To succeed in today’s economy, organisations in Asia must create global leaders with the right knowledge, experience and competencies.The Asia Pacific region is now the major source for the world’s business growth. This growth is set to expand in the next 10 years exacerbating the major challenge faced by business in Asia today—attracting, developing and retaining strong leaders.
Challenges
This is a unique challenge due to a number of factors that face leaders and organisations operating in Asia including:
a business environment that changes more rapidly than any other region requiring constant assessment and change by leaders
having to work within a constantly evolving legal and regulatory framework
a complex collection of ethnic groups which requires a much greater awareness of personal, national and corporate culture by Asian leaders than by their counterparts in the West
Operational challenges for organisations when it comes to leadership in Asia include:
many international companies actively moving out the expats that have become progressively more expensive and building local leadership teams. Often these Asian leaders have been schooled in different, and sometimes conflicting, leadership approaches to their European and American counterparts
leaders from multinational organisations in Asia are now in great demand by companies from the west who are actively pursuing them.
These challenges both for leaders and operations should lead any organisation—especially western multinationals that have an Asia Pacific presence that wish to survive, compete and expand—to one conclusion:
Develop existing talent
You can’t rely on just buying in talented leaders. You must develop and retain your existing people through intentional, focused forms of strategic leadership development. In a recent report written for the Singapore Human Capital Summit, 44 CEOs from across the Asia Pacific region were asked, ‘How did you end up as a CEO?’ The four most common responses to the question were:
because it just happened—I was in the right place at the right time
because I had a desire to have an impact and become a leader
because I wanted to do well in my current position and this resulted in incremental leadership opportunities being offered to me
because I was a member of the family that own the business and I was encouraged to become the leader
Most of the CEOs said that they had no plan to become a leader, let alone the CEO. So most of them got there by accident without any support or development by the organisation. This may have worked in the old paradigm.
Staying on top of the pack
However in the existing competitive marketplace for a small pool of talent, organisations run the risk of not being able to produce enough leaders to support their growth. If an organisation accepts this conclusion then they must put time and resources into:
becoming an employer of choice for leaders across the world in order to retain and attract the best
ensuring they have Asian leaders at corporate and board level as mentors, role models and aspirational examples
creating focused talent management strategies by providing comprehensive development for the current and the next generation of leaders in the organisation.
Developing global leaders
So, what is the best way for an organisation to develop global leaders in the Asia Pacific region? Working with multinational clients across Asia Pacific, over the years we have concluded that there are some ‘must haves’ that, if included in any Asian leadership development strategy, will make a significant difference.
The first consideration is to ensure you have a clear set of global leadership competencies. Many organisations do not have a clearly defined set of global leadership competencies. If you want to design a comprehensive leadership development strategy you must know what you want to achieve and develop.
A comprehensive set of global leadership competencies are vital to long term success and results measurement. A great set of global leadership competencies takes time to put together but it’s worth it because they form a solid foundation for all your leadership development.
One of the fundamental assumptions in many organisations is that leaders in Asia, Europe and the USA possess and need significantly different skills to lead. Well here is the good news: in a recent study, by Korn Ferry, of over 7,000 managers globally looking at 67 leadership competencies it was found that many competency levels are at a similar level globally, with just a few that need to be adjusted for Asia. Leaders and managers across six regions shared similar ratings in many competencies including:
high scores across all regions for competencies including: ethics and values, integrity and trust, intellectual horsepower, and functional/technical skills
low scores across all regions in competencies such as managing and developing direct reports, dealing with paradox, conflict management, and personal disclosure
There are some notable differences that need to be taken into account when developing Asian Leaders—these include ‘boss relationships’ and ‘personal learning’ that were both ranked substantially higher in Asia relative to other regions. In contrast, ‘humour’, ‘managing diversity’, and ‘hiring and staffing’ were ranked much lower.
A second critical issue is to ensure the development is relevant to the leaders’ needs and enables them to learn the way they naturally learn. How do leaders naturally learn? Well one thing is for sure, it isn’t usually with PowerPoint presentations and a few case studies in a business school or a company training room.
The results of the Korn Ferry study also highlighted the fact that leaders mostly learned to be leaders—often earlier in their career—through what they termed key moments or teachable moments like leading a downsizing, taking a stand on a controversial issue or achieving a special project. This brings up two questions:
Question 1: If my leaders are learning through key moments does this mean that they could also be learning the least-effective solutions and behaviours and then teaching that to others who will eventually replace them and make the same mistakes?
The answer to this question is yes. And that’s right—you should be concerned about that.
Question 2: How do I harness an approach that mimics my leaders’ natural ways of learning through experience to develop them further?
Designing effective leadership programmes is a complex business, but there are a number of key rules that that if followed can create great leadership development, especially in Asia. Rules to keep in mind are:
ensure that the learning goals are developed from global competencies, with regional variations taken into account
explain the ‘why’ behind the leaders’ current behaviour
explain what other options are open
to leaders
create learning moments through facilitation, action learning, practical experiential development. Enabling leaders to experience learning moments is the most effective way to develop new skills and behaviours
tailor the development and deliver it in a way that it can be immediately adopted in the work environment
In summary developing world-class business leaders in Asia Pacific is a unique challenge, but if you plan well and create leadership development that is focused, relevant to leaders learning needs and creates learning moments then you will develop great programmes and great leaders.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
