Leading a company into the global marketplace requires many business skills, among them, building partnerships, managing change, working well with other cultures, understanding how to motivate people and more. Author Stephen Cohen asserts that the most important attribute for a global leader is having a "global mindset"; of course that concept is important, but this paper asserts it is not the most important of the skills and attributes a global leader must have.
Global Leadership
While it is certainly important for a global leader to have what Stephen L. Cohen refers to as a "global mindset" -- and he refers to a "global mindset" as the most important attribute -- this paper argues that a global mindset is but one of the pivotal leadership traits that an executive needs in the global marketplace in 2013. What Cohen alludes to as a global mindset is an impressive bit of scholarship and creative business thinking -- and there is no doubt he has done the homework necessary to justify his assertions. However, there are skills and talents that are just as important -- if not more important -- in terms of operating a profitable business overseas. Those equally -- or more -- important skills and talents will be presented in this paper.
Effective Global Leadership -- Cohen's Assertions
The scholarly article by Stephen L. Cohen identifies five leadership skills that he believes must be linked to companies that have expanded their market and production overseas. Those are: thinking globally; appreciating cultural diversity; developing technological savvy; building partnerships and alliances; and sharing leadership (Cohen, 2010, 6). Clearly those five skills are vital in any organization endeavoring to expand into global markets. However, they are also skills that match up well with any modern company anywhere -- in Boston, Bangkok, or Los Angeles. Successful companies will incorporate those skills and strategies; although they fit well in the international business milieu, they are not uniquely designed for globalization.
Cohen (pp. 6-8) develops his point by fully explaining what he means by global mindset and goes to the point of listing the steps which a leader needs to take in order to develop the level of leadership required of a global executive (examination; education; experience; and exposure). Each one of those four development steps is valuable; and he is correct that being educated about cultures in countries the company plans to expand into is necessary. He is also on the mark when he mentions the value of living abroad; of learning foreign languages (albeit learning a foreign is not absolutely necessary for a global leader); and of understanding and respecting cultural values in other countries. But he seems self-congratulatory (as though he has come up with a slogan) and he reaches a point of near giddiness in his conclusion ("…global mindset can be the new competitive advantage in the marketplace, so a global corporation needs a high stock of global mindset!") which, for this writer, takes away some of the merit of his narrative.
Global Leadership -- Other Perspectives
Tineke Cappellen and colleague interviewed 45 global managers in their research effort and the authors learned that "…operational skills and general business understanding" were primarily the competencies required to run a successful business -- including businesses that are established overseas (Cappellen, et al., 2007, 514). The authors identify three key career competencies and publish the responses to those competencies by the 45 global managers. To wit, the respondents reflected that "knowing-how competencies" are skills that are valuable because they are "flexible and portable across culturally diverse settings"; in other words, these skills are not uniquely applied to a global mindset (Cappellen, 528).
When querying managers about the "knowing-why" competencies needed -- competencies that some researchers view as the most important -- the majority of managers indicated they are attracted to a global managerial position because "…of the values that it represents," including: a) international exposure; b) professional identification; and c) being at the "…center of decision making" (Cappellen, 531). Having a so-called "global mindset" did not enter into the responses.
That having been said, in the journal Leadership Excellence the authors take issue with the focus on competencies alone; instead, they assert that leaders are "…forced by the fires of experience"; leadership development (whether for global expansion or local markets) should zero in on "results, not competencies" because executives become adept at challenges "…through experiences" (McCall, et al., 2007). That point is appropriate because a global leader should (and often does) acquire experience by doing his or her job in more than one venue.
An article in the Journal for Quality & Participation references a recent study with 202 "…high-potential leaders from around the world"; those global leaders were asked to describe how the "ideal leader of the future" would be different from past leaders (Hopen, 2020). The answer: the ideal leader of the future needs to be competent at "…building partnerships inside and outside the organization" (Hopen, 8). Hence, whether the business leader is heading up a global venture or managing a grocery store chain in Alabama, the partnerships he or she is able to build and sustain will have a lot to do with the company's success in that particular market. Nowhere in that survey was a "global mindset" presented; success is about the competencies previously mentioned in this paper and it is about the partnerships that are developed.
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