LEADERSHIP AND GLOBALISATION

Leadership is one of most critical factors to business success. Leadership is about defining a clear vision and strategy for the organisation, it is about effectively and successfully managing change in today’s dynamic business environment; it is the process of skillfully and responsibly guiding and influencing employees towards accomplishing goals; and it is about living the company values. And developing leadership capability is a top-of-the-mind issue for most CEOs across the world. The general perception among employees regarding leadership capability is weak. For example, in Asia most employees have rated leadership capability in their organisation quite poorly, giving it the second lowest rating.

Only 40% of the employees in the WorkAsiaTM study indicated that they were satisfied with the leadership capability in their organisation. Being a leader today is a demanding job. Leaders are expected to be multi-skilled to manage multiple and often conflicting priorities with great success. They are expected to manage operations profitably, allocate resources judiciously and play multiple roles of a teacher, mentor and conflict manager among other expectations. Globalisation, market place issues and customer expectations have also put significant pressure on leaders in terms of speed and responsivenesss.

And shareholders continue to demand performance! So what should leaders focus on and what personal qualities do they need to demonstrate to manage these multiple expectations? When CEOs of leading global organisations across the different continents were posed these questions in a global leadership study,
conducted by Watson Wyatt, Customer Satisfaction was identified as the top focus area, followed by transforming global vision into effective business strategies. For Asia instilling ‘beat the competition’ mindset in the workforce was given considerable importance as compared to the other regions.