Chief Learning Officer - June 2008 - (Page 41) FIGURE 1: CHARACTERISTICS OF GLOBAL LEADERS KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS • Capacity: Acquisition of a breadth of new ideas and concepts on systems, markets, political and socioeconomic issues. • Complexity: Behavioral repertoire — a broad set of behaviors to call on, as well as what INTELLECT are often called competencies or skills (what you know how to do). • Capacity: IQ. • Cognitive Complexity: • Differentiation (number of constructs). • Integration (different ways you put them together). PSYCHOLOGY (PERSONALITY/STYLE) • Open-minded and nonjudgmental (cosmopolitanism). • Inquisitive: Learning orientation. • Self-aware. • Tolerance for ambiguity. • Can establish trust (proactive relationships) with those different from oneself. • Expert intuition: The integration of your experience over time in a unique way, applied to a particular challenge (what you know). basics as law, local context, crisis management, safety and security but explicitly address “leading in ambiguity” and the issues and opportunities around leading people different from oneself. Medtronic, a leader in medical technology headquartered in Minneapolis and doing business in 120 countries, found itself “talking global but acting like an international firm,” and did something about it. But what is global mindset and how can senior learning professionals establish it in their leadership pipelines, given the certainty that the demand for global leaders will continue to outstrip the supply? How Great Global Leaders Think Global leadership starts with understanding and insight across any given country’s society: its social structures, institutions and demographics. This understanding must extend to business-relevant issues such as legal, regulatory and economic structures. “Global leadership,” by definition, involves influence of the leader over those who are very different: people who, from their cultural background to their view of the world, will not have the same common experiences, legal frameworks, social structures or even the same views on the corporation’s role in society. At the same time, global leadership involves more than leading in just two or three countries. When we talk about global leadership, we mean the process of leading across borders where one encounters all the wonderful complexity of cultural, social, legal, regulatory and economic systems. We define it as the process of influencing individuals, groups and organizations — inside and outside the boundaries of the global organization — that represent diverse cultural, political and institutional systems to contribute toward the achievement of the global organization’s goals. Underlying this definition are two important pillars: 1. Global leadership is a process, not a single competency added to a domestic leader’s skills portfolio. Chief Learning Officer • June 2008 • www.clomedia.com 41 http://www.clomedia.com
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