emerging leadership development trends in india

{ perspectives } leadership development

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h a r va r d b u s i n e s s p u b l i s h i n g { 1 }

EmErging LEadErship dEvELopmEnt trEnds in india

Organizations with leaders in India’s fast-growing economy face unique challenges with leader development. Through our work with leading organizations throughout India, we have identified four key leadership development trends happening in the region.

BY vivEK ChaChra, sUmit sahni, and radhiKa BansaL

Harvard Business PuBlisHing is committed to providing quality leadership development solutions to organizations in India. As a part of our ongoing research and work with our clients, we conducted a study of forty-three organizations with more than 1,000 employees in India and identified four key trends for leadership development in India. These trends center on the need for fast-growing organizations to more rapidly develop their lead-ers and the need to scale to develop larger numbers of leaders prepared to manage this growth.

During our study we asked organizations about their top business priori-ties, and the key message that emerged was growth. Similar to our findings from our 2010 survey, our 2011 study showed that organizations in India are still experiencing rapid growth.

A focus on profitability has become important due to rising input costs, cost of capital, salaries, and inflationary trends. Given the mostly uncontrol-lable nature of these costs, the focus is to drive profitability through:

oo Growth rather than major cost reductions, and

oo Improved efficiencies, such as process and technology improvements.

Given the high valuations for domestic acquisitions and the stagnant policy environment in the country, Indian companies are becoming more global

“organizations in india faCE UniqUE ChaLLEngEs with

dEvELoping LEadErs.”

vivEK ChaChra, dirECtor, CorporatE LEarning,

harvard BUsinEss pUBLishing

emerging leadership development trends in india{ 2 }

than ever and investing heavily in exports and overseas acquisitions.

This context of growth provides unique challenges related to leadership development in India. These chal-lenges require that organizations grow leaders faster and work to build the capabilities needed to drive growth among their leaders.

We have identified these four critical trends for lead-ership development in India today:

1. Leaders in India have to mature faster.

2. Leaders in India have to learn strategic skills to manage growth.

3. Organizations need to accelerate leadership development through innovative action learning. To do this they need to think beyond traditional instructor-led training. The focus on action learn-ing and on-the-job training will increase.

4. Organizations need scalable and effective leader-ship development solutions. Thus, more and more organizations will use blended learning solutions.

trEnd 1

Leaders Have to Mature FasterIn the interviews we conducted, we found that most leaders need to mature faster to take on more respon-sibility relatively early in their careers. With most organizations still on a growth track, leaders have to learn key skills in a fast-growth environment. This includes maturity to understand what a leader is, manage role transitions, and manage oneself better.

As one respondent put it, “We need people to take responsibility and deliver without much supervision at a very young age.”

When probed deeper, we found that maturing faster would mean:

oo Self-Awareness: Being aware of your own strengths and weaknesses and personal leadership style.

oo Emotional Intelligence: Being aware of your own and other people’s emotions. Managing emotions in a better manner.

oo Leadership Values: Believing in and exhibiting leader-ship values. Being strong on ethics.

oo People Leadership: Being able to lead and manage others.

impact on leadership development: A compre-hensive leadership development program must include areas that enable leaders to mature faster. While these areas have been a focus of some traditional leadership development programs, a much deeper and structured focus is required.

trEnd 2

Leaders Need to Learn Strategic Skills to Manage GrowthGrowth challenges leaders to constantly balance strategy and operations. They have to run their verticals efficiently and have to do so while investing in long-term growth. For this they need operational and strategic skills.

Our study revealed that most organizations see that their leaders display significant gaps in strategic skills.

TOP BUSINESS PRIORITIES

51%

33%

28%

21%

Growth in domestic market

Growth in international markets

Rolling out new products and innovations

Other

Source: 2011 Leadership Development Survey: India from Harvard Business Publishing.

h a r va r d b u s i n e s s p u b l i s h i n g { 3 }

Leaders in India need skills over and above operational skills to realize the growth objectives:

oo Thinking Strategically: The ability to view big-picture issues such as market competition, global business pressures, and demand for growth, and then trans-late them into real execution plans.

oo Change Management and Innovation: The ability to carry down the agenda of business leaders to the rest of the organization in a rapidly growing and continuously changing business environment to drive proactive innovation and change.

oo Talent Management: The key leadership ability to lead, motivate, and inspire people. Develop your succession pipeline.

oo Global Leadership: The ability to lead a diverse team across different cultures (and sometimes genera-tions) and often virtually.

oo Business Acumen: The ability to understand key driv-ers of a business, develop sound business proposals, and demonstrate financial acumen.

impact on leadership development: When you design leadership programs for your organization, do you keep a healthy balance between operational and strategic skills? Are you grooming your leaders to be leaders for today and tomorrow?

trEnd 3

Organizations Need to Accelerate Leadership Development through Innovative Action LearningMore and more organizations in India are adopting the well-known 70/20/10 principle of leadership devel-opment. For instance, 48 percent of organizations we studied said that they will use job assignments as a way to develop their leaders.

