Leading in an International Context

Recent discussions around Brexit consistently emphasise London’s place as the world’s leading centre for international business – a place with unrivalled access to expertise in the multiple issues facing global businesses.

Warwick Business School’s new International Executive Development Programme based at London’s iconic Shard, overlooking the City, leverages this essential expertise, to offer a guide to strategic leadership that is invaluable in a time of rapid change and uncertainty. This five-day course sets out the macro-business and economic landscapes and covers both the art and science of leading teams across cultures and maximising value from an international business.

Leading in an international context, across cultures, demands a view of leadership that can accommodate uncertain and volatile business environments, and where a key responsibility of leaders, beyond directing resources, is to identify potential and enable its release. Confirming this view, and introducing the program, Jonothan Neelands, Professor of Creative Education, quotes WBS’s Professor Keith Grint:  

“The leader’s role is to ask the right questions rather than provide the right answers because the answers may not be self-evident and will require a collaborative process to make any kind of progress.” – For senior leaders knowing the right questions to ask is critical.

The International Executive Development Programme, supports business leaders from around the world by combining world-class executive learning around leadership and human behaviour, with a focus on strategic international business issues such as: international capital, managing investors, globalization and global trading blocs, etc.

Based in the heart of the City of London, and led by internationally acclaimed WBS professors and practitioners, the programme uses a range of approaches to interpret and manage the challenges created by uncertainty and translate these into opportunities through improved decision making. This programme has particular relevance to the economic uncertainty created by Brexit.

An intense week of lectures, company visits and seminars based at The Shard, delivers daily sessions titled:

• Day 1: Global business cycle, company performance and investment decisions The Real Value of Business for Mergers, Acquisitions and Managing Investors
• Day 2: The real value of business for mergers, acquisitions and managing investors Globalization and the rise of Global Trading Blocs
• Day 3: Leadership, context culture in decision making
• Day 4: Globalisation and managing global-local tensions within international firms
• Day 5: Behavioural science for leaders

John Thanassoulis, Professor of Financial Economics and the programme leader, says “Business leaders from across Africa, the Middle East and indeed the world will come to the WBS base at The Shard, London to develop their business insight in the heart of a leading financial and commercial centre.”

In this short video he introduces the programme: