Picture the ideal business person. What do you see?

More likely than not, your business person - for the sake of simplicity, let's call it a man, and call him Will Power - will be well educated with say, an MBA from a prestigious university. So here you have him, William Power MBA. What else do you see?

Well, Mr Power probably has a contacts book as fat as a regular phonebook. These contacts are not just in one country, however, but are based all over the world and speak a huge variety of languages. For this reason, if Mr Power wanted to learn business Arabic or learn business Chinese, he would have no difficulty at all. This is because Will Power is a man who knows how to get things done. He is not afraid to plunge in at the deep end and take a language course when one is necessary.

Mr Power is probably a well-traveled man who understands the difference between various cultures around the world. Before that all-important trip to seal the deal in Milan, he took a month of classes to learn business Italian; before clinching the big one in Madrid, he spent a fortnight locked away in his office with a teacher helping him to learn business Spanish. Of course, being the consummate professional, nothing untoward happened with the teacher - Will Power has the will power and common sense to keep business and pleasure filed under two separate compartments in his life.

Compartmentalising is very important to our ideal business person. He doesn't let his home life interfere with business and certainly doesn't let business interfere with his happy, stable family. After the business trip to Madrid, Power may well arrange a private Spanish course in London for his wife and whisk her out for a week in Andalucia, or a private Japanese course in London and zip her off to Tokyo for a week of high-tech entertainment. He wouldn't flinch at having to learn Japanese for business, despite the language being one of the most complex on the planet. With three separate written languages (one alone containing over 4,000 characters) taking a crash course in Japanese is no small feat.

While most British businessmen are monoglots who would struggle even to learn business French, Power knows the importance of communicating in different languages. Having looked at all the finance jobs London had to offer, Mr Power ('Will' to anyone who has known him for more than ten minutes) decided that finance was only one aspect of a successful business and that variety is the spice of life. On a whim, he may learn business Dutch or take a private German course in London just to improve his chances of sealing that all-important trans-European deal.

Will Power MBA is personable, dedicated, hardworking and able to step back and look at the bigger picture. He treats everyone from the copywriter to the CEO with the same respect. He is an expert in languages and balancing his life. If that is not the model of the perfect business person, what is?