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Who has the power in impact-focused enterprise? In 2018, Galen Welsch, co-founder and CEO of the Africa-based social enterprise Jibu, wrestled with this question in a widely read NextBillion article, which readers voted as one of the most influential articles published on the site that year. He argued that we ask the wrong questions when we evaluate impact: It’s not about which consumer segment is served or how profitable the enterprise is. Instead, the key question should be how an enterprise localizes power.

As a program evaluator, I couldn’t agree more. Yet this attitude and approach remains discouragingly rare among Western businesses and investors working to make an impact in emerging markets.

Why is it so challenging for Westerners to empower others?

I’ve conducted research on this question for over two decades. It’s easy to point fingers and declare wrongdoing when Westerners don’t share power, but it’s far more useful to understand why it’s difficult for us to do so.

The impact investing and broader social business space is filled with people who are driven to make a positive difference in others’ lives. But for many Westerners, and for Americans in particular, the work of truly empowering vulnerable people goes against several deeply ingrained cultural norms.

I recently published “Strong Together: Building Partnerships across Cultures in an Age of Distrust,” a book that delves into the question of how to empower others. It’s based on interviews and case studies that I conducted with 90 American and Global South leaders working in the development space. I limited my focus to Americans, rather than exploring attitudes across other Western countries, because I wanted to consider culture’s influence and needed to limit the scope of my research to do so.

So what exactly makes it hard for Americans to empower others? I’ll share seven reasons, and discuss some solutions, in the article below.

Why Americans Struggle to Empower Others

1. We work fast.

Americans view time as a scarce commodity that must not be wasted. Our fast pace makes us less likely to share power with those we hope to help, because collaboration requires a significant investment of time. With our focus on tight timelines and rapid results, our natural approach doesn’t pair well with the slower work of empowerment that entails deep listening, trust building and shared decision making.

2. We work alone.

The U.S. is the most individualistic culture in the world. Our natural bent is to work independently, to value leadership more than membership, to rely on no one. This approach reflects our love for freedom, but it often leads us to hold onto the power in our interactions with others.

3. We’re insulated.

The great majority of psychological studies have been conducted in WEIRD societies — Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. Faculty often tap their students for participation in these studies, making the pool of participants even narrower. These research results have become the norms we believe describe human nature — not understanding that many studies’ skewed results ignore important cultural differences across world regions. Americans often don’t know what they don’t know, in part because of this intellectual insulation.

A Ghanaian social entrepreneur I interviewed for my book emphasized the implications of Americans’ insulation: “Unfortunately, you have many Americans who think they know the world, but their life is concentrated on the U.S. of A. Americans have diversity — geographic, racial. There’s no reason to travel anywhere. If you want to experience a hot climate, you go to Florida. There is a superiority complex that’s instilled, a ‘Mr. America’ complex. When they come in, they have the answers. They come to do what Superman would do. It becomes difficult to even have a conversation.”

This insulation also makes us less likely to recognize cultural differences in how people politely try to say no or express concern about a proposed program — critical aspects of empowerment.

4. We keep our distance from those we’re trying to help.

Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, speaks often about Americans’ need to get “proximate” to those who are suffering or marginalized if we hope to effect social change. “We cannot change global injustice today if we isolate … ourselves in places that are safe and removed and disconnected. To change the world, we are each going to have to find ways to get closer to people who … are living on the margins of society.”

A Ugandan social entrepreneur expressed his frustration with Americans’ tendency to keep our distance during an interview for my book: “There are two kinds of expats living here. I am not a fan of one type — the type that comes in to work with a big multinational corporation. They live on a hill with big SUVs. I don’t know how they get to know what they need to learn by not living on the ground. You need to have a love for the local people. Look at them as people, as human beings. Have conversations with them and treat them as normal friends.”

Keeping a distance is efficient time-wise and it allows us to work alone — both of which are deeply held American values. But distance also keeps us from feeling the impact of power differences and from remembering that all people have a desire to make their own decisions.

5. We focus on a distinct problem that needs to be solved.

Americans, as strong individualists, are goal-oriented people who tend to focus on distinct problems. People from collectivist societies, which describes much of the Global South, tend to look more holistically at the challenges facing a group.

Americans I interviewed tended to focus on a distinct, perceived need they could address — like clean cookstoves or solar power. Global South leaders spoke more often about complexities facing communities, and saw community leaders as essential players in any effort. They were also more apt to focus on building community members’ skills rather than solely addressing a perceived need in people’s lives.

6. We approach problems from a place of presumed strength.

The U.S. has had the world’s largest GDP for over a century. Our economic strength is a significant part of our national identity. Why wouldn’t we want to share our business expertise to help others?

But because we often don’t get proximate to understand vulnerable people’s personal priorities, and because — as was the case with many of the American entrepreneurs I interviewed — we tend to focus narrowly on whatever economic problem we want to solve, we often assume that we have the answer to these problem on our own.

Our tendency to assume self-sufficiency is further encouraged by our tendency to overestimate our abilities — whether that’s our driving skills or our work performance. This is a trait that is almost nonexistent in some cultures. While we may assume that our marketing techniques and our business strategies are best, those I interviewed from the Global South pushed back strongly against this assumption.

7. We prize innovation and disruption of the status quo.

Americans value personal initiative. We push for ways to innovate, to move beyond the status quo. As one measure of our innovation, the U.S. has only 4% of the world’s population, but it has produced around 40% of the world’s Nobel laureates (though around 35% of them are immigrants born in other nations).

What I heard from Global South leaders, however, highlighted a different reality: the fact that innovations generally offer both costs and benefits. The potential benefits are usually obvious to Americans, but the costs to the user are typically far less so.

How to Approach Empowerment in the Global South

Americans are phenomenal at innovation, but we struggle to empower vulnerable people, for all the reasons listed above. How can an American entrepreneur working in emerging markets correct for these tendencies? It starts by considering what empowerment looks like from the perspective of people in the Global South. Here are three simple examples highlighted by the leaders I interviewed:

• Enterprise leaders should demonstrate respect for existing local systems by engaging with school, church and/or local government leaders as they begin work within a community.
• Entrepreneurs should engage local people in defining the problem to be solved.
• Customers and locally-based employees should regularly be asked to provide feedback about the enterprise, and to help its leadership understand the significance of their feedback.

When receiving this type of advice, it’s natural for American entrepreneurs to say, “Okay. Based on our cultural differences, I’ll change my approach and emphasize empowerment more.” But that misses the point. Our goal cannot simply be to operate more effectively on our own. We need to submit ourselves to greater local input and greater shared leadership. There are aspects of a local culture that we will never understand, and social capital that we will never, as outsiders, possess. Acknowledging our limitations and recognizing local people’s distinct assets is the first step toward empowering them. Including a cultural bridge — someone who has lived for an extended time in the local culture as well as in the American culture — can also be a tremendous addition to a team.

The second step? Believing we as Americans have long-standing problems that could benefit from Global South perspectives as well. Take, for example, the finding that in 2018, 55% of Americans reported experiencing stress much of the previous day compared to 35% globally, placing us among the most stressed people in the world. Many of us work too hard, rest too little and invest in relationships too rarely. There are valuable lessons people with a different cultural lens could teach us about these and other downsides of American life.

I’ll practice what I’m preaching and give the floor to a Kenyan leader for the last word: “Problems come when one form of equity is valued over another form of equity … When you don’t allow reciprocity, you end up with the dreaded monster of dependency. You must empower the Southern Hemisphere to recognize it too has something to give, because there is honor then in receiving your gift if we have something to give back in return … You need us whether you know it or not.”

Andrea Nelson Trice is an impact assessment researcher.

Photo courtesy of Tima Miroshnichenko.