Global Leadership Development

Creating a leadership development strategy: In regards to developing a global leadership pipeline, a study was done with a global Fortune 200 company where they were struggling to re-fill many global leadership positions and were in need of creating a systematic way to handle this need. They pulled together 20 senior managers and began to ask questions to understand the challenges involved in developing global leadership. The interviews with the senior managers centered around the following 3 questions: “(1) What are the experiences that will best prepare people for senior management positions?; (2) What skills and behaviors are needed to be successful in a global company?; (3) Is the current practice of leadership development working well, and how can it be changed to make it more effective?” (Connor, 2000, p. 2). The group agreed on several things such as, they needed a systematic way of development; they needed to plan career moves early; they needed to begin to groom people early and give them a multitude of different geographic assignments; they also needed to take more risks when selecting people for positions by pinpointing people early in their careers and begin making plans for development (Connor, 2000). “The executives thought that there was an over-reliance on the marketing department and expatriates as sources of future leaders” (Connor, 2000, p. 2). Their final agreements for leadership development included the agreement to broaden external hiring sources; look for internal talent regardless of the department they were working in currently; and recruit local talent outside of the U.S. (Connor, 2000). The resulting skill-set and capabilities gathered as a result of these interviews, necessary for successful global leadership culminate in the following: must be business savvy; know how to motivate; know how to use their personal influence; act like entrepreneurs; bring global perspective; and, have strong character (Connor, 2000). They then developed an individual development plan for those that were in the global talent pool with the following five sections: list strongest competencies; competencies that need to be developed; personal development actions planned and completed; short and long-term career options; and, willingness to relocate (Connor, 2000). “The final area of work important to a more proactive approach to developing global leaders was making sure that every senior executive and general manager around the world personally accepted responsibility for developing global leaders” (Connor, 2000, p. 7). “To remain competitive, companies must continually develop their people by identifying their very best and preparing them for tomorrow’s global challenges” (Connor, 2000, p. 10)
Reference:
Connor, J. (2000). Developing the global leaders of tomorrow. Human Resource Management; Summer/Fall 200, Vol. 39, Nos. 2 & 3. Retrieved April 3, 2009 from EBSCOhost Database.