Leading Across Cultures — A Conversation with Chris Hoare

In this episode of The Common Room, Joshua sits down with Chris Hoare — an international school leader with experience across the UK, the Middle East, and Latin America. Chris currently serves as Head of Upper School at Colegio Peruano Británico, a Nord Anglia Education school in Lima, Peru, having previously been part of a founding leadership team in Dubai. He teaches on NPQ programmes for international school cohorts and is a Fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and the Chartered College of Teaching. With a career built across three very different regions, Chris brings a grounded, honest perspective on what it actually takes to lead when the context keeps changing beneath your feet.

Together, we explore what leading across cultures really demands — and why the approaches that earn credibility in one place can land completely differently in another.

In this conversation, we cover:

• Why asking "what do you think?" empowers a team in one culture and signals incompetence in another — and what that reveals about assumptions leaders carry without knowing it
• The behaviour management example that shows how the same policy can mean something entirely different to parents depending on where in the world you are
• The VAC framework — Visible, Accessible, Credible — and why Chris's father, a police training officer, gave him the best leadership advice he's ever received
• Psychological safety in schools, and why Joanna Povall's Kind Leadership challenges the idea that kindness and authority can't coexist
• Authenticity as the one thing that holds constant across every culture — and the parent who came back a month later to say he respected a decision he didn't agree with
• Why nobody teaches you how to make decisions — and what's genuinely missing for ambitious younger leaders in international education

Whether you're navigating your first international leadership role, stepping into an established school community with its own deep-rooted culture, or simply trying to figure out what kind of leader you want to be, this is a practical and honest conversation about what the job actually asks of you.

A huge thank you to Chris for his openness, his energy, and for reminding us that admitting what you don't know is one of the greatest strengths a leader can have.

The Common Room is hosted by Joshua Sussex — Deputy Head of Secondary and EdD candidate: researching leadership in international schools.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

International education. The classrooms, the staff rooms, the lives built far from home. This is the common room. I'm Joshua Statistics. Let's talk.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Chris Hall is an international school leader with experience across the UK, the Middle East, and South America. He currently serves as head of upper school at a Nordangular Education School in Peru, having previously been part of a founding leadership team in Dubai. He teaches on MPQ programs for international school cohorts and is a fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and the Chartered College of Teaching. Chris is interested in school culture, behavior, and what it actually takes to lead well across very different contexts. This episode today is focused around the notion that most leadership development is built around a single context, one system, one culture, one set of unspoken rules. But what happens when you take that leadership and move it somewhere completely different? A different country, a different ownership model, a different relationship between staff and students, between teachers and families, between the school and the world around it. Chris knows what it feels like when the playbook stops working, when the approaches that earn credibility in one context land completely differently in another. This episode is a genuine practical conversation about what leading across cultures actually requires, the adaptations, the assumptions you have to let go of, and the things that turn out to be universal regardless of where you are. This is an episode for school leaders at every stage, and particularly for those early in their international career who are figuring out what the kind of leader you want to be. So, Chris, you've led in the UK, the Middle East, and now in Peru. When did you realize that leadership approach that had worked for you somewhere wasn't going to work in the next place?

SPEAKER_00 1:54

That is such an interesting question. I've been really lucky across my career to have worked in very different places. And a really good example is as a leader, one of the best things that I do is to say to people, what do you think? When I'm having line management conversations or when I'm trying to lead a new section of the school or a new policy or just general line manager meetings. Say, what do you think about something? And that's quite empowering. Certainly, when I was a middle leader or a young teacher, someone would say, Well, Chris, what do you think? I was like, Well, actually, I feel really quite valued here. But here in Latam, if we did that, someone might feel that is, well, I don't know. You're the boss, you're the leader. That comes across as you're uncertain or you lack clarity. And that's where different culture or different nationalities come into play. Because when you're leading across cultures, we're not just leading different nationalities, you're leading differences in the idea of authority, in communication, how you build relationships with your team. Because for people here in Latin America, you are their boss, and you are therefore a very important person within your life that you do as you're told, you listen to what they say, and you go and do as you're instructed. Whereas I have words in the Middle East, you want your boss there, you want your line manager to be going, Well, Chris, what do you think? How can we do this? How do we make things better? And is it's really interesting because we come from a society, uh a culture where we are trained to be innovative. We are trained to push the status quo. And I know we'll talk about this a little bit later about this idea of being young leaders, but the idea is that we are leading schools, and schools are teaching people for the next generation, for a world that doesn't exist. And therefore, we need to be pushing the boundary. But certainly here in a society and generally for Latin America, Latin America is an area of the world that is developing, that isn't there yet. The quality of education is not where it is, perhaps in the Middle East or Asia. I was head of pastoral in the Middle East, and it was probably my first major leadership role when I uh helped found the secondary school. And I was tasked in creating the first behaviour policy for the school. And people would say, well, just go back to the last school and just take theirs, it'll be fine. I said, Well, no, that's not what we should do here, because we have an opportunity to build this for our students, to build this for our exact context, not just take one example. It might work and it probably would work because it's not too dissimilar. But let's rip it up and do this for us. But I had a team there who were very much actually, yeah, this is a real opportunity. Because I was surrounded by British trained, experienced teachers who were like me, who were, yeah, actually, yeah, let's take their risk and let's try that. Here in Latin, that is very different.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

