3. Rewards for companies who develop Global Leaders
As companies reach across borders, they must cultivate leaders for global markets.
Companies that successfully invest in global leadership qualities, find new opportunities and better execution without failing their multinational strategies:
4. Coaching for Global Leaders
Organizations and its global leaders need support to navigate changes and keep up to the tasks and challenges that are required today and tomorrow.
The importance of carefully defining coaching is often overlooked. This step is crucial however, because the definition can either limit or allow to really enhancing the corporation to a new level of performance. If coaching is merely about listening, questioning and encouraging, its capacity to transform the organization might not be apparent.
This is why I have defined coaching as the art of facilitating the unleashing of people’s potential to reach meaningful, important objectives.
And as with most leadership capabilities, the best method for development is with practice.
Coaching can be exercised on an individual, team or organizational level:
a) At an individual level, participants discover new cultural choices for dealing with challenging situations:
Powerful coaching questions can be practiced with employees to enhance these capabilities and gain more mindfulness about their behavior as a leader:
1) What would it be like to be more open minded as a leader?
2) Where on a scale from 1 to 10 would you classify yourself as “open-minded”?
3) What is your unique gift as a leader?
4) How can you take advantage of it?
5) How can you take advantage of it in your multicultural team?
6) Where do you stand today and who do you want to become as an international talent?
7) What could you achieve by being more open minded? How can you achieve this?
8) What impact and energy do you have on others in the team?
9) What activity could you take on in your multicultural team to really challenge yourself – but you know you will achieve something you really want?
10) What can you do to maintain your decisions and behavior free from prejudice?
11) Try to list all your current opportunities in order to enrich yourself from diversity.
b) At a team level, global leaders can learn how leveraging diversity can lead to increased team unity and performance.
The coach can use the following exercises with the team:
1) Raise awareness about the impact of everybody’s presence on others
2) Let team members acknowledge who they are and who they want to be in different situations
3) Work with the team through cultural assumptions and values
4) Form groups of teams with people from different cultures
5) Work on each member’s unique gift to the organization
6) Help each member to take advantage of their unique gifts in a team
7) Work with the team on contradictions whilst establishing trust
8) Conduct role plays to help team members deal with conflicts
c) Organizational Coaching Applications
Mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures – all forms of expanding the business beyond country boundaries lead to the challenge of integrating diverse cultures, bridging the cultural gaps and defining a new corporate culture. When executives are able to work together to improve their performance, a positive sign of enthusiasm and motivation is lived throughout the organization.
A coaching organization creates an environment where behaviors for continuous learning, integration of different cultures, and exchange of knowledge are encouraged. This sort of coaching culture results in better networking, trust, effective leadership and higher commitment, leading to more effective multinational organizations.
5. References
Holt, Katherine and Seki, Kyoko: Global Leadership Begins With Learning Professionals, May, 2012.
Bowen, David, Javidan, Mansoor, Teagarden, Mary (2010). Making it Overseas. Harvard Business Review, April, 2010.
Coaching for Global Leaders Nora Binder, ICA Research Paper 8 | P a g e
Summers, Lawrence H., Moss Kanter, Rosabeth. Leadership in a Changed World. Harvard Business Review, February, 2004.
Rosinski, Philippe. Coaching Across Cultures. International Journal of Coaching in Organizations, 2003.
Tessman-Keys, David, Wellins, Richard S. Preparing Future: The CEO’s Guide to Global Leaders, 2007.