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HOW STUDYING ABROAD MAKES YOU A BETTER LEADER

Once upon a time, doing business abroad was unique: Berlitz and others published books on business etiquette for those venturing across the ocean, language books enabling you to order in a restaurant or to get you through a social encounter. And once upon a time, that was enough.

Today, thanks to technology and the internet, the world is global. Business is global. Nearly three-fourths of all S&P 500 companies today report some kind of international revenue. International consulting firm Egon Zehnder in its 2014 Global Board Index report shows that only 28% of S&P 500 companies generate all of their revenue in the U.S. Seventy-two percent of all S&P companies report some kind of international revenue, and international revenue as a share of total revenue is 37% – an increase of 5.5% since 2008.

But American leaders are not global. The Egon Zehnder report shows just 7.2% of companies had foreign directors (up from 6.6% in 2008), and 14.1% had directors with foreign work experience (up from 8% in 2008). The opportunities for lost business are ubiquitous - one of the biggest being the attempted take-over some 25 years ago of Honeywell by then GE CEO Jack Welch, which was finally thwarted at the EU level. Welch failed to “charm” European bureaucrats. GE immediately dispatched one of its most senior French executives to Brussels to set up an EU-oriented office.

One way to conquer this shortfall is to address it early, by studying and living abroad. Yes, I'm talking about sending your kids overseas.

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