Successful leadership at the global level requires greater skills than the domestic market. Managers who are going abroad should therefore know most common pitfalls that are waiting for them in new locations. Particular attention should be given to the following traps:
1. Mirror
The mirror trap catch you if you assume that the rest of the world thinks just like you. For example, when leaders from Facebook hypothesized China welcoming open communication, it was a disaster. The mirror is an easily predictable problem, many people, however, still forget about it.
2. Superficiality
The trap of superficiality catch you when youdo not try to understand and adapt to different cultures deeply. This happened, for example, to Disney within its expansion to Europe in the 1990s. The company based its business on American ideas about what people expect from entertainment.
3. Avatar
The Avatar trap catch you when you open yourself to the new culture so excessively that you lose connection with the past. It happened during Nestlé's expansion into Japan. The company localized its product to the extent that they were disconnected from the global brands. It functioned as a local company on a local market, but its overheads still reflected the fact that it was part of a global company.
How to, therefore, develop leadership from the global perspective? Get out of your comfort zone and spend time with people from different cultures. Build teams composed of representatives of various cultures. Listen to global customers and learn how they think and react.
-kk-