Not every­body can be a successful global leader. What works for a domestic leader in a natural envi­ron­ment may crumble abroad. Yet, with the right programs and tools, aspiring global leaders can be trained to pick up the key qual­i­ties needed to be effec­tive in a foreign culture or envi­ron­ment. 

Busi­ness owners or CEOs aiming to train global leaders should keep this in mind when selecting viable candi­dates to partic­i­pate in their chosen Global Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment (GLD) program.

But how do you pick the right people? Anybody who runs a busi­ness knows how impor­tant it is to pick the right people for the job, any job. Selecting the wrong ones means wasting time and money — espe­cially for some­thing as impor­tant as devel­oping your compa­ny’s global leaders.

In order to be sure, you’ll need to help the GLD program team to eval­uate your employee’s current abil­i­ties based on your knowl­edge.

In this guide, we’ll explain exactly how you can prede­ter­mine and eval­uate your current staff’s abil­i­ties to ensure you’re sending the best people through your GLD program and beyond.

What Makes a Good Global Leader?

Before you can assess how to eval­uate your team members’ abil­i­ties, you need to under­stand the gold stan­dard for what makes up a successful global leader.

There isn’t one true north study that describes what makes a global leader successful. However, there are many agreed-upon char­ac­ter­is­tics and traits that effec­tive global leaders must possess. 

Global leaders are open-minded, master nego­tia­tors, incred­ibly inclu­sive, effec­tive commu­ni­ca­tors, collab­o­ra­tive, and so much more. A global leader must have certain behav­iors, traits, skills, and knowl­edge that make them not only capable of, but excel at, handling diffi­cult and unfa­miliar situ­a­tions beyond borders and cultures. 

Beyond these general traits, they need to possess a set of compe­ten­cies that give them the edge they need to succeed.

The Euro­pean Academy for Exec­u­tive Educa­tion (eurac) GLD program uses four cate­gories and 16 dimen­sions that make up the recipe for success:

These compe­ten­cies repre­sent all of the traits that a good global leader needs to be pros­perous. Yet, it’s not always neces­sary for a global leader to embody all 16 of these compe­ten­cies at once to be effec­tive. Based on your company’s needs, your global leaders may only need to be excep­tion­ally skilled in half of them. We’ll discuss this in more detail below.

The goal is to train your leaders to become profi­cient with your must-have compe­ten­cies to ensure they are prepared for the tough chal­lenges ahead.

Why Is It Impor­tant to Pre-assess Poten­tial Leaders’ Abil­i­ties for a GLD Program?

As refer­enced above, not all leaders will succeed in the global realm. One of the key facets of having success abroad is possessing a “global mindset”. 

Global mindset is the ability to leverage innate cultural knowl­edge and absorb foreign cultural norms in order to adjust and react effec­tively, appro­pri­ately, and flex­ibly in unfa­miliar and diffi­cult situ­a­tions. 

The Global Journal of Manage­ment and Busi­ness Research conducted a study in 2017 that compared the effec­tive­ness of domestic vs. global leaders in the elec­tronics retail industry. The study found that a “global mindset” is an addi­tional attribute of global leaders to work effec­tively in diver­si­fied and cross-cultural envi­ron­ments, there­fore global leaders are more suit­able in dealing with issues of complexity, connect­ed­ness, and context.”

It’s impor­tant to pre-assess your aspiring global leaders to discover if they have the ability to develop this mindset with training. If they don’t, you may end up wasting time and money by sending the wrong candi­dates through your GLD program.

How to Pick the Right Global Leaders for Your GLD Program

If you aren’t sure how to eval­uate your poten­tial global leaders to see if they fit the bill, you’re not alone. Without a strategy, you may end up feeling like you’re sifting through candi­dates aimlessly. 

Before you do any employee pre-assess­ments, you need to start with some busi­ness eval­u­a­tion. Only once you’ve clearly defined your needs, should you get started on picking viable candi­dates. 

Let’s dive in.

Define your GLD program goals

The first and most impor­tant step in choosing the right global leaders is to set the goals you want them to achieve. 

If you don’t set clear expec­ta­tions, you’ll never know the types of leaders you need to employ to achieve such goals. Setting clear goals is the foun­da­tion of finding the right global leaders for your desired outcomes.

More­over, GLD programs are designed to suit your specific needs. There is no successful one-size-fits-all program; the best ones tailor their training to suit your unique ambi­tions.

You can use common goal types, like SMART or OKR, to define, set and measure these goals. To learn more about these strate­gies, read our guide on how to set and measure goals for a global lead­er­ship devel­op­ment program.

Define compe­ten­cies based on your goals

The next step is to sit with the GLD program team to define which compe­ten­cies your global leaders must have in order to achieve your prede­fined goals.

Once complete, you can then eval­uate your aspiring global leader’s abil­i­ties based on these set compe­ten­cies and goals. 

