I worked for a global corporation where this interesting phrase was used quite often.

It was like this – there would be a bright executive who would launch a grand new product or service with great fanfare and flair. Much would be written about it, a lot would be spent and the initial burst of enthusiasm and euphoria which lasted a couple of years would be enough to lift not just the spirits of the organisation but also the career of the lead executive, the start-up hero. The start-up hero would be promoted and sent to a foreign land of choice.

Another year down the road, the auditors and accountants would wake up and and discover a lot of not so flattering things about the erstwhile start-up idea. A search would be put out internally for a competent and tough executive to clean things up. Enters into the scene the new executive – he works relentlessly to do the reconciliations and write offs and in a couple of years, yes – would have done enough to lift not just the spirits but also the career of the lead executive,   the clean-up hero. The clean-up hero would also be promoted and sent to a foreign land of choice.

Good for the start-up hero. Good for the clean-up hero too. Of course, not very good for the organisation.

Think of it and you realise that in the drama of business, there is a place and time for start-up heros and a place and time for clean-up heros.

Start-up heros do what they are supposed to do – bring a huge burst of energy and enthusiasm, rally people around an untested and often crazy idea, take some huge risks, scan the environment for resources, breed a lot of creativity, dream and think big, worry less about execution and more about creating a market and so on.

By their very nature, start-up heros are impatient with details, scorn at people who talk about things like stability, order, process, planning, research and so on.

They tend to be charming, persuasive and unbelievably optimistic. They hate to talk about controls, process, profitability and so on.

Clean-up heros do what they are supposed to do – they evaluate, they control, they review, they look at the organisation’s ability to implement, they look for what can go wrong, they pour cold water over crazy ideas, they frame policies, they audit, they measure effectiveness and so on.

By their very nature, clean-up heros are detail oriented, they are planful, work through processes and seek stability. They often tend to be boring, pessimistic and predictable.

In my career spanning over three decades, I have seen an equal number of both heros and have over a period of time learnt to respect and value both.

 Of what use are processes and controls, without great and revolutionary ideas in the first place. Of what use are revolutionary ideas if they are not converted into sustainable businesses.

The best thing of course is to build teams with the right chemistry – the right blend of team members with start-up and clean-up characteristics and abilities.

It is also important that organisations respect and celebrate both kinds of individuals and also get them both to respect each another and see the value in leveraging each other’s strengths to compensate for each other’s weaknesses.

Until that happens, we will see both kinds of heros in demand.

Now, what kind of a hero are you?

Our education, training and later our work lives demand that we be sure of ourselves. Damn sure of ourselves. We are expected to get our facts right and state it with clarity and confidence.  Don’t leave any room for doubt, we are told. Those who are seen as unsure, uncertain and tentative are considered ineffective.

So, when we got trained to become Coaches and our Coaching Skills Guru and facilitator Dr B J Prashantham pleaded that as coaches we would benefit if we were tentative in our approach and style, many of us just did not get it. Where is the question of being tentative when we are sure, many felt!

However, after months of training and the several coaching encounters later, all of us as coaches in our coaching community swear by the fine art of being tentative.

I am convinced that the art of being tentative is important not just for coaches but also for leaders,  in fact for anyone who desires to have a great conversation and build healthy relationships.

So, what is the fine art of being tentative all about?

To be tentative is to deliberately and mindfully cultivate a mind-set in which one remains open to new insights and information and points of view and demonstrates to others that one can never have the last word.

To be tentative is to withhold judgement.

To be tentative is to acknowledge that you never know the full truth about anything.

To be tentative is to be convinced that there is another point of view, another perspective that the person in front of you might have and that by being tentative, you might be able to discover it and harvest it and enrich your own world view.

To be tentative is to be alive to recognise that there is more to anything than what you think there is.

To be tentative is to also be as curious about what you don’t know as you are certain about what you know.

Let me give you an example. A CEO walks into a room, typically a review meeting with all his direct reports. Within minutes or even seconds  of a discussion on any topic being initiated, the CEO starts sharing his point of view, his conclusions and his views about what needs to be done – the assumption is that he has all the answers and others don’t. He is so sure of himself that he believes that there is nothing else to add, nothing else to be said. After a few minutes the team around him figures outs what is good for them. They say yes to everything he says and the meeting ends and then they go about doing what they think is right. Have you seen such a CEO? Chances are you have.

Now imagine a CEO who is tentative. He displays a curiosity to know what is in the minds of his team. He encourages them to speak. When he does interject, he uses semantics that are tentative.

(Tentative semantics would include phrases like, “I am wondering if ….”, I am not sure but you may want to consider looking at ….”, “Is it possible that ….”, “would you like to ….” )

As a result of being tentative, others in the room are encouraged to believe that there is space for other opinions and points of view. They join in and have real conversations. There are animated discussions and as a result, hopefully better quality decisions and greater ownership for outcomes.

Leaders who are tentative in their conversational style, encourage others to be open and speak up. They create a climate around them that is free and spontaneous.

Being tentative is especially useful in difficult conversations. Be it sharing feedback or raising difficult issues, the use of tentative language gives the other person the opportunity to add, modify, change or even withdraw or save face respectfully. Being tentative is like leaving a door or window open.

As coaches, a tentative approach encourages our clients to take responsibility for feedback, insights and of course their actions and commitments.

Being tentative is to act with humility despite knowing a lot!

Finally, by being tentative, it is also easier on us to accept that we were wrong and show that we are open to change! We can save face too!

The corporate world has been rejoicing over the fact that the draconian practice of forced distribution through the so called bell curve has been done away with.

So, what has it been replaced with?

From all my discussions with HR leaders and all the available information in the public domain it appears that the focus is less on annual ratings and more on frequent performance discussions aimed at setting people up for success in their roles.

 That sound pretty cool isn’t it? Just have many chats with your employees and not worry about the onerous task of differentiation of performance.

Well, actually not. It is certainly not as easy as it sounds. In fact my biggest fear is that forced distribution (where managers are forced to undertake relative rating) will be replaced with forced discussions (where managers are forced to have periodic discussions with employees.) We all know what happens when you force people to do anything.

At least, forced distribution had a method. It had an SOP. Also HR Managers were the fall guys if it did not work.

Now, that is being replaced with a practice that depends entirely on the skill and will of managers to have good conversations – a skill that is hugely in short supply. They are in fact being called upon to use these conversations to coach their team members for performance. Yes, the new reality is that Managers are expected to coach their team members for performance through the year through great conversations rather than merely rate them on how they have performed at the end of the year.

This to me is a great step, provided managers are equipped to coach for performance. If they are indeed equipped with those skills and do it well, it can change the culture and climate of organisations and make not just ratings but also performance management systems almost redundant. Well, that would be the day.

So, what are some of the elements of performance coaching for managers?

Shifting from position to person

The first ingredient of performance coaching is that managers must step outside their position and start relating to their team members as persons. In other words, they must be able to build a trust based relationship with their team members. This trust based relationship must be characterised by respect, genuineness, faith in the team members’ intrinsic motivation as well as their ability to find solutions and resisting the temptation to judge.  This will form the basis for engaging as a coach ans also earn them the right to have more difficult conversations.

