At the world famous hotel Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, ASTD and STADA will organize one of the largest conferences in the Asian region. I will be there to present how we can design and deliver leadership development projects for global leaders.
The title of my presentation is "The Multicultural and Multigenerational Workplace – What Are the Future Challenges to Leaders?" This topic was inspired by a presentation I made at the 2012 ASTD International Conference and Expo in Denver, Colorado, and it examines issues related to transitioning to a global economy and an increasingly diverse workforce are creating an ongoing need to develop competent multicultural leaders.
A common link among my many global projects is that organizations are recognizing a critical need for their leaders to be competent in cross-cultural interactions. In addition emerging trends and technology, such as social media, informal learning, and generational differences, are providing new challenges and opportunities for leaders who work in global organizations. During my experience designing and delivering leadership development programs on five continents, I have uncovered processes and practices than can be applied with flexibility to improve communication in this diverse new environment, including
- leaders must balance the needs of the organization with the needs of employees
- leaders must ensure that all employees, customers, colleagues, and stakeholders in the organization are treated with respect and dignity regarding their individual, group, and cultural dimensions.
Leaders of Today vs. Leeaders of Tomorrow
Considering the changes in our society—both in the social and economic aspects—we must determine how to develop and prepare the leaders who will take the helm of the future workplace. One of the key questions we have to answer is: “What main trends in a multicultural and multigenerational workplace will influence and impact leadership development in the future?”
Without question, multiculturalism in the workplace is stimulating change on the scope, concept, and mission of organizational leaders. In my experience (after developing different leadership programs for global leaders and companies), I have found that leaders are beginning to understand that diversity issues are increasingly more important. Leaders are asking themselves:
- Is my organization prepared to have four different generations in the workplace?
- Are we designing leadership programs that consider new challenges facing our future leaders?
Rather than asking today's leaders about how to address the needs of the future workplace environment (leaders who, indeed, will not be there), it is imperative to seek insight and counsel from the people who will undoubtedly be tomorrow's leaders. In my quest for ideas on how to address the challenges that lie ahead, I have sought input from future leaders through focus groups, interviews, and surveys. In total, I collected data from more than 200 future leaders who were nominated from over 100 major companies around the world. Their contribution offers signs that organizations are beginning to adopt a broader concept and definition of the word diversity.
To summarize characteristics of the future workplace, we can compare the desired characteristics of the leader of the future with those of the leader of the present. Of course, there will be some similarities—the basics of core leadership do not change, such as vision, integrity, focus on results, process improvement, dealing and developing people, motivating teams and ensuring customer satisfaction.
However, we begin to see some new qualities emerge when we delve deeper into issues related to diversity, culture, a multigenerational workforce, and globalization. Ten key factors that emerged from my studies (and are seen as being clearly more important in the future than in the past) include:
- Good balance between behavioral and technical knowledge
- Being aware of self-profile, behaviors and their impacts on others
- Capacity of thinking globally, and good understanding of the economic and social changes
- Understanding the broad concept of diversity, including new factors that will be impacting the future
- Demonstrating a good perception about own behaviors and others
- Being a good ethical model – integrity and values
- Large use of technological tools, integrated in social media activities and instruments
- Capacity of building partnerships and influencing others even without authority
- Competence to understand employees needs and sharing leadership
- Ability to change the leadership style, clearly knowing when and how to vary from an authority to a coaching leadership style.
A Closer Look at the Data
As part of my research I collected information from 200 multinational companies regarding the use of modern techniques and social media to improve the leadership style, as well as gain a general sense of global leadership.
We can interpret from the data in Figure 1 that the number of companies focusing on designing programs with a global mindset is still lower than expected (only 9 percent). And while almost 40 percent are planning to deliver multicultural programs to develop their leaders, we find that one-third of respondents (36 percent) do not even know what we mean by that.
These facts are further emphasized after reviewingthe data in Figure 2, which analyzes the perceived impact organizations identify social media’s influence on leadership style. For more than one-half of the companies, the impact of social media is high (42 percent) or very high (21 percent).
A coaching leadership style is also a major dynamic affecting in global organizations. By analyzing Figure 3, we can see that approximately 15 percent of organizations are using coaching as a leadership model (with 8 percent expecting positive results from coaching). On the other hand, we find that 23 percent say that their culture does not support coaching as a leadership model, which indicates that we still have a good way to go.
Moving Forward
To successfully prepare for the new millennium, tomorrow's organizations will have to change the mindset of many leaders. More than simply learning new skills, leaders will have to learn why new skills are important. In addition, many organizational reward and reinforcement systems will need to change to reflect the new desired competencies. Learning and performance professionals must ask ourselves: Are our organizations’ leaders being prepared to deal with forthcoming issues of diversity related to globalization and multigenerational workforce? More important, are we ready to support all of these new demands?
Alfredo Castro is president of MOT, a consulting company based in Miami and Sao Paulo (Latin America), and was chair of the 2010 ASTD International Conference and Expo Advisory Board (Chicago). He is director of the Brazilian T&D Association and an international business consultant, experienced in implementing blended learning programs and human resource projects, in more than 120 companies, and over 25 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. He is the author of 8 business books; his latest book is titled Motivational Leadership. He has presented 10 sessions at ASTD conferences, and was the general coordinator of the Iberian American Forum (held for nine times in United States as a part of the annual ASTD conference). He conducts projects for multicultural organizations like Clariant, Ford, Avon, Sony, and many other big national companies. Contact him at [email protected].