For example, a company in the profes­sional services consulting space may have the desire to open new loca­tions abroad to expand its global market reach. Perhaps they’ve had tons of success at home, are hitting their sales and profits targets, and are eager to spread their wings. 

Because they are prof­itable and successful, their initial goals for their new loca­tion may be to focus more on engraining them­selves into a new commu­nity and less on boosting sales. There­fore, their goals could be:

• Making valu­able connec­tions with local busi­nesses;
• Engraining them­selves into the local commu­nity, and;
• Creating an inclu­sive office envi­ron­ment.

Based on these goals, their top required compe­ten­cies out of the above-mentioned 16 could be the following eight:

• Valuing People
• Cultural Sensi­tivity & Intel­li­gence
• Mindful Inter­cul­tural Commu­ni­ca­tion: Appro­priate, Effec­tive, Adap­tive 
• Culturing a Global Mindset
• Teaming skills
• Vision & Strategic Thinking
• Managing Commu­ni­ties
• Being Orga­ni­za­tion­ally Savvy

If the aspiring global leader possesses the traits that sync with your goals, they will have a much better chance of achieving your vision.

Global Compe­ten­cies Inven­tory (GCI)

To help you in defining the right compe­ten­cies to fit your goals, you can make use of the so-called Global Compe­ten­cies Inven­tory (GCI), devel­oped by the Kozai Group.

According to GlobeSmart, the Global Compe­ten­cies Inven­tory “measures lead­er­ship compe­ten­cies of managers and global leaders in areas essen­tial to inter­acting and working effec­tively with people from different cultures.”

The GCI exam­ines three major areas:

• Percep­tion Manage­ment
• Rela­tion­ship Manage­ment
• Self-Manage­ment

The GCI is a compre­hen­sive, statis­ti­cally valid and reli­able self-assess­ment.

Tech­nical personnel, middle and top manage­ment personnel in inter­na­tional corpo­ra­tions, as well as faculty and grad­uate students in univer­sity programs, have used the GCI in the following ways:

• Exec­u­tive coaching for personal/professional devel­op­ment.
• Selec­tion & promo­tion criteria for posi­tions with global respon­si­bil­i­ties.
• Pre-& post- measure­ments for changes in inter­cul­tural compe­ten­cies.
• Cross-cultural & diver­sity courses to increase aware­ness & self-analysis for improve­ment.

At eurac, we absolutely recom­mend using the GCI to help define the neces­sary compe­ten­cies of the people you choose to partic­i­pate in your global lead­er­ship devel­op­ment program.

Set up a ques­tion­naire

With goals and compe­ten­cies defined and set, you can begin assessing your candi­dates. 

A great place to start is by creating a ques­tion­naire to send to your employees. You could tailor each ques­tion to a use case your aspiring leaders may face in their new role. 

By asking ques­tions based on poten­tial real-life scenarios, you can begin to eval­uate if their answers are in line with the list of compe­ten­cies your leaders must possess. Then you can take it a step further and compare those compe­ten­cies to your defined goals.

Going along with the profes­sional services consulting example, their ques­tions could focus on commu­nity and team-building scenarios. 

For example, the company may ask: 

“How would you moti­vate and inspire a team of people from various back­grounds, many of which differ from yours, to work well together?”

Or maybe: “How would you prepare for a deploy­ment in India, working with a mixed team with Indian and Chinese back­grounds?”

If the aspiring leader’s answer shows they possess the neces­sary inter­per­sonal and multi-cultural compe­ten­cies, they may be a good fit for the program. 

Conduct inter­views

Together with the GLD program team, you are ready to conduct inter­views to assess and eval­uate where your chosen candi­dates stand in rela­tion to your pre-defined goals and compe­ten­cies. 

Use the inter­view to expand on the ques­tion­naire. You can ask similar ques­tions, but ask the candi­date to provide more detail in their answers.

While it’s impor­tant that your candi­dates embody natural strength in your required compe­ten­cies, they will most certainly be stronger in some areas than others. The purpose of the inter­view is to ask pointed ques­tions to help to uncover their varied skillsets.

By getting to the core of your aspiring leader’s poten­tial, you can eval­uate the gaps in their strengths. Once iden­ti­fied, the GLD program team can tailor their training to fill those gaps.

Finding the Best Candi­dates for Your GLD Program with eurac

Pre-assessing and eval­u­ating poten­tial global leaders is the best way to find the right employees for your GLD program.

Skip­ping this step is akin to hiring a new employee without conducting an inter­view. While every­thing may look good on paper, talking with them ensures they are a cultural and profes­sional fit.

Under­standing your aspiring leader’s core strengths, choosing the ones that fit your pre-defined compe­ten­cies and goals, and iden­ti­fying gaps in skill equips your GLD program team to create the best program for you.

If you’d appre­ciate some support in setting up a global lead­er­ship devel­op­ment program in your own company or orga­ni­za­tion, check out how eurac can support you here. And if you’re inter­ested in learning more about global lead­er­ship in general, sign up for our weekly newsletter here: