Glocal

Being a glocalist requires thinking globally while acting locally, with the goal of harnessing cross-boundary collaboration and innovation. 

The internet and collaborative platforms and tools flatten the world to a certain degree, there's transparency in the digital era of the twenty-first century. But there are still numerous barriers and obstacles that generate or even enlarge gaps between local communities, organizations, and global societies in a more volatile, uncertain, ambiguous, and globally distributed world.

There are differences between global leadership and local leadership. It's always important to bridge the gaps to amplify leadership influence.  

Global Leadership: Focus on the big picture and long-term vision across multiple countries/regions; It requires cultural intelligence and sensitivity to diverse perspectives; it deals with complex, ambiguous situations across borders. It emphasizes agility and flexibility in different contexts. It needs to balance global consistency with local customization It involves managing remote/virtual teams across time zones. It requires an understanding of global markets, trends, and geopolitics

Local Leadership: It requires a deep understanding of local culture, customs, and business practices; it usually deals with concrete issues in a familiar context; it emphasizes efficiency and results in a known environment; it can tailor approaches specifically to local needs; it typically manages co-located teams

Key Differences of global vs. local leadership:

-Scope: Global is broad and diverse, local is usually narrow and tactical. 

Complexity: Global deals with more ambiguity and diversity; local needs to understand local rules and cultures.

-Skills: Global needs cross-cultural competence, local needs local expertise

-Decision making: Global balances multiple cultural perspectives, local optimizes for familiar circumstances. Global manages diverse and dispersed stakeholders, local has specific group networks

The most effective approach often involves balancing global and local perspectives - what some call "glocal" leadership. Being an effective global leader needs high levels of cultural flexibility with open-minded perspectives, complex global and intercultural responsibilities, and interdisciplinary expertise. Being a glocalist requires thinking globally while acting locally, with the goal of harnessing cross-boundary collaboration and innovation. 

Posted in: Future of Leadership,GAPs,Global Perspective,Hybrid