Cultural Compatibility Comes First
Anybody wishing to succeed in our brutally competitive country, first needs to check if he/she is culturally compatible with people who have already been allowed to the American achievers table. Do you even belong? Let’s see what it takes to get there.
Prime Parameter: Abundance Mentality
In my experience interviewing outstanding women-immigrants, the compatibility parameters for success in the US include creativity; growth mindset; willingness to integrate; American-style work ethic; long-term goals orientation; plus, education and ambition—but most importantly, the abundance mentality.
Stephen Covey explained these basic for all American achievers concepts in his classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Scarcity mentality means thinking there is not enough pie/fruit/pizzas to go around. Many people are deeply scripted in it and see life as having only so much, as though there were only one pie/pizza out there. The abundance mentality, believing there is plenty for everyone, is a building block of a win-win attitude and future success; it features:
· Optimism
· Sharing/philanthropy
· Inclusion
· Independence
· Integrating/appreciating community.
Abundance mentality is not something we acquire but something we tune into. The US cannot be called a totally abundance-mentality culture; however, it’s a rich country with high material abundance, which makes it easier for people to cultivate abundance mentality in the US climate. On a graph, the average US-American is closer to the abundance-mentality point than those who grew up among poverty and chronic lack of opportunity.
When researching prominent immigrants for my upcoming book, I saw they’ve been predisposed to adopting the American mentality. I interviewed women who excelled in cultural integration, exceeding the average American abundance mentality. Here’s one of the brightest:
Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg, from Venezuela
Born in Venezuela, known as homeland of some of the world’s top beauty queens, Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg (pictured) was blessed with a gift of beauty as well as a sharp brain - but had a sense that she had been born in the wrong country where “opportunism beats merit.”
Her intellect helped her win a Fulbright Fellowship to study at Harvard, and there she continued striving for excellence. Eventually, she became an asset-liability advisor and chief investment officer at the World Bank pension fund (pictured with all-male upper management team).
Upon developing a competitively successful investment approach, Hilda founded her own firm—and the World Bank became her first client. Not bad for a start-up! Today this company, Strategic Investment Group, where she’s now non-executive Chairman and Senior Advisor, has well-known global investors as clients and sizeable assets under management. How did she accomplish that? Hilda enhanced her abundance-mentality orientation:
· Opting for optimism
The abundance mentality begins from a place of personal worth—and Hilda always believed in self, even when her life wasn’t too sunny. When ready, she opened her firm’s doors in 1987 while the US economy was on the brink of worldwide recession. Staying positive helped: a calculated risk-taker, the firm developed one of the first stress-testing risk models, which signaled higher probabilities of recovery than further losses. And the markets indeed recovered from the crash.
· Pursuing philanthropy
One of Hilda’s wealth-sharing initiatives was becoming a founding chairman of YOA (Youth Orchestra of the Americas), a Latin Grammy Winning world-class symphony orchestra of gifted musicians, representing more than 25 countries in the Western hemisphere. Passionate for supporting exceptional professionals, YOA seeks to promote excellence, of prodigious musicians from the continent.
· Becoming a participatory leader
“A firm is never better than its human capital,” Hilda stated in her firm’s 20-year anniversary book. True to her inclusive spirit, she was leading by example and her firm incubated its managers, to push the frontiers of investment theory together.
Hilda sees life as a cooperative arena rather than competitive one. Win-win is her natural frame of mind that blossomed in the US: she constantly seeks mutual benefit in all business and personal interactions. Inclusiveness brought her to the top 50 Smartest Women in Business in the US and had her included among Power 30 in Business.
· Independent and sharing win-win experiences
“I do feel independent,” Hilda admitted, “I feel I have achieved what I wanted to, which was to pursue the life of creativity and excellence and a rich personal and family life.”
Sharing experiences with younger professional women, she advised how to be self-reliant: “You need to build a strong support system – and the key person is the one you marry. People say you have to marry for love. But I believe you have to marry for strength. But not the strength of the other person – find the person who gives you strength and let your heart fall in love with them.”
· Integrating and appreciating the US
Part and parcel of “becoming American” is adapting to realities that shape our behaviors—and Hilda identified a major test for adaptation as becoming “more professional and respectful of supporters and competitors.” Hilda’s success in the steep-in-tradition financial industry shows that she became well-integrated in the US – although, as she puts it, “with the tenor of my Latino upbringing,” she truly belongs to the world at large.
The Point: Women immigrants’ standing in the US may seem modest. Some of the outliers, like Hilda, are more than culturally compatible—they attain serious success in the US.
One-Way Street
Success in America is largely predicated by your degree of understanding the rules of the game—which for immigrants comes after adequate cultural integration, after reaching the all-American abundance mentality level. You will be a big hero if you can exceed it 😊.
Who should pursue it? Not only the immigrants. Whether native- or foreign-born, coming out of scarcity/financial fear – or more prepared for prosperous meaningful live – we need to remember: the prime parameter of serious success is a one-way street towards abundance mentality. The bumps on the road are unimportant: it’s the goal that matters!
Read more stories about prominent American role models who already sit at the all-American success table, at my website.