Global leaders contend with many different chal­lenges in a world where atti­tudes towards manage­ment have dramat­i­cally shifted. With that said, there are four very distinct chal­lenges high­lighted by global lead­er­ship expert Dr. Schmitz, that global leaders must overcome. 

Read on as we go into more detail about what these chal­lenges are, and the things global leaders need to be aware of moving forward in the current climate.

1. Managing The Global Complexity

The first chal­lenge that global leaders face, is 

• finding a way to deli­cately balance collab­o­rating with others, 
• discov­ering new ways of doing things, 
• engi­neering new processes, and 
• placing all of that together in a system­atic framework. 

Essen­tially what that means is that out of the poten­tial chaos, global leaders fit all of the puzzle pieces together as they take the reigns of a diverse work­force, forge ahead with devel­oping both the busi­ness and people, as well as finding a balanced process that draws out the strengths of every team member and achieves a common goal.

This is no easy task. 

For global leaders today, this will always be the first chal­lenge. As you move forward, your mindset will be very impor­tant. You’ll need to acti­vate different manage­ment tech­niques and be able to be both the visionary and the strategist. 

Which leads very nicely into the biggest chal­lenge to face global leaders…

2. Lead­er­ship Effectiveness

As we move away from a more author­i­tarian style of lead­er­ship, global leaders cannot simply rely on the authority of their posi­tion to push through an agenda. Work­forces have an expec­ta­tion that their lead­er­ship is made up of people who 

• are account­able,
• able to inspire change, and 
• hold to values that are worthy of respect. 

For global leaders, there’s the added chal­lenge of the fact that being close to your team and being an active part of their devel­op­ment requires more time and a more defined set of skills. The chal­lenge of lead­er­ship is broken down by Dr. Schmitz into the following subcategories:

1. Devel­op­ment of Manage­rial Effectiveness
2. Inspi­ra­tion and Moti­va­tion of the Workforce
3. Devel­oping Employees and the rise of “Servant-Lead­er­ship”
4. Leading a Team

Let’s discuss each in turn.

The Devel­op­ment of Manage­rial Effectiveness

The first chal­lenge around lead­er­ship effec­tive­ness is culti­vating the right set of skills to make that tran­si­tion into lead­er­ship easier. Skills like 

• time manage­ment,
• the ability to set goals,
• task prior­i­ti­za­tion,
• good judge­ment, and 
• strategic thinking

all need to be culti­vated in global leaders as the basis of them being effective.

Without these skills, global leaders will struggle to deliver successful projects, to manage the some­times conflicting demands of various tasks, and they will likely burn them­selves out focusing on things that are not impor­tant, whilst achieving very little of what was initially planned.

In order to develop these skills, global leaders can take courses, go to confer­ences, or take part in programmes specif­i­cally designed to help you grow in all of these areas.

The Inspi­ra­tion and Moti­va­tion of the Workforce

Moti­vating human beings to act a certain way will forever be a chal­lenge that leaders face. In the context of a global work­force, this is no different. Being an inspiring and moti­vating leader seems like such an abstract goal, you wonder how truly possible it is to culti­vate that kind of pres­ence. Is it some­thing people are just born with?

The truth of the matter is that moti­va­tion and inspi­ra­tion are asso­ci­ated with passion; passionate leaders light that spark in others and it becomes a conta­gious envi­ron­ment where creativity thrives and people do things because they are excited to get involved. 

Now, we all do have to do work that some­times is not what we’d like to do. But on the whole, global leaders who love their area of exper­tise natu­rally share that passion and drive with their teams and other stake­holders. Who, in turn, begin to under­stand what you are trying to achieve and get on board to help.

Another added note here is that commu­ni­ca­tion is very impor­tant — people cannot be passionate and inspired by a vision that they do not under­stand. Global leaders need to success­fully convey the mission so that every­body involved knows how they might contribute to its accom­plish­ment. It’s another factor that goes into inspiring and moti­vating the workforce.

Devel­oping Employees and the rise of “Servant-Lead­er­ship”

The idea of “Servant-Lead­er­ship” is a kind of trans­for­ma­tional lead­er­ship based on the idea that a leader should not just be content to dele­gate tasks. Instead, they view them­selves as being ‘servants’ of the people that they lead, with their actions moti­vated by what is best for the people rather than themselves.

The kind of manage­ment style we see in global leaders today lends itself to the idea that there is a close part­ner­ship between manage­ment struc­tures and employees that allows space for leaders to be actively involved in not only meeting company goals but in the devel­op­ment of their teams.

