Global Leadership Skills

Global Leadership stands for the cross cultural Leadership abilities. Global
Leadership skill means ability to lead the audience of different nationalities, or performing
Leadership tasks in verity of countries. As a formal definition of Global Leadership, we can
say. “The ability to influence the people, who are dissimilar to the leader and are from
different cultural backgrounds, is called Global Leadership”

If we come with an example of a global leader, the name of Nelson Mandela come in
front. He was able enough to influence the diverse population of South Africa and to
eliminate the social injustice from the society. Not only South Africa, but the whole
American part of the world attended the influence of his thoughts and now, Mandela is
known as a truly global leader. His contribution to the world throughout his 67 years life
brought him to The Nobel Peace Prize.

The global Leadership includes all the concepts/roles of a good leader, but with more
sensitivity. A global leader, being a leader of diverse audience, is supposed to me a
multicultural approach person, with a sense of belief and faith of various places, religions,
nations and communities.

Leadership and Global Leadership

Distinguishing the Global Leadership Skills from Leadership Skills is an impossible

task, as the Global Skills have been extension of the Leadership Skills. Still, Global
Leadership Skills have been an advanced level of the Leadership. In the sonario of Multi-
National Corporations, The importance of Global Leadership Skills has been increased much.
A leader of an MNC needs to lead the global workforce, to maintain the loyalty for the
organization, to maintain productivity, increase the efficiency to adopt innovation among the
diverse workforce. Thus, Behavioral Complexity becomes an important part of the
Global Leadership. Taking the example of an organization, Microsoft, where people from
almost every part of the world are working, we shall see the ability of the Leaders of the
organization. Mr. Bill Gates, the Leader of the organization, is not only supposed to manage
the organization, but to lead its people, who are diverse, different and the best assets of the
organization.

A global Leader is supposed to take care of followings:-

1. A very good citizenship behavior, so that the workforce never set priorities for the
domestic culture over the organizational culture.

2. Teamwork between the workforce, to maintain the fraternity among them, so that they
may work together and may attain the optimum efficiency and effectiveness.

3. Intrinsic motivation of the workforce, so that the workforce can be kept on learning
innovative as a part of organizational culture.

4. Learning oriented tasks, which may work as another motivator, with which,
workforce, may feel that they are contributing something to the society.

5. Culturally Adventurous assignments, which will make the workforce known to other
cultures and make learning about the colleagues.

Global Leadership and Global Management

The culture of Multinational Corporations is based on the cross-national workforce,

cross-national operations, cross-national markets, cross-national dealings and thus, cross-
national Leadership. A CEO of a multinational organization is supposed to be a Global
Leader for this organization. He is supposed to earn a belief in the heart of his workforce that
he is the true representative of them. Thus, he must be known to the cultures of his
workforce. Thus, being a Global Explorer becomes another essential virtue of a Global
Leader. Exploration of the various cultures raises a passion for the native culture and thus,
one become aggressive to know and mix with the other cultures as well as his native one.

A global leader should be able to get familiar with alien environment and workplaces,
so that he may be able to work with his workforce, located anywhere in the world. Gandhi ji
was working in South Africa and in India, both of the places. Both the places have different
kind of environment, workings, different people, believes, emotions and requirements. Still,
he was accepted as a Public Leader at both of the places. This is the kind of ability; a leader
needs to have to become a global leader. He should be able to adopt unfamiliar roles as well,
so that the sense of belongingness should be maintained in his workforce. Thus, being
Contextual Chameleon becomes an important skill for a global Leader.

A global Leader should be adoptable enough for his workforce. He should consider all
his people, without any partial emotions, equally adoptable in the organization. This virtue
has been taken from Dutch roles of Management, as the Dutch managers have earned name
for being flexible and adoptable for the workforce. This term is called by the name of
Handing.

People of the global organizations are always from various cultures. Thus they are
always different for their emotions also. Thus, they need a leader, who is enough intelligent
emotionally, to get their feelings and care for those. Thus, Emotional Intelligence becomes
an important and required skill for a global Leader.

I such organizations, each person may have a different set of skills, different ways of
performing tasks and ways to respond to a particular problem. Thus, a global Leader should
have tolerance for ambiguity for his people.

An important skill for a global leader is being Linguistic. A person, who speaks one’s
mother tong, seems to be closer than somebody other. Similarly, a leader, knowing languages
of his people may be closer to them.

Conclusion

Thus, we see that a leader needs many skills beyond a leader, to be accepted as a
Global Leader. Till the time, a leader is not able to represent the public of various cultures,
nationalities and religions; he may not be accepted as a global leader. And those, who have
earned their name as Global Leaders, are the modals for the world, to learn and follow their
skills.