From Davos to Dalian: We Are All Global Citizens

John Hope Bryant is a thought leader, founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE and Bryant Group Companies. 

The first day I met Professor Klaus Shwab, the founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum, I was in a school in inner-city Detroit, Michigan, teaching a financial dignity course, and he was in his Forum office in Geneva, Switzerland, bringing world leaders together to advance his vision of creating a better world.  On this international call we shared his then new vision for something world changing; something that would later go on to become known as the Forum of Young Global leaders. 

Today, YGL is a vision made real with over 900 YGL’s from around the world, and from right here in China too, making a difference in our world.

Professor Schwab and I may have come from very different cultures and backgrounds, and now we were communicating across two very different continents, but the language we used on that call was in fact universal.  The values needed to lift any society, and to create a sustainable world, are in fact universal.  I did not realize it then, but on this day we were global citizens.   He knew it, and I was about to learn the power of it. This is but one of the powerful things at the World Economic Forum does quietly, yet powerfully for all who attend.

We both wanted to “improve the state of the world,” but one did it as an accomplished leader and Ph.D in the institutional power environment, and the other did it as a passionate and community engaged Ph.Do in the localized environment. 

We both appreciated the value of these unique approaches, and as well simultaneously call for real action, leading to very real leadership results, from the community streets of Detroit, Michigan, to the corporate suites occupied every year in Davos, Switzerland.  And now, here at the Summer Davos, in Dalian, China.  Here in Dalian there are thousands of concerned leaders from government, community and the private sector,  all gathered together this week to help create sustainable solutions for a troubled world.  A world in many ways, on Reset.  But rainbows only follow storms.  You cannot have a rainbow, without a storm first.

The newly announced Global Shapers initiative is a great examples of the Ph.Do spirit, with Hubs in local cities, made up of emerging young leaders from 20 to 30 years of age, all passionately concerned about THEIR city in the global community.

The Forum of Young Global Leaders is a perfect example of leaders who represent a focus on the local and the global at the same time. 

They think global, yet often act local. 

They make big bets, but keep small promises. 

Their word and what they stand for, and the values that they stand behind, appear to be at least “as” important as their ability to produce yearly impressive results that advance their enterprise,  field of study, or passion, say in the arts and sciences. 

Who they are and how they lead, is at least as important to the broader YGL community as what they do, and this unique combination earns each member their right to be called Young Global Leaders.  And the YGL’s from Asia are some of the most passionately engaged in this conversation as global citizens. 

One of the most inspiring sessions that took place this week in the YGL space, was one focused on the terrible impact of the Tsunami in Japan.  But it featured not towering world leaders, but some of the orphaned but dignity rich children from the region.  This Forum made sure that they were seen also.  Doing this, says…who you are, and what you are about.

I remember being at Harvard University in the U.S., and talking on the subject of nuclear weapons and a country’s right to have one.  When a YGL spoke as one country’s representative, they almost always wanted to have at least ONE nuclear weapon for themselves.  But when asked to view themselves as global citizens – in an instance, no one wanted even one nuclear weapon for anyone.

From Davos to Detroit, to Dalian, leadership matters.  It matters most, today.

The members of the World Economic Forum, organized here in Dalian, China at the 2011 Summer Davos meeting, sit at the very doorstep to greatness. 

China, has the potential for true greatness, and not just economic success.  

China, with it’s rich history and philosophical lessons around the essence of leadership itself, also has a lot to teach the rest of the world.  But all of this is a choice.  Our choice.

Today, the solutions we seek do not lie in being exclusively American or European, Asian or East Indian, Latin American, African or Middle Eastern. 

The solutions we seek are bound up in a simple classroom lesson that my now friend and mentor, Professor Klaus Schwab was trying to teach his new “student,” on an international telephone call from a simple classroom in inner-city Detroit, Michigan – we are all global citizens. 

Our enlightened self-interests, are all bound up together. 

We are all global citizens.