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I friend of mine who has recently changed companies just sent me his new work address and phone number. I noticed that his new title is Global Head of ... . The phrase Global Head just makes me think of the School Crossing wordless sign
Is it just me, or would you all also prefer Head of Global ... ?
e.g.
Global Head of Sales (580,000 hits in Google)
Head of Global Sales (590,000 hits in Google)
Reminds me of the big shake-up we once had in job titles. A few lucky people ended up with business cards identifying them as "Center Head", which sounds like something you'd call someone in an eighth-grade schoolyard fight.
Others became various kinds of "Leader": there were "Relationship Leaders" (called RLs), "Team Leaders" (TLs), and "Operations Leaders" (who got giggled at when we mentioned them to our colleagues in Japan, where "OL" is a longstanding abbreviation for "Office Lady" and refers to someone who gets the coffee and runs other errands).
I observed at the time that "leader" can also be defined as "the piece of blank tape at the beginning of a cassette that you can't record anything on".
While I certainly appreciate the difference you point out, Glenn, I think that, somehow, the term "Global Head of Sales" makes more sense. I think we in the U.S. have some kind of default response that interprets most things as inherently domestic, excluding other nations. Thus "Global Head of Sales" connotes a person who is "Head of Sales" for the entire globe, whereas "Head of Global Sales" connotes a person who is in charge of sales around the globe, but excluding the domestic sales market. And I think this is a natural, sort of tribalist response to what we hear — we hear ourselves as implied in some things. I think it becomes clearer if you were to substitute "International" for "Global": "International Head of Sales" seems to immediately mean something different from "Head of International Sales."
I agree that there is the different shade of meaning. A related question occurs to me – in European companies (that now all want to have English job titles) they tend to use the title and then the department name following immediately, with no preposition:
e.g. Director Sales and Marketing Head Human Resources Director European Sales
I realise these, coming under a signature, or on a business card, are necessarily telegraphic in style, but is it also customary in English-speaking areas to omit the preposition "of" (or at least a comma)?
It seems clipped and strange to me. Where I work, we would use a comma or a dash, depending on where you look. We do not use a level title of Head. I don't think that would work well at all in initial position without of.
e.g.
Director, Sales and Marketing or Director – Sales and Marketing
Manager, Quality Control or Manager – Quality Control
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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