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The Challenges of Global Leadership

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Abstract

Global leadership is particularly challenging for companies because differences in leadership expectations and management practices across cultures are not always apparent; communicating, motivating, and managing are more difficult due to language, geography, and cultural barriers; monitoring and tracking represent significant challenges due to distance; cultural differences are sometimes used as a rationalization for performance issues or resistance to change; complex organization designs such as matrix and network structures can complicate reporting relationships and accountabilities; influence without authority is a competency that takes effort and skill; and the opportunity costs are not always visible to corporate headquarters. One area where successful global leaders can make a difference is in becoming aware of and adapting their behavior when engaging in cross-cultural interactions: greeting someone, establishing rapport; leading a team; conducting a meeting or participating in a meeting; providing instructions, guidance, coaching, or teaching; resolving disagreement and conflicts; negotiating; motivating others; and giving and receiving feedback. Henson offers a simple approach to help global leaders become effective in these cross-cultural encounters.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    From IBM Global Business Services white paper “Developing Global Leadership” (2010).

  2. 2.

    “How to Make Sure Volvo Is Starting a Trend,” in the Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2015.

  3. 3.

    Laura Stevens, “Borders Matter Less and Less in E-Commerce,” The Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2015.

  4. 4.

    One of the first books on matrix management is Matrix by Stanley Davis and Paul Lawrence (1977).

  5. 5.

    Ben Worthen, “Cisco CEO John Chambers’s Big Management Experiment,” The Wall Street Journal, August 5, 2009.

  6. 6.

    Saabira Chaudhuri, “MBK Partners Clinches Deal for Tesco’s Korean Operations,” The Wall Street Journal, September 8, 2015.

  7. 7.

    From “Demystifying the Market for Executive Talent in Asia”: http://www.russellreynolds.com/sites/default/files/demystifying_the_market_for_executive_talent_in_asia.pdf

  8. 8.

    “Do We Hug? Kiss? Shake Hands?” in the Financial Times, September 22, 2013.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rutgers Business School, Newark, NJ, USA

    Ramon Henson

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  1. Ramon Henson
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Henson, R. (2016). The Challenges of Global Leadership. In: Successful Global Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58990-3_5

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