Global learning conference
For HR, L&D, OD and Coaching professionals.
For HR, L&D, OD and Coaching professionals.
Leader in a global context
Get Ready to redefine Leadership with Lidia Ołowska.
During this session, Lidia takes a step inside Industry 2.0
to unravel just how it’s reshaping leadership.
During this recording, you’ll:
• Uncover the tech-driven values of global organizations.
• Learn what it takes to be a successful global leader.
• Discover the key personality traits and competencies that define successful global leaders
• Explore the dynamic link between leadership and organisational structure.
• Contemplate the future of leadership: Is co-leadership reality or fantasy?
WATCH THE RECORDING BELOW.
This recording is taken from the Facet5 Live 2023: Leader in a Global Context.
And is hosted by Lidia Ołowska. Duration: 53.39 minutes.
Sorry for that.
Now it’s now it works. So sorry for me. So I mean, let us let us focus first on the, on the, definition.
And, most likely, if you would ask five people about the definition of global leaders, you would get five different answers.
But all of them would be most probably around, interaction with, a diverse group of people within, cultural context.
While it is true, it’s not only that when we talk about global leadership. It’s much more about it because global leaders, they need to, they need to, work in, international landscape in the span of the nations and, and different challenges related to that. They need to address the, challenges and also find the opportunities, within the global, global world just, to focus on them and also to, be able to overcome, those issues and find their ways to be successful both as a leader and as a businessman at the, at the same time. So I don’t know why.
I’m sorry for that.
So, if we talk about the challenges, then, Of course, the major challenge, they face, there are there are five areas called political uncertainties and trade dynamics.
This, geopolitical, events, strengthens, global political uncertainties, can have very significant impact on, on business. And leaders need to navigate in those un unpredictable, go political case, changing trade policies and, potential disruption, they they need to understand and they need to know what is happening in, in, go political, environment.
And I can share with you my own experience, while being expatriated for the first time, I really focus on the local, understanding of the local, environment. So I watched local television, Polish television, BBC and CNN.
And, actually, having the same picture, you’ve got four different stories around this picture. So the complexity of the news of the, communication also brings this, different dimension how to navigate as a leader and how to understand their work in the, in the proper way. On the top of it, there is this digital transformation and technological disruption.
And, leaders, they, first of all, they need to ensure that we competitive within, this fast, changing, digital transformation were, with the that transformation learned. And, may also need to address cybersecurity issues, for example, It’s it’s a very important part of, of global leadership, concerns, right now. But it’s not only about leading digital transformation initiatives.
My my own experience also else. When we were, currently, implementing SAP, it’s not only about meeting digital digital transformations, also about executing the workforce.
That is really something what leaders need to take into consideration versus the country because with this very fast changing, environment, our people, we also need to be able to digest just and, get the skills which are required to be able to utilize the opportunities, given by the, by the, new technologies.
There’s also need to balance very much between, being competitive and implement in utilizing new technologies and at the same time ensuring that it is not destructive to the business. So those are the challenges which for sure are correlated with the digital transformation. And on the top of it, COVID, time, of course, accelerated very much transformation of work models.
Currently flexible time wise, working from this time, sir, everything for this related to the in work environment and the expectations of new generation in in your legs to the transformation of work models something that brings additional dimension to the challenges of the of the global leaders. And on the top of it, this global mobility issues.
On one hand, we have access to to the parents from the from all over the world, Calan three, but at the same time, it brings a lot of, issues related to, about talent the mobility.
So I mean, our law and perspective is that our law often is not adjusting, fast enough to the potential opportunities which are created by global talent mobility.
Sometimes we need to wait for just because of administration issues like these as requirements for the person to allocate for a year.
Sometimes we need also consider a lot of other dimensions which are related to, taxation, permanent establishment issues.
All those elements brings also complexity regarding the battle and mobility.
And on the top of it, the multi mobility brings also, much more opportunities related to cultural complexity and diversity on one hand is opportunity. But on the other hand, how to navigate to begin, very diverse, diverse environment brings also the challenge to to the leaders.
On the top of it, when you look at the expectations employees.
Employees also, expect from the leaders that they address the important, issues and that they respond to those, issues related to the industry political events, nation crisis, and national crisis, as well as employee driven issues.
So the expectation level from, from employees is also increasing, and it’s increasing every single year. We can see that, with new generations, this, and I will show you also some researches, from Adelman, the current one from this year, also showing how it develops and what are that will power the expectations of employees evolving towards leaders, in a globe. So if you think about global, leaders, what do they need to develop? I mean, we started talking about leadership. I mean, do we, being as HR, professional for many, many years already.
We started with IQ and EQ. Currently, we are talking about really many intelligence is to be developed, for for readers. It’s not only our QIQ. It’s also DQCQ, we are talking about emotional intelligence, digital intelligence, cultural intelligence, global intelligence, so all those, elements, all the all those capabilities are really important for for, leaders, just to be efficient and, to be successful in the global world.
I I like this picture because for me, it always shows, what needs to be, in leaders’ heads, how many shapes callers, how color colorful is what is happening in, in, leaders’ heads. And global leadership also, requiring so many capabilities.
So different approaches is also bringing this more colors and more shapes even in, in our, in our heads. So let us start with the, emotion of, intelligence. I would like us to reflect a meter on this in a bit different possible context. So for me emotional intelligence is foundation for all other, cues, we are going to, to talk about And let’s start to self awareness. It’s it’s about how you understand yourself.
And it’s actually important for leaders in global context, even more important, right now because it brings you also this, identity and understanding of own values. It brings also understanding of the reaction reactions for difficult situations, reactions, and how how you also include those difficult situations.
All those elements are very important for us to create our own identity and helps us find ourselves in a very diverse, world.
It’s also about this self regulation. It’s about how we respond to the word, how we respond to, to our reaction, but also to the reactions of, of others this is something that helps us a lot in, in the world to to understand and to, to be able to, to be able to, stay in control and stay calm.
And it’s also about empathy. It’s how we put ourselves, in the, in the shoes of others.
How we, how we are interested, and curious about the others. It’s also about our motivation So you will see also that, that, emotional intelligence is a real foundation for the cultural cultural, intelligence.
But understanding understanding to yourself is real, really valuable for That’s why. And from my perspective, what helps a lot, and I observe also with leaders especially global leaders when they need to address all those challenges we were discussing about, and also the need to focus on those very diverse teams very often, they do not focus enough on themselves.
It’s it’s actually important, that that they stop and they reflect on themselves, often enough.
So I would like to say that we we use for, self awareness, enhancement, specified tools that, the first five personality profile.
And, I find that, that, leaders, very often they, defined it very, very useful.
I got a lot of feedbacks, from, from the media they they reflected for, the first time in Southern House many, many years in that context. Seen an index in that way on themselves, and it helps them also to develop their take capability related to emotional intelligence but not only. So what I would like also to encourage you is not to forget when we develop our leaders, when we, took a lot of programs, development programs for our leaders and there is so various, list of the capabilities our leaders need to process, but this emotional intentions and self awareness is really foundation. So we personally, I strongly believe that it’s very important to focus on that part, very, very important. So but it’s not only about emotional, emotional intelligence.
Currently, it’s not only to know our own personality. We have also this digital, intelligence capabilities to be developed because need also to, understand our digital, personality, how we create our digital, personality who we are in this digital world. Very often, we know, I mean, we know each other, only, through the digital tools, currently, we, we hire people. We attract people.
We run the recruitment processes, just online.
So the it happens that we do not meet with people for many, many months, face to face.
And then, we also create our, patience, our imagination about the person based on their digital identity, sometimes it’s very funny when you need after, after some time, and we are surprised about someone is so tall, or we, we can see that, you know, that the behaviors are, you know, different they they they sit in a different way or their gesture is different. What we could see, the body language, is is, is tool we can observe. So this digital identity is very important how we create our personality in the in the digital and also how we use digital tools, how we propose also our tools to use the digital tools and how we, ensure the security and protection of, for ourselves and also of our teams, of our companies, in relation to the, to the use of the, digital, digital tools.
