Devel­oping global leaders has never been an easy task. It’s also a task that compa­nies rarely prior­i­tize unless it is imper­a­tive that they do so. Even then, efforts can be ill-informed and governed by a ‘sink or swim’ mentality. In those cases, leaders would either have the tenacity and the drive to succeed on their own, or they’d go back to their home nations with their tails between their legs and take a quiet, domestic manage­ment job in a company some­where familiar.

Not good.

With that in mind, when compa­nies take a more proac­tive approach to develop multi­cul­tur­ally compe­tent managers, it’s defi­nitely some­thing to write about. 

But what does a commit­ment to devel­oping global leaders look like in reality? If resources aren’t an issue, what does the program become? What happens when resources are limited? What does the ‘lean’ version look like?

Enter tech­nology giants IBM and Google. 

Two Global Compa­nies, Two Different Methods

Enter tech­nology giants IBM and Google. 

IBM is like the tech equiv­a­lent of your parents. Loads of expe­ri­ence, lots of resources and estab­lished. IBM has grown into a truly multi­na­tional company, oper­ating in over 170 coun­tries, across nine different time­zones with well over 400,000 employees. After years of providing us with IT equip­ment and soft­ware that solves complex busi­ness prob­lems, IBM has accrued the resources needed to really invest in a global lead­er­ship devel­op­ment program. We’ll look at the program in a bit of detail later. In the mean­time, let’s take a look at a young, fresh Google to compare.

Google is like the child looking to start their own busi­ness and step out of their parent’s shadow. Nowa­days, Google can do anything they’d like, and divert resources to anything they want, but 15 years ago things were different. Resources were not as abun­dant as they are today. Google had to think about a training program for their global leaders that was both lean, cost-effi­cient and effec­tive. 

For both compa­nies, the outworking of their indi­vidual circum­stances carved two different methods of global lead­er­ship devel­op­ment. 

Google: Quick and Dirty Field Training Cham­pions

The approach that Google took was to send their brightest minds out into the fields they were hoping to get a foothold in. They needed their global leaders to know how to navi­gate different cultures but they didn’t have the resources or the time to really get into depth.

So Google got specific. Fledg­ling leaders were sent on missions to under­stand cultures from a busi­ness perspec­tive. They would learn the intel that would give them the edge in the market, like chal­lenges around bartering, local part­ner­ships, and the oppor­tu­nity to visit areas of the world that really ques­tioned their ideas around ‘culture’. 

3 Pros of Google’s Approach

1. Highly Flex­ible

When Google was a much smaller orga­ni­za­tion, it had the advan­tage of being able to respond quickly in a market that was constantly changing. Their training program was no different. They could add training exer­cises and place­ments even on a project-specific basis, which made their program truly bespoke and highly focused on the indi­vid­uals involved. 

2. Very Focused

In addi­tion, Google cherry-picked every element of their program. Doing this means there’s less waste; why repeat work if it’s not neces­sary. Google would notice that perhaps their employees lacked perspec­tive — they needed their leaders to think beyond the assump­tion that every­body knows who and what Google is. Google’s response? Send global leaders to a village where they are entirely discon­nected. The program was very direct and hyper-tailored to what was needed.

3. Requires fewer Company Resources

The commit­ment to focus and flex­i­bility ulti­mately reduced the number of company resources required. 

2 Cons of Google’s Approach

1. An Ulte­rior Motive?

It was clear for Google that they needed their global leaders to have a clear under­standing of their cultural contexts, which is good. Nobody is going to learn about the whole world in their work training regimen. 

But with a focus on specific markets in mind, the leaders risk being less well-versed in their approach to cultural diver­sity, with a trun­cated view of how culture perme­ates into spheres that are both personal and profes­sional. The foun­da­tional prin­ci­ples that help to make a leader cultur­ally intel­li­gent aren’t present here. 

In other words, it’s like learning facts to pass an exam. It’s not a change of internal char­acter, it’s just intel to make a project work.

2. The Danger of Incon­sis­tency

In addi­tion, the danger of being focused on very specific skills is that Google risked producing global leaders of varying compe­tency. As a program, it works if people already bring a high level of manage­ment skill to the table, but if they don’t, Google’s approach is not an end-to-end solu­tion. Instead, it relies heavily on existing ability and expe­ri­ence and it’s now becoming common knowl­edge that more often than not, global leaders aren’t born. They’re made.

If the global leaders haven’t had the same oppor­tu­nity to embark on inter­nal­izing the char­acter traits required to become compe­tent in the many skills required, then you end up with incon­sis­tency and a return to the ‘sink or swim’ mentality.

IBM: A Thor­ough In-House Training Program

IBM, on the other hand, formu­lated a very thor­ough in house- training program for their aspiring global leaders. Online training modules and in-class training came together to really impact the internal char­ac­ters of their global leaders.

IBM’s approach was to take their global leaders on an internal process that would fine­tune their ability to work within diverse cultures. As a result, leaders who completed the program came away with so much more than field skills. They came away with an entirely different perspec­tive on cross-cultural manage­ment and diver­sity. This undoubt­edly would have facil­i­tated an appre­ci­a­tion and an open­ness to new cultures that would have affected all areas of their lives.

What IBM created in their training program was an entirely freeing expe­ri­ence for the partic­i­pants. It gave them an ethnorel­a­tive cultural sensi­tivity and a cultural intel­li­gence that would set them apart in the industry and set them up for success in a wide range of chal­lenging circum­stances.

2 Pros about IBM’s Approach

1. The Depth

This program facil­i­tates a deeply internal shift within the partic­i­pant. Global leaders in this program are fully immersed in the prin­ci­ples that underpin the effec­tive manage­ment of diver­sity. Time is given to explore all of the philo­soph­ical thought processes behind effec­tive diver­sity manage­ment. 

Everyone goes through the same process which should go a long way to stan­dard­izing the quality of the leaders devel­oped by IBM. Nothing is left to chance. Ulti­mately, this program creates better, more rounded leaders.

2. The Ethics

The training program teaches leaders to appre­ciate cultural differ­ences as part of a core value system. What makes this so powerful is that it makes cultural appre­ci­a­tion and effec­tive culture manage­ment a goal in its own right. No ulte­rior motive. No sly focus on the bottom line. 

Of course, by going through this program, the global leaders become more compe­tent, which leads to happier, more produc­tive teams, better part­ner­ships and increased produc­tivity. This has a posi­tive impact on the bottom line by default, but it’s not what is at the heart of this initia­tive.

This is what makes IBM a diver­sity cham­pion as opposed to a company that essen­tially teaches leaders to weaponize their cultural knowl­edge so as much revenue can be gener­ated as possible.

3 Cons of IBM’s Approach

1. Resource Inten­sive

IBM’s chosen method of training requires a lot of resources at all levels of the orga­ni­za­tion. They’ve built a bespoke program that draws from a wide range of expe­ri­ence; just collating all of the infor­ma­tion required to build it is a huge project requiring lots of finances and time. Whilst the end result makes for more rounded leaders, its main­te­nance relies heavily on vast resource stores. IBM isn’t likely to be going anywhere, but it’s a consid­er­a­tion. If there was an occa­sion where resources were in short supply, would they still be able to deliver a global lead­er­ship devel­op­ment program of this quality and depth?

2. Not as Prac­tical

There’s a lot of theory in this program which focuses on changing the leaders’ mind­sets and expanding their appre­ci­a­tion for many different cultures. All well and good, but what is the prac­tical outworking of that mindset change? How do you quan­tify its effec­tive­ness? It’s highly likely that this program could not stand alone as a complete training regimen. Further supple­men­tary training is needed to ensure that leaders have the right mindset as well as the prac­tical compe­ten­cies they need.

3. Not as Flexible

The training at IBM is a huge under­taking with many moving parts that tran­scends cross-cultural and geograph­ical bound­aries. It has taken a long time to get the training to this point, and every­thing that has been added has been done so after plenty of careful thought. This is bril­liant, but that means if a new contex­tual chal­lenge presents itself, more time will be needed to assess and build a response to that chal­lenge. In other words, such an estab­lished program is not as agile as it could be.

Lessons for Smaller Compa­nies 

For smaller compa­nies wanting to focus on providing training for global leaders, there’s a high prob­a­bility that time and/or resources are going to present some limi­ta­tions. So here are a few pointers to help you create your version of a lean, mean global lead­er­ship devel­op­ment machine.

1. Get advice — It’s impor­tant to do your research. Get advice from people who know how to develop global lead­er­ship skills to help you out in the early stages.

1. Figure out the top skills and compe­ten­cies your global leaders need to be successful. Google decided to focus primarily on devel­oping the skills that would help their global leaders to spot market oppor­tu­ni­ties, and remove road­blocks that prevented Google’s progress. You might need your global leaders to be great at under­standing how to connect different cultures together. Decide what skills are most impor­tant to your industry and focus your program on devel­oping those specific skills initially.
2. Build a modular program. Design a modular program that can grow as you grow. This is in fact a major perk because your global leaders will constantly have the oppor­tu­nity to refine their lead­er­ship skills and grow in confi­dence. Modular programs will keep you agile and flex­ible to the needs of your unique busi­ness context and your leaders. Don’t focus on the skills you know they already have but focus on the gaps.
3. Build Part­ner­ships. Part­ner­ships increase the size of your network as well as the expo­sure your global leaders get. If you are currently only oper­ating in your country of origin, but your goal is to expand into coun­tries across the globe, find some friends who can show your leaders the ropes about oper­ating some­where new.
4. Go for as much field training as possible. Take your select few leaders and go for a full immer­sion strategy where you can. Learning on the job is one of the fastest ways to grow and it creates plenty of oppor­tu­ni­ties for inno­v­a­tive solu­tion­izing. IBM has been around forever; they’ll have built a whole back catalog of case studies that they can use. You’ll be in the process of building your own catalog so get out in the field and docu­ment every­thing. It’ll save you rein­venting the wheel as time progresses.

Inten­tion­ality: The Over-Arching Lesson

To conclude, devel­oping global leaders must be an inten­tional process regard­less of whether you have an infi­nite pot of resources to dedi­cate to it or not. Taking time to iden­tify the specific contex­tual chal­lenges your global leaders will face and supporting them through it, sets the tone for the whole orga­ni­za­tion to succeed. 

The main priority is to choose a program that has the capacity to grow as your orga­ni­za­tion grows. Have a clear under­standing of how having cultur­ally compe­tent leaders will contribute to the integrity and effec­tive­ness of your orga­ni­za­tion.

This prin­ciple is universal across orga­ni­za­tions of all sizes; devel­oping global leaders is now no longer a luxury. It’s a neces­sity.

And if you’re looking to develop successful global leaders to take your own multi-national, global company to the next level, to under­stand the process of global lead­er­ship devel­op­ment, convince your execs of its neces­sity, and choose the right employees to develop — then get our free eBook now!