What would you say are the assumptions that international school leaders most often bring into a new context and get it wrong?

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Certainly, as the British expat, we're taught to a very thorough and high standard in how we should teach. And that works really well for us in Britain. And it works really well in a British international school in the Middle East, because you're teaching 75-80% British students or families who are really passionate and knowledgeable about what British education is. But here in Latin is this idea that because this is how we're taught, that's the way it should be done. But a good example would be behaviour management. Where in the Middle East it was really easy because the student did something wrong, they received the consequence, and the parents were, yeah, no problem. Thanks for letting us know. But here in Latin America, that doesn't work because if you say to the student, well, they've done this wrong and here's the consequence, the parents are okay, well, but what? They got it wrong, yeah, okay, but why are you punishing them for it? So this whole idea of the consequence system is actually quite challenging because for a lot of the parents here, private schooling is something that they really have to work hard for. We have a lot of parents who will be working two or three jobs in order to send their children to our school because they understand that private education from a large organization in a British school is going to really open doors for studying abroad, for social economic progress. So the parents are very protective over their children. They're very, you know, my child wouldn't do that. No, no, that's not right. You can't punish them. And it's not about punishment, it's about trying to work with our parents to understand that we need to develop their understanding of right and wrong.

SPEAKER_02 7:06

I think what you're describing is what we started off the conversation. It's some things do travel well, some things don't. Some things need adapting. I think the question that I'd ask you is how do you get that buy-in from parents? How do you get parents to buy into you as a new head of upper school into a very well-established environment where there's a community that have been there for many years? How do you get parents to feel confident and trust you as a leader, as a British expatriate leader coming into the school?

SPEAKER_00 7:38

It's a question that me and my principal we wrestle with every single day because he's also fairly new into the school as well. He's also in British. Similar kind of background to myself in terms of development. But I'm going to go back to actually to my father, who was the head of training for the police in the UK for a number of years. And when I first became a leader, he said, Chris, I'm going to teach you an acronym. And he said you need to be VAC. And I said, What do you mean VAC? He said, You need to be visible, accessible, and credible. And that has stuck with me every single day of my leadership career. And this really worked here. And this is how I built the trust of the parents here in the community. It applies to the students and also to my teachers as well. As I mentioned, a lot of the teachers here in school have been here for 10, 15, 20 years. They're also, who's this new young guy who's turned up who's going to start telling me how to do things and telling us that we need to change our behavior system or the way we accept? But being visible in the sense that I am genuinely around school. I stand on the gate every single morning and shake every student's hand. And equally with the parents, that visibility that I'm not just somebody sat in an office. That is something that is quite societal here as well. A director of a school, they'd call them directors, um, or a manager, they're in their office. They are managing, they are doing. Well, I spend very little time uh in my office. My uh PA, her step count must be outrageous, trying to find me throughout the entire day because that visibility to our community is immensely important. Listening to our parents and giving them the opportunity. I always need with every teacher, every parent, uh, every student or what because that visibility is really important. Accessibility there is that is the next part of my VAC is you can be visible, but actually, are you accessible? Are people actually going to come up to you and ask you a question? Or are they actually going to come up to you and tell you there's a problem? Or tell you that that's not working, or tell you that that decision you made was not the right one. And I encourage every single member of my team, my parents, and my students to tell me that. If you don't like something, you've got to tell me. And that's accessibility. I've worked with leaders before who put it in my diary, find space in my calendar. No, because to that person in that moment, that they might need to tell you something. And if you don't take them up on that opportunity, you might miss it. And that might erode the trust that they have with you because that person's not important. Now, obviously, this is all very idealistic, right? But I feel that's really important. The other day, I left my office to go to lunch at school. I eat with the students and the staff every day, and it took me 45 minutes to reach the cafeteria. The cafeteria is 50 meters away from the office, but it took me 45 minutes to get there. And you know what? That was the best 45 minutes of my day. Because in that 45 minutes, I was accessible to all of those individuals who needed something or wanted something. And I could have gone, no, no, speak to me later. No, I'm busy, I'm going for lunch. Actually, no, because those 45 minutes were really important for those individuals. And finally, the C the credibility, you've got to do what you preach, you've got to have some backing on what you talk about, which is why I'd like to teach on the MPQ programs, I like to publish articles, because I have to keep myself at the cutting edge of what's happening in education, of what's happening within leadership. I've got to be contributing to that community because that's what I'm doing as a job. And got to practice what you preach, right? And I make a point of making sure that I still teach so I understand what my staff are going through in the classroom and I encourage them to come and watch me teach, and that's really important. It gives me an idea of what's happening on the ground. And I can myself practice the policies that I'm working on with my staff.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