And there is also digital, emotional intelligence. You know, I mean, it might be surprising. But, yes, and it’s very important how we create relationships, and how we, how we, run our relationship with people for the, in the digital, environment how we communicate, how we collaborate, what kind of content, we also, upload, which is also related to this digital, identity, admin and how we ensure that digital rights, rights, how do we evolve with each digital rights, also how we understand the digital rights, ensure that our, our people, our teams can feel, safe in the, digital, work. And how do we also ensure for ourselves to feel safe in the digital world. How we’re ensuring for our business to be a success to open sighted at the same time. So digital intelligence is, I wouldn’t say new, but quite new, type of intelligence, which we also need to develop which we need to understand not only our presence in the real work, but also in the digital environment.
And you can see here, this is the, this is the picture of, different dimension of cultural world, by Hofstadter.
Why I just brought it just to to show this complex city of different dimension and, different, different types of the cultures, which may we very often tend to think about, cultures, about differences, something versus something. Collective these verses can be the short term augmentation, one time augmentation.
But You know, in current world, the complexity is much higher. First of all, it’s not only about cultural intelligence related to, to different cultures.
We personally, I perceive it as the intelligence of the diversity. I would call it diversity intelligence.
Because, it’s not only how we behave as leaders, how we approach different cultures. It’s how we approach any type of diversity.
And, it starts with the knowledge. So It’s extremely important for the leader to to have the knowledge about the, diversity, about the differences, to understand have with volunteers for different composition of diversity.
Is similar or different.
It’s extremely important to understand it. It’s extremely important to to get to know it. And, I can tell you, I, I experienced very often in, in my, career working with different nations even the, propharmacologists we hired away from all over the world people. So those cultural diversity is extremely important part of of the company.
And, in in my career, I met very often the situations where there were some misunderstandings.
There were some projections very much related to cultural diversity, and it’s more only about the relation between leaders and the teams.
Very often with experience, it’s more about peers.
It’s about, people, working together as peers, and that they do not understand why some of the behaviors are perceived in their way, we would not expect they should be perceived in the inventory. That’s why.
I would not undermine the role of the cultural, trains, but it’s not only about trending, sir, and bringing the knowledge about different cultures. It’s to bring into the organization the knowledge about diversity and understanding of adversity, understanding of how we can have a good intention for a serious situation from a different perspective depending on the differences, which we process cultural differences, for example. So this understanding brings us a lot of, a deep value, and it can really be the breaking point in the efficiency of the teams, in the efficiency of the collaboration.
When you when you have this knowledge, it’s extremely important also to create your own awareness and ability to plan how you would react, how you would approach, as yourself those differences.
I can tell you really my my first, exclamation when I was relocating to to to other countries. I created the strategy for myself. Do not be surprised at anything. And actually, I found this, strategy, quite, efficient.
Because it helped to allow just me to look at things with very open mind am not booking it through my own patterns, my own cultural patterns. At the same time, it I was just, think about this, emotional intelligence.
Understanding my values, understanding my, moral code. It’s something that helped you also to, think about it from the perspective that, okay, I I I really respect it. I will, meet under my, understanding that at the same time, This is something that is not my value. This is something what I don’t need to absorb, but I need to respect.
And, and I wanted to do it and that helped me a lot, within, working with different, different cultures, different types of mentality of people, where this respect is the same time understanding that people do not need to share, my values, but at the same time, their their values, I’m not in convincing my own, a moral code or my my my own values. That that that was for me, important, lesson for me within that, strategy.
But, you know, strategy is one thing. So I went to, I went and say, okay, I’m I I won’t be surprised at anything, but at the same time, how you implement it in the action?
How you’re able to implement your strategy in an action is another thing. So quite fast, I got the feedback that I need to, work on my, on my face expression because even though I was not surprising, at myself, you know, my body language, was, was, sometimes, showing something what my amygdala was faster than my cortex.
So, it’s very important to develop the ability also to to to adopt your strategy, to to to really, go ready and, be able to fulfill everything what you what you need to, you need to achieve. And then there is this level of interest and this drive So how confident you are, how curious you are, how you really want to, navigate in a diverse, diverse world.
How persistent you are also in getting the knowledge creating the strategy and also, bringing interaction.
This is something important, just by when we we develop that, cultural intelligence. And the cultural intelligence diverse, diversity intelligence as I would say is something that’s extremely broken for the, leaders in the, in the global world.
It’s also about leadership state. It is diverse environment brings also this, sometimes to stretch yourself as a leader and, work a bit on your styles, not only from your natural state, but also adapting some other styles just to the experience and system to the, to the situations.
And then we go to the DC global, intelligence.
Global intelligence is is something that is also, coming from, from, from those intelligences we already discussed, but it brings also more complexity and more demands related to the to the, you know, expectations from the leaders for the need to develop what capabilities they need to develop it’s it’s not only if we talk about awareness.
It’s not only about, awareness of, different cultures different people. It’s also the awareness of the work is, a geopolitical situation, issues related to the, supply chain issues related to, into economical, by government.
Awareness how they impact our business, awareness, how they impact our people, and being able to adapt, our strategies, to very fast changing environment this is something that is actually important, in the in the in the word offer, in offer global, leaders.
Sometimes it comes within one night or one day. I experienced several times the things where optimizes has an, that they haven’t accepted, for example, the product and then launch, to be canceled, and, we needed to adapt the strategy just over the night.
Some and all the wars of all the conflicts when you think about how they change our environment, COVID.
What has happened with, in us and the adaptability, not only locally, but also globally, where we had to address the things, from different, perspectives and adjust our strategies, locally and also globally. That’s why this integration place also a very important important role in, in this g q.
Because leaders need to think locally and globally at the same time. They need to understand what are the what is the global context, but they also cannot undermine the local circumstances.
And there’s, balancing between the the global strategy, and local strategy is something that plays really important role, in, in, leadership in global context.
Not everything can be adapted. And, sometimes, also within, HR words when we receive, the strategy from headquarters. We are seeing, okay, this is something what won’t, won’t work here, and we need to, we need to adjust it. We need to fine tune it. It’s also about marketing, not all the peak chores, not all the messages can be just translated, same way around the world. So this is something what global leaders need to take into consideration, very, very much. And, they need to have curiosity.
Curiosity, as such, in my opinion, it’s a very important feature for for leader, for successful leaders.
Just to be really interested, but really interested in, in their things in, not only in the part of the business, but in the broad context of what is happening, what people face what we may face, as, as leaders also in different contexts.
It’s extremely important how how we try to not only know but also understand, really understand those, and begin knowledge and understanding. There there there is real gap, so curiosity is a really important factor.
And things which are related, to to to people alignment and party collaboration.
Those are the considerations where global leaders developing their global intelligence need to take very much into account.
How we foster unity among employees with different backgrounds, how we really create them as teams how we engage people, on the on the personal level, not on creating the teams which are the the the business teams, the project teams, but that they feel like being united, that they feel like being, together.
That is something that is extremely, extremely important for, for global leaders.
And, actually, when you when you think about it, there is good good news and bad news, about working in the, diverse global environment.
The good thing is that you can really outperform. You can achieve exceptional results, working within multicultural teams, but you can also, really fail. So the average efficiency is reserved for monocultural teams, and, working within multi cultural teams, either you can outperform or you can fail. So what to do just to outperform and to be really exceptionally, efficiently in there, the, the global teams and, very, very diverse teams. First of all, what is important is just for, for leaders to keep their the team united.
But really united. It’s, just to live in the platform, not only to solve the business issues. But also to give them the platform just to talk to share concerns just, to be together It’s extremely important from the, from the perspective of, very diverse and, things which are spread all over the world. It’s also just to to to give that technology and to use that technology to to work the, to enhance the work efficiency.
It’s to give people the, possibility to really, to to really understand the technology and use it in an effective, efficient way. Right now, there is big, discussion about and artificial, judge degree and artificial intelligence.
Some of companies already, really enhance their employees to use it. They perceive it as one of the tools to increase the work, efficient, inefficiency, some of the restrictive and really monitor the usage of very attractive So how as global leader, we, also approach those new technology you know, opportunities coming from the, from the technologist is actually important for our teams to be also, efficient. It’s also about reducing barrier languages, a technology and a language I would like to to keep your attention to to those two factors because if your team is not efficient in usage of the technology.
It really can, it really can, the efficiency of of work. But it’s also about the known language barriers. If people working in international environment, we do not understand each other. This is something called maybe, reduce their, feeling of belonging also. It’s not only among the efficiency.
