A recent Fortune article recognizes that companies that are best at developing leaders are those that have taken a long term perspective with their employees. To ensure the quality of their leadership, companies invest in their most promising candidates by requiring them to go on global developmental assignments. Most return with global, cross-cultural skills to effectively build the company’s presence in the global marketplace, which is where most now look to for revenue.

IBM came in at number one in the world for developing leaders in Fortune’s “Top Companies for Leaders” in 2009. One of IBM’s Corporate Service Corps teams was assigned to market locally crafted Ghanaian products around the world. The job “stretched me in a way we all absolutely need,” and “it gave us a shake in perspective,” said one of the team members.

“Developmental assignments like his are among the most important tools that great companies use to build leaders — and that average companies rarely use at all,” according to the article.

“The importance of such assignments and how they’re being adapted to pay off in today’s global economy are two of the strongest messages emerging from the research behind our new ranking of the world’s Top Companies for Leaders.”

International assignments have had a history marked with a mixture of success and failure, but perhaps this doesn’t need to repeat itself because you can learn the skills to adapt to other cultures, and to be successful in a global function. Individuals must spend significant time learning how to adjust their behavior to successfully interact with people from around the world (and before this, to recognize that there’s a cultural gap between themselves and their counterparts in other countries). Intercultural learning is another investment that many global companies make to prepare their leaders-in-the-making, especially in tandem with global assignments. Another key point is that as the global marketplace has grown, companies are recognizing how crucial it is that their leaders understand the range of global markets in which the company operates.

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In the New York Times, a conversation between columnists highlights the future of Western men through a very general comparison of Western and Asian thinking styles.

Before looking at that article, I’ll start by noting the various cultural dimensions CultureWizard teaches, e.g. relationship and communication. These dimensions encompass styles of thought, and the approach one takes to human interaction. In China, for example, we generalize that most people are relationship-oriented, which means that relationships are the underlying lens through which Chinese see all aspects of life, both business and personal. The general idea is that this is the opposite of a country like Switzerland, where people often look at a clock to organize their days. To understand others, simple lessons on very basic and commonly encountered cultural attributes is a necessity for global business succss. However, in reality, everyone is unique and should be treated according to their personal culture. Nevertheless, everyone is influenced by a national culture through religion, mythology, history, mass media, etc.

David Brooks’ conversation with Gail Collins is very general, but there is some truth to what Brooks observes on culture, even though it’s still far from being common knowledge.

“Different cultures and groups have different styles of thinking, or to be more precise, the average behavior is different from one group to another. So is it possible that Westerners, on average, have thinking styles that make them ill-suited for the problems of the future while Asians have styles that make them better suited?”

“Asians place emphasis on context while Westerners place more emphasis on individuals. This seems like a gross generalization but it is robustly supported by hundreds and hundreds of studies.”

“Basically, I’m saying that two groups I’m a member of — Westernized men — may have been well adapted to the agricultural and industrial societies, but our thinking styles are not well adapted to the networked age of social information flows. I’m not just saying the West is doomed. I think Western men, like me, are doomed unless we change and adapt quickly!”

The individualistic approach that is deeply ingrained in Western individuals’ minds is not the norm in Asia, although culture is gradually changing, so learning and recognizing situations where different approaches are popular interesting. Western men may not be doomed, but cultural awareness is a solution to the adaptability that global business demands today.

Click here to read the conversation. How would you react to these ideas?

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