Proficiency in conversation skills

Since the emphasis will shift from managing to coaching, managers will need to have all the skills for good conversations. This will include the ability to demonstrate high quality presence, the ability to listen with empathy, the ability to respond with understanding, the ability to convert confusion about what is happening into concreteness, the ability to confront dysfunctional behaviours, beliefs and mind-sets and the ability to facilitate action planning and finally holding the team member accountable for those plans.

Mastering the know-how

Performance coaching is all about understanding the psychology of how and why people perform or what comes in their way.

• The first element of such know-how is about setting the right goals and benchmarks. Managers must be able to set benchmarks and standards that are challenging and inspiring and yet achievable. Managers must also know how to present the job challenge in a way that is motivating.
• Managers must be able to help employees know where they stand on a regular basis so they can get better while also knowing that they are on the right track. This is all about giving feedback and removing blind spots.
• Managers must be able to spot and help address some of the self-talk of employees that is negative and self-defeating. In fact, this is perhaps the single biggest area of support that a manager can provide to facilitate superior performance.
• As performance coaches, Managers will also need to focus on the emotional well-being of their team members. This will include helping them cope with stress, failures and disappointments, fears and so on. This will also include encouragement and appreciation.
• Training for skills and job knowledge is yet another dimension of performance coaching, something that can certainly augment performance.  

While these many come naturally to some, for the vast majority, it must be imparted. Without the skills and the structure, managers many avoid having conversations or may have conversations that go badly.

Doing away with a system called for courage and we have shown the courage to do that. Replacing that with a new way, a new cultural orientation is the next big thing. The next decade will tell us if we have done on that count or not. If we do, we would have created a much more humane workplace.

That is certainly my hope.

Organisations love employees who are passionate about what they do or work with passion. In fact, passion often figures as a preferred value.

The reasons for this are understandable.

Passionate people love what they do and put their heart into it. Because they love what they do, they go out of their way and put the very best efforts to turn in great results almost every single time. Also, passionate people do all this because they want to make a difference, not just because they expect extrinsic rewards.

Their personal standards are often higher than what the organisation sets for them.  The associated behaviours of taking high ownership, being extremely absorbed in their work and bringing a certain intensity are often inspiring and infectious.

So, you see, Organisations would be fortunate if they had a bunch of passionate people at every level, in every function. Needless to say, a passionate founder or CEO or leader would be inspiring.

So, how can there be trouble at all with passionate people?

As is the case with many character strengths, passion can have its shadow side if such individuals have not paid attention to other important skills and abilities that bring balance. Many coaches, mentors and managers are constantly grappling with the task of helping a passionate employee deal with this shadow side even as they attempt to preserve it and leverage it for organisation good.

The shadow side

In my experience, there can be trouble or challenges with passionate people for one of many reasons:

High standards

Passionate people have such high standards for themselves. They push themselves very hard and are unforgiving if they do not turn in the very best every single time. Unfortunately, they expect this of all the people who work for or with them too. They fail to understand why others are not like them, why others do not bring their heart to work and why they cannot give their very best every single day.

Uni dimensional

For many passionate people, what they are pursing is all that matters in their life. This uni dimensional approach can make those close to them feel almost guilty – guilty that they are having fun, taking a vacation, going home early, watching a movie, just chatting up with friends and so on. This can also lead to burnout for the individual itself, especially when the person is overusing this strength.

Looking at the big picture

Sometimes passionate people can be so absorbed in the minutiae of what they are doing that they can fail to see the big picture. They may sometimes fail to see that 100% is not required in everything they do. They may fail to pay attention to the larger context including the impact of their words and actions. They may fail to recognise that means are as important as ends. They may also fail to be objective and recognise other valid and often contrary data staring at them.They may also fail to see that their style and approach can be unsustainable.

Limiting beliefs

Passionate people often carry limiting beliefs that if they do not worry or turn in the best or feel the excitement, they are not being true to themselves. They might have catastrophic visions of what might happen if they change.

Valuing differences

Passionate people can often be judgmental about others and can fail to recognise that others can be different, can have different needs and have a different approach which might also yield equally good results.

Emotional regulation

Passion is a great emotion and can yield great results. However, when not balanced with the right skills and attitudes, it can lead to frustration, disappointment and anger. Meetings and other interactions can be volatile .Many of their relationships can be fragile or even broken. It can lead them to believe that they are better off working by themselves than having to depend on others to get things done, their way.

High intensity

In general, it is wonderful to see and admire passionate people from a distance. However, those who have to work with or around passionate people will complain that their intensity is not easy to handle, especially not all day long.

Helping passionate people

Passionate people would benefit from help if their shadow side is causing challenges. The intent of help would be to make their effort sustainable, help them enjoy it than to rob them of their passion.

A lot of empathy, nurturing of their inner child, re-framing their beliefs and modifying some of their less useful behaviours can ensure that people with passion remain invaluable assets to the organisations they work for.

Whenever I am conducting a workshop on coaching and mentoring skills for leaders within organisations, I am almost always asked this difficult question. It is almost like an objection that is posed to a salesman making a sales call:

“All that you are saying is fine, but then, my boss is not at all coaching oriented or people oriented. In fact, he is the very opposite. He does not stand for any of the values that you are talking about? Are you going to be training him? How do I get myself to practice all this when my everyday experience is to the contrary?”

Like a salesman who learns to handle sales objections, I have over the years learnt to answer this question with candour and conviction. However, I am always left with this honest confession in my heart: It must be very hard for someone to demonstrate empathy, interest in others, show concern for their well being and foster their development when one receives the exact opposite from people they look up to.

What indeed is the truth about bad people at the top? And how can a leader or manager embrace and demonstrate a positive style despite not being a recipient of the same?

I would like to draw a distinction between difficult people and bad people at the top.

(I am attaching a technical rather than dictionary meaning to the words Difficult and Bad)

Difficult People

Difficult people in my view are people for whom all or some dimensions of their emotional intelligence may not be well developed. In a large number of cases, poor emotional regulation is what causes most distress to the people that work for them. They tend to lose their temper and say things that might hurt others. Some might fail to empathise, might have difficulty in building and maintaining relationships or might be unappreciative.

However, at their core, they have good intentions, want to be good spouses, a good parent, a good boss and so on. After every episode of dysfunctional behaviour they might show remorse. They are also open to feedback and receiving help.

Bad People

Psychological literature is full of descriptions and insights into personality traits, character orientations and behaviours of people that I call Bad. Sigmund Freud identified three such personality types: erotic, obsessive, and narcissistic. Eric Fromm came up with four different character orientations: receptive orientation, exploitative orientation, hoarding orientation, and marketing orientation. Psychologists have also come to describe the three common undesirable personality traits as ‘The Dark Triad’: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathic.

Michael Maccoby who was trained by Eric Fromm and recognised globally for his expertise on leadership has dealt with some of these very same dysfunctionalities in his book The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership.

These personality traits and descriptions collectively represent a comprehensive universe of what I call Bad. 

In my view and experience, Bad people have little or no regard for other’s feelings or thoughts.

They also display a very high level of selfishness and focus on themselves.

Their desire to win is so high that they want to win even when it does not matter. Given this desire to win, they exploit other people and win at others’ expense. They see others in strictly utilitarian terms, somebody to manipulate for their own ends. They may also play with others’ emotions when they need something done by them.

This means they may not have an interest in others and their development or well-being.

They may come across as extremely competitive and unable to tolerate dissent. They also create an air of fear using the consequences of punishment within the team. This makes it hard for them to collaborate with the ones who need their help in an empowering way.