How do you know that land well with staff?

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Do they come and ask you? Do they speak to you? Do they say what they think? Do they challenge me? Do they catch me in the corridor and say, hey, I don't think that was great, or hey, that word's really well. Are they open? Are they honest? And that's a really great question. And I'm sure some staff don't like the changes I'm making, but that's part of being a leader. You're not going to be liked by everybody. But the conversations that I had would say that I think that is landing. I I've talked a lot recently on LinkedIn about that, the idea of psychological safety. So, how do leaders make people feel? And I don't know about you, but we both trained in the UK, and I remember the fear of a member of SLT walking into my classroom. Like, what are they gonna pick up on now? I'm doing my best, I'm teaching uh 25 hours a week or whatever it was. I'm marking till 10 o'clock at night, and they're gonna come in and tell me my starter was three minutes longer than my lesson plan. And that used to fill me with genuine anxiety of I'm trying to do my best, but someone's just gonna pick up on what I'm not doing. And I said that I would never want to be that as a leader. I don't want to walk into one of my staff classrooms and people to feel, oh my goodness, what's the problem? What's he looking at? What's what's not right? And that is something that I work really hard to make sure that doesn't happen. So if I come into your classroom, I'm there to help. If I'm in the corridor, I'm not there to catch you out, I'm there to help you, I'm there to support you, I'm there to make sure that you feel supported. And I say this to staff as well: I will support you on anything as long as I can. Some things I'm not going to be able to support you on if you do something that's really bad safeguarding or anything, then of course, but I will always have your back. And that takes time, and there's tears, there's difficult conversations, but building that relationship and that trust with staff members through being visible, being accessible, and being credible has allowed me to be an effective leader.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

It's really interesting. I do like the acronym as well, actually. That you say that point about the UK and about SLT and having that fear. I certainly can relate. My experience was that was almost celebrated. That was almost SLT members were proud that there was an element of fear and Ofsted coming in, and like you say, any member of SLT coming in, there was genuine fear, and it was awful, it was a horrible experience. There's a wonderful book written by uh Joanna Pavel. I'm not sure if you're ever aware of her, but she's a she's a principal in the in the Middle East, and it's called kind leadership. And it's exactly what you're describing there, made me think of it, because you can be kind when you're leading, and it's about being clear and giving support to staff in a kind way. And again, uh Joanna mentions don't get confused between kindness is not a weakness. And I think going back to UK comparison, it's it was seen as a weakness if you were kind. If you were nice as a member of SLT, or even perhaps an offstead member that came in, if you were kind, it was perceived to be a weakness. So I think we're moving on from that. I think luckily we're moving on from that. And I can't speak for the UK, I've not been there for sort of 10 years now, but we're certainly moving on from that in an international approach to leadership. And I think it's needed. If we look at staff's well-being and general happiness around school and interactions, as you say, are they asking questions? Are they challenging? And that's our metric of the success. And that does from my experience and from what you're saying, it comes from that being kind, being clear, being supportive, being seen, being visible, being credible. All those aspects are at the forefront as opposed to fear, which, from my experience in the UK, and similar to what you're saying, it sounds like fear was at the forefront, really.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

But that's exactly it. And we're educators, first and foremost. I've got many friends who are very successful, business leaders and work in corporate jobs. But I think we are in a lucky place in a society where we bridge the gap between education and certainly in private international schools and the commercial aspect. So we kind of see both worlds. And this idea of well-being is hugely important. And we talk all the time about our students, and we talk about differentiation, we talk about how we support our children's well-being or mental health in the classroom, how are we keeping them engaged, how are we getting them to reflect? But do we ever apply what we do in our classrooms to our staff members? And I think that's something that as a profession we don't do very well. Do we differentiate our professional learning, our PD, or our staff members? Do we prioritize well-being? Do we make people feel included like we would do in the classroom? And that's the principle that I like to try and apply the way I lead.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

