Devel­oping Global Leaders for Multi-National Corpo­ra­tions

eurac's Global Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment Program

Glob­al­iza­tion changed our work envi­ron­ments and corpo­ra­tions face the chal­lenge that their leaders lack the skills to adequately meet the demands of a more and more connected world.

The tradi­tion­ally educated leaders struggle to deal with complex­i­ties, ethical and cultural chal­lenges, tensions and para­doxes, the creation of learning envi­ron­ments and the guiding of large-scale change efforts across conti­nents. Disrup­tive change in infor­ma­tion tech­nology led to inse­cu­rity and non-confi­dent manage­ment.

Strug­gling in a Complex, Inter­con­nected, Ambigous and Uncer­tain World

The impact on multi-national corpo­ra­tions is signif­i­cant. When leaders lack the skills to manage processes of collab­o­ra­tion, discovery, archi­tecting and system thinking, then compa­nies lose the orien­ta­tion to navi­gate chal­lenges, lose cred­i­bility and market share and fail to achieve a sustain­able finan­cial, ecolog­ical and economic impact.

Reality shows that inter­na­tional advan­tages are secured by leaders with a global mindset and mindset who are able to adapt rapidly to an ever evolving, highly compet­i­tive market. They master cross-cultural rela­tion­ships and create winning strate­gies by inte­grating global and local perspec­tives.

However, of the 52% of multi-national corpo­ra­tions which plan to expand their oper­a­tions, only 16% of them reported that they have enough global leaders to fill these crit­ical roles. This lack of adequately prepared global leaders leads to chal­lenges like these:

  • Your leaders are strug­gling with increasing complexity, ambi­guity, and uncer­tainty in their day-to-day tasks, thus leading to shrinking market shares.
  • Your managers lack core compe­tences to effi­ciently and effec­tively lead your team across cultures, causing internal conflicts.
  • Your colleagues are unsure of how and when to adapt their lead­er­ship style to fit local circum­stances, failing to achieve corpo­rate objec­tives.
  • You are strug­gling to align your corpo­rate strategy with multi-cultural dynamics — and so your organ­i­sa­tion is being out-competed in global markets.
  • Your exec­u­tives lack tools for better under­standing them­selves and expec­ta­tions they face when working across borders, causing losses of employee loyalty and moti­va­tion.
  • Your team works (partly) remotely and virtu­ally but lacks the means to sharing knowl­edge and context, is overly depen­dant on tech­nology, and frequently loses useful details.

Do you recog­nize your­self or chal­lenges in your orga­ni­za­tion here? These chal­lenges are not god-given. Read on to learn how to over­come them.

You are not alone.

Among the leaders ques­tioned only one-third reported being effec­tive across coun­tries and cultures. That is the lowest single skill effec­tive­ness rating in a survey of 13.124 global leadersand 1.528 HR exec­u­tives within 2.031 multi-national corpo­ra­tions in 48 coun­tries. (Deloitte 2015)

The data collected regarding the use and urgent need for global lead­er­ship is oppres­sive:

  1. Global lead­er­ship is more than any other option a key factor for global success. (Ghemawat, P. 2012. Devel­oping global leaders. McKinsey Quar­terly)
  2. The global lead­er­ship vacuum "remains the biggest chal­lenge of all for 2013 and beyond." (World Economic Forum, 2013 Global Agenda Outlook)
  3. Compa­nies still struggle to adequately prepare enough global leaders. (Gitsham, M. 2008. Devel­oping the global leader of tomorrow. Report of 1st Global Forum for Respon­sible Manage­ment Educa­tion, United Nations, New York)
  4. Firms have had to curtail global strate­gies due to the lack of global leaders. (Mallon, D. 2015. Deloitte's 'What Works' awards 2015: Lessons from the best report)

Global Leaders: High Demand but in Short Supply

What can You Do?

Multi-national corpo­ra­tions began to confront and try to solve the chal­lenge of finding and devel­oping leaders who could operate sucess­fully in the global context by using different approaches, usually built on top of a do-fail-learn-mindset. These early adopters quickly faced internal barriers within the compa­nies.

Urgency, limited time, limited budgets, conflicting agendas, inertia and bias towards tradi­tional lead­er­ship training as well as high yet unclear expec­ta­tions made the process of finding and devel­oping global leaders unnec­es­sarily nerve-wrecking, painful and costly.

Despite these hard­ships corpo­ra­tions succeeded in the devel­oping global leaders. For example IBM launched a company-wide initia­tive in 2008 to give its future leaders the kind of expe­ri­ence they needed to develop skills and perspec­tives to effec­tively address the chal­lenges it faces in the global market­place. Their leaders learned to be more collab­o­ra­tive, were more attuned to a multi­plicity of cultural differ­ences, and far more fluid and glob­ally networked. IBM achieved record finan­cial perfor­mance and trans­formed itself into a glob­ally inte­grated enter­prise.

