda's Tokyo headquarters — and the split-second decision she made that shaped her entire philosophy of cross-cultural leadership
• The We Building framework — what it means to bridge an us versus them gap and why the best leaders do it even when they don't agree with or like the difference they're bridging
• The trust continuum: stranger → acquaintance → colleague → trusted colleague — and why most teams get stuck at colleague and never make it to trusted
• Why cultural differences are inevitable and predictable — and what changes when leaders start treating them that way
• The difference between visible and invisible cultural differences — and why the invisible ones cause the most damage
• The Team Machine — Laura's 90-minute interactive simulation that exposes the real collaboration behaviors teams bring to work every day
• Three categories of action for bridging any cultural gap: safe actions, challenging actions, and radical actions
• What males can specifically do — with humility — to better include female colleagues in their work cultures
• How hybrid work and the pandemic have made silos worse and what leaders can do about it right now

Reflection Questions:

• Where in your organization is an us versus them gap quietly costing you collaboration and trust?
• When did you last take a safe, challenging, or radical action to bridge a cultural difference on your team?
• Are the people you lead stuck at colleague — and what would it take to move them to trusted colleague?

Resources Mentioned:

• The Business of We — Laura Kriska (available wherever books are sold)
• The Accidental Office Lady — Laura Kriska (her first book chronicling her Honda experience)
• Harvard Business Review — co-authored piece on the Team Machine (coming May 2025)
• Connect with Laura on LinkedIn (her most active platform)
• H2 Leadership Coaching — h2leadership.com

Want more? Visit h2leadership.com for coaching, resources, and tools to help you lead well.