Leadership and Global Understanding

Globalization changes corporations in fast and fundamental ways. This chapter is about the challenges of global leaders who have to face increasingly the so-called VUCA environment: very volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous business situations across national borders. There is an increasing demand to integrate local responsiveness and global consistency. For this people have to be connected across countries and leaders have to engage them to global collaboration in order to facilitate complex processes of knowledge sharing. Based on a broad variety of examples, this chapter illustrates that Cultural Intelligence (CQ) is a necessary ability to find appropriate solutions to global leadership problems. It is CQ that enables leaders to embrace global complexity and to respond to a multiplicity of management styles simultaneously. Only by reconciling conflicting demands, resolving dilemmas, and responding to opposing perspectives, can leaders succeed to turn global challenges into positive energy for the creation of opportunities.