Grasping global leadership

Denmark needs strong and healthy companies that can thrive in a globalized world. A key requirement for success is for these companies to have leaders with the right skills – skills that match the complexity that characterizes our globalized world. And skills that enable the leaders to exploit the opportunities that are constantly arising across national borders.

To stimulate the development of global leadership skills in Danish companies, the Danish Industry Foundation has been supporting a project over the last five years which focuses on the global leadership skills that we need, now and in the future. The project has been run in close collaboration with the Confederation of Danish Industry, Copenhagen Business School and a number of Danish companies that have some experience of leadership on the global stage. The stimulus for the work was a study of companies’ attitudes to and experience of global leadership. One conclusion from this was a need to gain a deeper insight into the leadership skills that are vital if we are to do the best we can as global leaders. The project therefore set out to analyse the leadership skills that are crucial to success on the global stage and to support the development of tools that can be used to promote these skills in the companies. And finally, one of the success parameters for the project was that the knowledge produced should be widely disseminated, with a view to fostering greater competitiveness in Danish companies.

This book is a summary of the knowledge and experience gained in the project, based around the tools developed to support the growth of global leadership skills in Danish businesses. All of the tools are based on concrete experience from Danish managers operating at a global level. Another common feature is that the tools are user-friendly when they come to be implemented in practice. The tools focus on leading people in a globalized world, whatever sector they are working in.

The intention of the book is to offer inspiration and methods that can help Danish managers and companies to succeed in a global setting, regardless of where in the world they happen to be. So the book is not a cultural guide to effective leadership in specific parts of the world, but a source of good advice in a broader perspective. The tools in the book are therefore valuable whatever the national context in which they are used.

Our hope is that the book will give managers further inspiration and the strength to grasp the opportunities for success that a globalized world represents, and which Danish companies depend on to maintain development and growth in their businesses and in Danish society.