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Abstract
Being an effective global leader requires strong characteristics
including integrity, critical thinking skills, ethics, the ability to communicate
clearly across cultures, and the ability to influence your followers and their
society and culture even outside of the work place. These characteristics
help to build my global leadership philosophy and the values that guide my
actions and behaviors in the role of being a global leader.
My global leader philosophy is based around leading ethically and with
integrity, with fairness and the best interest of all stakeholders in mind. A
global leader like this leaves a lasting impact, and fills gaps in this rapidly
changing world left by governments and policy makers. With the support of
peer reviewed articles exploring these characteristics, and establishing a
deeper understanding of the global need for strong leaders, I will develop my
global leadership philosophy as one that is based around ethics and
operating with integrity.
Introduction
This is an interesting time in the world when we are seeing a leap in
globalization, a surge in technological advances, and the blending of cultures
through easier and faster communication, and the boom of worldwide
corporations. With the world getting smaller in the sense that globalization
of organizations and economies converging, it is becoming clear that
openness, cooperation, and co-creation between nations is a prerequisite for
dealing with global challenges (Jones & Miller, 2010, p. 1). These trends are
expected to continue and will increase the world economy (Buller et al.,
1991, p. 767), and therein the need for global leaders.
An effective global leaders is someone who possesses strong
characteristics such as integrity, flexibility, and adaptability, and has the
ability to communicate clearly across cultures, operate ethically, think
critically, and can be decisive while seeing things from the perspective of all
stake holders involved.
Globalization has forced stakeholders to readdress global leadership
competencies and reassess decision making (Jenkins, 2012, p. 97). Decision
making during crisis situations requires decisiveness and can be defining
moments for organizations and their leaders. Leaders need to be able to
think both critically and flexibly, and take into account the implications of his
or her decision on themselves, their organization, and on other stakeholders.
This paper will further explore these characteristics and core values
that make an effective global leader. With the support of peer reviewed
ethics are influenced primarily by societal and corporate ethics (Buller et al.,
1991, p. 768).
A global leader must be a critical thinker, and a flexible one who can
adapt to rapidly changing environments. As Jenkins (2012) calls out, the
context of global leadership requires global critical thinking and even more
so, global critical leadership (p. 95). Because of this, global leaders must
possess strong critical thinking skills that can be applied in global situations.
Jenkins defines global critical thinking as any attempt to develop concepts
and tools that can be used across disciplines, subjects, or domains (2012, p.
95). Critical thinking at the global level is comprehensive and multi-logical,
and requires situations and assumptions to be examined from different
cultural norms.
According to Jenkins (2012), leading critically is defined as applying
critical thinking skills to decisions about leadership actions in different
situations and is a challenge for leaders and followers (p. 95).
To develop global critical thinking skills, students need to understand
perspectives and develop a global mindset by appreciating cultural diversity
(Jenkins, 2012, p. 98). Time must also be taken to understand strengths and
weaknesses of those working around the leader and the cultural limitations
(p. 99). Jenkins furthered this point by quoting Stigall (2010), A large
component of developing cultural understanding is accepting that we often
do not fully understand (p. 99).
This globalization leaves not only these gaps but the issue of
legitimacy, trustful stakeholder relations, social capital, internal and external
organizational environments, ethical environment, and perceived corporate
social responsibility all as issues for global leaders to take on. It is my
assumptions that global leaders will assume this responsibility readily as part
of their job. As a leader, your role does is not to lead only in the work place,
but to be there for your employees and as an example always.
In a time when it has become increasingly difficult, if not impossible,
to delineate systematic outcomes and individual responsibilities, ethics and
morality have once again become front page news. As a consequence,
theory and practice are struggling with the task of re-conceptualizing the role
of corporations and their leaders in society, in order to address the surge of
public concerns (Voegtlin et al., 2012, p. 2).
Truly effective global leaders continue to influence people long after
they have left work or even after they are out of power.
Morrison (2001) defines a global leader as someone who successfully
impacts the actions and beliefs of others on a worldwide basis (p. 65).
A global leader, according to Jones and Miller (2010), should be open to
alternative values and views, and be able to integrate long-term
considerations and interests from many stakeholders into their strategic
choices, all based on a transparent and stable moral compass (p. 2). This
compass needs to be globally valid and require an ethical leader. Going back
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to the core values that I believe make an effective leader, these are things
that will influence a society and a culture, not just a work place.
I believe that leadership is best understood by studying individual
leaders and their qualities, behaviors, and situational responses. Leadership
is what leaders are or do, and therefore the meaning of leadership derives
from the work of the leader: Leaders define leadership (Fairholm, 2004 p.
579).
Personal Global Leadership Beliefs
Who and what exactly makes a good leader? Nicholson (2012) argues
that leadership skills are an evolved capacity, and that leaders are key
agents in social evolution, by influencing the parameters of selection and
socialization that shape cultures at all levels (p. 399). But what is key in an
effective leader is self-regulation. Nicholson believes that this is a critical
component of leaders shaping of society.
Nicholson (2012) points out that it is well established that a principal
cause of leaders failure is an inability or unwillingness to adapt to changing
circumstances: in short, a lace of versatility (p. 406). In other words, an
inflexible leader has no hope of ever succeeding. However, as Nicholson
goes on to explain, adaptation does not consist solely of response flexibility,
but also in the leaders ability to encourage change.