Of of work, but, of course, it has, it has absolutely impact on that, but it also, it also may, may, influence their, self motivation and self confidence So it’s actually important that, managers put a lot of emphasis on, on that, on that that part. And, we discuss, quite often about having, native speakers, and having people, who remember experience or learned learned the language only from, from, from school and not being able, in the past to be exposed to, to to work in the, international, in the, international environment. We need to ensure also this conclusion for them. And we, as, as, leaders in this, diverse and, digital environment where we work from different places to ensure knowledge. It’s not easy.
And, just to create the knowledge black funds, the knowledge, sharing, knowledge base, you know, places is extremely important because to be sharing the knowledge. I personally perceive as one of the of the major issues, of working as a because when you, and and we discuss it and we observe it, that when when you are, in the same building, in the same, environment, you share the knowledge and the coffee machine during the lunch, you have plenty of opportunities just to get to know what is happening and also learn from others.
When you worked in the, in the, environment, where you work from business and you are not together as a one team. It’s extremely, I mean, I I wouldn’t say that it’s difficult, but we need to find their ways how we ensure that this knowledge is also shared, how we build the platform, how we build the opportunities also to share the knowledge, and also to chat not only to have any things which are the new things fully devoted to the, business, related issues, but also to have time just simply to chat to to share the things, to share share share also our private things because This is something called creates this, integrity of of the team. And, it’s even more important right now for for us to also, think about the, integration and people by purpose.
When you work from this task, it’s extremely important for us to understand why we are doing it and also to to to have this common goal, something that we perceive how we add value by our work to something bigger because, some people also and studies shows it could feel quite alone are working from the assessment. On one hand, they really, appreciate it. They they perceive it as great opportunity, but at the same time, they also feel this longness, being a maker, alone. And if we, as an leader, do not, integrate people around the goal, around the purpose. It’s more, more difficult.
And the last but not least, it’s very important. Just to generate within this, global word, fun, fun for everyone. Without fun at work is, really more difficult. We don’t know about it very very well.
Just, thinking about respect about the values, respect transparency and trust.
Those are the values which are extremely important, within the global world.
And if if we would be able to really walk the talk and really, present those full values, in a global environment, the rest is just, correlated believe those, free, free values.
By respecting differences, but respecting the diversity by, communicating openly and being transparent by saying difficult things, but in a transparent way when we all understand why is it so, it wouldn’t create the trust. And trust is basic for for for, for success or for the organization, that is something that’s already proven by many many, movie searches. And what is good news is that the trust, is really, the highest among the among the, employers, which might be pricing, but the biggest trust is towards the employers. But trust is also, local. We can see that more global and this is the challenge of global leaders that’s more distant you are from your teams than, the the trust is, more difficult to retain. So we really need to put attention, and we need to focus on, on building the trust among the teams and trust towards our services as leaders.
With other man, trust biomarker, which, is run for the fur, twenty third time. So they they started in, in thousand. This year end was around a month, twenty eight conference with, thirty two thousand respondents.
And what was, what was, really important finding it, from that is that actually the expectations from employees towards employer, even within the period of those, the last five years, evolved, quite significantly. So if when we looked, at, two thousand nineteen, employers were more, more most trusted and this, trust towards employers, employers, given them, during that pandemic, time, of course, funding, put a lot of emphasis on, a money element, but, they were all also, and employers were most trusted to respond to the pandemic. So it’s shown that we as leaders, we address the issues and we were able to, solve the issues in the white people, really appreciated, on the global, scale.
But then, in in, in the next year, the the significance of the values and beliefs, was very much, very much under. So employees just, started to look at the at the employers, not only from the brand’s perspective, not only from the end. That’s what I could also observe when, during the recruitment process that employees started to, put a note of emphasis on the values, of the organization.
How the values are, represented also in the organization. If we work the top If this is something about these values are only on the paper, or is it something that has been really presented in the in the organization?
And then gen z started to redefine the work.
And, right now, we, also can see that, the expectations of, new generation towards the work is really defining this work as a as global leaders who need to respond to you need to find a way how to navigate and, you know, just balance between the expectations of the Tancy, and at the same time, opportunities and solutions we can bring to around the business efficiently.
So what was, new for me when I, when I read this, reporting this year is that what place started to be really, place where people feel the most comfortable. So they they prefer, for example, to discuss the, the controversial, items and issues in the workplace than their neighbors.
So after the family and friends, workplace is the most comfortable, place for, for, for the employees, which might be surprising. I really encourage you to meet at the at the mentalist parameter.
It brings a lot of good insights for the, for for for for the leaders.
And, it it brings also patience, towards us as employers. So, this employer trust also brings responsibility, of course, on we, we, we have to fulfill the expectations. We need to find the solutions so people can fill those, and give more power to, generations.
They do not feel any, distance. They they approach us, they expect from us that we will, as leaders, we will discuss with them openly so that the power of this is really right now short term that it doesn’t exist almost, which is a great thing because they bring also a lot of good insights and they want to be more, more impactful and put more impact on, on things. So if you think from the, leading, global, team perspective, if you need to look at the team structure, you need to think about either language, identity, technological communication, reporting clients. But at the same time, what is extremely important is that we just, integrate people, around the vision about the goal that that impairs the, the trust, just those are the extremely important things.
And we also need to look at our organizational structures because organization and the structures serve need to change the, it’s not only enough to have flat organization, dynamic structure, boundaries organization structures, seems to suit the best of the organization of the future, it’s not easy task. It’s it’s really very demanding task. I I perceived as one of the most demanding tasks, because everything is correlated with the organization structure. So this is something what, we need to take us, into account also as global leaders when you want to ensure that, we are not only successful in the current work, but also in the, in the future, future work.
A lot of expectations towards the leaders. We already discussed it. And, and, it’s very complex.
And that’s why I also reflect, okay, is it something that one human being is able to, to fulfill and, to also meet the expectations of the, of the of their teams, of their companies, and so on. That’s why, I strongly believe that holy airship is is the future. Me personally, I experienced leadership and working within leadership. Co leadership means that the leadership is perhaps two or more, or more or more, people.
And, actually, I founded very interesting experience and very efficient experience.
Of course, you may say the may slow down the, the decision making. It’s, sometimes, it may create confusion because we, in our head, are really, more, really more perceived the word. Okay. There is one person to go. And here to whom we got. But believe that she brings a lot of color, a lot of good dimension to the organization.
What is correct was it called the the leadership is trust. There must be trust between those leaders and the but they may really be like composition of different, personalities, which as one are bringing really much more value to the organization than just one, neither. As I said, I personally experienced it. And, that is something that was, was from great experience. And, I I am a quite big fan, I would say, of a college I proceed with great value. And it’s coming from the Asian time, when I was in Paris, I learned about the leadership also from, from the the civilizations, you know, in Andy. So, this is not something to know, but this is something for most probably we should also, consider more and more in our organizations.
So Looking at all those elements, I would like to to say that me as a professional, I I look at, all those challenges, and how can I support ERCs? And, I want to say that, five tools are very, very much useful from my perspective tool to utilize them, and, this is can use them for many, many years already.
It’s not only for the leaders, and they also have, self awareness. It’s also about team awareness. It’s to understand how the team is composed, what are the roles of, of, people what is the emotional level of, our, our, team members. So now, so what, you know, just to understand how we can bring the more diversity. This is something what we also use in our recruitment because as we know, leaders, very often they they, try to, hire people very similar to themselves. So, just to ensure the diversity that we sometimes even, try to to discuss it from that using the, audition and, and understanding also, especially it helps a lot from my first with only higher people, online.
So, an audition is a really very great, tool for a special tool to run the in conversation and, brings additional additional dimension to their recruitment conversations.
And leadership development. We, we offer leaders, you know, the spotlight, but not only there’s also, our employees just, to reflect on their development, opportunities and could reflect on the year, stress and, and legal ideas, for development from prospectly. So, I find the physics five tools as, and that that’s why, when we were deciding, you know, which tools because, of course, on on the market that meant it.
I find that this is two, which might be used, for many, many, different needs in the organization.
And, and at the same time, building the same language, building the same understanding, the same dimensions we can discuss reflect on in different contexts.
So, I I find that preparing their, the leaders for the global roles, and also global leaders to navigate in their roles, is really as a very, very supportive say.
And, it’s difficult to talk to yourself, for one hour. I would like to thank you very much. This is my lead team profile.
You can find if you are, if you would like to connect, with me. And if there are any questions, I am just, in the clinic, looking forward for for your, for your patience.
Thank you so much.
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