Description
Overview
Global Fitness for Global People is for all those wanting to thrive in today’s global workplaces and to flourish in culturally diverse contexts. For this you need Global Fitness. Such competence does not develop by chance; individuals and organisations each need to foster it deliberately. This book explains why and how. Global Fitness results from tackling three key areas – establishing your Global Fitness goals, mastering your Global Fitness toolkit, and moulding the Global Fitness environment.
The approach of Global Fitness for Global People is in line with the Chinese saying “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” In today’s rapidly changing and uncertain environment, people need sound insights and guiding principles to shape their actions – whatever the situation and whenever or wherever it occurs. Global Fitness for Global People prepares you for this challenge, providing you with a set of core principles and tools that you can apply flexibly and dynamically to meet your own and your organisation’s needs – now and in a changing future.
Each of Global Fitness for Global People’s 15 chapters uses thought-provoking authentic examples from a wide variety of situations to illustrate important learning points. It draws on state-of-the-art research and practice to explain the key issues and offers you reflective guidelines and activities for professional development purposes. Part 3, which focuses on the Global Fitness environment, goes a step further by providing a strategic perspective. It is especially interesting and useful to senior management and Learning & Development decision-makers who have the task of promoting Global Fitness in their organisation.
The book is essential reading if you are leading, managing, or working in culturally diverse situations and hence need Global Fitness in order to achieve effective collaboration. Whatever your sector – international business, not-for-profit, third-sector, education, healthcare, research, politics, government, diplomacy and more – this book will help you and your organisation to perform more successfully.
Sample
Contents
Introduction
1. Becoming Global: Mapping your Development Journey
Part 1: Understanding your goals: Global Fitness in Practice
2. Global Personal Qualities: Growing in Self-awareness
3. Global Knowledge & Understanding: Establishing Common Ground
4. Global Communication Skills: Enhancing Mutual Understanding
5. Global Rapport Management Skills: Developing Strong Relationships
Part 2: Mastering your development toolkit: Global Fitness Engagement
6. How to Embrace the Unfamiliar, Reflect and Adapt
7. How to Build Global Relations and Enhance Rapport
8. How to Collaborate and Succeed in Global Teams
9. How to Exercise Global Leadership and Handle the Context
10. How to Manage Ethical Challenges and Maintain Integrity
Part 3: Moulding the context: Global Fitness Environment
11. Ensuring Well-being: How to Establish the Essentials
12. Promoting Learning and Innovation: How to Leverage Cultural Diversity
13. Identifying Development Priorities: How to Monitor and Benchmark Performance and Satisfaction
14. Managing Development Initiatives: How to Plan and Implement Programmes
Concluding Reflections
15. Becoming Global: A Continuing Need
You can see more about the authors from their the Global People Consulting website.
Goldie –
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The expertise of the authors is evident from the first page, and this becomes even more apparent as you read through the book. The advice given is practical and easy to understand, and at the same time it talks to the reader and not down to them. It does not propagate stereotypical images of different cultures, but rather leads the reader to make their own conclusions about how to interact with people who have a different cultural background or experience from their own. I recommend this not only for people in business, but also for those who live and work with people from different cultures, which, in this day and age, is pretty much all of us!
Joanna Sell –
Reading „Global Fitness for Global People“ is like opening doors to the new worlds. Thanks to numerous case studies, stories and authentic critical incidents from academia and from the business context, it offers multiple perspectives on how the same situation can be viewed from different points of view. In order to understand our emotions in the intercultural encounters and expand our comfort zone, it is enriched by several hands-on tools and models that enable reflection and re-evaluation of emotionally charged events that occurred across cultures. Helen Spencer-Oatey talks about two tools described in detail in this book: 3Rs and SOS in our conversation for One Word Stories, episode 59 on http://www.onewordstories.net
Above all, this book is a real treasure for everyone who appreciates the intersection of the practical approach and the academic explanation. A huge added value is a chapter on the importance of the context and the system in which intercultural encounters take place.
Arjan Verdooren (verified owner) –
Global fitness for Global People is a rare book in the field in several ways.
First of all, unlike several more abstract study books, it directly invites the reader to reflect on and enhance their competence. Secondly, unlike many other approaches, it doesn’t oversimplify things but instead embraces the complexity of communication and interaction in a global context- while providing concrete and actionable advices and suggestions.
Thirdly, instead of focusing merely on factors directly related to culture, the ‘global’ focus allows space to encompass other factors such as psychological, linguistic and identity-related ones.
A rich resource both for those operating in global or multicultural contexts and consultants, trainers and coaches in these areas alike.
– Arjan Verdooren
Lecturer, consultant and co-author of Diversity Competence- Cultures Don’t Meet, People Do