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.

Want to know more about how to set up and run a successful global lead­er­ship devel­op­ment program in your company? Then sign up for our newsletter below.