Increasingly, communication skills are becoming vital for global business leaders to manage effectively across international boundaries.
For business leaders in an increasingly global, 24/7 environment, running a team is no longer about engaging, inspiring and motivating people in the same building, town or even country. Today, a team is likely to be multi-lingual and multi-cultural, located across different time zones and markets. Therefore how leaders communicate with their diverse teams is becoming increasingly important and critical to business success.
In the latest Hays Journal, the recruiter explores the growing importance of communication tackling the challenge of international people management. Even the most globe trotting manager cannot be everywhere at once. How can managers then develop the right mindset where they are attuned to the different cultural and societal expectations of global teams? The main key to success is to have regular contact with the team, keeping in mind regional sensitivities and market differences.
Barney Ely, Director at Hays Human Resources says, “Managers have to build, engage and foster team spirit across different time zones and geographies. To do this many organisations run their own online diversity and inclusion training programmes for managers with extra programmes offered for those likely to work with staff across geographies. At Hays, we run a global leadership development programme for top managers. This programme combines classroom study with executive coaching and virtual learning.
Although technology plays an important role, both in training and day to day communications, it should not be used as a substitute for personal relationships. Networks are hugely important to learning and sharing the experiences of international leadership. Organisations should consider formulating a set of standardised principles, behaviours or performance expectations to sit across an organisation at a global level – a vision – freeing up a company to focus on aligning their regional business to local markets.“
Credit: onrec.com
