Global Leadership Challenges and Competencies

This assignment delves into the multifaceted nature of global leadership, emphasizing the pressures exerted by both societal external environments and organizational internal cultures. It examines Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory and highlights key competencies such as social intelligence, emotional intelligence, perspective-taking abilities, and communication skills. The document concludes by emphasizing the growing importance of technical expertise, innovation, and virtual team management in shaping successful global leadership strategies for the future.

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Analysis of Global Leadership Competencies

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Impact of Societal and Internal Organizational Culture on Leadership..........................................3
Selected Set of Cultural Competencies for a Global Leader...........................................................4
Specific Profile of Global Leadership.........................................................................................5
Characteristics and Effectiveness of these Cultural Competencies in the Global Context:............6
Comparison of Current and Future Leadership Competencies........................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
In this diversified business world, when the business firms operate in the global markets,
they have to deal with a wide range of cross cultural differences. In the area of management,
leadership is one of the most crucial and important themes. Hanges, Aiken, Park and Su (2016, p.
65), mentioned that the idea of leadership in an organization can be explained as the abilities and
skills of individuals to influence the behavior of others to contributes in the success of the
organization. According to Reilly and Karounos (2009, p. 1), leaders of the global business
organizations have to operate in the cross cultural business environment and their styles of
leading people and business influences with a wide range of factors including internal
organizational and societal factors. This piece of paper presents a critical evaluation on the
impact of societal and internal organizational culture on leadership. Along with this, a selected
set of cultural competencies that a global leader should have to become successful and effective
in the cross cultural environment are discussed.
Impact of Societal and Internal Organizational Culture on Leadership
In the global environment, the leadership styles of individuals are affected by several internal
and external environmental factors. The societal cultural can be explained as the values and
beliefs accepted by the social and community people, whereas the organizational culture is
shaped by the norms and values defined by organizational people for the management of a
diversified culture people (Emmerling and Boyatzis, 2012, p. 5). For all the business leaders
impact of social and organizational culture is crucial for them to shape their leadership style. The
cultural environment of Westerns countries like America, United Kingdom and Europe is

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entirely different from the Asian countries such as Japan, India, China, thus, leaders have to
adopt their leadership styles according to the culture of the society. For example, in the United
Kingdom, the relationship between superior and subordinate is close and they have little power
distance in comparison to Japan (Boley, Maruyama & Woosnam, 2015, p. 119). Thus, it is
considerable for the leaders to follow a strict hierarchy process to influence the followers in
Japanese culture.
At the same time, different cultural factors in the society such as individualism and collectivism
nature, risks taking behavior and long term orientation, femininity and so on influences the
leader behavior and style of leading people at a high extent. In an individualistic social culture,
the leaders have to ensure that they would assign responsibilities and give credit to individual
employees to manage high productivity and performance (Dartey-Baah, 2013, p. 41).
On the other hand, internal organizational culture also has an impact on global leadership in
terms of creating a diversified culture, leading the employees in a participative approaches and
providing them a happy and pleasant working and growing environment for their welfare and
healthy development. For example, if the organization is facing an unpredictable change, leaders
have to follow a situational style and focus on managing change resistance (Mohelska and
Sokolova, 2015, p. 1012). In a cross cultural environment, effective communication, ethical and
religious values and organizational and social norms are highly important to improve the
performance of a leader.
Selected Set of Cultural Competencies for a Global Leader
To become a successful global leader, an individual leader should have some critical
competencies and skills, so that the leader would be able to manage societal and organizational

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culture. In this set of cultural competencies, social intelligence and emotional intelligence are
one of the most critical competencies (Emmerling and Boyatzis, 2012, p. 9). It is also imperative
for the leader to value culture flexibility and differences at the time of dealing in a cross cultural
environment. Along with this, ability to deal with multiple perspectives and ambiguity, frame
shifting and emotionally resilient are some unique competencies to become a successful global
leader (Hanges, Aiken, Park and Su, 2016, p. 69).
Specific Profile of Global Leadership
Based on the above discussed competencies, a specific profile of global leadership should
have 11 skills and abilities, which are as follows:
 An in-depth self awareness
 Strategic thinking from global perspective
 Dynamic and flexible personality
 Well spoken
 Effective negotiation skills
 Self Confidence
 Emotional empathy
 Sensitive to social values
 Lifelong curiosity
 Risk taking behavior
 Patiently impatient

