How to Develop Effective Global Leaders

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Global Leadership Development: How to Develop Leaders Across Cultures

Leadership becomes more complex as responsibility expands.

A new manager may still rely on personal expertise to solve problems. A global leader cannot. The work moves across teams, functions, time zones and cultures. Success depends on creating direction, influencing through others and communicating in ways that different audiences can understand and trust.

That makes communication central to global leadership development.

In this episode of What’s Your Story?, Sally Williamson speaks with Helen Nghiem about developing leaders across a global organization. Their conversation explores what leadership means, how expectations change as teams grow and why storytelling helps leaders communicate vision, change and shared purpose.

Helen also reflects on the lessons learned from building leadership-development experiences for emerging and senior leaders with different backgrounds, responsibilities and cultural perspectives.

Global leadership development requires more than teaching a standard set of management skills. Leaders must learn to communicate across cultures, influence increasingly complex teams and create clarity during change and ambiguity. In this episode, Helen Nghiem joins Sally Williamson to discuss how organizations can prepare new and experienced leaders for expanding global responsibilities.

On today’s podcast episode, we are meeting with Helen Nghiem of Epsilon to learn what makes a good leader and how she trains leaders from all over the world. How important is communication as leaders take on more teams, and how does the pressure shift as leaders are no longer able to manage projects on their own? Are leaders the same across the globe, and is the modern economy changing what is expected of leaders? Helen Nghiem discusses how to use leadership skills to tell stories in order to communicate effectively, to instill a sense of loyalty and excitement for a company, and how these stories make memories stick.

Helen Nghiem is a seasoned consultant and corporate learning and development leader with a passion for galvanizing leaders and employees for change. Throughout a 20-year career, Helen’s industry experience is wide, spanning management consulting, energy, travel and hospitality, technology, and digital marketing. She drives business results by drawing from deep expertise and insight to build unique talent and organizational development solutions. In her current role, Helen helped Epsilon grow from a $500M company to a Fortune 100 global enterprise. She cites the company’s steadfast investments in leadership and employee development as the agent of growth.

Show Highlights

1:00 Leadership development and creativity. Skills needed in communication, influence, and engagement in order to develop leaders
2:00 What is Epsilon? What do they do regarding leadership interaction and management? What technology do they use and how does data play a role?
5:00 Did Helen focus on people who were becoming new leaders who were taking on responsibilities they’d never had? Or did she focus on seasoned leaders? What was the business need Epsilon chose to approach and why?
7:00 How does Helen define a leader? How does vision play a role? What about the shared experience of change and ambiguity? And communication skills?
10:00 How does pressure shift to communication as the number of teams reporting to a leader grow in number? What makes leaders not able to take over a task if the team falls through?
12:00 Did Helen have a master plan for what would make a leader successful when starting her program? What sorts of topics did this entail?
17:00 What did Helen learn from leaders in the program over 9 years? What did the leaders get out of it? Have leadership needs changed in that timeframe? How does leadership change across cultures?
23:00 What are the most impactful stories Helen has heard from leaders? How do leaders fare with managing the requirement to tell an impactful story in front of other leaders? Does she remember the stories told by leaders over the years? What makes them stick? What benefits does this have?
30:00 How are senior leaders impacted by Helen’s program? Open, honest, and vulnerable are expectations of leaders. How do stories promote these sensations?
36:00 Where has Helen seen the impression of a leader strengthened or expanded based on their experience in the program? What part did storytelling have in this? Plus, Helen shares her own story.

Guest Information

Helen Nghiem is an accomplished and widely regarded professional with vast cross-industry experience spanning more than fifteen years. She is an effective, dynamic, and seasoned leader in key organizational development and business consulting roles who never settles for the status quo. A meticulous strategic planner with a proven track record of success at galvanizing leadership, management, and employees for change. A skilled communicator with a history of upward mobility in fast-paced global domains.

You can find more information about Helen on Linkedin:

www.linkedin.com/in/helennghiem

What Is Global Leadership Development?

Global leadership development prepares leaders to guide people, decisions and change across organizational and cultural boundaries.

It involves more than learning cultural etiquette or managing employees in multiple countries. Global leaders must create alignment among people who may interpret authority, collaboration, feedback and decision-making differently.

The strongest development programs build shared leadership expectations while helping participants adapt those expectations to different audiences and situations.

Global consistency does not require identical behavior everywhere. It requires leaders to understand which principles should remain stable and which communication choices need to adjust.

Global Leadership Development: How Leadership Changes as Responsibility Expands

Early-career success is often based on what someone can accomplish personally.

As leaders gain responsibility, that standard changes. They cannot step into every assignment, solve every problem or make every decision themselves. They must create clarity so other people can move the work forward.

Leaders need to communicate:

What the organization is trying to accomplish
Why the priority matters
What teams are responsible for
Where employees have authority
How decisions will be made
What should remain consistent
Where local adaptation is appropriate
How progress will be evaluated

A leader who continues taking over the work may solve an immediate problem while limiting the team’s ability to grow.

