Sabrina Mucig was thriving in the US when she left behind a path to a green card, packed up her young family, and moved to Japan with Colgate-Palmolive.Then she walked into meetings where everyone appeared to agree and yet nothing happened. Without speaking Japanese, Sabrina could no longer rely on the instincts that had made her successful. To lead, she had to stop taking words at face value and learn to read silence, seek out interpreters, and understand the culture beneath the conversation.The experience changed how she saw every organization she led afterwards. She understood that language barriers do not disappear when people speak the same language: they simply become harder to see, concealed by familiar words that in fact carry distinctly different meanings.The hardest part of leading change is not getting the message out. Rather, it’s bei ...