As a business owner or CEO, it’s important to choose a global leadership (GLD) program that helps you produce exceptional global leaders.
An exceptional global leader is a master communicator and team builder, incredibly reliable and a skilled problem-solver, among many other things. They are highly capable of using their collective strengths to navigate difficult situations.
These superhuman-like skills are not easy to teach and are why experts have developed GLD programs to help companies groom remarkable leaders and efficient global teams.
But, in order to get the most out of your chosen program, you must set and define goals based on your company’s specific needs and desired outcomes. After all, if you don’t know what you want to achieve from your GLD program, your results might not match your expectations.
As the company’s decision-maker, it’s up to you to set and measure goals for your GLD program.
Let’s dive into exactly how to do this.
What Are GLD Program Goals?
GLD program goals are the future-focused, short- or long term achievements that you want to gain from your program. Setting these goals for your GLD program gives you a direction and a clear path forward.
An example of a goal that you could set for your GLD program is:
Gain competent leaders that are successful at navigating difficult international assignments.
Once defined, the method of setting objectives or targets will help you to reach your goals within your desired time frame. You can have as few or many objectives as you want as long as they are clearly defined and realistic.
An example of an objective or target that you could set for your GLD program is:
Implement three strategic, simulated real-life international challenges for my global leaders in training to tackle and learn from.
Your objectives need to be achievable or else you may never reach them. Using the above example, if time doesn’t allow for three real-life simulations, then only schedule two, but perhaps increase their difficulty to account for a shortened time frame.
Why Are Goals Important to Global Leadership Development Programs?
GLD programs are inherently flexible to account for your business’s specific needs in their program framework. This is why it’s so important that you, the business owner or CEO, work with the GLD program team to set business-specific goals. They cannot define these goals for you or else you risk being underwhelmed by the outcome.
Before the GLD program starts, you should sit down and evaluate your company’s pain points, needs, strengths, weaknesses, and mission. From this, you can start to define exactly why you need a GLD program, what you expect to achieve from it, and how you want to get there.
Let’s use fictional Company A as an example of how this could look.
Company A relies on local third party vendors to deliver products to their warehouses. As Company A is making plans to expand internationally, they need to find new local vendors in markets and cultures they are unfamiliar with.
In order to boost their chances of forming strong relationships with culturally dissimilar vendors, Company A’s CEO has decided to invest in a GLD program to groom new global leaders.
The CEO’s goals for the program could be:
- The global leaders must be able to make difficult decisions based on strategy when reacting to problems — especially ones born from cultural or language barriers.
- The global leaders must be able to think critically and build trusting relationships with vendors in new and unknown markets.
- The global leaders will be able to use their combined skills to facilitate and manage local vendor relationships to gain a competitive edge in the new market and boost overall sales.
With these goals in mind, the CEO will then meet with a GLD program mentor to create specific objectives to measure success.
Some objectives that the CEO may set to achieve these goals are:
- Test the global leader in training’s performance in a real-life vendor negotiation scenario. The test could be measured by negotiation skills, tactics used and time it takes to finalize a deal.
- Challenge the global leader in training to pick ten local vendor leads from a fictional list of 30. The fictional leads will have necessary information such as business size, revenue, other clients/partners, etc. Then, have them present why they’ve chosen these specific ten and how they would win their business. Measure their success based on strategy used to choose the vendors and sales/negotiation strategy.
Furthermore, you need to work with the GLD program leaders to set both company-wide and individual goals. You know your employees better than the GLD program leaders do, so your evaluation here is crucial. This will help the GLD leaders to measure each individual’s success and perform in-person coaching sessions to address weaknesses and improve upon the potential global leader’s strengths.
Armed with these defined goals and objectives, the GLD program leaders can get started on fitting their training methods to your specific needs.
Types of Common Goals and How They Work for GLD Programs
There are several structures that have been designed to help business owners and CEOs define and carry out goals. A few popular methods have become commonplace in the business world.
SMART Goals
A popular method known as SMART Goals is one that many businesses use. SMART goals were most likely manifested from Peter Drucker’s Management by Objectives, written in 1954.
SMART stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
Some authors have expanded this acronym to include an E and R at the end, standing for Evaluated and Reviewed, respectively.
To dig a bit further, let’s outline each method in detail:
Specific
The goal should clearly outline what you want to achieve, why your goal is important, who is involved in achieving the goal, where the goal is located, and which resources can be allocated to achieve the goal. You should also define the limits of the goal in this stage. For example, if the goal goes over budget, you may stop and reevaluate your targets and measurements before deciding whether to push forward or abandon the goal.
For GLD programs, specificity is of utmost importance. Because the costs and risk of expanding internationally and/or into new markets are high, you must know exactly what you want to achieve from this type of move. For example, are your goals to increase productivity and efficiency, or is improving internal team communication more important to your business? Reevaluating your ultimate goals will help you set specific GLD program goals.
Measurable
The goal must be measurable in order to efficiently track progress. It also helps you reach deadlines and stay motivated. It should have truly measurable units that outline how much of something can be used to achieve the goal, how many resources can be used, and how to measure when a goal is reached.
