Leadership (week 10)

Leadership in leader perspective.

It is said that the greatest competitive advantage global companies in 21st century can have is its effective global leaders. It is necessary
for a successful leader is to have global mindset. A global mindset leader has 3 major qualities. First of all, intellectual capital, a global
leader need to have have a general knowledge and capacity to learn, including global business savvy, cognitive complexity, and
cosmopolitan outlooks. Chalon in case Leading across culture at Michelin seems to have been building strong knowledge capital. He
has experiences working in different departments in different cities and countries such as London in the UK, then Netherland, France,
and now North America. His successes in global business shows a strong global business savvy in which he mastered at companies
global operations, global customer behaviours, and the competitors. His structured plans and his demanding personality shows his
competitive ability in cognitive complexity to piecing things together without being paralysed.

Secondly, psychological capital, that is the receptiveness to new ideas and experience. The main attributes include the passion for
diversity which is the passion to know other part of world, learn other cultures, countries; the thirst for adventure is the appreciation for
the uncertain events and opportunity that allow them to challenge themselves and self-assurance is the self-confidence. Chalon was
fluent in four languages, he has experience living in different countries as well as his enjoy to work with colleagues from different
countries. They all show his passion for diversify. Moreover, his accepting different positions with challenges including one from
Michelin shows his thirst for adventures. We can all see his confidence in his experience as well as management and leading skills.

Lastly, global needs social capital which is the ability to build trusting relationships with and among people who are different from you
including intercultural empathy, interpersonal impact and diplomacy. Chalon seems to fail this social capital in his North Korea
assignment, or he has been failing it the whole time but he chose to ignore it. The first social capital attribute is intercultural empathy
which is the ability to engage and connect emotionally with people from other part of the world. It may due to the high power distant
France people hold compare to much lower one the US people have, Chalon feel it inappropriate to share personal things at workplace.
The co-workers find it difficult to communicate with Chalon as well as find him distant or cold. The second attribute is interpersonal
impact which referring to the ability to build trusting relationship with people who are culturally different from you. His frequently
walking around the office and talking informally to his colleagues allows him to excuse for his not socially associate/interact with his
team. However, the workers may think that he is just supervising on them. Hence, it is hard for the team to build close relationship, or
find it easy to approach their manager. The last attribute is diplomacy referring to listen to what is said and what is not said, and ease the
conversation with people who are different from you. His demanding management style may push too much pressure on the team. He
keeps pushing them to get the target and even they hit their target, he will not show that his pleased because he want to push them
further. He needs to be more emotional sensitivity, social flexible and pay more interpersonal engagement with the team.It is important
for leader to have a global mindset as it allow them to realize that there are differences in cultures and the only way to managing with
different people from different cultures is to accept, adapt and respect people.

In another theory called Global competencies, there are 5 levels of skills that a leader needs. In the first level, a leader need global
knowledge, which is the knowledge of both a business and cultural nature. Business knowledge consists of general understanding of how
global business operate and function. Cultural knowledge includes general understanding of how cultures differ and understand the
norms, values, rituals and behaviour within specific cultures. The second level is threshold traits including stable personality traits of
integrity, humility, inquisitiveness and resilience. Third level is about attitude and orientation presented by the notion of global mindset.
A global mindset makes it possible for leaders to see beyond their own culture. Fourth level is about interpersonal skills. Leaders need to
have mindful communication, create and build trust and be able to manage multicultural team. The first 3 levels of competency only
become valuable when they are converted into actions in level 4. And lastly, system skills are fifth level. These are Meta skills that
concern about their ability to adapt to cultural differences and to leverage them for competitive advantages.

Leadership in beholders perspective

In a different view, leaders need to be aware how the community they are working at see a leader. There are 3 global leadership models:
universal approach, normative approach and contingency approach. The universal approach see leadership as a generalizable behaviour
regardless of where it is exercised. The underlying belief is that leadership traits and processes are relatively constant across culture. The
normative approach focus on enduring personal skulls and abilities that are thought to characterize effective global manager. It is
assumed that certain sets of leader traits and abilities are common to all managers regardless of where they are working. The contingency
approach assume that there are no universals in describing effective leadership. The focus is on the leader as a local manager, not a
global one, and it is assumed that their characteristic for success will vary with the situation.

In individualistic societies, leadership refer to a single person who guides and directs the actions of others. In collectivistic society,
leadership is more closely aligned with group endeavours. In a global context, it can be highly instructive for managers facing global
assignments to think about how they conceptualize leadership and managing people. They should go the extra mile to understand the
uniqueness of the local environment and work to accommodate cultural differences where they exists.
Using the GLOBE project to go deeper understand on culturally contingent beliefs regarding to effective leadership style. It includes
Charisma, Team, Self projective, Participative, humane and autonomous. The USA people prefer leadership who are charismatic
(visionary, an inspiration to subordinates and performance oriented), team- oriented (integrative, collaborative toward the team),
participative (engage with team and encourage subordinate to take responsibility) and human (compassionate to the team).