How do people with low self-esteem fare as global leaders? Or what of those who are arro­gant and think they know it all? Can either of them be successful global leaders? 

They can — if they’re willing to work on their “intrap­er­sonal” skills and intel­li­gence. No leader can be successful without self-aware­ness, intro­spec­tion and personal reflec­tion, which are the hall­marks of intrap­er­sonal compe­ten­cies. 

“Intra” means “within”, so “intrap­er­sonal” is some­thing that takes place within the self. Intrap­er­sonal compe­tence is about being good at recog­nizing and inter­preting your own emotions and thoughts. This takes both confi­dence and humility, which is why people with low self-esteem or arro­gance will never reach their full poten­tial as global leaders. 

In this article, we’re going to take a look at the five main intrap­er­sonal compe­ten­cies of successful global leaders and how to develop intrap­er­sonal skills and intel­li­gence. 

Side note: Intrapersonal compe­ten­cies shouldn’t be confused with interpersonal compe­ten­cies. Inter­per­sonal compe­tence is the ability to interact with others. Check out our full article on inter­per­sonal compe­ten­cies — a.k.a “people skills” — here.

5 Intrap­er­sonal Compe­ten­cies of Global Leaders

At their most basic level, intrap­er­sonal skills are defined as the following: 

• Self-reflec­tion
• Intro­spec­tion
• Intu­ition
• Inde­pen­dent thinking
• Strong sense of self
• Firm values and morals

But for global leaders, a.k.a. “extreme leaders”, we must once again go beyond that basic skillset. The above-mentioned intrap­er­sonal skills form the foun­da­tion that a global leader needs to build strong intrap­er­sonal compe­tence. Here’s how true global leaders use them to their advan­tage. 

1. Inquis­i­tive­ness

As a global leader you have to be willing and eager to ask some diffi­cult ques­tions — about your­self. You have to be curious, inter­ested and inquis­i­tive about how you come across to people, where you need to improve yourself, and how you might do that. An atti­tude of “that’s just me, there’s nothing I can do about it” won’t cut it for global leaders.

Example ques­tions a global leader might ask are the following: 

• How do I want to come across in the upcoming meeting?
• How did I come across in the meeting? 
• What could I have done differ­ently? 
• What can I do to improve next time? 
• How does [person you look up to] handle certain situ­a­tions? 
• Why do people follow [person you look up to]? What about him / her draws me, too? How can I emulate that? 
• How can I work on raising my self-esteem and confi­dence? 
• What can I do to come across as less arro­gant or defen­sive? 

Part of a global leader’s intrap­er­sonal compe­tence is to be inquis­i­tive enough to ask those ques­tions, find answers to them, and espe­cially act on those answers. 

2. Culti­vating a Global Mindset

Global leaders must think on a “global” scale. This doesn’t just include leading effec­tively across borders, but also serving a multi­tude of diverse stake­holders in a contin­u­ously changing complex, uncer­tain and ambiguous envi­ron­ment. A global mindset also goes beyond under­standing cultural differ­ences within your team, but includes under­standing differ­ences in busi­ness fields and the impact of actions and reac­tions on various stake­holders. 

A global mindset allows leaders to

• inno­vate in foreign cultures,
• become early movers in global market­places,
• coor­di­nate across subsidiaries and regions, and
• under­stand trade-offs between global stan­dard­iza­tion and local customiza­tion.

Here’s an overview of what having a global mindset requires, that may help you deter­mine in which areas you must focus to improve, build and culti­vate your global mindset: 

• Intel­lec­tu­ally: Global busi­ness savvy, cogni­tive complexity, cosmopolitan outlook
• Psycho­log­i­cally: Passion for diver­sity, quest for adven­ture, self-assur­ance
• Socially: Inter­cul­tural empathy, inter­per­sonal impact, diplo­macy

Like all intrap­er­sonal compe­ten­cies, culti­vating a global mindset must be intrin­si­cally moti­vated. A global leader must be willing to recog­nize where he or she may be lacking, and develop a strategy to improve those areas. Then, of course, they must also follow through on those strate­gies. 

3. Flex­i­bility

Flex­i­bility in leaders is becoming more and more impor­tant in our economic and social envi­ron­ment marked by rapid change. Leaders are flex­ible if they can adjust their lead­er­ship style in response to unpre­dictable circum­stances. 

Flex­ible global leaders are able to adapt to change, to revise their plans and over­come chal­lenges, while still achieving their goals. They are willing to try new things and behav­iors, even in times of radical change. 

Adapt­ability is also an impor­tant element of flex­i­bility. In fact, “flex­i­bility” is defined as the agility in adapting to change. Adapt­able global leaders are able to imple­ment new behav­iors even in existing, “old” situ­a­tions, finding new problem solving methods and expressing creativity in their work. 