If one of your business goals is to increase team throughput, then you may want to focus on training your leaders on how to best manage teams comprised of employees from multiple backgrounds who are physically scattered around the world. Your GLD leaders will need to know how to navigate various learning and working styles. In your GLD program, you could measure this goal by asking your leader in training to assist fake team members with fake problems. The GLD program leader must use active listening and creative thinking to solve these diverse problems.
Achievable
The goal needs to be attainable and not out of reach. You can do this by factoring in any restraints, such as financial, that will hinder you from reaching the goal. You should clearly define what methods you will use to accomplish the goal and brainstorm how to best achieve the goal by making use of all of your available resources.
Naturally, if your goal is to improve internal team communication, but you aren’t able or willing to invest in the software needed for your global leaders to best achieve this, then the goal becomes less attainable. If something isn’t feasible, remove that goal and come up with a more realistic one.
Relevant
It’s important to ensure the goal aligns with what truly matters to your business. The goal should feel worthwhile and match the needs and vision of your business. You should only set your goal in motion if the timing is right.
If you want to add five new international branches in the next two years, make sure that aligns with your business’ expansion plan. The global market may be enticing, but a quick expansion plan may not make financial sense. Make sure that what you set out to achieve is possible now.
Time-bound
This helps you to prioritize your goals from urgent to non-urgent. By categorizing your goals, you ensure you’re working on the most important ones first and accomplishing the lower-priority goals later on.
This doesn’t necessarily apply to GLD programs, as the program is already time-bound by nature. Therefore, make sure you are choosing the highest priority goals for the program so as not to waste the opportunity.
SMART goals, like any program, are most effective when the needs align with the solutions.
This type of goal setting can be rigid and define goals in simple units. For example, signing ten more clients in Q1 year over year. However, setting a goal like “become more creative in brainstorming sessions” is less tangible and more difficult to measure. For creative goals, SMART may not be the best method.
Let’s look at another popular goal-setting program.
OKR (Objectives and Key Results)
OKR is known for its ability to help teams focus and increase transparency. This team-cohesion method provides a simple structure of how to achieve goals, along with a best-practice guide to follow. The methodology is intentionally kept simple so that it can account for various scenarios.
A good OKR consists of two elements:
- Clear-set objectives that are inspiring
- Objectives that do not contain a measurable number
OKR has a key results measurement system that measures the things that you influence, like website traffic, rather than the things that you do, like how many new clients you gained in Q1.
SMART versus OKR in GLD Programs
SMART goals and OKR both place a high value on setting objectives and have defined rules for how to achieve an objective. They differ in how to measure success.
SMART sets more rigid measurements and does not distinguish the difference between tangible versus creative goals. For example, simply achieving a number is easier to measure than team motivation levels.
OKR highlights macro, emotional and ultimate goals, while SMART focuses more on isolated, task-driven goals. Therefore, OKR is becoming more popular amongst large organizations that may have teams distributed across many physical locations. These team members need to be adept at communication and transparency.
From a GLD program perspective, SMART goals may make sense for businesses that have more tangible, hard goals. These goals could be increasing sales, landing 10% more customers in a year, or achieving faster development cycles.
OKR may be better for businesses looking to improve culture, enhance communication and motivate employees to inspire loyalty.
Are There Goal-Setting Best Practices That GLD Programs Should Follow?
While there’s no guidebook that outlines exactly how to decide which goals and objectives will work best for your company’s GLD program, we can learn from a case study that was published in 2016. A Case Study of Global Leadership Development Best Practice sought to discover what variables made up the best practices for global leadership development programs.
Researchers studied Wärtsilä, a global leader in advanced technologies and complete lifecycle solutions for the marine and energy markets. At the time of the study, their power plant business provided power to over 175 countries and served over 175,000 customers.
Their own company-wide GLD program, LEAD, has given them unparalleled global leadership success. The researchers labeled their program as “a critical component of its people strategy” and employees left highly positive feedback.
Their one-week intensive program emphasizes several factors as key best practices that lead to success. One of the most important factors is setting “clear and relevant program goals and objectives.”
They go on to write, “everything must be measurable. We decide what the company’s goals are and measure our results based on these pre-set objectives.”
How Should a Company Set Goals and Objectives for Their In-House Global Leadership Development Program?
As described above, there are several types of goals and best practices, that, if implemented well, statistically lead to success. The priority should not be to focus on which framework works best in general, but which framework aligns best with your business culture.
The most important question is how will you measure success? Defining how to measure success is key to whether or not you will get the most out of your GLD program.
Align Best Practices with Your Organization’s Specific Culture
Evaluate your team and outline their goals based on their specific strengths. People work in different ways, and the clearest path forward for one team member may be the hardest route for another.
By truly understanding how your team works best, you can set attainable goals that motivate your team rather than disorient them. If something isn’t working, be flexible.
Continuously evaluate and restructure your goals as needed.
The most successful global leadership programs, no matter the chosen structure, are the ones that allow team members to be self-aware and promote group dynamics and team building.
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