to diversifying their leadership pipeline, they have invested billions ($14 billion in the US alone)17 in cultural competency training, multicultural leadership development, ex-pat executive coaching, and cultural navigation tools. Tools such as the ITAP International’s Culture in the Workplace Questionnaire™18 and Aperian Global’s GlobeSmart® Teaming Assessment and Global Teams Online® e-training tool19 (among numerous others20) have been developed on the basis of decades of research, including Geert Hofsted’s groundbreaking theory of “bilateral leadership,” the ten-year GLOBE study of sixty-two cultures, Richard Lewis’ When Cultures Collide, and Erin Meyer’s excellent The Culture Map, as well as more recent contributions to the field, such as Ernest Gundling’s Working Globesmart.21
But these leadership development strategies ultimately fall short of growing locals into global executives because they fail to move candidates beyond understanding cultural differences to acting on them.22 Local talent still lacks credibility with senior management at headquarters; expats still lack the culturally appropriate behaviors to create the partnerships and pathways necessary to driving value in the footprint; and senior managers continue to see and sponsor the people who surround them at headquarters, ensuring that the upper echelons of leadership resist diversification from abroad.23 Distance and difference remain chasms for companies whose competitive success depends on bridging them.
Virtual communication platforms have indisputably helped bridge these divides. Recognizing the imperative of integrating information flow across a wide range of digital platforms and devices, and of growing innovative, responsive, and flexible global networks,24 MNCs have been quick to prioritize investment in hardware, software, and training to facilitate virtual collaboration and knowledge sharing instead of other kinds of corporate development. A 2012 IBM study revealed that 71 percent of global CEOs see technology as the most critical factor in maintaining market competitiveness.25 Towers Watson found that upward of 61 percent of MNCs plan to integrate mobile technology into existing systems.26
Yet even as technology eases communication and maximizes efficiencies, it introduces misunderstandings and productivity constraints. Corporate leaders must not only demonstrate high-level expertise in an ever-expanding array of complex digital technologies, but also project authority and unlock value in this virtual environment,27 a challenge compounded by variances in quality and consistency due to inadequate infrastructure in the developing world.28 Technological savvy, skillfulness in cross-cultural virtual team management, adroit use of mobile technology and social media, and better allocation of precious in-person time are critical to the success of global virtual team leaders, but guidance is scant and, as a result, success is mixed.29
What will it take to move more local talent into global leadership roles? How can MNCs unlock the innovative potential of local teams? What should be the focus of leadership development?
With this study, we answer these crucial questions. Drawing on an eleven-market quantitative sample (Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Japan, India, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey, the UK, and the US), interviews with forty-eight global executives, and focus groups with over fifty global team players, we find that emerging global leaders are in want of two core competencies: the ability to modify their leadership presence in order to project credibility to superiors at headquarters as well as to stakeholders worldwide, and the ability to unlock value from globally dispersed and culturally diverse teams through inclusive leadership. Overlooked by MNCs and business research organizations alike, these cutting-edge leadership competencies build on pioneering research of the Center for Talent Innovation (CTI), which shows how developing executive presence and inclusive leadership are the keys to growing executive potential in multicultural talent in US corporations.30 On the global stage, we find these core competencies depend, respectively, on mastery of virtual communication, which enables emerging leaders to project credibility and leadership presence even when far from headquarters; and on sponsorship, which, as exclusive CTI research has demonstrated, generates high-level visibility for emerging leaders both as rising stars and as a developers of team talent.31
MNCs are grappling with a bewildering array of management issues today: the increasing economic clout of emerging markets, heightened competition for local talent, and an unprecedented dependence on virtual leadership have all contributed to sluggish revenues, uninspired business solutions, and stagnant talent pools. Yet these problems have a common solution: the innovative potential of emerging global leaders, gleaned from the ranks of the very MNCs facing these challenges. By tapping into this vastly underutilized resource, MNCs will not only jettison outmoded models of corporate leadership and gain a pipeline of diverse, innovative, and culturally savvy executives; they will also cement their competitive position in the world’s fastest-growing marketplaces.
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Projecting Credibility: Mastering the Double Pivot
What signals readiness for a global leadership role?
An ability to project credibility to stakeholders
around the world.
To be seen as having “the right stuff”—competence, confidence, and trustworthiness—leaders must exude executive presence: they must look, sound, and act in accordance with cultural expectations of authority figures. Research we conducted in 2012 on the “intangibles” of leadership shows that in the US, executive presence derives chiefly from gravitas, a constellation of behaviors that project credibility. Exhibiting calm in a crisis—“grace under fire”—tops the list of behaviors, followed by demonstrating decisiveness and integrity. Demonstrating emotional intelligence (EQ), establishing reputation and standing, and emanating charisma are other competencies that our research highlights as essential to being found credible as a leader in the US, whether you’re male or female.
Globally, we find, gravitas is still the heart of the matter. According to 47 percent of respondents, gravitas is the most important component of a leader’s executive presence (with communication skills and appearance—virtual and in-person—making up the rest).
Yet what our eleven-country dataset reveals about gravitas is that the behaviors that give rise to it are accorded different importance in different countries and regions. With the exception of demonstrating integrity, which respondents across markets prioritize in their leaders, gravitas varies from hemisphere to hemisphere, from country to country, and from corporate culture to corporate culture. If in US boardrooms it’s essential to demonstrate authority, in Japan it’s vital to show you can work across difference. In Russia, it’s terribly important for leaders to first establish their reputation and status; in India, credibility derives from being able to inspire a following. Rising leaders must understand these cultural differences and adjust their gravitas accordingly to win the trust and respect of globally dispersed team members and clients as well as centrally located senior executives.
Projecting credibility thus becomes quite a challenge for leaders operating across time zones and cultures. Global leaders must master a double pivot, demonstrating authority with senior executives in the West (the vertical pivot) and prioritizing emotional intelligence with stakeholders in global markets (the horizontal pivot, which may well prove to be a multifaceted challenge).
Projecting Credibility: The Double Pivot
The Double Pivot
Makiko Eda, VP of Intel’s Sales and Marketing Group and president of Intel Japan, is one such master pivoter. As a native of Japan, she enjoys working for a multinational company that respects her leadership skills and imbues her with authority—something that would never happen in a Japanese managerial hierarchy, where women are rarely welcome, she says. But she also enjoys, during her quarterly visits to Intel’s headquarters in California, being “a translator of my culture to the Western world.” Traveling