There are ways any global leader can improve his or her flex­i­bility: 

• Diag­nose before responding
• Taking time out to assess a situ­a­tion
• Plan­ning ahead
• Clar­i­fying expec­ta­tions
• Selecting the best people for the job
• Asking for feed­back
• Building allies
• Devel­oping conflict manage­ment skills
• Effec­tively managing time
• Helping others set effec­tive goals

The key here is once again to be aware of short­com­ings in flex­i­bility and to have the will­ing­ness to work on them. Without that aware­ness or will­ing­ness — that inquis­i­tive­ness to know more and improve — there would be no growth or devel­op­ment in a global leader’s intrap­er­sonal compe­tence. Which would also make the next intrap­er­sonal compe­tence impos­sible.

4. Building Char­acter

"Character is not made in a crisis; it is only exhibited."

~Robert Freeman

A person’s char­acter — not to be confused with a person being a char­acter — is composed of three factors: 

1. Having the right values. For global leaders, these could be respect, humility, toler­ance, inclu­sion, and passion, just to name a few. 
2. Doing the right thing. Successful global leaders act on their values; they “walk the talk” and lead by example.
3. Being the right kind of person by being honest, brave, kind, compas­sionate, wise, and human, among other things.

Global leaders must continue to show good char­acter even in stressful situ­a­tions, when the pres­sure to succeed is high, or a crisis has to be dealt with. They must remain respectful and honest, for example, and continue to live by and up to their values. 

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And while “char­acter” itself isn’t measur­able, it is defi­nitely some­thing that can be improved upon, by

• seeking continual educa­tion,
• spreading kind­ness,
• working on oneself,
• pursuing excel­lence,
• adding value,
• prac­ticing persis­tence, and
• being deter­mined.

A good global leader contin­u­ously aims to improve his or her char­acter, to be able to remain true to their values even in moments of crises. 

5. Creating Resilience

Global leaders must be resilient and depend­able, able to work, think and strate­gize under pres­sure — which can come from many different direc­tions.

Prior­i­tizing Tasks

Orga­ni­za­tions tend to have lots of different prior­i­ties that run along­side or even contra­dict each other, competing for a lead­er’s atten­tion and resources. Such prior­i­ties are often beyond the lead­er’s control, but never­the­less an inte­gral part of their objec­tive. 

We go into the details of how to handle conflicting prior­i­ties as a global leader here. You may not have set them, but as a global leader it’s up to you to manage and deliver them, even when all hell breaks loose. This could be someone in your team falling ill, or someone missing a dead­line; it could be new urgent tasks coming in when you’re already strug­gling to complete current ones; or maybe the time­line of a project gets accel­er­ated, meaning you have less time to complete it than orig­i­nally thought. 

In such moments, resilience is the key to keeping your cool and not letting the pres­sure and stress keep you from restruc­turing tasks and finding solu­tions. 

Handling Crit­i­cism

The higher up the food chain you go, the more crit­i­cism will come your way. It’s just a fact of life. Not every­body is going to agree with you and your views or vision — and that’s okay. But if every unkind or crit­ical word aimed at you brings you down, puts you on the defen­sive, or shuts you up, your success as a global leader stands on fragile ground. 

Intel­li­gent people don’t follow yes-men, or someone who won’t face the oppo­si­tion. As a global leader, you have to be able to see crit­i­cism leveled your way as an oppor­tu­nity to view your cause or vision from someone else’s point of view, to learn some­thing about your oppo­si­tion, or yes, even to adjust your own opin­ions and values. 

As a global leader, you have to be able to handle even destruc­tive crit­i­cism in a construc­tive way, demon­strating the resilience and ability to not take it person­ally (even if it’s clearly meant to be), and put aside pride and ego to make the most of it. 

Learn to Flex your Intrap­er­sonal Muscles With eurac

As you’ve surely noticed by now, the common thread to improving your intrap­er­sonal compe­ten­cies as a global leader, is to always be open to

• ques­tion your­self and your capa­bil­i­ties,
• analyze and assess your skills,
• come up with a strategy to develop and grow your abil­i­ties, and
• follow through on imple­menting those improve­ments. 

Intrap­er­sonal compe­ten­cies are diffi­cult to grasp and even more diffi­cult to measure; so without this will­ing­ness to grow and make their own change happen, leaders will have a hard time rising to the level of “global”.

That doesn’t mean you have to figure it all out alone. If you feel like you’re stuck, or you simply want profes­sional advice and training, check out eurac’s Corpo­rate Academy, where we develop global leaders for multi-national copro­ra­tions. 

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