HOW TO BUILD GLOBAL LEADERS?

To prepare someone to lead globally, development options must equip leaders with the right combination of skills around collaboration and influence.

Most curriculum to develop global leadership skills and competencies focuses on the same points: developing and executing strategic business plans; communicating and working effectively with diverse internal and external colleagues and customers; and dealing with change, complexity and uncertainty in a confident manner.

While all of this is important, high-performance organizations know four elements are essential for effective global leadership development and market performance:

• Immersion in cultures and customs for local markets.
• Focus on collaboration and influence.
• Selection made by objective behavioral evidence.
• Curriculum based on the long-term.

A June 2014 study from the Institute for Corporate Productivity and the American Management Association, “Global Leadership Development: Preparing Leaders for a Globalized Market” found a mixed bag in terms of year-over-year progress from employers equipping their leaders to perform in a global environment (Editor’s note: The author works for the Institute for Corporate Productivity). On one hand, the proportion of firms addressing global leadership development — with a distinct program or embedded within a general leadership development curriculum — has grown to 44 percent from 31 percent in the past five years. But 21 percent of companies perceive their GLD programs as effective to a high or very high, despite the fact that success in the global business environment is an imperative.

The study found four times as many high-performance organizations — defined as the top 25 percent based on multi-year growth trends in revenue, profit, market share and customers satisfaction — are highly effective at developing leaders with global skills and competencies than their lower-performing counterparts, 32 percent vs. 8 percent respectively. Research revealed a distinct set of practices that distinguish these high-performers, and have a strong positive correlation to market performance and global leadership development effectiveness. 

The Value of Local Intel
Global offerings in GLD programs are often overshadowed by a focus on soft communication and business skills, but the tide is turning, according to the study. Organizations are including local perspectives specific to key markets when developing GLD curriculum by:

• Including interviews with successful global leaders to determine common behaviors/traits.
• Consulting with in-country resources to determine region-specific needs.
• Ensuring consistency with program delivery on a global basis.

Organizations don’t have to exhaust resources on these practices. Cultural fluency can be achieved without physical immersion in a region anytime with technology.For instance, create virtual rotational programs that deliver consistent cultural and regional-specific learning. Such learning may include cross-cultural coaching and mentoring, webcasts from local academicians, participation in videoconference meetings for global teams, audio presentations for language learning, and specialized video series via YouTube or Vimeo.

Global IT applications company Oracle Corp. ensures its leaders worldwide receive a consistent offering that is regionally relevant by involving local talent, said Sandy Elvington, senior leadership consultant. Oracle wanted to deliver leadership training globally, but wanted to build that capability within its own learning organization. To that end, the company chose a global vendor that required facilitators be certified in program delivery.

Global content is included in the core leadership development program, which covers critical pieces for frontline managers worldwide, such as transitioning to management for first-time managers, communication, building teams and networking to build a knowledge base. A global team — including members from Asia-Pacific; Europe, India; Latin America; Middle East and Africa; and the U.S. — develops the program, weighing feedback and input from local Oracle employees.

“Whatever we develop must play not only in the U.S., but also in other countries,” Elvington said. “You can’t create a program to roll out globally with U.S.-centric people; weengage all teams across the globe to make for a greater success rate.”

The New Global Leader
High-performance organizations are more likely to define leaders based on influence rather than authority. They define influence by the ability to persuade others to consider or adopt a point of view and the ability to obtain a positive action from others. However, excellence in work performance trumps both competencies and has the greatest correlation to market performance and GLD effectiveness.

Conversely, two definitions detract from both market performance and effective global leadership development and show influence does not look like: “direct reporting authority over others” and “personal reputation.” These two definitions of influence are more likely to be found in low-performance organizations and showed a negative correlation to market performance and GLD effectiveness. It’s about leading by example.

As organizations develop leaders who must operate in increasingly matrixed and project-oriented work environments, it’s important to develop leaders who can collaborate with various backgrounds, demographics and perspectives. Therefore, GLD should focus on teaching and coaching individuals with diverse learning styles, and addressing and resolving performance issues of virtual team members.

Renata Viskanta, director of learning and development and leadership and organization effectiveness at W.W. Grainger Inc., said the global organization helps its leaders develop influencing skills via a nine-month global leadership development process. Participants spend 40 to 60 percent of their time in a comprehensive action learning process and must delegate their high-priority responsibilities to others and help stretch those individuals to take on expanded roles.