They may also overstate their accomplishments and may convert every platform as a platform for looking good, and being under the spotlight including their interactions with someone who needs help.

They may also have an excessive concern with orderliness, perfectionism and a high need for control over everything including others, time and the environment. To this end they may be seen as dominant in all social and work interactions.

Sadly, these traits are not present in isolation but appear in combination with other highly functional personality elements. They are gifted with a sharp intellect, great communication skills, limitless charm, courage, energy and the drive to achieve great results and take the organisation to great heights. They are therefore often extremely successful and effective in what they do and that often gets them to the very top.

However, some of their weaknesses and faults can have hugely undesirable consequences for the people they lead and engage with.

So, if you have trouble with your boss, ask yourself if he or she is Difficult or bad. I am guessing (and hoping) that for most of you the answer would be Difficult.

If he or she is merely difficult, that is great news. 

All the modern tools of development hold great promise in helping Difficult people get better. Any empathy, support and encouragement demonstrated by you can only create a conducive environment for change.

As for Bad people, I can only tell you what I did – I quit! 

(the image is that of Niccolò Machiavelli. The term Machiavellian originated from his ideas expressed in his work, The Prince. His most famous quote is it is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.)

Hind sight is a perfect science. In the last few days all the wise men and women have shared their wisdom about what went wrong at Tata Sons and how it could have been avoided. In hind sight, all this seems to make great sense.

As a Coach and Coach Provider involved quite deeply with helping leaders manage transitions, I can only say this: It appears that Cyrus Mistry’s transition into the role as Chairman of Tata Sons may not have been well managed from all sides and therefore resulted in these unfortunate consequences.

If that was indeed at the root of the problem, I would like to believe that the task of helping the next Chairman manage his or her transition successfully will assume very great significance. In fact, such a successful transition may hugely impact the fortunes of the Group.

In this post, I would like to share my thoughts on why transition is tough and what organisations and the transitioning leaders can do to make it a success. This can apply to the next Chairman of Tata Sons or to any other senior and Board level hire for that matter.

The challenges of transition

In planning to support transition, we will need to first recognise some of the potential challenges that the incumbent will face.

In the case of Tatas, it is fair to assume that very few (if any) potential candidates are likely to have been Chairman of a $100 billion global conglomerate in diverse businesses before taking on this role. Many transitions call for taking on something which is very new and different.

The second is to recognise that the cultural milieu of this group is very unique and can take a lot to understand, accept, respect and function in, leave alone change. This is true for most organisations with a history and that can make transition tricky.

The third is to recognise that the organisational and business context of the group is so unique and different and distinct that there are likely to be few parallels or past experiences to fall back on. Past success is seldom a guarantee for smooth transition.

All this means that even the most competent hire will need to learn and unlearn a lot to make a smooth transition.

Most importantly, even the most competent leader will find it hard to do it on his or her own – they will need help and support. Of course, there must be willingness to give and receive. Such help and support can come from the Board, the CHRO and of course from the one who is handing over the reins.

A potential strategy for transition.

One or more transition partners / coaches / mentors

It would be not just useful but important to place at the disposal of the transitioning leader a panel of resources (called by any name) whose mandate is to help the leader make the transition successful. This could be members of the nomination committee, one or more members of the Board, a seasoned external Leader or a seasoned Coach.

This panel should be able to help the leader draw up a transition support plan, help the leader implement the plan and in general be available to the leader as a co-navigator as he encounters some of the inevitable road blocks or landmines.

Of course, the most important role needs to be played by the person one is replacing or succeeding. This person needs to be the sponsor for transition support.

A transition plan

A transition support plan is likely to include the following interconnected elements:

Building trust based relationship with key stakeholders

The most difficult part of any transition is the fact that all the stakeholders are new, each of them have views, expectations, influences, interests and being able to work with them effectively is often a prerequisite to success.

The person from whom one is taking over (or whom one is succeeding) would certainly be the most important stakeholder with whom the incumbent needs to develop a very deep trust-based relationship. If the outgoing leader has been around for decades and is leaving behind a legacy, the stakes are even higher to build a relationship and of course take an appreciative view of that legacy.

The shareholders and their representatives on the board are very important stakeholders. Developing a deep understanding of what they are looking for, what they value and what they don’t is critical. So also, the other members of the Board are key stakeholders.

To build relationships, the leader may need to create platforms and forums and other formal and informal opportunities to connect, debrief and discuss.

As has been well established through a lot of research, warmth and relationship have to precede task and competence.

Figuring out the ways of working

Every organisation and group has its one unique and distinct ways of working. Older the Group, more deeply entrenched and embedded are these ways of working, thinking, feeling and acting. Understanding them and respecting them is absolutely necessary before even imagining that one can change it.

The cultural stories, the historical perspectives and other folklore must be learnt and understood and for this one needs to connect and access people who have been there and seen it all.

Picking the right agendas and leaving the holy cows alone

What the transitioning leader chooses to work on in the early days is critical. That determines the kind of stories that get created about him and does the rounds. Are these positive, low risk agendas? Are these controversial high risk agendas?

Does the leader know what are the holy cows which he must approach with caution? Does he know the things which if changed or challenged are likely to help or hinder building relationships with all or some of the stakeholders?

If the leader picks on the wrong agenda, he or she needs urgent feedback from the transition partners so that course correction is possible.

Negotiate the role making process

Most often, what the last incumbent did is what is set as the default role expectation from the new entrant.

On the other hand, it is quite natural for any new leader to want to redefine and re-negotiate the way the role will be played or give it a new slant or twist or even a new avatar.

If the new leader envisions a radically new role, he or she must know that it will take a huge effort in selling it, campaigning for it and even lobbying to get that version of the role accepted. It will help if the leader is able to brainstorm about these possibilities with someone.

Style blind spots

Leaders might be blind to how their particular style is working in the new context. They might have been successful in a certain context by acting in a certain way. They may not be clear about the style shifts that they will need to make to succeed in the new setting. They may just be too busy to pay attention to these things.

Should one be hands on, get into details or adopt an empowering style? Should one be pace setting, should one respect boundaries? These are style questions that one needs to ask oneself.

Similarly, should one focus on short-term issues or pay attention to issues with a longer time horizon is a question to ask.

Unless someone holds a mirror for the leader or obtains feedback and feed-forward and shares it, he or she will remain blind to the impact of their style in the new context and may even cause some collateral damage.

New skills and competencies

The new role may demand of the leader, new skills and competencies. Acquiring them urgently might be mission critical. For example, if managing multiple stakeholders is not something that this leader has done in the past, learning to do it quickly is critical. If being inspirational is not something that comes to the person naturally, the person needs to get somewhat comfortable with it. If learning to be patient and knowing that it takes days to turn a ship around is a missing skill, then that skill will need to be nurtured.

Calibration

A transitioning leader is often flying blind. He needs to constantly calibrate his views, intentions and action based on emerging realities and reactions. Having access to one or more transition partners can help in this calibration process.

The first step

Organisations spend enormous amounts of time and money in identifying, assessing and selecting internal and external candidates for mission critical positions. However, most believe that their job ends when the person is hired or appointed. That is perhaps the gravest error in judgment. The selection job might be done but the transition job starts and we need to be alive to that reality.