Harvard Business Publishing believes this to be an interesting and very positive trend. Organizations can accelerate development by using action learning (for example, job assignments) in a much more structured manner. Assessments help the person understand where he or she is. Development programs help the person learn new skills, but real application comes from action learning.

KEY LEADERSHIP SKILLS

40%

21%

23%

33%

Strategy

Strategy execution

Innovation

Change management

23%

12%

37%

9%

Business acumen

Customer focus

Talent management

Communication

23%

33%

Global leadership

Other

Source: 2011 Leadership Development Survey: India from Harvard Business Publishing.

emerging leadership development trends in india{ 4 }

The challenge is that because of the level of logis-tics involved in executing them, job assignments are not a scalable methodology. We believe that organiza-tions will have to look for more innovative and scalable action learning methodologies to develop their leaders.

The good news is that with a little bit of innovative thinking, this can be achieved. During our experience of working with a cross section of organizations in India, we have discovered a whole range of innovative, relevant, and scalable action learning approaches. For instance, many organizations have started using lead-ership simulations as an action learning tool.

impact on leadership development: While design-ing leadership development programs for your firm, do you or does your team think about innovative ways of developing leaders through action learning? What is the breadth and depth of action learning options you provide to your leaders?

trEnd 4

Organizations in India Need Scalable and Effective Leadership Development SolutionsIndia has more than 2,000 large organizations with leaders located all over the world. A large IT organiza-tion in India will have to train thousands of managers each year, and a large public-sector organization in India will have hundreds of leaders geographically dispersed. With such size, it becomes difficult to get leaders to participate in instructor-led programs. Organizations in India need scalable solutions that will allow them to train hundreds of leaders in key competencies fast.

We believe that the answer to this need for scale lies in using blended learning solutions. For instance, 74 percent of organizations we surveyed said that they will use blended learning to develop their leaders this year.

Organizations are finding these types of solutions not only scalable but also more effective than the tra-ditional training methods. This is because blended learning offers the opportunity to create a more “con-tinuous” leadership development solution rather than a one-off event.

We found that only 26 percent of organizations said they use just classroom training to develop their lead-ers. Respondents point out that this traditional route has obvious disadvantages, including how long it takes to develop an employee, high cost, decreased employee productivity, difficult scalability, and failure to create sustainable change.

At Harvard Business Publishing we believe the most effective leadership development program has a healthy mix of instructor-led training, technology-enabled learning, and action learning

Mobile learning, though still a new entrant in the leadership development space, is catching up quickly. However, in the short term most organizations in India will use mobile learning to push critical content rather than use it for core leadership development work.

impact on leadership development: Organizations in India need to ensure that their leadership development strategy is scalable. Those responsible for leadership develop-ment in large firms have to learn how to design, deliver, and implement blended learning solutions.

We believe that professionals who develop and design leadership development programs in India must keep in mind the Indian context and these four leader devel-opment trends. Doing this will keep their organiza-tions’ leadership development strategy sustainable, contemporary, and relevant. Aligning with these trends will help organizations both grow leaders faster and develop the critical skills leaders need to drive growth.

PREFERRED DEVELOPMENT METHODOLOGY

13%

9%

74%

26%

eLearning programs

Mobile learning

Blended learning programs

Face-to-face programs

Source: 2011 Leadership Development Survey: India from Harvard Business Publishing.

viveK chachra is director, Corporate Learning, Middle East & India,

for Harvard Business Publishing. In this role Vivek leads the sales and the

services efforts for the firm in the region. An XLRI alumnus, he frequently

contributes to thought leadership in the leadership development space.

He can be reached at vchachra@harvardbusiness.org.

sumit sahni is head, Learning Services, for Harvard Business Publishing

in India. He engages with clients to develop and implement leadership

and development programs and has trained close to 3,500 customers

as a facilitator. He has conducted senior management programs on topics

such as change management, leadership, and talent development and

is an alumnus of the University of London. He can be reached at

ssahni@harvardbusiness.org.

radhiKa bansal is a learning services associate for Harvard

Business Publishing Corporate Learning. Radhika works closely with

clients to design and deliver leadership development programs for

their organizations. She has strong capabilities in solution design and

implementation aimed at enhancing organizational effectiveness through

talent management. She can be reached at rbansal@harvardbusiness.org.

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