Global Leadership v. “Ordinary” Leadership

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denying our differences, then once again we will fail.” (Sampson, 2008, p. 158) That is consistent with the message of leadership research operating with a dialogical understanding of cooperation (Sampson, 2008) or a relational perspective (Chen & Miller, 2011).

So, to summarize this review of central perspectives on global leadership in extant literature, one can conclude that global leadership skills should not only be defined as intercultural skills. Globality must be seen as a special context that is greater, or at least something other, than, the sum of the various cultures involved. Further, it does not only affect leaders who are posted overseas. On the contrary, the global leader is characterized by his/her way of thinking. The leader, who is posted overseas, is defined by his/her geographical location (Pucik, 2006, p. 88).

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interaction with others.” Leadership exists, emerges and is practiced in a variety of forums:

- Individual leader behavior (“I”)

- Leader behavior in an immediate environment, group-dynamic leadership (“we”) - The leadership process in the form of connected leadership environments (“all of us”)

Therefore, leader behavior, locally and globally, is both a single person’s accomplishments and a social process, which together create leadership. The pertinence of seeing leadership as a team effort and

collective endeavour is underlined by the fact that self-leadership (Pedersen & Kristensen, 2013; Kürstein, 2010; Kristensen, 2011) and other forms of distributed leadership (HBR IdeaCast, 2011) are on the rise as is leadership in teams (Pitcher, 1997; Thomas, Bellin, Jules & Lynton, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c). Furthermore, leadership is contingent upon followership, and leadership may not only be carried out by persons with a managerial title or position, but also be performed by non-managerial employees. The different elements of leadership may have different weight at different levels and in different situations, and Holt Larsen complements Johnsen ‘s image, specifically in relation to middle management, by noting that their

“charge” is characterized by their need to: lead downward (staff), lead upward (be a part of the total management team, be an ambassador for strategy and values etc.), lead outward (customers, interest groups etc.), lead across (create cohesion, common ground, a sense of “us”) and lead inward (lead

him/herself) (Larsen, 2008). Whatever the hierarchical level, Johnsen underlines that the individual leader's leadership behavior can be regarded as a combination of goal-setting behavior, problem-solving behavior and language-creating/communicative behavior.

Globality does not alter the fact that these tasks are part and parcel of the leader's job description, if it is based on the definitions given above. The need for context-sensitive leadership, lean leadership,

performance management, leadership of teams etc. still exists. But globality can be regarded as a special context that influences, for example, how one can suitably implement language-creating behavior, lead upward or lead teams (Valentiner, 2011). Consequently, what characterizes global leadership is the fact that the leadership role must be carried out in a specific environment and under special conditions. The conduct of this particular leadership role can be a source of competitive advantage, if one is capable of dealing with global opportunities and threats better than one's competitors: “A company’s ability to develop transnational organizational capability and management mentality will be the key factor that separates the winners from the mere survivors in the emerging international environment.” (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1987, p. 7).

54 3.3 Global Mindset – a Global Meta-competence

The “global mindset” concept (e.g. Chatterjee, 2005; Gupta & Govindarajan, 2001; Javidan &

Teagarden, 2011) is a suggestion for how a company can ensure that human resources can cope with the global diversity and complexity, both culturally and strategically (Pucik, 2006). This focus should be seen as a result of the complexity and diversity of the global leadership context, as described above, and also of the fact that it has not been possible to identify a definite set of special, individual characteristics of a global leader, despite many attempts to do so. In relation to global leadership competences, global mindset represents a hybrid, which includes both the global leader's intercultural competence and his/her ability to navigate in a complex field – or, framed within the four global leadership domains presented previously, as a meta-competence encompassing a variety of global leadership roles and competences:

Figure 3.2: Global mindset as a hybrid global leadership meta-competence. Source: Author.

The development of global mindset as a managerial competence of international or global managers and their organizations can be seen as an attempt to discover a “blue ocean of global cooperation” across borders (institutional and cultural differences) and boundaries (internal physical, geographic, or mental fault lines) where cooperation is enabled by a holistic managerial outlook. This can be seen as opposed to and different from an increasingly ‘red ocean’ of traditional intercultural training and wisdom that

typically focuses on collaboration between one or two cultures. This type of bicultural competence may be

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adequate for the traditional expatriate spending extended periods away from his/her home country in one or two other markets. This mode of operation, however, is very sensitive to staffing changes and

flexibility as is the case when, for instance, a manager is assigned to a new market or has to work with a new group of employees as a result of mergers. The skills of the modern global manager have to be more mobile, spanning a more diverse group of people in complex matrix structures and project organizations.

Instead of being caught in the red ocean of trying to develop detailed knowledge about the dimensions of any one culture or department in the company, the manager – and ultimately the organization – with a global mindset has a holistic outlook, thrive on the constructive controversy and cross-fertilization in the flux of the global organization.

Global mindset, then, suggests a particular pair of glasses or mental filter, through which a person experiences the world and the globalization of markets, people and companies: “The functions of an individual global mindset to a global leader are a means to structure the complex global reality and to provide guidelines for appropriate leadership behavior like formulating a global vision and interpersonal skills.” (Dekker, Jansen & Vinkenburg, 2005, p. 2). Thus, global leadership, in the sense of leadership with global mindset, is summed up here as a particular way of thinking, which enables a person to build a bridge between the local and the global. The leader with a global vision is capable of integrating and mediating between potentially conflicting opposites and of charting a course, which makes sense across, and profits from differences. In terms of the benefits of leading with global mindset, Gupta &

Govindarajan emphasize the fact that: “The benefits of a global mindset derives from the fact that, while the company has a grasp of and insight into the needs of the local market, it is also able to build cognitive bridges across these needs and between these needs and the company’s own global experience and capabilities.” (Gupta & Govindarajan, 2001, p. 11).