This and other processes — like Ulysses and Oasis for Price­wa­ter­house­C­oopers (PwC)'s leaders — were successful, because they created contexts in which leaders had to engage in contrast, confronta­tion and trans­for­ma­tion in a mean­ingful and deep way.

Global Lead­er­ship is Extreme Lead­er­ship

The complex processes and actions through which an indi­vidual influ­ences internal and external players from multiple national cultures are what make global lead­er­ship neces­sary. Global Leaders are not to be confused with domestic leaders, expa­triate leaders, compar­a­tive leaders or global managers. Global Leaders are "Extreme Leaders" (Osland et al., 2012). Their most impor­tant compe­ten­cies and skills can be divided into two domains:

  1. Tech­nical / profes­sional compe­ten­cies and skills
  2. Compe­ten­cies asso­ci­ated with connecting and relating with people who differ cultur­ally from the leader

Compa­nies are expe­ri­enced in devel­oping the tech­nical and profes­sional compe­ten­cies, but lack effec­tive processes to develop the inter­cul­tural compe­ten­cies. We summa­rize four cate­gories of compe­ten­cies based on "A Frame­work of Nested Global Lead­er­ship Compe­ten­cies" by Allan Bird in his article "Mapping Global Lead­er­ship Compe­ten­cies", and a review of compe­ten­cies espe­cially needed in times of crisis.

Global busi­ness compe­ten­cies
  1. Vision & Strategic Thinking
  2. System Thinking
  3. Being Busi­ness Savvy
  4. Managing Commu­ni­ties
  5. Being Orga­ni­za­tion­ally Savvy
  6. Leading Trans­for­ma­tion
Inter-personal compe­ten­cies
  1. Valuing People
  2. Inter­per­sonal Skills
  3. Teaming Skills
  4. Empow­ering Others
Intra-personal compe­ten­cies
  1. Inquis­i­tive­ness
  2. Culturing a Global Mindset
  3. Flex­i­bility
  4. Building Char­acter
  5. Creating Resilience
  6. Creativity
Multi-cultural  Compe­ten­cies
  1. Cultural Sensi­tivity & Intel­li­gence
  2. Mindful Inter­cul­tural Commu­ni­ca­tion: Appro­priate, Effec­tive, Adap­tive

These compe­ten­cies are the ground work of true global lead­er­ship. Put together they enable leaders and compa­nies navi­gate chal­lenges, secure inter­na­tional advan­tages, create winning strate­gies, build cred­i­bility and market share and achieve long-lasting finan­cial, ecolog­ical and economic impacts. Global strate­gies will be put into actions and the "biggest chal­lenge of all" (World Economic Forum, 2013 Global Agenda Outlook) will be solved.

Solving the chal­lenge with eurac reli­ably

Our trainers and coaches are experts in Global Lead­er­ship, Psychology, Inter­cul­tural and Cross-cultural Commu­ni­ca­tion, Coaching across Cultures, and Change processes. They have diverse geograph­ical as well as educa­tional back­grounds. With their commit­ment to field-research and quality training, they are compe­tent to support managers in achieving their goals.

We support C‑Levels and Top-Exec­u­tives leading multi-national compa­nies. We will supply you with cross-cultur­ally and inter-cultur­ally compe­tent global leaders to build effi­cient global teams and create successful global orga­ni­za­tions.

We achieve this in your company through six distinct offer­ings:

Consulting

Compre­hen­sive and focused knowl­edge sharing to manage the VUCA nature of global busi­ness

Coaching

Target-oriented mentoring support to lead highly diverse multi­cul­tural teams

Assess­ment

Global Lead­er­ship Compe­ten­cies and Work­place Inter­cul­tural Intel­li­gence assess­ment and analysis for indi­vid­u­al­ized devel­op­ment plan

Design

Exper­i­mental learning, high contact and high chal­lenge inter­na­tional assign­ments

Training

Prac­tice and compe­tence based educa­tion for behavior change:

  1. Global Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment
  2. Lead­er­ship with Coaching
  3. Cross-cultural Lead­er­ship Excel­lence
  4. Inter­cul­tural Commu­ni­ca­tion Excel­lence
Facil­i­tating

High­lights and appli­ca­tion oriented facil­i­ta­tion of strategic inter­na­tional busi­ness travels

In contrast to other busi­ness acad­e­mies we take atrans­for­ma­tive approach to learning at acogni­tive, rela­tional and affec­tive level. We facil­i­tate posi­tive change by using a multi­dis­ci­pli­nary concept of psychology, neuro­science, busi­ness science, educa­tion, commu­ni­ca­tion and human devel­op­ment. Our method­olo­gies are process-focused and outcome-driven and under­pinned with science.

Research and our expe­ri­ences convinced us: Global lead­er­ship devel­op­ment always requires personal trans­for­ma­tion.

