Three Core Competencies in Global Mindset

At the age of digitalization, ‘being who you really are as a global leader’ is more critical than ever.

The business world has become hyperconnected and interdependent. Global leaders of the future sense, feel, read, imagine, and intuit possibilities on the journey of digital transformation. Global leaders articulate strategic visions, interactive designs, and navigating directions where networks of management informally communicate the possibility of generative behavior changes in structure, patterns, and processes.

With unprecedented digital technology advances, the knowledge brainstorming is happening in real-time with people and plays spontaneous networks of human and business operational concerns. Organizations not only need good managers to take care of today’s business; but also have to grow the world-class leaders with a global mindset to leapfrog their companies for long-term prosperity. What are the core competencies in a global mindset?

Self-awareness: At the age of digitalization, ‘being who you really are as a global leader’ is more critical than ever, being authentic is a sort of prerequisite of global leadership because your digital footprint is omnipresent, the working life is converging with personal life, you have to be real and true to yourself and others. This will translate and distill into believability throughout your entire organization and beyond. Being authentic means to be original, positive, progressive, courageous, conscious, creative and curious, and to adopt mindsets of critical thinking, challenging convention, maximizing diversity and being willing to experiment, as a basis for then being able to think differently, independently, and globally. You will be seen as a digital professional and leader who can be trusted not just by your coworkers but also by your customers or clients. Global leadership is shifting toward grooming historic digital leadership skills embodying effective communication in networks of global conversations that inspire creativity in diverse domains of expertise.

Inquisitiveness: The diversity of thoughts, character, cognitive difference, skills, style, and generation account for the majority of our difference for today's digital workforce. Global leaders are inquisitive to ask many good questions. The good question is usually open and thought-provoking. The good question brings a multifaceted perspective with cultural intelligence. People are gregarious by nature, they tend to organize themselves and it gives rise to a collective set of attitudes, beliefs, educational systems, notions of time and space, society structures, ways of doing business, etc. These items are the elements of a culture (regional, national, continental, age, ethnic background, religious beliefs, the list goes on and on). Hence, global leadership certainly has to take into account cultural intelligence and how that affects things: how you interact with one another, how you manage, and what’s your thinking process and how you make a decision; from cognitive intelligence about others - as well as themselves! A global leader needs to be able to facilitate and orchestrate these differences, values, cultures, and gain a profound understanding of the business ecosystem.

Adaptability: Global leaders manage people across functional and broad geographic boundaries. In one way 'global leadership' is synonymous with leading virtual teams across the globe. They must be comfortable leading remote teams, multiplexing tasks, and time zones, communicating, and collaborating in a way that keeps everyone focused and connected in spite of the distances. While there are many components of global leadership, one of the most important ones is the ability to adapt, model and influence change. We live in a world where change is the norm and if we don't embrace it, accept it, roll with it, or make it happen, we're not going to be successful. The adaptable global leaders are good at shifting from one leadership style to another, but keep the leadership substance on checking; they are good at identifying and articulating paradigm shifts, setting trend, not fad; and they are good at molding leaders that go out and promote changes in people's mindsets and paradigms and make influence through vision and insight.

Cultivating digital leaders with the global mind is not just simply a horizontal expansion of management responsibility, look around to find out how to bring leaders closer to integrity and authenticity. They are crucial for global leadership. They bring courage, which is lacking so much so often, they bring determination to make things happen, they bring inspiration when you trust what you feel to decide what to do, and they bring the capability to lead the hyperconnected world effectively.

Posted in: Digitalization,Future of Leadership,Global Perspective,Mindshift