Skills a Global Leader Should Adapt

Doing business in South Korea might be challenging due to the completely different culture and norms in working environment. That’s why as a global leader I should be able to adapt faster and respond to the challenges that awaits me on my journey.

One of the tools that is required for global leaders is active listening, especially in South Korea, where you need to encourage your employees and coworkers to give feedback to you. That’s why in order to know how they feel about your actions and your as whole, you need to listen them actively, show your concern and stimulate them to speak up. Their indecision to speak directly and openly developed because of the eastern concept of  “saving face” in all situation, especially in work environment. Another reason might be the hierarchical order in society and its impact in their daily life.

One more tool might be spending time with your team face-to-face, instead of skype calls or lots of emails. Koreans value face-to-face time, even the country is at the forefront of technology development, they believe that only by spending time together and go through hard times as one makes team work better, and consequently good team reach good results. Moreover, being collectivistic society, South Koreans enjoy working in teams and try to develop strong relationships within the members. Besides, they like to gather after work and during lunch breaks in order to get to know each other, so as a manger it is important to participate and even organize these kind of gatherings.

As a global leader you can use empathy in order to really hear what my coworkers and partners have to say to me. In order to establish close relationships with them that will be based on trust and mutual understanding. Moreover, by applying empathy to solve conflict situations and during tough negotiations you will be able to get a win-win position for both parties. As for using empathy with every person that you met, is a good way to deal with people, because every person is unique and have different attitude and thoughts towards situations.

Other than this, as a global leader it is important to be ready for anything and learn how to maintain things that way that it will suit new environment and culture. Also, being good global leader, means  having background of seeing different places and cultures, in order to bring something from here and there to the table of the workplace and make it a better place. Moreover, by seeing how business done in different parts of the world will develop a skill of easier adaptation to any kind of situation and in order to deal with foreign clients.