Indian firms losing leaders!

There is worrying report in yesterday's Hindustan Times, a B-school study shows that there is a serious downfall of leadership in Indian companies.

The findings of the study, conducted by Pune's Symbiosis indicate that in the past two years, a lot of people in leadership roles at all levels, have either switched jobs or been laid off. When such roles are offered to existing employees, they find excuses to reject the offer. The reason? Lack of investment  by Indian companies in grooming them to become leaders and bringing in people from outside to fill leadership roles.As a direct result of their neglect of developing and investing in the potential of their own employee, they find themselves low on confidence in taking on leadership roles.

According to Mr K.S. Subramanian, the director of Symbiosis, neglecting to groom employees to become leaders results in them display  'stopping behaviour' where their mindset stops growth. "The self awareness to rise up the ranks is missing," says the director.

As an Executive/CEO coach, I have noticed this neglect of grooming employees for leadership roles at first hand. A few companies who do invest, do so on the conduct of training programs, the objectives and design of which are little related to leadership grooming.

As an Executive/CEO coach, my prime objective is to build my client's self awareness by offering a mirror to himself . I do this by initiating the coaching process with a focus on Leading the Self. Only after this do I move on to the other two leadership domains - Leading the People and Leading the Organization. This inside-out approach proves extremely valuable in enlarging the self-awareness of clients, and helps them engage better with their external world .

One of my clients after a coaching session, said to me, "Uday I realize now that I have been spending only 0.5% of my time on my most important priority - communicating my vision to my team!" 

Imagine what that one single insight can do to a leaders effectiveness!