A Leader Listens by Ajay Banga

Author:Ajay Banga [Banga, Ajay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2017-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

2. Leadership and developing a global view

The world is getting smaller and more interdependent than ever, which makes leadership and developing a sense of globality more important than ever. By globality, I mean developing a global view and increasing your connectivity to the world around you. For example, once you get acclimatized to your new jobs, consider getting involved in organizations outside of your work but that connect back to it as well—like a bilateral or a multilateral organization. Explore avenues like the World Economic Forum. There are colleagues of mine at MasterCard who have been very active, even right from their schooldays.

The key is to go beyond looking at the world through the lens of your company or your organization or even your country. All of which are better served by the mindset that you can’t catch the blind spots I just mentioned with blinkers on. Globality is about taking those blinders off. It’s about seeing that we’ve got a global population that’s increasing exponentially. We’re at seven billion plus today. A hundred years ago, we were at less than two billion. We’re expected to reach nine billion in only a few decades. It’s about being aware of demographic shifts and what they mean for countries like India and China, where the demographics in both places are moving in opposite directions. It’s recognizing that globalization has benefited some but not nearly enough people. In fact, we’re seeing some backlash in the form of increased nationalism and, in some cases, chauvinism. It’s realizing the role that the world governments and politics play. Who’s in and who’s out makes a difference in addressing these larger, global concerns. It makes a difference for your company or organization in those countries where it has a presence or wants to have a presence. The regulatory environment around your business will be something you’ll want to get a handle on as well.

Globality not only broadens your thinking, it also expands your focus. It enables sectors like government, business, international development, foundations and civil society to get beyond their own spheres—and to coalesce around shared interests or common concerns. I mention all of this because, wherever you’re working, as you do your day-to-day tasks, the more you can put what you are doing in a larger, global frame, the more value you will add to those around you—and the more you will deepen an important aspect of leadership.

Globality is the twenty-first century’s answer to the ancient Greek ideal of being a citizen of the world. It’s the deep appreciation that—in the words of Dr Martin Luther King Jr—‘we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality . . . whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.’

Globality is vital to leadership at any level but it’s a prerequisite to leadership at the highest levels, where you will have the greatest opportunities to do well and do good, which brings me to my third point.

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