Future global manager experiences and leadership development

Global Managers

The world of business and communication is becoming increasingly global or "flat" as the new term emphasizes. It will be very probable that today's college graduates and recent managers in organizations will be traveling or living in other countries, or at least working with other cultural groups in the United States or for short-term assignments out of the country. Ethical standards are now very important to companies, and they will continue to be in the future. Managers will be facing more challenges, because they will not only be dealing with the values and ethics of the United States, but other countries as well that may or may not differ.

In an interview, Nitish Jain, President, S.P. Jain Centre of Management, spoke on management education in India and global recruitment trends. When asked about the conflicts that will face global managers, he said, "The 'global workplace' is a mindset more than anything.... One can become a global manager by picking up the best of ethics and practices benefiting business. For instance, Indians are good at out-of-the-box thinking, very resourceful but careless and error prone. Americans and Europeans on the other hand are meticulous even though they take more time to get trained. One needs to balance these traits and do a good job." This is the first thing that a manager must remember: he/she must leave ethnocentric thoughts behind and remember that each culture has something to offer to the equation.