We mainly work with corpo­ra­tions, but also offer open-enroll­ment options for indi­vid­uals. The process we use to develop global leaders in your multi-national corpo­ra­tion is as follows:

  1. Defining Goals and Goal-required Compe­ten­cies
    We work with you to clearly define the goals your leaders shall achieve and we define the compe­ten­cies those leaders must have to accom­plish the goals.
  2. Pre-Asses­ment of Leaders
    We eval­uate your leaders' current abil­i­ties in 3 cate­gories and 16 dimen­sions and compare those abil­i­ties to the compe­ten­cies needed to achieve the defined goals.
  3. Global Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment
    We fill the gap between the current compe­ten­cies of your leaders and the compe­ten­cies required for reaching your goals by coaching, consulting, and / or training in a agreed upon period of time.
  4. Post-Assess­ment of Leaders
    We re-eval­uate your leaders abil­i­ties and show the achieved improve­ments.
  5. Supportive Action Plans to achieve the Goals
    We can design high contact and / or high chal­lenge busi­ness travels to accel­erate the devel­op­ment of goal-required compe­ten­cies.

Take a look at what Matijas Meyer,CEO of Komax HoldingAG, says about working with EURAC:

EURAC gets to the bottom of chal­lenges

Before we've started working with EURAC we were hesis­tant: Would Dr. Wolf­gang Schmitz and his team posess the needed compe­tence and cultural match to coach our employees? However, we found EURAC to be an inter­esting sparing partner to discuss orga­ni­za­tional devel­op­ment, approaches to imple­ment it and getting to the bottom of chal­lenges — even facing provo­ca­tion and irri­ta­tion. We also enjoyed EURAC's enter­taining approach to coaching, easily capturing peoples interest as well as the struc­tured step-by-steam tailored to our current situ­a­tion. We've learned and applied new method­olo­gies to run our orga­ni­za­tion success­fully. I'd fully recom­mend EURAC to get started with Global Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment and stay on track.

Matijas Meyer

Euro­pean Academy for Exec­u­tive Educa­tion (EURAC)

2019 – 02-28T19:12:13+01:00

Matijas Meyer, CEO Komax Holding AG

Matijas Meyer

Before we've started working with EURAC we were hesis­tant: Would Dr. Wolf­gang Schmitz and his team posess the needed compe­tence and cultural match to coach our employees? However, we found EURAC to be an inter­esting sparing partner to discuss orga­ni­za­tional devel­op­ment, approaches to imple­ment it and getting to the bottom of chal­lenges — even facing provo­ca­tion and irri­ta­tion. We also enjoyed EURAC's enter­taining approach to coaching, easily capturing peoples interest as well as the struc­tured step-by-steam tailored to our current situ­a­tion. We've learned and applied new method­olo­gies to run our orga­ni­za­tion success­fully. I'd fully recom­mend EURAC to get started with Global Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment and stay on track.

https://​eurac​.com/​t​e​s​t​i​m​o​n​i​a​l​s​/​m​a​t​i​j​a​s​-​m​e​y​er/

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Euro­pean Academy for Exec­u­tive Educa­tion (EURAC)

In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who will inherit the future. The learned usually find them­selves prepared for a world that no longer exists.

You will benefit from:

    1. Effi­cient and authentic global lead­er­ship, empow­ering multi­na­tional compa­nies to grow and thrive
    2. Context-specific actions to orga­ni­za­tional excel­lence
    3. Devel­op­ment of suffi­ciently cultur­ally aware and intel­li­gent leaders and inte­gra­tors
    4. Keeping global team connected and engaged to foster effec­tive cross-cultural work
    5. Lever­aging differ­ences and syner­gis­ti­cally inte­grating the disparate elements in an increas­ingly complex world
    6. Explore the skillsets of successful global leaders and discover what it takes to build a cohe­sive global team
    7. Improving your leaders ability to nego­tiate and moti­vate inter­na­tion­ally
    8. Flex­i­bility and curiosity to lead success­fully across cultures

To provide an inte­gra­tive and inno­v­a­tive seminar concept, eurac assures:

  • Cost savings in personnel devel­op­ment through targeted, yet robust, on-going exec­u­tive training
  • Measur­able results.
  • The elim­i­na­tion of "spot-solu­tions" in personal further educa­tion and move­ment forward to compre­hen­sively inte­grated training content for indi­vid­uals, teams and the entire company.

Indi­vidual Skill and Compe­tency Frame­work
Train­ings and exec­u­tive coaching will be indi­vid­u­ally tailored for you, based on your company's goals and employees' skills. This will elim­i­nate "spot solu­tions" by imple­menting the eurac Skill and Compe­tency Frame­work, not only on an indi­vidual basis, but also for the busi­ness as a whole.

Prac­tical imple­men­ta­tion in the routine workday
All train­ings connected with exec­u­tive coaching will effi­ciently increase the compe­ten­cies of partic­i­pants. The methods and tech­niques are prac­tice-oriented and easily applied. The train­ings and exec­u­tive coaching are construc­tively designed and will be imple­mented by prac­tice chap­ters, on-the-job training, and fixed assign­ments between indi­vidual units.

Exclu­sivity
eurac training groups are small and exclu­sive in order to provide indi­vid­u­ality, differ­en­ti­a­tion, and quality at the highest level.