Global Leaders

Global leaders

Many executives wrongly believe that the leadership skills, knowledge, and experience they have accumulated should be enough to ensure that they thrive globally. They assume that what worked at home will work abroad.  Global leadership roles are far more demanding and more complex than a local or regional role because it involves connecting people from diverse cultures to a bigger purpose. Success in such a role requires a healthy degree of self-awareness as well as respect for others who live in different political, economic, social and linguistic systems.

Early on in their new role, the global leader needs to work out what constitutes good management and leadership in this new context, what priorities he/she should tackle first, and how they can effectively lead others who are different, who have different perspectives and values.

This requires four keys to success in such a role.

• Develop a Global Mindset as a leader which means valuing diversity and the different ways people communicate. It requires leaders to think in an interconnected way.
• It requires leaders to see cultural differences and similarities as neither positive or negative, just different.
• The Global Leader needs to be curious and open to learning new ways of seeing things and be prepared to challenge world views when necessary.
• They need to develop an emotionally intelligent leadership style which is culturally sensitive to other peoples’ perspectives, being courageous as well as humble.

We help global leaders

• Understand their own unconscious biases and adapt to different cultures and their values as well as how to read people well.
• Become more self-aware, and increase their emotional intelligence.
• Reflect on their new cultural contexts and see how previously successful strategies may not always work in a global context and what they need to flex now.
• Plan how to communicate with people of different cultures  to have the best possible impact.
• Create a regular dialogue with their global teams in a way that engages and includes all.
• Explore how to motivate people from different cultures as well as helping them find a healthy balance between the perspectives of headquarters and those in the field across the world.

We are objective, independent observers who leaders can turn to when trying to understand and deal with the complexity and cultural nuances of their role.

Our work with global leaders

Over the last twenty years, we have travelled extensively to work with our clients from over 50 different countries including France, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Singapore, Finland, Denmark, Indonesia, Taiwan, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Russia, USA, China, South America, South Africa, India, Australia and Canada. Our own directors are British and Irish nationals.

We also have a wide range of cross cultural tools that help our clients understand how to achieve results as they build greater levels of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion in their teams.

Recent global assignments have included:

• Coaching a senior IT team in Eastern Europe to improve their collaboration and build bench strength below them across three continents
• Coaching a Chinese born high potential transitioning into a highly visible leadership role leading Western based teams
• Coaching a senior American leader in leading transformation through senior teams in Europe
• Uniting a senior leadership team across Europe leading twenty different nationalities
• Supporting a global leader responsible for Indian, Chinese, Thai, Singapore and Japanese teams
• Coaching a global team of scientists from Italy, China, Holland, Israel and USA developing a breakthrough innovation
• Coaching a senior Australian leader as she accelerated a change programme through her global team
• Coaching a senior team as two senior teams merge from two different continents