Prof. Peter Wood – International Director of The University of Griffith

 The conference “Seeking for the effective global leader of XXI Century” of Prof.Peter Woods, which is hosted by Office for International Study Program – Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology. 

There were about 500 freshmen of Advanced Program, Articulation Program of term 2014 attended in this conference.

According to Prof. Peter Woods, the most important thing that make a good leader is to respect cultural difference.

 Therefore, a leader has to be good at multi language communication ( you will earn people’s respect if you know more languages), multi-culture awareness, local business environment and opening/flexible in accepting new culture/ new experience.

 As Woods said, from XV century, the Chinese had the demand of learning, communicating and trading with other countries in order to self-improve their knowledge as well as increase their impact on other regions

 From 1405 to 1433, an Chinese adventure Trinh Hoa commanded a fleet including 200 ships, reached Indian Sea, South Africa beach and South East islands, etc., then brought back numerous of goods, new kind of plants and many prisoners of war.

 He also listed many famous businessman as Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita – two co-founders of Sony, the brand of many top-class products; Mark Zuckerberg – excellent CEO of Facebook Corp, etc., they have been succeeded due to their awareness and respect to the difference of cultures.

“Leaders will never be able to maximize their effective management if they only focus on technological development but ignore the aspects of culture, legal and local history” – Peter Woods said.

 He also shared some experience in working in many countries: never give things/ shake hands by left hand in Indonesia; offence to  baht (Thailand money) is considered as offence to Thailand Loyal; etc.,

 Some pictures of the conference taken by OISP: