Only a third of leaders are effective in leading across countries and cultures.

A Case Study of Global Leadership Development Best Practice

This is one of the conclu­sions A Case Study of Global Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment Best Prac­tice arrives at – and it’s a pretty shocking one, consid­ering the fact that compa­nies are becoming increas­ingly multi-national. 

It’s one of the reasons why the topic of “global lead­er­ship” is on the rise and why multi-national compa­nies are investing in devel­oping and retaining global leaders. But what exactly is a global leader? And why is global lead­er­ship such a trend these days, when glob­al­iza­tion itself has been unfurling across the world for several decades? 

In this article, we want to take a closer look at exactly those ques­tions and explain why effec­tive global lead­er­ship is becoming increas­ingly impor­tant today – and how you can ensure it in your own company. 

What is global leadership

Let’s define global lead­er­ship right off the bat, so we all have the same under­standing as we move forward. Global lead­er­ship means leading in a global context or environment. 

More specif­i­cally, global lead­er­ship is defined as “the processes and actions through which an indi­vidual influ­ences a range of internal and external constituents from multiple national cultures and juris­dic­tions in a context char­ac­ter­ized by signif­i­cant levels of task and rela­tion­ship complexity”.

In this respect, global lead­er­ship goes beyond domestic, expa­triate, and compar­a­tive lead­er­ship, as well as global manage­ment, or simply a global title. Rather, global lead­er­ship becomes “extreme lead­er­ship”.

Why global lead­er­ship is trending

Why does anything trend in the first place? People’s pref­er­ences and actions are influ­enced by social dynamics. At least a quarter of a popu­la­tion is needed to elevate a topic from “hipster trend” to mainstream. 

While this rings true for trends in consumerism or subcon­scious inter­ac­tions, the world of busi­ness includes another factor: a trend will adapt faster when it consist of a new and better way of doing some­thing — meaning it becomes faster, cheaper, more effi­cient or more effective. 

For multi-national compa­nies, tradi­tional lead­er­ship is slow and expen­sive to adapt because it doesn’t allow for cultural barriers that cause misun­der­stand­ings and miscom­mu­ni­ca­tions. Global lead­er­ship, by defi­n­i­tion, doesn’t just take these cultural barriers into account, but strives to us them to its advan­tage by building on the different strengths each member brings to a team.

The impor­tance of global leadership

According to Ghoshal and Bartlett, “the global busi­ness manager’s overall goal is to capture the full benefit of inte­grated world­wide oper­a­tions”. In a world that is increas­ingly at odds when it comes to ideology, reli­gion and poli­tics, busi­ness oper­a­tions continue to span the globe. Exec­u­tives still have to figure out how to run them effi­ciently and well. 

This is only possible with global lead­er­ship, which 

• enables people to lead in complex, cross-border, multi­cul­tural environments, 
• builds and coor­di­nates cultur­ally diverse and geograph­i­cally dispersed teams, 
• inte­grates national and host cultures,
• lever­ages cultural diver­sity and reduces cross-cultural inefficiency, 
• achieves sustain­able growth and prof­itability while contributing to people’s overall well-being, and • works with diffi­cul­ties of being flex­ible and adapt­able as they broaden their global footprint.

More than any other option, global lead­er­ship has been iden­ti­fied as a key factor for global success. Compa­nies (and busi­ness schools) still struggle to adequately prepare enough global leaders. 

A Case Study of Global Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment Best Prac­tice, the case study mentioned earlier, involving over 13,000 global leaders and more than 1,500 HR exec­u­tives within over 2,000 multi-national compa­nies in 48 coun­tries, also found that 

• only one in five orga­ni­za­tions empha­sizes global lead­er­ship devel­op­ment, and
• of the 52% of multi-national compa­nies plan­ning to expand their oper­a­tions in the next few years, only 16% reported having enough global leaders to fill crit­ical roles.

Experts agree that global leaders are in high demand but in short supply – as of yet. To be a successful and effec­tive global leader, you must bring certain traits to the table; compe­ten­cies that some leaders innately possess and others acquire through training. 

The compe­ten­cies of successful global leaders

Successful global leaders of today develop certain core compe­ten­cies that allow them to not only navi­gate the pitfalls of multi-national compa­nies and teams, but thrive in and lead them competently. 

These compe­ten­cies includes

• global busi­ness expertise, 
• orga­ni­za­tional acumen, 
• inter­per­sonal skills (for example active listening, team­work, respon­si­bility, depend­ability, patience, flex­i­bility, moti­va­tion and empathy), 
• intrap­er­sonal skills (for example self-esteem, ‑confi­dence, and ‑disci­pline, open-mind­ed­ness, aware­ness of one’s own thoughts, recog­nizing nega­tivity, posi­tive deci­sion making) 
• inter­cul­tural compe­tency (for example mind­ful­ness, cogni­tive flex­i­bility, toler­ance for ambi­guity, behav­ioral flex­i­bility, cross-cultural empathy)

Do you want to know how good your inter­per­sonal and intrap­er­sonal skills are — and thus if you are fit to become a Global Leader? Take the test:

Granted, global leaders sound a lot like prover­bial unicorns; like those types of people who are compe­tent in every aspect of lead­er­ship, to truly make it work. Who can ever live up to that? 

Which is exactly the reason why global lead­er­ship is trending and why successful global leaders aren’t found on every street corner just yet. But they do exist, and not all of them were born with that inherent instinct of how to lead people and busi­nesses success­fully on a global scale. Many of them learned from and trained with other successful global leaders – and at lead­er­ship acad­e­mies like ours. 

At eurac, we support C‑Levels and Top-Exec­u­tives leading multi-national compa­nies. We support them in building effi­cient global teams and creating successful global orga­ni­za­tions. Learn how in our weekly emails: