GLOBAL LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
BUS 439
Lori Wieters
08/01/2011

The development of globally competent leaders has been widely recognized as a critical factor in the future success of multinational companies.
It is no surprise that global leadership development is one of the key human resource issues of chief executives in multinational firms a shortage of global leaders is becoming an increasing problem for multinational companies, slowing down and sometimes hindering the implementation of global strategies and leading to lower bottom-line results. Organizations are struggling today to identify both current and future global leaders, they are also failing to help these global leaders to acquire the skills and best practices necessary to succeed in the face of greater globalization. Most global leadership development programs fail primarily due to the lack of a coordinated internal process to create, flexible, and visionary leaders who can hold multiple perspectives in different environments.
Some of the issues associated with global leadership development occurs where “a lot of career politics are associated with getting visibility early in the eyes of top management so that one will be given the challenging jobs that count. How- ever, there are real dilemmas associated with the age when potential should be identified—early or late?” (Evans, P., Pucik, V., Bjorkman, I., p. 336). The challenge is the amount of time, effort and investment it takes to develop globally minded leaders. An potential candidate doesn’t become globally minded because they have successfully completed an expatriate assignment in one particular country and is now returning to headquarters .It might help with focusing the spotlight on themselves but the executive becomes globally minded when he or she uses that expatriate experience in relation to other global learning environments