“The action learning team itself works on an enterprisewide business challenge and receives intensive focus on developing their leadership capabilities,” Viskanta said. “At year end, the team’s final presentation tells a story, in equal measure, about the strategy and implementation plan they’ve created as well as their leadership development journey. It’s a high-visibility development opportunity and also a great tool for introducing the board to upcoming talent.”

Many organizations use recommendations from senior leadership or an employee’s direct supervisor to select participants for GLD, but neither of these methods is positively correlated to market performance or global leadership development effectiveness. Such approaches can be highly subjective and undermine confidence in the selection process. High-performance organizations base global leadership candidacy on objective evidence: recommendation from a mentor, sponsor, or coach; performance history; or skills or behavioral assessments.

The 2013 iteration of this study showed that competency gaps identified through strategic workforce planning was a key driver for GLD processes that distinguished high-performance organizations from low-performance organizations. This year’s data reveal several additional future-focused practices for creating curriculum, and all have strong correlations both to market performance and effective GLD:

• Determining future-focused critical roles core to the business’ longer-term success but difficult to fill.
• Identifying specific skills needed in future-focused critical roles.
• Conducting an internal-skills inventory to determine longer-term gaps in critical roles.
• Conducting environmental scanning to determine external skills shortages in future-focused key markets.

Global agriculture/industrial supplier Cargill benefits from having CEO and top-of-the-house support for GLD — a practice highly correlated to market performance and GLD effectiveness. “We get regular senior-leader perspective by having leaders teach leaders across our top programs,” said Ian Stephenson, vice president of organizational effectiveness at Cargill. “They shape the curriculum they are delivering, and we tap them for the capabilities we need to build next.”

Cargill also uses strategic partnerships with customers and other outside resources to helpdefine skills needed five to seven years out. Stephenson said seven years ago, as the rate of change continued to accelerate and complexity increased, leaders identified the need to build stronger change leadership and systems thinking capabilities. “We benefit today from having developed leaders with a change mindset and skill set and tool set,” he said.

Ideally, organizations should create a dedicated GLD program. For organizations lacking the necessary resources, or those for which GLD doesn’t fit the business model, consider a curriculum that addresses global skills and competencies within a general leadership development program, which also has a strong correlation to GLD effectiveness.

Following are three recommendations for organizations to prepare leaders to manage and operate effectively in a global environment.

1. Create a senior-leadership development council. The senior leadership team must own global leadership development. The primary cause for ineffective global leadership development is lack of attention from CEOs and other senior leaders. The CEO must chair the council, which meets quarterly to identify, assess, get to know, mentor and teach top talent. The council defines specific behaviors; decides on interventions, such as removing barriers, strategic recruiting and executive education investments; agrees on officer succession; and builds talent pipelines. These tasks cannot be delegated.

2. Replace competency models with behavioral models for every level of leadership. The Institute for Corporate Productivity’s research has consistently shown that ensuring leadership behavior is consistent with strategy as a practice that is extremely highly correlated with market performance. However, most GLD programs are anchored in a competency model developed by HR professionals. Competencies describe contributing factors that enable leaders to function in their role, such as knowledge, experience, skill and attitude. Behaviors, on the other hand, are demonstrated actions, attitudes or activities leaders exhibit to show proficiency in a professional skill. Behaviors are a better gauge for leadership effectiveness because they are observable and can be measured.

3. Address current and future needs.The majority of leadership models and curriculum today are based on the past and don’t leverage data to anticipate changes in the organization or its markets. The senior leadership team should have data pertaining to gaps in workforce supply and demand based on future-focused critical roles so they can determine which leadership behaviors, at each leadership level, are needed to drive the organization forward.

Like all investments, the GLD program must be reviewed and managed with vigor. Quality of movement — which provides data on internal placement rates, promotion rates and other organizational movements — is important. It is especially critical to monitor assignments in other countries and to follow up on performance after a move.

A subset of this is to examine how many individuals who complete the GLD program fill key roles. The quality of these “hit rates” can help reveal deficiencies in GLD selections or development processes, as well as post-program support resources.

Quality of attrition — which tracks departures from critical roles or among those who have been identified as high potential — is also a key metric. This reveals undesirable, voluntary turnover, which has a high cost on the business, including lost revenue and income, as well as decreased employee engagement and morale.

GLOBAL LEADERS EMBRACE DIFFERENCE

To be a true global leader, executives must learn to welcome differences with curiosity and empathy in a way that seeks mutual benefit and growth.

Imagine the following scenario. In a training room of executive learners from a multinational petrochemical corporation, there are at least 20 different nationalities present. Like most such gatherings, learners initially sat with their own: Brits, Malays, Chinese, Nigerians, Indians, Saudis, French and Russians all sitting as remote from each other as their nations appear on a globe.