The transitioning leader needs to display the humility to be able to accept help when offered and not believe that he or she can do it alone.

 When a transition is handled well, we protect the organisation from avoidable risks. When ignored or mismanaged, we bring upon ourselves a huge amount of avoidable misery, sufferance, stress and wasted energy and of course bad press. It pains me when I see otherwise great institutions and their creators suffering because they failed to pay attention to some of these human dimensions of leadership.

I really wish that the next Chairman succeeds or for that matter every new leader in every new context succeeds.

How and when does a reputed Hotel decide if its young front office employees or cashiers or order takers can actually begin to handle guests? When are wealth management professionals permitted to start engaging with clients to give them information or guide them with their wealth management decisions? For that matter, when does a pilot get to fly the plane or a surgeon begin to perform surgeries?

One of the most important moments of truth for any professional is when he or she gets to go live and perform a task or offer a service or deal with real customers. This is a big moment and the manner in which it is handled can make a lot of difference not just to the recipients of the service but also the professional himself or herself. When managed well, the professional grows in confidence, stature and of course competence. Or else, the professional can make mistakes, cause huge risks to the recipients and harm to the reputation of the function or profession and of course end up feeling completely demotivated.

HR Professionals are no different.

Have we all not seen many a new HR professional starting off his or her career facing customers (employees and people managers) without due training and preparation and as a consequence suffer humiliation, loss of confidence and of course add ammunition to the perennial criticism about the function.

In fact, a large number of the so-called HR business partners who were hoping to do strategic stuff end up solving problems or trouble shooting mostly because somewhere some young, new and mostly untrained HR professional who was the first port of call did not do what was meant to be done in an error free manner.

So, when can we say an HR Professional is ready to be put in front of customers? In my view, there are at least five clear areas in which the person needs to acquire a base level of proficiency before being cleared to engage with internal customers.

Understand the organisation’s published policies, products and programs

Every new HR professional must be completely familiar with all the published HR products, programs, processes and polices of the organisation. This familiarity should help them answer basic questions and explain how they work, why they are the way they are, how one can avail of them or comply with them. The HR professional must be fully familiar with anything that is put in the public domain by the function – intranet, bulletin boards and mails – no different from the way B2C businesses keep its customer facing employees fully briefed about all new products, services and offerings.

Understand how pay, benefits and other policies are actually administered

It is equally important for the new HR professional to know how the company’s payroll actually works, how various benefits are administered, how provident fund get remitted or withdrawn, how some of the basic employee welfare services like cafeteria, transport and so on work, how things like attendance and leave are recorded and computed, how new employees get enabled, how HR service providers are paid, how tax is computed, how the final settlement works and so on.

This unfortunately is easier said than done. With most HR functions at least in large organisations moving towards shared services, I am beginning to see a worrying trend. We have an entire generation of young HR professionals who are completely disconnected from the role of aiding policy implementation. They are growing up believing that they can leapfrog into business partnering and leave this seemingly inconsequential stuff to shared services.

Young HR professionals would do well to spend at least a few mandatory months working in shared services. This way, they will understand how the basics work and also experience the moments of truth as faced by employees.

Young HR Professionals must also get proficient in case work – solving some of the most common problems or issues or complaints or grievances that are raised by employees and their managers. By learning to analyse these problems under due guidance, they will also figure out what typically goes wrong and how they can fix it with a spirit of service orientation.

Training in service skills

HR professionals must be trained in the basics of service skills so they can present a very professional image of themselves and their functions. They must know how to greet and answer the phone which rings at their desk professionally. They must be asked to choose ring tones which are neutral and do not announce their musical tastes to the world. They must know how to respond to mails with clarity and accuracy and know that a mail is different from a text message.

They must know how to handle an irate employee. They must be able to listen with empathy and respond with understanding to an employee or a manager who has an issue and is looking for a solution or just wants to be heard.

They must know how to handle a complaint without becoming defensive and also know how to recover when there is a service failure. They must know how not to take the employees’ anger towards company policies and processes personally.

They must above all be well groomed. It may be fine for a young employee to wear faded jeans to work. But an HR professional who is supposed to be the custodian of critical people processes and represent the organisation to the outside and inside world, should be groomed professionally.

Commit to standards of professional excellence

HR Professionals must know that they are bound by certain standards that form the bedrock of their profession.

Upholding fairness in all that they do is one such standard. Bring committed to the safety and security of employees is another standard. Maintaining confidentiality about employee information is yet another standard. Being a role model on the business conduct guidelines of the organisation is a fourth such standard.

They must know why these are important and what the consequences of non-adherence are.

Role clarity

The new HR professional must not only be clear about his or her role but also his or her larger responsibility towards the function and its overall service quality levels. When faced with an employee query or issue, the professional should readily offer to help and not say it is not his or her job – just the way, a well-trained hotel staff will make every effort to help a guest with any problem in a seamless way no matter which department he or she belongs.

Once a young HR professional qualifies across these five basics dimensions, at least to an acceptable level, we might say that the person is service ready. He or she can now be safely put in front of employees or managers with the assurance that the person will do what is right for the person and the profession and through those actions grow in confidence and professional stature. On this carefully built foundation, the person will of course need to keep adding higher and higher levels of competence on a daily basis.

Until that is achieved, it is best that he or she wears an “HR Trainee” badge and merely shadows a trained senior.

I still remember the fascinating time I spent at the cafeteria in my first job. First, I was not even sure if it was okay to join a bunch of seniors who were sitting and chatting. Slowly, I gained the courage to join the table where my immediate supervisor was seated. Once at the table, the conversations were so much fun and so fascinating. Most of the time, they were busy sharing stories about what some of the leaders did – some were stories of leaders who showed bravery and valour.

Some were stories of great decisions and actions. Some were stories of leaders who did silly things and some were about leaders whom everyone hated and so shared stories about their acts of insensitivity. At that time, all these leaders appeared to me like characters out of a comic book.

This ritual continued in my second and third and fourth job. The only change was that as I grew older, I was telling the stories too because I had experienced some of the leaders first hand! Of course as the stories got murkier, the location changed from the office cafeterias to pubs and other informal settings!

As I reflected about these fascinating stories, I often asked myself – did these stories only serve the purpose of comic relief and entertainment? Did it also help teach me and others about culture and leadership? I had more serious questions – did these stories reach decision makers? Did they pay attention to these stories?

The most important question I ask myself now is this (and that is the focus of this post) – do leaders’ careers get built and destroyed based on the stories that go around about them, especially among decision makers? Asked differently, in the ultimate analysis, what really counts for a leader – his or her performance rating or his or her stories?

The place of ratings

I think ratings are important to keep one’s job, especially in the early days of one’s career. In other words, a good rating is like escape velocity – the minimum performance needed to get out of the gravitational forces of failure and be seen as contributing and remain in the reckoning.

Beyond ratings

However, beyond that, it is not the ratings that count for being considered for that big job. What matters is the kind of stories and folklore that go around about the leader.

What new things did she do? How well did he do it? How much courage did he or she display in a tough situation? How innovative was she? How empathetic and charming was he? Of course, stories that are not so flattering also find their way around. Unfortunately, even if these stories are not validated (they seldom can be) people tend to believe them out of abundant caution.

Who passes on your stories and how?

Every employee is a potential story teller. The more senior the person, the more his version of the story is believed and also counts.

