Bridging the Gap: How We Building Leaders Create Trusted Teams with Laura Kriska

About this episode

Alan Briggs interviews Laura Kriska about bridging cultural gaps in leadership to create trusted teams.

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…

People in this episode

Host: Alan Briggs

Guest: Laura Kriska

Topics covered

• leadership
• cross-cultural communication
• team building
• trust
• collaboration

Keywords

• leadership
• cultural differences
• trust continuum
• team dynamics
• cross-cultural leadership

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Honda

Books & works: The Business of We

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