National Language and its Importance for Worldly Leadership

Abstract

A worldly individual is most commonly defined as somebody who is devoted to the temporal world and experienced in human affairs (Gosling and Mintzberg, 2003). Expanding on this, one could say that a worldly individual is aware of not only his/her own but also others’ belief sets, values and is able to interpret and understand different behaviours and attitudes. Within a world where especially large companies operate on a global basis, one may expect or rather hope to find increasing numbers of worldly individuals working at various hierarchical levels in such organizations. The existence of, and importance associated with, multifunctional and multicultural/national teams within organizations can almost be seen as a contextual factor enforcing the gathering of a wide range of experience in world and human affairs. For example, Gosling and Mintzberg (2003) report on the importance of a worldly mindset and its development within Shell, and research by the author of this aspect with regard to leadership in the German chemical industry has shown that it has become a prerequisite for senior leadership positions to have gathered experience as an expatriate manager in a number of other countries.