There’s also an expec­ta­tion that global leaders should lead by example; they must embody the values they wish to see within their team dynamic, and be able to inspire their teams to uphold these values also. Essen­tially, they need to be able to use these value systems to persuade their teams to act, rather than relying on using fear tactics to get people to do things.

There is a sincerity and a humility that is intrin­si­cally woven into this manage­ment style. Exam­ples of leaders who embody it are Martin Luther King Jr, who led the Amer­ican Civil Rights Move­ment in the 1950’s and 60’s, and Abraham Lincoln who went on to be consid­ered one of America’s greatest presidents.

Any global leader who can master this lead­er­ship style will be able to inspire and moti­vate their team without having to resort to a more author­i­tarian style of manage­ment. The chal­lenge is in getting that servant-leader balance right and not swinging too far one way or the other.

Leading a Team

The chal­lenge around leading a global team mainly centres around getting all the different cultures and perspec­tives to gel together in an atmos­phere of collab­o­ra­tion. Some global leaders will be able to build their team from the ground up. Which is chal­lenging because there’s no former pattern, but it has its perks because you can modify the values within the team and recruit directly in line with those themes.

Alter­na­tively, you may inherit an existing team and the chal­lenge there is bringing that inno­va­tion you want without causing a back­lash of resis­tance, espe­cially if every­body has been working really well together. In both cases, global leaders need to be in a posi­tion to provide the support that the team needs, whether that’s supporting them through change, or supporting them as they create some­thing completely new. 

Quan­ti­fying what ‘support’ is needed is harder to do because teams are as unique as the people within them. A leader needs a high level of atten­tive­ness to be able to recog­nise what it is that their team needs. More autonomy, for example, works for some teams, but not for others. You may find that some teams are more process-driven so a fluid, free-form approach to a project will not work for them. 

Leaders need to be able to adapt their manage­ment style in all of these different instances, to create a bespoke package of support in keeping with the needs of the time.

3. Guiding Change

As a global leader, managing existing processes is one thing. Designing some­thing new and leading people through a change process is really quite another. There are several different stages to this, but global leaders need to believe in the change and the reason for it, commu­ni­cate the change, help to plan the strategy and then oversee the execu­tion of the change and the tran­si­tion from the old into the new.

Again…this is not an easy thing to do.

We know that most change manage­ment programmes fail in conven­tional organ­i­sa­tions. Once you add the complexity of being a global leader, managing a diverse work­force, things can become compli­cated very quickly. Never­the­less, global leaders have to be profi­cient and being able to recog­nise where change is needed, or where change would ulti­mately improve things, and have the skill to deliver the change in the face of oppo­si­tion; change is always resisted in some way. 

Getting your team excited about change will help over­come this chal­lenge. Essen­tially what global leaders need to be able to do, is to get that ‘buy in’ from their team, where they become actively involved and invested in the change that you would like to make. It’s poten­tially prob­lem­atic in any sphere, but it’s made more potent when you have the extra chal­lenge of managing teams that are multinational.

4. Managing Internal Stakeholders

The manage­ment of internal stake­holders is a key compo­nent of any global leader. Garnering the support of your team is always impor­tant, but having the backing of your fellow colleagues, your managers, the board and investors will feed into this as well. 

At its heart, managing internal stake­holders is really a rela­tion­ship chal­lenge. How well you network and how well you portray your­self is going to have a huge impact on how you meet your lead­er­ship objec­tives. Here are two top tips to help with this.

1. Commu­ni­cate, communicate

…and commu­ni­cate some more. Always be completely trans­parent about the agenda, the facts and the figures. Honesty is always the best policy and it shows that you’re approach­able and open to discuss things. Always allow room for people to ask ques­tions about the different approaches you are implementing.

2. Become An Expert at Conflict Resolution

How you handle resis­tance will cement your repu­ta­tion as a global leader. In any situ­a­tion where people gather, there will be conflicts; conflicts of interest, conflicts over prior­i­ties, strategy, time­lines, budgets. The list of possible sticking points goes on. 

Your job as a global leader is to recog­nise these things and find a way to create a viable solu­tion out of all of these concerns. It’s not easy but conflict manage­ment is about drawing people’s atten­tion towards that common goal and getting them to tran­scend above conflicting details. 

These are what we would consider to be the key chal­lenges facing global leaders today. This is why devel­oping all the key skills you need is so impor­tant: you need to ensure that you are equipped to take on all of these different obsta­cles and become the most confi­dent leader you can be.

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