Significant changes have occurred since the emergence of the knowledge economy, and those changes are altering the roles of leaders.

Today's leaders live and work in countries other than their home country, manage multinational teams, and have customers from all over the globe. Anyone who is working either outside their country of origin or with others from outside their country of origin needs to demonstrate an effective blend of global competencies. This is even more critical for leaders and requires blending cultural definitions of leadership with multiple geographic influences.

More and more, the Internet and other means of rapid communication are enabling diverse groups of employees to come together to work and learn from each other.

Ian Davis and Elizabeth Stephenson explained in a recent issue of The McKinsey Quarterly, "More transformational than technology itself is the shift in behavior that it enables. We work not just globally but also instantaneously. We are forming communities and relationships in new ways. More than 1 billion people now use cell phones. We send 9 trillion emails a year. We do a billion Google searches a day, more than half in languages other than English. For perhaps the first time in history, geography is not the primary constraint on the limits of social and economic organization."

Indeed, we live in a web-enabled world; yet, we travel more than ever, encountering new people, new places, and new cultures. According to the International Air Transport Association, international travel is expected to grow an average of 5.6 percent per year between 2005 and 2009. The five fastest growing markets are Poland at 11.2 percent, China at 9.6 percent, the Czech Republic at 9.5 percent, Qatar at 9.2 percent, and Turkey at 8.9 percent.

Likewise, according to a Business Week article by Beverley Fearis, "Business travel remains strong in most regions of the world, according to the latest findings from the airline industry. Significant growth in airline capacity, particularly in Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe, indicates a continued upturn in business travel in these regions."

Today, a leader might be from India working for an India-owned company and assigned to work in the United States. Another may be from France, working for an Australia-owned company and living in China.

In my case, I am an American who relocated to India to work for an India-owned company. Yet another person might work for a company headquartered in one part of the world and be assigned to a region in another part of the world. Wherever they are, workers can connect simultaneously (with some creative and respectful time zone planning) to make key decisions that instantly influence organizations on a global scale.

Leadership without borders

My book Leadership Without Borders started as a way for me to learn how to be successful in my new role as head of Satyam School of Leadership in Hyderabad, India. I had never lived outside the United States or worked for a non-American company, and things weren't going quite as I had thought they would.

The leadership techniques I had used successfully in my home country weren't working for me in this new part of the world. As I struggled with my own learning curve, I realized that many other people were likely embarking on the same type of leadership journey as me.

At Satyam, my journey and that of my colleagues toward borderless leadership, comprised three stages:

Stage 1. Satyam conducted its Global Leadership Study, a survey in partnership with ASTD that received more than 200 responses from 16 countries. Findings suggest that leaders who have the opportunity to gain business and personal familiarity with other countries tend to be more focused on global issues. (The report can be found here.)

Stage 2. Satyam interviewed more than 50 leaders who have lived and worked in more than 60 different countries.

Stage 3. Satyam sought advice and counsel from those successful global leaders, which we distilled into the book.

Successful strategies

I took the advice and counsel from the interviewees and turned it into strategies for success that anyone can use. Successful global leaders are entrepreneurial. When most people hear the word "entrepreneur," they think "business owner." But the dictionary defines entrepreneur as an innovator; one who recognizes opportunities and organizes resources to take advantage of the opportunity. In this context, everyone has the ability to be a successful global entrepreneur.

There are two types of leaders: those who use the best talent and those who develop the best talent. Ralph Nader once said, "The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers."

Successful global leaders understand that developing talent is a top priority. Therefore, executives need to grow more leaders by constantly developing and assisting in the growth of their careers.

Successful global leaders understand the dynamics of global business. Deep domain and functional knowledge may take people up the career ladder. But the leaders we spoke with understand that these skills are not enough. They understand the need to develop global business savvy including being technology perceptive; demonstrating financial acumen; and being skilled in the areas of strategic marketing, enterprise knowledge, organizational behavior, and operations management.

Effective leaders also successfully balance tactical work and strategic work, so that they both produce and lead simultaneously. They understand the need to balance time spent in thinking, doing, and communicating.

As Mahatma Gandhi said, "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony." Successful global leaders lead others by influencing them. Mentoring, coaching, and teaching are three primary roles that leaders must master.

People no longer want to work in settings where the leaders are authoritarian micro-managers. They want to work for leaders who empower them; someone who can, according to Peter Drucker, "lift a person's vision to higher sights, raise a person's performance to a higher standard, building a personality beyond its normal limitations."

Successful global leaders delight stakeholders. Within every organization, there are multiple stakeholders, including employees, investors, customers, and society at large. Leaders balance their efforts to enhance stakeholder satisfaction and ensure the success of their organizations. In addition, they understand that a multidimensional, diverse workforce is better prepared to take full advantage of opportunities that result in megainnovation and limitless creativity.

Successful global leaders share a set of core vales. Integrity, excellence, respect, and perseverance are just a few of the core values important to leaders. In addition, leaders admire traits such as desiring to learn, enjoying differences, and seeking to understand others.

Critical competency areas

Within the context of global competencies, Satyam's survey respondents and the leader interviewees listed critical competencies needed to be a successful global leader in the following categories:

  • global business acumen, 29.5 percent
  • leadership characteristics, 16.6 percent
  • world view, 12.5 percent people leadership, 27.2 percent
  • business leadership, 14.2 percent.

The data suggests that while leaders recognize the importance of awareness of the global environment, it can be a challenging factor in running a team, and many organizations are therefore failing to make encouraging a world view a key focus of their leadership programs.

Details about the five critical categories offer additional insight into the issues and challenges facing successful global leaders.

Global business acumen encompasses the ability to comprehend the business environment in its totality. This includes entrepreneurial and financial skills; profit and customer awareness; and domain, industry, and business knowledge.

Leadership characteristics encompass mental and emotional behaviors, including self-assurance, energy and enthusiasm, being learning-focused, and displaying empathy. It also includes a common set of core values, and the ability to remain authentic regardless of the situational and environmental challenges.

World view encompasses global environment awareness, cultural adaptation, and social, political, and economic trends. The common themes that emerged from our research - experience with foreign countries, years in leadership, and organization size - influenced our survey and interviewees' world view responses.

Variables related to foreign experience that influenced the worldview responses included number of countries traveled to for business, responsibility for staff in other countries, interaction with customers in other countries, and work experience in other countries. Leaders from larger organizations were more likely to mention world view than leaders from smaller organizations.

People leadership encompasses communication skills, ability to motivate and inspire people, human resource skills, networking, and development.

Business leadership encompasses strategic decision-making, efficient resource allocation, effective time management, problem-solving ability, ease in managing complexities, and ability to stay flexible. It also includes the ability to adapt a leadership style to a variety of situations, creativity, innovation, and having a strategic or visionary mindset.

Organizations must continually identify new, and extend existing, expectations about the competencies and characteristics required of their employees who are doing business in our increasingly global business environment.

Our lives, our economies, and our societies are more interconnected than ever before. Across the globe, those who have the leadership characteristics, business acumen, world view, and people and business leadership skills to be successful, and who are willing to take these risks, will become more and more marketable.