The Board, the nomination committees or the CEOs are often seen quoting stories and folklore (and not ratings) to support or not support a leader for a job. A single board interaction can create a compelling story – good or bad.

Search firms and head hunters often quote stories and not ratings in support of their panel of candidates. This person did this here, he solved that problem there, she achieved this at that time and groomed these people at this place and so on.

Even the media writes about folk lore, it does not quote the leader’s ratings. The use of social media can only make story telling easier and even make them go viral.

The most powerful stories are the ones where the story tellers were there to experience the events unfold first hand and were beneficiaries or at least became raving fans.

So, what are the stories about you?

If you are a leader, what you need to worry about is not your rating but about the kind of stories that are going around about you – in your present organisation and from your past organisations.

A leader needs to have the self-awareness and the availability of a few trusted people so he or she knows what kind of stories are doing the rounds.

It is inevitable that not all stories will be great. However, it is important that there should be more good stories than bad stories about you. There must be more acts of kindness and heroism and fewer stories of failures and bad behaviour.

It is also important that these stories are shared by all your stakeholders. It is not good enough only for your team to have great stories about you. Even your Board must have listed to or have been part of some great stories.

Now, is there hope for someone who has a few strong bad stories about him? I think there is. Leaders can always work hard to change the perception of their team members and peers by creating new stories that get added to their story book and hopefully some of the old stories will be forgotten.

Unfortunately, the trouble is at the top. Top management is often too isolated and has access to too few stories. Given their position, ego and attention span, they often have most difficulty in remaining open to new stories and through that changing their position and view about a leader.

They may continue to believe their old stories, even become attached or fall in love with it and therefore fail to recognise that a story is a story – that there can be two sides to it, that there can be a twist, that there can be change and that there can be a new story or perhaps even a story behind that story. Unfortunately, the stories they hold matter the most!

For several decades, management thinkers and others in the field of human psychology and leader development have led all of us to believe that it is an individual’s magnetic qualities that inspire followers to follow. They have led us to believe that it is an individual in the position of leadership who rallies his or her troops, gives them a sense of purpose, creates passion and hope and leads them into a greater future or helps them get what they want.

To me, that notion of leader as a person is under peril. I have been witness to a series of events in the past decade which has led me to question this overemphasis of the individual or even glorification of a single person as the cause for leadership.

A few recent events (especially in the city of Chennai, India) have convinced me that it is the cause and not a person that provides real leadership or inspires followership.  

In December 2015, the city of Chennai was ravaged by the century’s worst floods. Citizens witnessed unimaginable misery and hardship. In the midst of this calamity, the city discovered leadership. This leadership was not in the form of a politician, a social worker from an NGO, a Member for Parliament or anyone else. It was the “cause of flood relief” that moved thousands of people to demonstrated exemplary levels of compassion empathy, jump in and participate in the flood relief which was “The cause”. It is the cause of helping people that served as the leader or provided  the emotional draw that no leader could have ever provided. Interestingly, there wasn’t a single person or even group of persons who stood out as leaders at that time and that really helped.

The month of December 2016 saw the sad demise of the then Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, Selvi Jayalalitha.

What citizens and the common men and women of Chennai feared most at that time was violence as an aftermath?

Interestingly, and to the surprise and relief of people, the entire funeral and the transition was completely incident free. No leader stood up and appealed for peace or asked people to maintain calm. The cause of maintaining grace and dignity and demonstrating true respect was so strong that it served to mobilise people to act in perhaps the most civilised manner.

Take the aftermath of demonetisation as another example. How is it that such a large nation like India which is so used to cash lived with such huge misery and hardship for so many weeks without any violence or unrest on the streets? In my mind, it was the cause of fighting black money and the fight against terrorism that silently rallied people – people silently signed up for this compelling cause and therefore showed the grit and determination that they did. The cause was again the leader.

A few days ago, the state saw a huge uprising in the wake of the ban on Jallikattu, a sport which has been an integral part of Tamil Culture. An unprecedented scale and magnitude of protest came to life, thanks to the wholehearted participation of youth in the state, from all walks of life. This is in fact described as the largest people’s movement in the country. There was no leader giving a clarion call, there was no leader delivering speeches. In fact, that was the saving grace and the few leaders who attempted to claim the space were rejected.. The cause of protecting a symbol of Tamil culture and fighting for what was fair served as the leader.

What is true in civil life is true even in the corporate world.

When an airline attempted to remove employees or an IT company did not honour it’s campus offers, employees came together spontaneously and got what they wanted. None of them were interested in forming a Union or appointing a union leader. The cause was the leader.

If the true meaning of leadership is that followers are willing to follow, then my surmise is that it is the power of a cause that propels people to follow, not a particular individual and his or her qualities. Cause is the real leader today.

The ingredients of Cause leadership

So what are the ingredients of cause leadership? In other words, what is so powerful about a cause that it provides leadership and gets people to sign up as followers?

Volunteerism

The most important and defining ingredient of cause as leadership is the true spirit of volunteerism. No force, no mandating or compulsion. Individuals make the choice to sign up for the cause or are moved to join the cause. This is critical.

Emotional appeal

The cause itself is such that it holds a powerful emotional appeal to the person. Such an appeal is either at an empathetic level or at a level of civic rights like justice and fairness or could just be about personal rights being violated or just enlightened self-interest.

Shared interest

This is where the social element comes in. What brings thousands of people together is the fact that they have a simple and sharp agenda in common – that particular cause. There is nothing else. Once that shared interest is fulfilled, the group has no other reason to exist.  

Leaderless

Another important characteristic of cause leadership is that there isn’t a single person who is either appointed or emerges as a leader. In the system of cause leadership, as I see it, the emergence of a leader can actually be a liability.

Take for instance the anti-corruption movement that emerged in India a few years ago. The emergence of a few leaders actually derailed the movement and the leaders themselves lost their credibility and ended up in infighting. The emergence of a leader is actually counterproductive to the spirit of volunteerism and can even trivialise the cause and it larger altruistic appeal.

We see this time and again in organisations. As long as HR tries to provide leadership to programs and issues, it becomes a bureaucratic overhang and never gets off the ground. Leave it to people and their spirit of voluntarism, and things get done.

Implications

There is a growing cynicism about leaders in all walks of life. Very few are willing to believe any leader or trust them in what they say. Today, people know too much to believe what a single person says.

The implications of cause as the leader are huge and hold great potential. Social movements will take place easily. With technology to their aid, organising will become easy. With no leader telling them what to do, people will take high ownership. For teh right cause, people will be willing to go all out.

Governments and organisations alike have reason to worry. Should people see their rights being violated and it matters to them a lot, that will become the cause that will mobilise them like magic.

So also with citizens. They will blog, tweet, post on all social media forums and of course come together in the thousands to get what they care for.

Leaders who thrived for centuries by taking advantage of their position will find it very hard to find a credible place in the world of cause as leadership.

Business leaders who lack credibility will have fewer followers than some of their junior most employees who choose to speak their minds and ignite a cause.

Of course, there will continue be individuals in leadership positions fulfilling some of their responsibilities. But real leadership that ignites transformation will come not from them but the causes that people see for themselves.

The future of cause as leadership is exciting. For now, I am not worrying about its perils. After all, have we all not seen enough leaders who have been perilous too. 

