Research
Below is a summary of the 2 year research carried out by Accenture and top leadership development professionals that serves as the basis of the Global Leadership Assessment 360.
Phase 1
The first phase of the research was to ask 100 CEOs and top-level executives of Fortune 100 organizations a simple question - “Who are the most influential thought leaders on global leadership?” Amongst the various responses, 18 thought leaders were selected by nearly every respondent.
Phase 2
The next phase was to study these thought leaders’ publications on global leadership to understand their leadership models and the skills required to perform within them. Based on this initial research a clear set of 15 competencies needed for global leadership was identified and subsequently validated.
These competencies are
- Thinking globally
- Anticipating opportunities
- Creating a shared vision
- Developing people
- Empowering people
- Appreciating diversity
- Building partnerships
- Leading change
- Developing technological savvy
- Encouraging constructive dialogue
- Ensuring customer satisfaction
- Maintaining a competitive advantage
- Achieving personal mastery
- Sharing leadership
- Demonstrating integrity.
Phase 3
The third phase is focused on identifying patterns of the importance of each competency on a timeline: what was important in the past, what is important in the present, and what will continue to grow in importance for the future.
Interviews were conducted with international business and HR executives and spanned more than 500 respondents from 200 organizations on 6 continents. A key focus in each interview was to measure the importance of each competency in the past, present, and future.
With consistent responses from each global region, distinct patterns surfaced, specifically 3 clusters that highlight the change or lack of change in importance of certain competencies over time.
The first cluster to appear is a set of competencies which had little importance in the past, but have grown in importance and will continue to be critical to the success of all future leaders. These are emerging competencies. These are areas where organizations need to heavily invest to fortify their future leaders and high potentials. They are Thinking Globally, Appreciating Diversity, Building Partnerships, Sharing Leadership, and Developing Technological Savvy.
The second cluster to appear is a set of competencies that have forever held great importance in effective leadership and continue to do so moving into the future. These are timeless competencies. They are Anticipating Opportunities, Creating a Shared Vision, Maintaining a Competitive Advantage, Achieving Personal Mastery, and Demonstrating Integrity.
The final cluster to appear is a set of competencies that had a large, positive gap between their importance yesterday and their importance today with a steady and high importance in the future. These are Large Gap competencies. Empowering People, Leading Change, Encouraging Constructive Dialogue, Developing People.
Validation & Demographics
With the initial constructs in place, a rugged and thorough process of validation took place through a number of in-depth interviews with over 200 HRD officers from global organizations. Let’s look at the demographic spread of this group.
This group came from six distinct geographic regions: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. 74 percent of the participants were male and 26 percent female.
30% of the participants were in their 20’s, 30% in their 30’s, and 40% were in their 40’s or older.
Organizationally, representation came half from for-profit organizations and the other half from government, multilateral, and non-profit organizations.
A broad range of industries were represented with the largest showing from telecommunications, media, pharmaceuticals, and high tech industries.