Even before the pandemic, cultivating a global mindset was challenging. With rising protectionism, remote working and decreased travel, the hurdles for executives have grown higher. But it is precisely these changes that mean understanding cross-cultural differences will become an even more important success factor in the future, results of an IMD survey show.
Any executive exposed to international markets knows navigating the socio-political differences and avoiding cross-cultural blunders is a challenge. To succeed, leaders must adopt a set of skills known as the “global mindset” – an ability to appreciate, and whenever possible, leverage differences across cultural contexts. This requires understanding the peculiar nuances of different countries, bridging differences, finding common ground, and encouraging participation and ideas from multicultural settings.
Having a global mindset is a key success factor when doing business internationally and an increasingly critical source of competitive advantage. It can even help your company navigate rising geopolitical tensions, and is vital in the era of remote work, with videoconferencing tearing down some barriers to cross-cultural collaboration.
While many organizations are keen to talk up their global credentials, surveys show that executing this can be hard. Nearly a decade ago McKinsey Quarterly published insightful results based on a survey of senior executives. While 76% of the respondents believed their organizations needed to develop global-leadership capabilities, only 7% thought they were actually doing so effectively.
The COVID-19 pandemic has further complicated the task of cultivating a global mindset, with virtual meetings increasing the likelihood of miscommunication and reduced travel meaning there are fewer opportunities for face-to-face cultural exchange and information sharing.
So how difficult is to really embrace a global mindset? And what role has the pandemic played?
To gauge how business leaders believe they are operating in global environments, IMD surveyed more than 200 senior executives from around the world in two separate surveys in 2013 and 2021. The results show that having a global mindset has become even more important, but often harder to achieve, with senior managers finding it more difficult to lead multicultural teams and hire from the global talent pool than they did eight years ago.