Global Leadership Development: The Skills Global Leaders Need

Global Leadership Development: Communicating Vision and Direction

Global teams need a shared understanding of the larger direction.

Leaders must organize complex strategies into messages that can travel across functions and locations. The message should remain consistent even when examples, language and level of detail change for different audiences.

Global Leadership Development: Influencing Without Taking Over

Global leaders depend on people they may not manage directly.

They need to build credibility, understand stakeholder priorities and create enough alignment for others to act. Influence becomes more important as direct control decreases.

Global Leadership Development: Leading Through Ambiguity

Global organizations regularly face incomplete information, competing market conditions and different regional needs.

Leaders should be able to explain what is known, what remains uncertain and what the organization will do next. Credibility does not require pretending every answer is available.

Global Leadership Development: Adapting Across Cultures

Communication habits do not carry the same meaning everywhere.

Direct feedback may feel clear in one culture and unnecessarily confrontational in another. Silence may indicate disagreement, reflection or respect. Employees may expect a leader to make the decision or invite broader participation.

Global leaders need enough curiosity to avoid interpreting every response through their own cultural assumptions.

Global Leadership Development: Building Trust Across Distance

Trust can be more difficult to establish when teams rarely share the same physical space.

Leaders build trust through consistency, follow-through, accessibility and attention to different locations. Employees should not feel that proximity to headquarters determines whose perspective matters.

Global Leadership Development: What Leadership Expectations Are Universal?

Global leadership programs need common ground.

Organizations may define expectations such as:

Communicate direction clearly
Treat people with respect
Follow through on commitments
Listen to relevant perspectives
Connect decisions to organizational values
Give employees useful feedback
Create accountability
Develop other leaders

These expectations can remain consistent across the organization regarding global leadership development.

The way a leader demonstrates them may differ depending on culture, team maturity and business situation.

Global Leadership Development: What Must Adapt Across Cultures?

Global leaders should consider how local audiences experience:

Hierarchy
Directness
Decision-making
Individual recognition
Group agreement
Conflict
Feedback
Risk
Time
Relationship building

Adaptation does not mean abandoning personal authenticity or organizational standards. It means understanding that the same behavior can produce different impressions.

Before communicating, leaders should ask:

What does this audience expect from someone in my role?
How comfortable will people be questioning the idea?
Does the group need more context before the recommendation?
How is disagreement usually expressed?
What would help people participate honestly?
Which terms or examples may not translate?

Global Leadership Development: Why Storytelling Matters in Global Leadership

Stories help leaders give strategy and values a human context.

A global organization may use broad language about innovation, collaboration or customer commitment. A well-chosen story shows what that idea looks like in practice.

Leadership stories can help:

Explain why a change matters
Demonstrate organizational values
Share lessons across regions
Make complex ideas easier to understand
Build connection among dispersed teams
Recognize local contributions
Create a message people can remember and repeat

But stories must be chosen carefully. An example that resonates in one location may not carry the same meaning somewhere else.

The strongest global stories contain a universal human idea while respecting the context of the audience.

Global Leadership Development: How to Build a Global Leadership Development Program

A global program should begin with the organization’s business needs rather than a generic list of leadership competencies.

Consider:

Which outcomes require stronger leadership?
Where are leaders struggling today?
Which expectations should be consistent globally?
What must adapt by region or culture?
Which real business situations should participants practice?
How will managers reinforce the learning?
What opportunities will leaders have to apply the skills?
How will progress be measured?

Program design should include input from leaders in different regions. A model developed only at headquarters may overlook the realities participants face elsewhere.

Global Leadership Development: Develop Emerging and Senior Leaders Differently

Emerging and senior leaders may need some of the same fundamentals, but they apply them differently when it comes to global leadership development.

Emerging leaders may need to:

Transition from individual expertise to leading others
Set expectations
Give feedback
Delegate
Build confidence
Communicate with senior stakeholders

Senior global leaders may need to:

Communicate enterprise direction
Influence across functions and regions
Lead through ambiguity
Align culturally diverse leadership teams
Build commitment to change
Develop leaders beneath them

A global leadership program should reflect these differences rather than delivering one experience to everyone.

Global Leadership Development: Measure Global Leadership Development

Participant satisfaction provides useful information, but it does not show whether leadership behavior changed.

Organizations can also evaluate:

Manager and stakeholder feedback
Application to real leadership situations
Clarity of team expectations
Quality of feedback conversations
Cross-functional collaboration
Communication of organizational priorities
Leader confidence across unfamiliar situations
Development of successors
Consistency across regions

Measurement should connect to the reason the program was created.

Global Leadership Development: Develop Global Leaders Who Can Create Alignment

Global leaders need more than a common vocabulary. They need communication skills they can apply across audiences, cultures and business situations.

SW&A develops tailored leadership communication programs that help emerging and senior leaders organize ideas, communicate direction, build connection and influence through others.

Like what you hear? Hear more episodes like this on the What’s Your Story podcast page!