Global Leadership, Culture & Mythology

Global Leadership, Culture & Mythology

What Is Global Leadership?

• Definition: Global leadership is conceptualized as a process reflecting how an individual engages in and fulfills global roles and responsibilities. (Mendenhall, M. E., Reiche, B. S., Bird, A., & Osland, J. S., 2012)

• Key Components: This process includes:

  • Sense-making.

  • The nature and quality of relationships a leader holds with people in a global context.

  • The mechanisms through which a leader exerts influence.

Essential Skills for Global Leaders

• All global leaders, and by extension, leaders in multicultural environments, must possess the following skills (Gregersen, Morrison & Black, 1998-):

  • Uncompromising integrity.

  • Unbridled inquisitiveness.

  • Personal character traits that enable emotionally connecting with individuals from diverse backgrounds.

  • Ability to handle duality: Navigating between the need for additional information and the imperative to act in uncertainty.

  • Business and organizational savvy.

Culture Defined

• Core Characteristics: Culture encompasses:

  • Learned beliefs, values, rules, norms, symbols, and traditions that are common to a group of people.

  • Shared qualities of a group that make them unique.

  • The way of life, customs, and scripts of a group of people.

Formation of Cultural Patterns, Norms, & Thoughts

• Resistance to Change: Even when aware that other cultures are equally valid or beneficial, individuals often find it difficult to replace their ingrained cultural habits with new alternatives.

• Self-Reference Criterion: There is a tendency to rely exclusively on a