This ability to encourage change early in a leaders tenure can often be
called shaping, and it is a key strategy for leaders to build their power base.
This power base can then reinforce the leaders style and culture formation,
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making the shaping process one of the most important sources of their
impact (Nicholson, 2012, p. 406). This is an extremely effective way for
leaders to gain credibility.
Fairholm presents five distinct leadership mind sets that have emerged
from the past 100 years of experience and literature: leadership as scientific
management, leadership as excellence management, leadership as a valuesdisplacement activity, leadership in a trust culture, and whole-soul
leadership.
The whole-soul leadership allows for leaders and co-workers to work
toward objectives through shared values, and focuses on maintaining a
culture of trust, and it focuses on the whole-soul nature of both the
individual leader and each follower. This perspective assumes that people
only have one self and one spirit in both work and personal lives, so the
leadership that they engage with at work will be influencing these workers to
their core. This idea of spiritual leader is a different way of stating emotional
intelligence, which Fairholm (2004) notes is related to social intelligence, and
are both very necessary in human relations and the ability to guide ones
thinking and actions (p. 580-581).
Whole-soul (spiritual) leadership integrates the components of work
and personal life into a comprehensive system that fosters continuous
growth, improvement, self-awareness, and self-leadership in such a way that
leaders see others as whole persons with a variety of emotions, skills,
knowledge, and abilities that go beyond the narrow confines of job needs.
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see it. Or, there are as many definitions of leadership as there are persons
who have attempted to define the concept. (Fairholm, 2004, p. 579).
According to Fairholm (2004), a persons leadership perspective
defines what he or she means when they say leadership and shapes how
they view successful leaders in themselves and others (p. 580).
Conclusion
I agree with a statement in Nicholsons article (2012), that the
relevance or leadership is evident (p. 400). With the world getting smaller,
more connected, more populated, and moving faster every day, we need
leaders who can guide us through the challenges that face us today, and who
can anticipate the challenges that are yet to come. I believe that my global
leadership philosophy can be summed up by a quote from Morrison (2001),
effective global leaders have a level of individual integrity that surpasses
the norms of the organization. The high integrity of global leaders is required
to unite the organization across cultures (p. 73).
This Morrison quote hits very close to home for me. I remember when I
was a general manager of a clothing store during my years in undergrad and
I had a very close-knit team working for me. We had worked hard to build our
culture, and being a leader among my peers, I had worked tirelessly to gain
my teams trust and respect.
One day, directions came to all store managers from corporate that
there would no longer be part-time associate managers; any person holding
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an associate manager title with part-time hours would be demoted with a cut
in pay, or they would have to upgrade to full-time status. Being the manager
of a store in a college town, we were all students, and my associate
managers were both part-time due to being full-time students, and they had
turned down the offer to be full-time previously. My associate managers were
both amazing, loyal, hard-working employees, and I was sick to my stomach
and angry at the thought that I had to demote them and tell them that their
pay had been cut due to no fault of their own. It didnt seem fair, and I
immediately communicated my concerns to my superiors and stated my
case. In the end, I had to demote my associate managers, but I believe the
fact that I immediately defended them and defended what I thought was
right helped to keep us together as a team. That is where my global
leadership philosophy started to form, when I realized that being a leader
came with way more responsibility than what the job description says.
Global leaders need to not only shape the working environment and
working culture of those they lead, but also need to shape society and
culture outside of the work environment. I hope that the ethical decisions I
have made in front of the people I have led will influence the decisions they
make throughout their lives in a positive way, and potentially help to fill in
the gaps left by the government and elected officials to change the world for
the better. If effective global leaders are truly leading with integrity and
ethics, than being leaders beyond the workspace will be a natural transition.
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References
Buller, P. F., Kohls, J. J., & Anderson, K. S. (1991). The challenge of global ethics. Journal of
Business Ethics, 10, 10, 767-775.
Fairholm, M. R. (September 01, 2004). Different Perspectives on the Practice of
Leadership. Public Administration Review, 64, 5, 577-590.
Jenkins, D. (2012). Global critical leadership: Educating global leaders with critical leadership
competencies. Journal of Leadership Studies, 6, 2, 95-101.
Jones, M. T., & Millar, C. C. J. M. (2010). About Global Leadership and Global Ethics, and a
Possible Moral Compass: an Introduction to the Special Issue. Journal of Business
Ethics, 93, 1, 1-8.
Morrison, A. (2001). Integrity and global leadership. Journal of Business
Ethics, 31.1, 65-76.
Nicholson, N. (December 01, 2011). The Evolved Self, Self-regulation, and the Co-evolution of
Leadership. Biological Theory, 6, 4, 399-412.
Piccolo, R. F., Greenbaum, R., Hartog, D. N., & Folger, R. (2010). The relationship between
ethical leadership and core job characteristics. Journal of Organizational
Behavior, 31, 259-278.
Voegtlin, C., Patzer, M., & Scherer, A. G. (2012). Responsible Leadership in Global Business: A
New Approach to Leadership and Its Multi-Level Outcomes. Journal of Business
Ethics, 105, 1, 1-16.