“Go find the person most different from yourself and start a conversation.”

Everyone froze. Not surprisingly, no one is initially comfortable enough to do it. Perhaps because people are conditioned by society to believe that difference is at least cause for hesitation. Being different is often assumed to mean “less than.”

After some prodding, the room began to look more heterogeneous.

In the end, this kind of exercise can illustrate a valuable lesson: To be global as an individual and as an organization requires that executives embrace diverse learning at the personal/interpersonal level and at the business level. This includes learning to embrace differences with personal curiosity and empathy.

This is the fundamental step in making an organization global, but most companies aren’t willing. A 2013 Right Management study reported that 42 percent of individuals in overseas assignments fail. The same study found 22 percent of North American companies don’t provide learning preparation for executives being sent abroad.

Don’t Miss Global Opportunities
Expatriate, international businessperson and global executive: These three terms are often used interchangeably, but each have distinct roles and the latter is all encompassing.

Most global executives are expatriates, which means they generally stay in one place abroad but aren’t necessarily tasked with leadership roles. International executives have leadership roles and are aware of global differences but don’t necessarily need to engage with local personnel.

Truly global executives, however, must lead in these situations and be comfortable moving fluidly through different time zones, cultures and geopolitical boundaries. In other words, the distinctive characteristic for global leaders is their ease of engagement and re-engagement — the ability toengage in meaningful, effective and productive ways in any locale.

Marriott Elevates Its Global General Managers

When it comes to Marriott International Inc.’s general management training, employees have checked in for an extended stay.

“We don’t want it to be a fire hose experience where in a week you’ll get 15 topics,” said Tim Tobin, vice president of global learning and leadership development.

The hotel chain’s Elevate program gives employees a year of training in owner relations, sales and revenue management, brand, customer focus, intercultural communications, human resources, finance and crisis communication — all pivotal parts of being general managers.

These skills are delivered through a variety of methods, including classroom, individual development planning, mentorships and webinars. Toward the end of the program, participants complete a two-week shadow period and participate in peer forums made up of their fellow trainees.

“All of leadership development has got to have a component that’s not just developing skills, but also creating deep roots in terms of what are your values, what is your purpose in life and what assumptions do you make about your role as a leader and the impact you have on the lives around you,” said Kathleen Ross, executive vice president of leadership development at consulting firm Healthy Companies International. “Otherwise it’s hollow and unauthentic.”

In the next several years, Marriott wants to expand its presence in Asia by 30 percent and in the Middle East by 50 percent. To get there, it has to add at least 300 general managers. Tobin said Elevate has prepared 400 potential general managers worldwide to fill those spots.

Elevate pulls employees focused on particular functional areas and exposes them to the rest of the job before they’re promoted. This approach shrank speed-to-performance rates from 10 to 12 months to two to four weeks.

Elevate creates cohorts of 30 to 40 people from more than 55 countries and territories. This deepens the talent pool from which international properties can find general managers with the right skills and cultural background.

General managers are Marriott’s front-line leaders who work with customers, communities, financials and other employees, Tobin said. In a global setting like Marriott’s, understanding cultural context is pivotal to communicate with all levels of internal and external partners.

But knowing how to successfully work with these groups takes more than having the right answers.

“Sometimes you get more seduced into having the answers rather than connecting with people,” Ross said. “We’re not looking for answers, but for human connection and assurance. That’s whether you’re a front-line supervisor or a CEO.” — Kate Everson

English-speaking Western executives often have an advantage because English is the dominant global language for business. But this also can become a weakness. Executives may assume that a common language means a common culture and common context, but it’s actually the most common obstacle to engagement.

Western executives have extra responsibility in global engagement because they come with a different lens than some other countries. English-speaking countries that once imperially ruled today’s emerging nations have more responsibility to understand and acknowledge this historical and social context. Understanding the privilege of having English as a first language in a multinational world is one of the bigger adjustments for multinational executives.

Western businesses can no longer expect the world to come to them. Since the financial crisis of 2008, when legacy markets in the world’s wealthiest nations reeled, the world saw growth not only in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South India, but also in many emerging nations. LindaRottenberg, co-founder and CEO of nonprofit company Endeavor, which advances high-impact entrepreneurship around the world, coined the term “E2E” for “emerging market to emerging market” in 2011.

“When I came up with that, my point was that so many Americans that I spoke to — especially in Silicon Valley — assumed they were like Florence in the age of the Renaissance,” she said. “There was a sense that anyone who wanted to grow big had to come to the United States, the hotbed of action.

“What I started seeing were companies in Brazil going to Turkey and the Middle East, and companies in Asia finding Latin America and realizing they could almost bypass the so-called developed world because they had enough markets and growth opportunities among themselves.”

Organizations may survive without being global, but without adjustment, nonglobal Western organizations will miss out on their own potential growth.

Engagement Is the Global Edge
Global executives have to engage. They must be able to deal with local personnel and their cultural contexts.

Diane Johnson, director of talent at Kennametal Inc., a global tooling, mining and highway construction company with customers in more than 60 nations, said trust is primary to successful global engagement.

“Most cultural appreciation requires the time to build a relationship and to build trust,” she said. “That’s really the engagement part. That’s the investment on the front end that is necessary for the engagementconnection.”

Executives must connect to the people under their direction, even if they need to travel to communicate face to face with their direct reports. 

“The glue that helps engagement happen is the trusting relationship that holds things together when things seem to be falling apart,” Johnson said. “You are more willing to walk through fire for the person you trust.”

However, traditional expatriate training doesn’t go far enough for most Western executives to be effective abroad. Competencies needed for global engagement focus heavily on interpersonal skills; global executives need more.

A Willingness to Learn
In their 2002 foundational study of global leadership titled “Developing Global Executives,” Morgan McCall Jr. and George Hollenbeck established a list of learnable behaviors:

• Open-minded and flexible in thought and tactics
• Cultural interest and sensitivity
• Able to deal with complexity
• Resilient, resourceful, optimistic and energetic
• Honesty and integrity
• Stable personal life
• Value-added technical or business skills

In 2014, writing for Forbes.com, Jack Zenger, CEO of the leadership development firm Zenger Folkman, offered six skills for global leaders: strategic perspective, customer focus and understanding, ability to spot trends, engaged and committed teams, willingness to take risks, and deep knowledge and expertise.

The commonality between these skills and behaviors is emotional intelligence, and they all can be developed through assessment, learning and coaching. But they are too often mistakenly taken for granted.

In her book, “Crazy Is a Compliment,” Endeavor’s Rottenberg also stresses authenticity as a key tenet. “People can see right through inauthenticity. People who try to change themselves based on what they think different cultures want are doomed to fail. You can be culturally sensitive and still be true to who you are.”

For meaningful engagement to occur, executives must not only be authentic but also they must beadept when adjusting to local culture while still employing leadership skills. Learning to admit one is still learning is surprisingly difficult for many executives, but it’s vital to being stylistically engaging, especially with local personnel.

With this in mind, willingness to learn about local religion, educational systems and governmental systems will pay huge dividends in working effectively with local co-workers and subordinates. Individuals should consistently place themselves in unfamiliar situations toexpose weaknesses that need to be developed. Or consider identifying a local coach to help navigate company and government relationships in a new region.

“A successful global leader has learning agility beyond the job,” Johnson said. “If they listen well, they do better. Listening implies you don’t know everything, and you are trying to listen to see what the specific needs of a particular region are.”

What Companies Are Missing
Companies need to help people practice learning agility and gain tacit knowledge, so they can understand and improve their ability to respond to situations that are new to them. 

While executives are expected to be experts, theysimultaneously must learn about local cultures. The first step is for them to understand their own learningstyle.

There are many ways to do this, but one approach, described by Maxine Dalton, author of “Learning Tactics Inventory,” is for a leader to ask if he learns best by: going to a book and seeking information, seeking advice from people to understand their approaches, or by jumping in and experimenting.

The best mode is to use all three. Working globally, executives should always be learning different things. But in too many cases, the “leader as learner” role doesn’tappear soon enough. Executives need to become broad learners earlier so they practice learning skillsregularly.

The unfortunate reality is that, after an overseasassignment, little learning takes place. Executives come back to the home office and report that no one asks them about their experiences. Regular debriefs could uncover insight and lessons learned that greatly enhance the global effectiveness of the entireenterprise.

The goal is to gain the ability to approach things differently. In their book “What Is Global Leadership,” Ernest Gundling, Terry Hogan and Karen Cvitkovich advise leaders to seek out critical differences and “invite theunexpected.”

Being global is a competitive advantage for individuals and organizations as so much international business relies on engagement with emerging economies. Corporate learning must evolve to become globally oriented. In doing so, Western businesses and leaders will benefit from honing these teachable learning skills at a time when few companies have focused on it.

Recall the petrochemical company’s “introduce yourself to the most different person” icebreaker. The exercise would likely play out quite differently with a group of seasoned global leaders. Instead of avoiding or denying differences, the group would be eager to identify and learn from those who could help them the most: those most unlike themselves.