Is there such a thing as Global leadership?

Author: Kevan Hall

Leadership theories through the ages have tended to focus on the behaviours and attributes of the leader. Most large companies have lists of competences and skills that they expect their leaders to display and training and appraisal programs that focus on how to behave to be an effective leader.

In global organizations, this can be a challenge. In our “practical global leadership” program we asked different cultures to choose their ideal leaders. They could choose from figures in politics, business and other fields from a range of cultures and over the last 3,000 years. The vast majority chose figures from their own or very similar cultures. One group in Eastern Europe were attracted to Stalin, as a model of the strong leadership they thought was effective in their region. Leaders tended to reflect the ideal attributes of the culture that chose them.

So how can we be an effective leader for a global organization or team – do we need to be flexible in style – a different face to each individual, or is it better to have a consistent style and run the risk that you will not inspire some cultures and personalities. It is hard to see the same style inspiring a Japanese R&D team and a US sales organization.

In other organizations leadership criteria are developed by looking at the behaviours of existing top managers – running the risk that we create a new generation of leaders based on what was successful in the last 20 years, rather than what is needed in the next 20.

We believe that there is too much emphasis on what the leader does and too little on what we want the FOLLOWERS to achieve. In one exercise in our training we ask participants to start by defining how they would like their followers to behave. A typical list would include words like – self motivated, challenging and self-starting.

Next we look at how they as leaders need to behave in order to get these behaviours from their followers.

If you want your people to be self-motivated you need to give them the space to do this. If you want them to be challenging, you need to give them the opportunity to overturn your decisions and change your mind from time to time. If you want them to be self starting you cannot direct how they spend their time every day.

The list of leadership behaviours that this exercise generates is almost the opposite of a traditional set – do any of your leadership competences include leaving people alone and changing your mind regularly?

Try taking the list of your current leadership competences and identifying what followship behaviours they are likely to create – typically they tend to put far too little emphasis on the follower doing things for themselves.

If you want to be a true global leader, try focussing on what you want your followers to do, rather than focusing too much on the style you personally need to adapt.

Find our more about our “Practical Global Leadership” program at http://www.global-integration.com/what_we_do/practical_global_leadership.html

Speed Lead Book xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Our book “Speed Lead” by Kevan Hall is now available to pre-order on Amazon.co.uk There will be special offers and signed copies available through our website for people on this tips and updates list. We will let you know about these in the summer.

Please pass this on xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Please circulate this to anyone in your network that you think would find it useful. They can get their own subscription and free copy of our “Remote & Virtual Teams” booklet from http://www.global-integration.com/contact/free_tips.html

© 2006 Global Integration, All rights reserved. You are free to use material from this mailer as long as you include complete attribution, including live web site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear. The attribution should read:

"By Global Integration. Please visit www.global-integration.com for additional
information on the skills of working internationally”, (Make sure the link is live if placed in an eZine or in a web site.)

If you have received this mail from someone else - TO SUBSCRIBE FREE: just leave us your email address at http://www.global-integration.com/contact/free_tips.html
when you subscribe you will also get a free copy of our electronic booklet "Remote & Virtual Teams".
PRIVACY and SPAM POLICY: We never make our list available to anyone for any reason whatsoever.

Last updated: 28/06/06 04:14pm