A father or mother wants to talk to their daughter or son about something important. The conversation begins and in a couple of minutes, the daughter or son walk away indicating that the she or he is unhappy with the way it went.

You seek out your friend to talk about something that has been troubling you. Within a few minutes, you switch the topic because you get the sense that the conversation is not going the way you had expected it to.

A Leader calls for a team meeting and finds that despite his best efforts, no one wants to open up and say anything. He finds that there is no conversation whatsoever.

Your boss or your colleague comes up to you to say something. The way they say it is so insensitive that you wait for the ordeal to end.

My work gives me the opportunity to engage with people to help them improve the quality of their conversations. Thanks to this, I listen to a lot of stories about how and why good conversations do not happen or how despite good intentions, people end up killing conversations.

Here is my list of the six most effective ways in which anyone can kill a potentially good conversation.

1. Multitasking

Texting, emailing or other acts of multitasking are sure ways of telling the person in front that there are other things that matter more than the conversation at hand.

After a few attempts, the other person will switch off and realise that the conversation is not going to happen.

In general, multitasking and other ways of showing disrespect are very powerful tools to kill conversations.

2. Sharing a matching story

With much effort, you have chosen to open up and talk about something personal and important to this person in front of you.  Your expectations is to be understood, to receive some empathy and of course some relief as a result. Unfortunately, the other person rushes in to share a matching story, indicating to you that his story is better than yours and intending to turn the spotlight onto him. Sometimes, hidden in the story is the message that his way of handling the situation was superior or that his struggles were bigger or worse. He may also give you the impression that it is more important that you first listen to his story.

That’s a sure killer.

3. Reacting with anger

Reacting with anger and frustration to what someone says is another sure shot way of killing a conversation. Maybe the other person failed to do something, or did something that was wrong or said something that one did not agree with. Reacting with anger and agitation and frustration is a good way to put an end to the conversation.

4. Judging

Let’s ask ourselves this question – what is the very first thing someone says in response to what another person said? The tendency to evaluate the right or wrong of what that other person said or the tendency to  see the fault in the other person’s line of thinking or to point out what they missed or failed to see or did not see tends to come first for many.

This can be another very effective strategy to kill the conversation because the other person feels very defensive and uncomfortable and shuts up.

5. Interrogating

Asking questions that are interrogative in nature can also be another effective strategy to kill a conversation. Such questions tend to quench one’s thirst to know more rather than help the other person to think, or become more concrete and specific. This too can kill conversations.

Giving advice

This is perhaps the most popular conversation killer. Most of us have a prescription pad ready with us at all times. The moment someone comes to us to share something, we spring into action and write out a detailed prescription in terms of what they should do and how they should do it and so on. In addition to making the other person look small and stupid, it also kills all initiative.

So what should one do?

The most common response to such a list is this: “Where is the time for a conversation? Given the transactional pressures, it is not practical to expect anyone to spend all the time to have conversations.”

I agree with that position. There are several occasions in a day where we give instructions, receive instructions, share information, obtain information put out a fire or just do a whole bunch of transactional stuff.

However, there are at least a few conversations moments each day – occasions when it is important to listen, empathise and respond with such empathy and understanding. Seizing those moments can take our relationships with these individuals to greater heights.

It is also useful to ask ourselves this question after each such conversation – How did I do today? In what ways did this conversation help the other person and in what ways did it strengthen the relationship?

Asking myself these questions has helped me shine the spotlight on ways in which I tend to kill conversations.

The training room is ready, lunch has been organised, the trainer has arrived but the participants are missing, at least many of them.

Ask any L&D professional and she will tell you that her biggest challenge is to get participants into the class room.

Ask trainers and they will tell you that they have come to accept a 15% to 25% drop out rate. (The percentage of employees who do not attend a scheduled training program that they have signed up for or nominated to.)

Line managers across levels are seen as the villains of the piece – the ones who say yes to programs but are alleged to have pulled their team members out a day before or in the middle of the program.

Employees find it hard to balance between the need to fulfill mandated training man-days and complete their unending work.

More and more organisations continue to commit more and more financial resources towards training. Given that signing off training budgets is the politically right things to do, most CEOs find it hard to say not to training budget proposals. Having signed off on these budgets, they continue to worry about return on investment. L&D professionals also feel disappointed about their challenges in making training deliver results.

In summary, effectiveness of class room training is a problem that seems to get bigger by the day. 

There are several reasons why the traditional class room training is in trouble.

1. Given the very difficult business circumstances which only seem to get even more difficult by the day, it appears genuinely hard for people to get away from work for two or more days. For a long time L&D professionals have been refusing to accept this reality and that is hurting. Accepting this reality might open up other creative options.
2. L&D professionals have been swearing by the 70:20:10 rule. (That 70 of learning should be on the job, 20% through developmental relationships and 10% through formal learning events.). However, in reality, they are unable to do much, especially about the 70%. As a result, there continues to be an over reliance on class room training despite an intellectual appreciation of its limitations. Most have cosmetically rechristened their function as L&D from T&D, but continue to focus on T and not L. In fact, we continue to use number of man-days of training as a metric for training investment while we swear by 70:20:10 – quite a contradiction. We continue to ask participants to sign training attendance sheets and fill in post-training feedback forms despite our belief that actual results are evident on the job, through the 70% effort. I am told that it is an ISO requirement.
3. Many L&D professionals are so wedded to their specialization that they conduct themselves like academicians. They do little to engage with business, get under the skin of the most critical jobs of the organisation and understand the critical capability needs of organisations and facilitate learning.
4. Professional trainers confess that they can no longer compete with content on-line. They are no longer the ones who have access to never seen before videos or never read before quotes or articles or books. Most participants have seen so many videos and read so many things already. The only thing that trainers can do is engage in conversations, share perspectives or impart critical skills. Truth is that using training programs to deliver content is becoming futile.
5. Attention spans have become extremely short. Most employees, especially young employees are subject to so much of incessant sensory stimulation that it is hard for any trainer to hold their attention for two or three days. Add to this the presence of 25 smart phones and tablets and laptops in a class room and you have absolute chaos.
6. Employees openly question the contradictions between what is professed in the class room in terms of desirable behaviours and what their own managers and leaders practice. At the same time, they value their managers and leaders leading training programs to share functional and technical know-now and perspectives. In other words, the divide between real life and the class room is becoming unacceptable. Where, bridged training works and where it isn’t, it just does not work.
7. Coaching, mentoring, learning communities, peer learning forums and global on-line resources have been able to deliver outstanding value. For trade, technical and professional roles, learning through a system of apprenticeship (especially the nuances and the tacit knowledge embedded in the heads of skilled seniors) has been well established.
8. In a outsourced world where the face of your organisation is not your employee, or in a world where your workforce is around the globe delivering value 24/7, in a world where your employees are so geographically dispersed, the idea of everyone coming to a class room physically to learn how to do their job better seems almost impossible.

So what is the future?

There are at least seven things I foresee.

1. Most job skill learning will be delivered to the employee at his workplace at a time when he or she needs it, not when L&D can mobilise a batch. Such training will be delivered in small doses, consumed when the learner is ready and needs it.
2. Class room training will be used only to impart specific skills, share perspectives and discuss practical issues and learn from peers.
3. Self-learning, learning through on-line resources and peer networks and learning through developmental relationships will become even more popular.
4. Leadership development will be around offering a range of developmental experiences and will move away from learning event centricity.
5. Trainers will reinvent themselves to get wiser and smarter than google and other on-line competitors to earn the respect of participants.
6. The once useful 70:20:10 will get refined and redefined.
7. Fitness centers, yoga classes, cookery classes, pottery classes and a whole host of other things that people fancy will be very well attended because people will make the personal choice and take the personal responsibility to be there! Also, because such learning is fun!

