Successful Traits for Global Managers

NC Kenan-Flagler and the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) successfully collaborate to deliver customized executive programs.

A new book, "Success for the New Global Manager," by Maxine Dalton, Chris Ernst, Jennifer Deal and Jean Leslie of CCL describes two major concepts that managers need to understand if they are to be effective across multiple borders.

• Same but different. Effective managers need to be skilled at managing people, information and action. They need to understand their business from the inside out, but effective global managers also must be able to adapt what they know to the situation at hand. Leadership and decision-making look differently in other places, and they come across differently via the medium, whether it's a conference call or e-mail, for example.
• The pivotal skills. Effective global managers are able to be "the same but different," because they have developed four pivotal skills:
  1. International business knowledge
  2. Cultural adaptability
  3. Perspective-taking
  4. The ability to be an innovator

Simply said, effective global managers know how to do business in another country, and they understand how cultures are different from one another. They are willing to see the world from someone else's point of view. They can take the best of what they find in one place and integrate it with the best of what they find in another place to create novel products, policies and services.