Marie-Thérèse Claes

Leadership and Global Understanding

Globalization changes corporations in fast and fundamental ways. This chapter is about the challenges of global leaders who have to face increasingly the so-called VUCA environment: very volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous business situations across national borders. There is an increasing demand to integrate local responsiveness and global consistency. For this people have to be connected across countries and leaders have to engage them to global collaboration in order to facilitate complex processes of knowledge sharing. Based on a broad variety of examples, this chapter illustrates that Cultural Intelligence (CQ) is a necessary ability to find appropriate solutions to global leadership problems. It is CQ that enables leaders to embrace global complexity and to respond to a multiplicity of management styles simultaneously. Only by reconciling conflicting demands, resolving dilemmas, and responding to opposing perspectives, can leaders succeed to turn global challenges into positive energy for the creation of opportunities.

Managers’ Awareness of Their Decision Making: Discussing Cognitive Biases

Managers are currently confronted with highly complex situations where time constraints and the availability of information make it essential that they have an effective decision-making process. Studies show that in many cases we do not use a rational process to make decisions but instead rely on instinct, emotion, or quickly processed information. The objective of this chapter is to enhance managers’ decision making by understanding the impact their cognitive biases may have on decision making, more specifically on managing people.