Follow the Leader: The Most Sought After Skills for Global Leaders

Frank Kalman - 1/31/12

As global business grows more complex, corporate leaders need to have a wider skill set and global experience to succeed. Experiential learning programs work best, but only when paired with the foundation of the classroom.

Executive leadership demands have evolved. Growth in the global business environment has prompted many organizations to reinvent themselves to meet the enlarged scale and scope. This places a spotlight on how leaders are developed. The modern leadership profile requires a complex yet malleable skill set.

Fifty-one percent of senior learning and leadership development executives view strategic planning as a top leadership skill to target, according to a November survey by Chief Learning Officer and Human Capital Media (HCM) Advisory Group, the magazine’s research arm. Business acumen, coaching, critical thinking, mentorship and situational leadership were among the most sought-after traits required of today’s business leaders, the survey said.

Developing great global leaders has gone beyond simply cultivating certain skills, however. In many ways, as leadership development as a learning discipline has become well defined, the valued skills it seeks to teach have grown more muddled. As a result, developing a fresh mindset or framework within which to evaluate and lead business is just as important as specific skills.

Effective corporate leadership traits are often hard to define, but many learning leaders say they know a true leader when they see one.

“Leaders are those with followers,” said Maril MacDonald, CEO of Gagen MacDonald, a Chicago-based leadership development consultancy. “Leadership is granted; it’s not actually an authoritarian position. Nor is it a title.”

That subjectivity makes leadership harder to teach, but organizations that create a leadership development-friendly culture will end up with a robust pipeline of leaders with complex capabilities. That culture will include foundational programs that welcome experiential learning and align with the greater business strategy.

New Skills: Don’t Command, Lead
In 1956, General Electric Co. launched what is now called the John F. Welch Leadership Development Center in Crotonville, N.Y. The 53-acre campus, designed to equip GE’s employees with real-world leadership skills, is still viewed as an epicenter for corporate leadership development. The campus remains largely unchanged, but the skills and character traits developed there are constantly shifting.