Today’s Leaders Should Be Global

While leadership development always has been at the core of most learning professionals’ charter, the importance of developing global leadership competencies recently has risen to new levels of criticality. It has been identified as a priority and significant hot-button issue by CEOs and CLOs alike, while also receiving heightened attention from academic authorities and consulting firms.

Successfully doing business today almost requires that an organization operate in the global marketplace, no matter where it is headquartered. As a result, a great deal of attention is being paid to cracking the code on how to perfect global leadership, irrespective of industry or company size. Top management is pressed to find ways to improve performance and to do so with greater consistency and effectiveness. Upcoming leaders need to have a broader skill set, one that equips them to think and act globally.

In March 2010, American Management Association (AMA) conducted a study, “Developing Successful Global Leaders,” with nearly 1,000 companies on six continents to confirm and inform what high-performance organizations are doing differently in the area of leadership development. The study was conducted in partnership with the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp).

In a clear sign that corporate management is striving to compete successfully in today’s worldwide marketplace, a majority of large organizations have implemented or plan to implement global leadership development initiatives. Organizations with 10,000 employees or more were most likely to have global leadership programs in place, with about 74 percent either having implemented programs or in the process of implementing programs.

Nearly one-third of the companies surveyed are years ahead of this particular curve and have been actively working to develop global leadership competencies in their curricula. However, more than an eyebrow raise is warranted for the 38 percent of organizations that do not have a global leadership program and are not planning to develop one. One might question their breadth of future opportunities given customer and stakeholder demands and expectations.