Dive Brief:

• In order to create effective leaders, multinational employers have to go beyond basic learning and development programs, such as team building and classroom simulations.
• Anita Bhasin, CEO at Sage Ways and Emerging World, writing at CLO Media, says in order to "turn up the heat" for effective leadership, learning professionals must get those potential leaders out of their comfort zone to "disrupt" typical thinking and behavior patterns.
• Bhasin writes that one emerging way to do that is by turning to corporate international service learning (CISL), which sends high potentials across country borders to apply their skills to a project that helps others.

Dive Insight:

CISL programs are created to challenge participants with real world projects that require insight, skills and expertise. They can include an individual or groups, and involve customized experiential learning tasks that challenge people to think and behave differently in getting meaningful results while developing leadership skills.

Essential ingredients for CISLs include "a really "gnarly challenge, a new context/work environment provided by a frontier market, an organization or community in need of service, and a group of high-potential business leaders."

Bhasin cites Cargill Inc., Credit Suisse, EY, Microsoft and GlaxoSmithKline as examples of employers using CISL programs. She also cites a study of five multinational employers with CISL programs who reported that these learning experiences can cultivate global leadership competencies, including self-awareness, self-confidence, problem-solving skills, collaboration, dealing with ambiguity, developing resilience and balancing diverse perspectives.