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Characteristics and Effectiveness of these Cultural Competencies in the
Global Context:
All of the defined cultural competencies have different characteristics and attributes, which
improves the capabilities of leaders to cope with the diversified global environment. A social
intelligence competency has characteristics of identifying, recognize and use of social
information and emotions of other at the right place and right time. It facilitates the leaders to
lead effective cause and create a social bond with the employees to improve their performances
(Emmerling and Boyatzis, 2012, p. 7). Further, the competency of emotional intelligence also
has unique characteristics of recognizing information about the individual, who lead success
causes. This enables the leaders to develop an emotional bond with the followers (Reilly and
Karounos, 2009, p. 3). In addition, both of these competencies have attributes of giving value to
the cultural flexibility. The competency of multiple perspectives and ambiguity has features of
understanding diversified perception of the employees and respond them with high patience and
using problem solving skills, whereas frame shifting is a characteristic of a leader, which
supports him to adopt different leadership model and style to lead the followers in a different
culture (Caligiuri and Tarique, 2012, p. 612).
All of these competencies are highly effective for the individuals to become a successful global
leader. By developing all of these competencies, the leader would be able to understand the
cultural differences and how these differences can be managed by developing a strong social and
emotional relationship with the followers. It is considerable to deal with ambiguity available in
the global environment, to influence all the employees in a positive manner. In order to become a
global leader, an individual should have multiple perspectives to solve a problem and focus on
the flexible culture requirement rather than sticking on a single cultural perspective (Asree, Zain

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and Razalli, 2010, p. 530). All of these competencies are also beneficial for the global leader to
handle the competitive pressure and manage interpersonal relationship in the global environment
with culturally diversified business experts and workforce (Hanges, Aiken, Park and Su, 2016, p.
67).
Comparison of Current and Future Leadership Competencies
In the 21st century, above discussed leadership characteristics and skills are highly effective for
the individuals to handle a highly unpredictable and competitive global business environment
and manage changing external societal and internal organizational environment. At the same
time, as the trend is changing and introduction of new modern business practices, high
dependency on the wireless information technologies and introduction of e-commerce business
platform, it is considerable for the business leader to develop some new and innovative
competencies. From the cultural perspective, along with the current discussed competencies in
the future, the leader should also focus on technical competencies and abilities to link the
diversified culture with technology.
The leader should have a multiple perspective of the development of culture through wireless
technologies and abilities to handle virtual teams (Hyejung, Jungi and Jung, 2013, p. 4).
Accountability and responsibility along with followership and technical competencies are
essential for the future leaders in the global economy. It is also important for the leaders to be
open minded and give independence to the followers to do their work with their own skills and
knowledge and do not interfere in their activities according to the changing social trends. Here,
tolerance, empathic and risk taking behavior will help the leaders to handle a most advanced
workforce generation (Caligiuri and Tarique, 2012, p. 620). In the coming future, along with

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high value of emotions, managing rewards and appraisals for their hard work is more important.
Producing innovation, taking risk and leading change will be the most required competencies in
the coming future for the leaders.
Conclusion
Thus, on the basis of the above discussion, it can be concluded that a global leader have to
handle a pressure of both societal external environment and organizational internal environment.
As the societal culture environment is created with different factors and dimension, the leader
have to understand all of these difference to lead a culturally diversified workforce. Similarly, in
the company, defining organizational culture, its policies and practices and working according to
the internal culture pattern is also important for the leader to lead a diversified workforce in a
right direction. For a global leader, some essential competencies are social intelligence,
emotional intelligence, abilities of understanding multiple perspective and handling ambiguity,
frame shifter, communication and so on. A successful global leader always promotes diversified
view points and tries to create social and emotional balance among the employees. In the
coming future, a global leader should focus on technical competencies and innovation to and
technical business platform and virtual teams.

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References
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organizational culture on responsiveness and performance of firms’, International
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Caligiuri, P. and Tarique, I. (2012) ‘Dynamic cross-cultural competencies and global leadership
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Dartey-Baah, K. (2013) ‘The Cultural Approach to the Management of the International Human
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Emmerling, R.J. and Boyatzis, R.E. (2012) ‘Emotional and social intelligence competencies:
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Hanges, P.J., Aiken, J.R., Park, J. and Su, J. (2016) ‘Cross-cultural leadership: leading around
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Hyejung, L., Jungi, P. and Jung, W.L. (2013) ‘Role of Leadership Competencies and Team
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Mohelska, H. and Sokolova, M. (2015) ‘Organisational Culture and Leadership – Joint Vessels?’
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