Our honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has issued a clarion call to Make in India – to transform India into a global design and manufacturing hub.

Several strategies and actions have been rolled out to make this initiative a success.

My HR consulting work with manufacturing organisations has often led me to ponder about what is and will come in the way of Making in India – of realising the dream of transforming India into a global design and manufacturing hub.

A few things stand out from an HR perspective.

Competing in the labour market

For close to two decades, manufacturing organisations have failed to compete successfully in the labour market for engineering talent in various disciplines. Ask any manufacturing leader and he will display a huge self-limiting belief that “no one wants to be in manufacturing”. Many display almost a sense of resignation that no one wants manufacturing. Instead of reinventing their approaches, many have just given up and have chosen to make do with what they can find.

This does not augur well for building depth and competence in manufacturing and design.

The Indian labour market has become very sophisticated and fiercely competitive. It calls for a lot of innovation and marketing prowess to find one’s meaningful place in the food chain. Sadly, many manufacturing companies have failed to fight and claim their meaningful place in the labour market. The first step in this direction is the belief that manufacturing can compete. Unless that happens, we cannot make in India.

 Employee value proposition

Employees are in many ways like customers- they are spoilt for choice, their loyalties are transactional and their expectations are ever increasing. Finding and keeping employees today and tomorrow is therefore as hard as finding and keeping customers.

For this, employers need to have a compelling value proposition to be able to not just attract but also retain quality manufacturing talent.

The India IT industry has over the years been able to offer a value proposition that has been very compelling – good pay; great working environment; opportunities; global exposure; an egalitarian culture. Little wonder then that chemical engineers, mechanical engineers and even metallurgical engineers have found their way into IT.

Manufacturing companies on the other hand have been struggling to come up with an equally compelling value proposition. For one, most of them have their facilities in remote locations and most metro-centric youth do not want to live there.

The quality of work itself has not been showcased or positioned to attract good talent.

Many manufacturing companies have time based promotion policies which does not go well with young employees who would like to see frequent albeit notional growth.

The quality of physical settings and the basic infrastructure in many manufacturing facilities are quite uninspiring, when compared to modern office spaces and cool food courts in modern IT campuses or even campuses in telecom or financial services companies.

The challenges faced by the IT industry and the consolidation threats in telecom present a golden opportunity for manufacturing to redesign and reposition its employee value proposition and make itself attractive to good engineering talent.

Functional leadership over business leadership

There are deeper issues in many manufacturing businesses. Given business pressures for growth, profitability and cost efficiencies, leadership in these organisations seem to have emphasised business competencies over functional competencies. I am therefore seeing an entire generation of leaders in manufacturing across functions feel proud about their business acumen while other silently laminate that this has been at the cost of eroding functional depth across levels.

This has been exacerbated by the fact that business leadership has been positioned as more valuable than functional leadership. Even pay and rewards might be positioned in that manner. As a result, everyone in manufacturing wants to run an SBU rather than lead a function with pride. This does not augur well for making in India. It is functional depth and functional leadership (in production, quality, sourcing, engineering, design) which will be the true differentiator and we seem to be chasing it away, inadvertently.

Leadership style

Adding to the woes of poor talent in manufacturing is the style of leadership. Many manufacturing leaders continue have such an antiquated view to managing people. They still believe in hierarchy, in telling their team members what they should do, in building dysfunctional silos, in failing to respect and value other functions and in not making an attempt to respect the fact that young employees are different and different from them does not mean bad. Unless leaders in manufacturing embrace a more empowering style, their talent bucket will always be leaking. We cannot make in India if we do not have enabling leadership.

A transient workforce

Last but certainly not the least, concerns about cost competitiveness and business uncertainties have forced manufacturing businesses to adopt staffing model built on the edifice of a contingent workforce. While these may offer the impression of short term cost savings, they also result in creating a transient workforce which leads to lack of depth in skills and consistent quality and productivity in the front line. Many production managers and plant HR managers spend a lot of time just mobilising manpower on a daily basis given that such workforce keeps moving on in search of higher wage islands. Most importantly, we are failing to build a factory on the edifice of workmanship which comes only when there is stability and continuity. Sure, there is a place for a contingent workforce but that cannot certainly form the core of the staffing model. A workforce without skills cannot help us make in India.

To make in India, leaders in these organisations will need to pay close attention to these and other compelling HR agendas.

For the past several months, we have all been reading gloomy reports about India IT services companies laying off in the hundreds if not thousands.

While the more immediate concern is whether the employees laid off will find other jobs or manage to rehabilitate themselves easily, I am asking myself a larger question.

Do employees in the IT industry in general possess skills that are portable or transferrable to other industries or are they of value only to the IT industry? In other words, is the Indian IT industry a wellspring of talent?

I would call any industry a well spring of talent when it produces professionals who are sought after by and found to be of value in another industry, albeit allied or adjacent. It would qualify to be a wellspring of talent if there is demonstrated evidence of cross-industry mobility.

Take the FMCG industry for example. It produced sales and marketing executives who were in great demand in Banks, the financial services industry and the telecom industry.

Take the hospitality industry as another example. Many from the hospitality industry found opportunities in the BPO industry, the Retail industry and the health care industry.

Take the manufacturing industry as a third example. Many from its enabling functions like Finance and Human Resources have found it easy to move across to any industry. Those in core functions like supply chain and engineering have been able to leverage their domain expertise to find opportunities as ERP specialists or in Technology companies that needed their domain expertise. Those in the electronics hardware industry have been able to move into the telecom or software companies or design centres.

In recent times, many from consulting companies have managed to move into e-commerce companies in leadership positions.

Think of organisations like Citibank, HUL, Sankara Netralaya, The Oberois, RPG Retail, Xerox, L&T, Asian Paints, the Murugappa Group. Despite the diversity of these Organisations, each of them had at some stage in their history served as a wellspring of talent that the rest of the industry came to rely upon.

Take a look at the Board rooms and executive cabins of any of the financial services organisations in India and you are likely to find a Citibanker there.

The story of HUL’s and Asian Paints’ and Xerox’s contribution to business leadership and functional leadership, especially in sales and marketing has been told several times over.

 If you wanted to consult a good Ophthalmologist, and found one, chances are high that he or she was trained at the Sankara Netralaya. 

As you read this post, I am sure there are many other such organisations that come to your mind.

Many of these organisations decided to invest in people development at a scale that was beyond their immediate and own needs.

What about the IT industry? Unfortunately, the industry track record has been quite poor on this count. While they were able to consume talent from every perceivable field during their heady days of growth and convert them into IT professionals, they have fared very badly in serving as a source of supply to newer and emerging industries. It might appear that no one wants them.

Even those in the enabling functions in the IT industry like Finance and HR find it hard to move to other industries.

Sensing this challenge, a large number of young technology employees typically with 2 -3 years of experience took loans, paid huge tuition fees and flocked to B Schools with the hope that once armed with an MBA, they would be able to exit the IT industry and join the mainstream so to speak. Unfortunately, their hopes have been dashed and quite a few end up going back to the IT industry grudgingly because no one else seemed to find value for them.

