Yet, by all accounts, the effectiveness of efforts to develop global leaders for most
companies has been mixed at best, and in most cases disappointing. Why is that?
We, along with our colleagues, have been studying global leadership since it emerged as
an important issue for companies in the late 1990s. While it is too early to say that we know all
about global leadership and how to best develop it in managers, the research over the past fifteen
years has yielded many important principles, processes, and practices that can aid firms in their
quest to truly globalize their managerial cadres. The reason, in our view, that most companies
have seen less than stellar results in their global leadership development initiatives stems mainly
from disconnects between what the research tells us are critical factors for enhancing global
leadership and many of the practices we find in companies.