You mentioned about differentiation, different approaches, different styles is really important. But what's the thing that stayed constant across every culture you've led in? Something that turns out to be genuinely universal.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Being authentic. I've seen leaders and seen people in the past go, well, I'm in a different place now, I need to be different. A really good example is language. Yeah. Words in the Middle East, the word in British school, so English, everyone spoke English. Coming here, um, a lot of my staff don't speak much English. My Spanish is is questionable at times, but I've seen some people just go, oh, well, I'm British, I don't need to speak Spanish. Well, for me, I've been really authentic, and hey, I'm not very good at Spanish, but I'm gonna try. I'm gonna have a go. So that adds to that authenticity of I'm not trying to fake it. I'm gonna try genuinely speak Spanish with you because it shows respect. It shows I'm a visitor in this country, but I'm gonna try and speak to you in your native language. I say all miserably, but you know what? I'm being authentic.

SPEAKER_02 18:17

I've seen challenges with that approach where it doesn't land as well as intended, and perhaps can create difficult conversations and perhaps even makes yourself question your approach, and then perhaps you should change it. Then you'll storm between being authentic, but at the same time, this particular person or persons, it's not landing the way I want it to land, so I have to change. And you're gonna sort of gray area if you like. Have you ever experienced that? And if you have, how do you overcome that?

SPEAKER_00 18:46

Every day. So you have this internal kind of conflict of this is who I am. For me, having a difficult conversation is difficult for me. I don't enjoy it, I don't look forward to it. It's not who I am. I I like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I like to be very supportive. Um, we're very happy, a positive person. I don't like being negative. But the reality of our job is that sometimes we have to have difficult conversations. We have to do things that are difficult. And if something hasn't landed with a member of staff or a student or a parent, we have to have that conversation. I posted to this on LinkedIn the other day that there's many times where I've driven home at the end of the day, I've been questioning my decision. Was that the right decision? Did I do the right thing? And I put an example up. I had to make a decision with a parent, and it was really challenging. It hadn't landed the way I wanted it to, but I stuck to what I believed to be true. And the parent wasn't particularly very happy about it. And I drove home and I thought, my goodness, did I make the wrong decision? Maybe I should have just given in and said yes to the request. But about a month later, the parent came back to me and he said, I really appreciated that meeting we had a month ago. I didn't agree with the outcome, but I understood why you did it and I respect it. And for me, that was one of the best pieces of feedback I've ever had in leadership. Because I clearly had been authentic in that difficult conversation. I'd explained what the reason why I was making the decision I was making. Uh, even though it wasn't what anybody wanted to hear, it wasn't even the decision I wanted to make. I questioned it, but I stuck true to what I believed, what my experience told me, what colleagues' advice had given me, and I made that decision. And the parent respected that. And that was one of the biggest credibility and trust building things that I've ever done. Because that parent came back and but they said, Hey, thank you. Your decision was right, and we now trust you in that decision. But in order to do that, I plan meticulously my difficult conversations. I always start with something positive, I always try and end with something positive and try and build the trust in the reporter. Hey, what I'm about to tell you is not going to be great, but it's going to help you do this. We from here we can go there. And it's kind of that coaching approach. So that's how I deal with that, but it's not something I particularly enjoy or look forward to. It's not something that for me gets easier, but that's part of the job.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

You mentioned that what you're trying to do feels like something that's missing for younger leaders in international education. What is it and why do you think it's missing?

