On a Mission to Develop Global Leaders
By Anthony Griffin
Global Bridge empowers clients to bring their visions of success into reality. To do this, Founder and President Garry Pearson and his team of professionals established a company mission and vision that permeates every aspect of the company. Previously, I spoke with Garry about what makes Global Bridge unique. In this article, we explore the philosophy behind the company mission and vision.
Flourish on the Global Business Scene
Can you explain the Global Bridge mission?
When the company was first established back in 2012, our mission was to develop global leaders. Basically, we want to help people fulfill their potential and allow them to flourish in any global business environment.
This idea is based on my experience as a trainer, before I established Global Bridge. I found that a lot of the people I was training didn’t set their targets very high. For example, if they had to give a presentation, they would tell me that they just wanted to survive – to get through it. The bar was not set very high. This is one of the reasons I chose the word “flourish.” I think Japan has a lot of extremely capable, talented business people, and I’m fortunate enough to have worked with so many of them over the years. But at the same time, a lot of Japanese people don’t get the best results possible when they negotiate or do business with foreign counterparts. I think that’s partly due to communication, but it also has to do with other things as well—mindset, perhaps. So, I wanted to help people flourish and become leaders in the global business scene.
We teach people at different levels, from experienced executives all the way down to freshly graduated new hires. We help them on different stages of their leadership journey. This journey starts at a young age, when we start laying the groundwork for who we want to be in the future. So, coming full circle, our mission is to develop global leaders, helping people fulfil their potential and flourish in global business.
A Focus on Communication Skill, Mindset, and Flexibility
How about your company vision?
As for our vision, we aim to become the world’s premier training company. We’re especially focused on three aspects: communication skill, mindset, and flexibility. Communication skill is the base of what we do. How do we do that? One aspect of this is the basic language skills. But while we help our clients improve their language skills, we also help them to use the language that they have in order to communicate effectively in meetings, teleconferences, presentations, negotiations or in any situation where they are required to communicate in business. Cross-cultural understanding, knowing how to communicate effectively with people from other cultures, is a vital component of this.
But it is important to remember that communication skills are just tools. In order to use these tools, you need to have the right mindset, which brings us to our second point. This includes open-mindedness and a willingness to listen. Perhaps the most critical aspect of mindset though is confidence. When we first meet people, we often hear things like “I can’t communicate in English.” We want to change that mindset to a more positive, “can-do” one. It’s amazing the impact a positive mindset can have on your communication. And that starts with confidence.
The third point that we focus on is flexibility. Anyone engaged in business knows that no matter how much we prepare, things in the real world never go exactly as we expect. If we only prepared our clients to do things in one way, they wouldn’t be able to adapt to real-world conditions. So at Global Bridge, part of our training and vision includes giving our clients flexibility to adapt to any situation.
I like to use the metaphor of a toolbox. I want to make sure that our students have a full toolbox when they join a business meeting, take a business trip, or negotiate with clients. Whatever situation they face, they can look at their toolbox and find the right communication tool. Through our training, they are able to use each tool well. They just need to select the right one.
The Power of People
Ultimately, Global Bridge is all about people. As Garry often says, “People are the greatest asset of every organization. At Global Bridge, we are committed to helping people fulfil their potential and develop the skills needed to succeed in global business.” By adhering to the company mission and vision, the Global Bridge team never loses sight of this fact.
If you would like to get in touch with Garry or learn more about Global Bridge, please contact support@globalbridge.co.jp or call 03-3518-2620.