SPEAKER_00 21:33

As a young teacher, I was always ambitious. And I remember really clinging, it was the first day of university, first day of the PTC. And this university lecturer said to all of these new prospective teachers, What's your dream in 10 years? I went round, I want to be a best teacher. Person X said, I want to be a head of the department. And he gets to me and I want to be a head. I want to be a head teacher. And he laughed. And I was like, whoa. He said, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good luck with that. And it made me angry because that person in that moment took away maybe it was a little bit unrealistic, but maybe it was incredibly ambitious. That was what I wanted. I always knew I wanted to be a leader. I always knew I wanted to be a head teacher. And that fueled me. And it fueled me to be young, engaging, innovative. I wanted to prepare students for a world that doesn't exist. I wanted to lead people. And the next 10 years, I just worked. I worked at the expense of relationships, at the expense of my personal health or or mental well-being. But I did it. And 10 years later, I became a head teacher. And I saw out opportunities every single step of the way. I saw out, okay, head of department, can I do the data analysis this month or this term? Because I want to know how to do it. I want to understand how it works. And I went and did this leadership course. I went and did that training. I went and did the IB training or whatever it was. I built myself as much experience as I could. But now there's one thing missing. I've been taught how to do data analysis. I've been taught how to lead a curriculum. I've been taught how to do a performance management cycle. But nobody has ever taught me how to make decisions, how to be a leader. Now for me, it's something I think it comes fairly naturally. I feel like it's I'm good at something that I can listen, I can relate to people, I can be confident in my decisions. But nobody teaches you how to make decisions. Nobody teaches you that judgment. And for my whole career, I was told, well, you know, you're too young, you've got to do your time, you've got to build more experience. Well, what about those CEO leaders who are brilliant million-dollar companies? Did anyone tell them how to do it? Did anyone tell the head teachers 50, 60 years ago how to do it? Because education, certainly in England, I'd always felt that you've got to do your time. You'll be a head teacher, but you're going to be 50, 60 years old. Or yeah, you can be a head of department, but you've got to do 10 years as a teacher first. And I said, well, actually, no, because being a leader is about leading people. It's not about necessarily doing the same thing in a classroom for 10 years. And I'm just, I've annoyed everybody this thing now, saying, well, you know, be doing 10 years in a classroom is a good thing, and it is a good thing. But equally, being ambitious, innovative, taking risks is what's needed in education because education is changing all the time. And I was preparing just today, actually, a training session for some of our staff members next week's on the idea of generations. Generation alpha, uh, who are the students in our school right now, are very different to millennials, to the baby boomers, to Gen X in the way that they learn, the way that they approach life, the way that they interact with the world and the values that they have. But yet we have leaders, and I'm going to upset a lot of people again here. We have a lot of leaders of school who are trying to lead school from 20, 30 years ago. But schools are very different places, and parents are very different. And parents know what the education system is now because education hasn't changed that radically in 20, 30 years. So the parents that we have in schools right now are the parents who went to these schools who did the same GCSE course or who did the IB or did the ALA. And in a world of AI, in the world of mobile phones and technology, people know about education and people can find good stuff about education. And uh, I think that there's a place for young leaders, and there's a place for people who maybe haven't done the job as just as long, but have the ability to lead people and have the ability to relate to people and to bring people with them. Um, and nobody taught me that. Nobody told me how to do that. So I think that's what's missing.

SPEAKER_02 26:26

Before we finish, for someone listening to this who is three or four years into their international leadership career and trying to figure out what kind of leader they want to be. What do you want them to take from this conversation? What would be your advice?

SPEAKER_00 26:42

You've got to be yourself. And I've seen many young leaders who think, well, this is who I need to be, or this is what I need to be in order to be a good leader. And I think that's just not true. You've got to be hard, you've got to be tough, you've got to be ruthless. And actually, I I'm none of those things. I've been my authentic self, as we talked about earlier. I am passionate about what I do, and that remains, you know, at the at the heart of every decision I make and every opportunity I seize. I I've known who I am. And leadership always starts with that is knowing yourself. I know what I'm good at, I know what I'm not good at, I know what I'm interested in. And I think trying to identify those kind of characteristics in yourself is really important. Who are you? You know, what is it you're genuinely passionate about? For me, I'm passionate about the world, I'm passionate about working with people, passionate about young people, and trying to make a difference, right? But that authenticity is absolutely essential because if you're not authentic, people will see right through it, they won't have that trust in you, and they won't see you as credible, and then you'll be an ineffective leader. So admitting mistakes, admitting when you don't know something, actually, the more I realize sometimes that I don't know is the greater strength I have in being a leader, in going to that teacher of 30 years and going, Hey, I need your help. What do you think? That really empowers your team and makes people think, Oh, hold on, this guy is trying to make the right decisions for school and and for students, that's incredibly important. Because the moment you don't do that, you erode all of your credibility, all of the trust, and then you're not effective. And you erase the culture that you're trying so hard to build.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

Brilliant. And just a very final point, really like the that visibility, accessibility, and credibility, right? Yeah, that's like that. That's that's a definitely a takeaway for me. Chris, it's been lovely to chat with you, lovely to meet you and lovely to hear your perspectives and your journey. It's been uh it's been brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

No, thank you very much, and uh it's been a pleasure as well. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

Brilliant, thank you very much.