The problem gets even more acute as people spend more time in the industry.

So, is it a structural problem with the industry or is it to do with the way many of the players in the industry approach development?

In my view, it is a bit of both. Many of the IT industry jobs score very poorly on aspects of skill variety, task identity, task significance, responsibility and knowledge of outcomes. As a result, many years of work in a typical IT job does not necessarily end up being value adding.

Added to this is the fact that most IT companies spend very little for the real development of their employees. While they will all claim that they have virtual learning and e-learning and skill certifications and so on, none of these are designed to help the employee remain employable and of value and relevance outside of their campus. That is the uncomfortable truth.

To make matters worse, Indian IT companies have in recent years been relentlessly pursing automation and deskilling, converting their so called development centres into factories. While these have helped protect their margins they have marginalized the developmental aspirations of the lakhs who chose to work with them.

While many industry veterans have been lamenting about wage disparities, I am saddened that they have remained silent about the impermanence and non-portability of skills (across industry) in the workforce that they created.   

On the other hand, many in the manufacturing and service businesses have been setting up industry, trade and technical academies to equip their employees with trade and professional skills that add lasting value.

So, my conclusion is that the Indian IT industry is anything but a well spring of talent. Indeed a really sad conclusion.

Produced by General Electric Theatre (broadcast by CBS radio and television) and aired in 1953 was the episode “The Eye of the Beholder“, starring Richard Conte and Martha Vickers. Produced as a television serial, this has perhaps emerged as the single most powerful, popular and educative video used by the training and education industry to illustrate the subject of perception and more specifically how our perceptions can easily become distorted through beliefs based on our past experiences, fears and expectations. This classic also illustrates the dangers of snap judgment, projection, prejudice, predisposition, preoccupation and lack of appreciation for the dreams, intentions and ideas of others.

Containing all of the drama of a first-rate murder mystery, this video portrays how five people perceive Michael Gerard a painter during a 12-hour period. One sees him as a “lady’s man”, another as a “good boy”, the third as insane, the fourth as a gangster and the fifth as a murderer. 

In the past few days, newspapers, television channels, blogs and of course WhatsApp groups have been busy creating and forwarding dozens of “truths” about the events at Infosys. Through the varied eyes of thousands of beholders, some see the MD & CEO as the victim while others see him as the perpetrator, some see the founder as the victim and other see him as the perpetrator, some see the Board as helpless and others see them as colluding, some generalise and see CEOs as vulnerable and founders as clingy, some see CEOs as irresponsible and founders as betrayed.

C S Lewis the influential twentieth century writer and author of over thirty books said, “What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”

I am therefore wondering if what we are choosing to see and therefore what we are holding as the absolute truth is influenced by where we stand – our vantage point. Perhaps the views of each of us are in some ways influenced by our own projections, prejudices, predispositions and preoccupations.

Given our attachments to our pet theories and our versions of the “truth” it is likely that we may find it difficult to see the existence of another possibility, another perspective.

In fact, cognitive empathy as a skill and value is to do with our ability to see things from multiple perspectives, be comfortable in holding more than one point of view in our heads.

If it is so difficult for all of us who are mere bystanders to demonstrate cognitive empathy or be open to other possibilities, I can imagine how difficult it would have been for all the players involved in the situation. Clearly, high stakes and high emotions may have made it very difficult to demonstrate cognitive empathy or perspective taking.

Speaking for myself, I feel very sad for the organisation. I feel very sad for all the people involved – all of them great minds with outstanding accomplishments of a pioneering and transformational nature. I feel sad for the employees whose sense of pride and safety has taken a huge beating.

I hope that with time, tenacity and even temperament, the tide will turn. 

I was with a young working couple in our family a few days ago. They were busy doing something important – they were figuring out the number of long weekends in 2017! They were delighted that there are many in 2017!

From a time when our work defined us and our identity, I see us moving surely and steadily into a time when our identity will be a lot fuller and a lot more meaningful.

Irrespective of age and life stage, getting a life will be a huge priority for many in 2017 and that is great.

For some it is the just the challenges of everyday living in many of our cities that will fuel this need. For others, it might be the uncertainties and frustrations with the world around them. For some others, it might be the stress from their work and for some others it might be the guilt of not finding time for one’s near and dear ones. For some it might just be the meaninglessness of what they are currently pursuing. For some it might be the lack of direction and motivation!

Whatever the reason, getting a life will be a big priority.

So, will you and I manage to get a life in 2017? What will it depend on?

Here are the ten most common questions I see people asking themselves in their quest of getting a life (myself included):

1. Can I travel less in the coming year?
2. Can I get back home early more often and work from home at least sometimes?
3. Can I take more breaks this year than I did last year?
4. Can I liberate myself from my smart phone or other internet additions so I have greater presence for myself and others around me?
5. Can I moderate my ambitions and set more realistic goals? (And embrace the belief that I need not be defined by how much I produce and earn)
6. Can I find for myself that elusive hobby or interest or do something just for fun?
7. Can I be there for my family and my friends when they need me the most?
8. Can I play to my strengths and do things that I like?
9. Can I stay mindful about some of my patterns of thinking and behaving that makes me miserable?  
10. Finally, for the ever growing tribe of youth who are bright but confused and in no hurry to figure out what they want to do in life and drop anchor, I really hope they get a life in 2017!

I really wish, hope and pray that all of us are able to get a life in 2017!

Generations of corporate leaders have taken on new roles, felt their way around, stumbled a bit, pulled themselves up and over a period of two – three years, ‘settled down’ into these roles. Today, at no level in the organisation, do new hires have that kind of luxury. After three to six months, eyebrows begin to rise and doubts creep in. More so for those hired at seven and eight figure salaries, into senior management positions.

Our coaches find that many of their engagements deal with ‘delayed transitions’ – when a new leader is not demonstrating the potential shown during the hiring process. By then, organisations have missed the bus to a successful transition.

Leaders are hired on the merit of their past experience and achievements and what organisations believe they are capable of delivering. What is possibly left unrecognized and therefore unsupported is the fact that the factors that made them stars in their previous organisations are no longer with them! According to a Chief People Officer, experience in a particular role gives one the ability to look around corners and anticipate the curveballs. This is the reason he or she would have attained a certain level of success in the previous organisation.

That same leader in a new organisation with a bigger team, higher salary and more deliverables, is met with an onslaught of fires that need to be put out immediately. In trying to prove themselves, leaders try to handle everything based on past experiences. Sometimes it works but more often, it does not. The other factor that causes disruption, is the loss of one’s network. In the new organisation, one needs to build trust and credibility with all important stakeholders from scratch. This is an arduous exercise as the ecosystem is huge and new leaders could find themselves completely at sea.

A new leader could be inheriting a disaster, or succeeding an illustrious predecessor. The position itself could have been a role that is newly created to pivot the organisation onto a new path. Any of this is impossible to do unless the new incumbent is also able to navigate the cultural and political layers that exist in every organisation. While outcomes and deliverables are clearly communicated, what may not feature on top of the senior management’s to-do list is focus on supporting the newcomer in navigating the intangibles like culture, politics and ways of working. One’s failure to comprehend these aspects, could sabotage the best of experience and ideas being brought to the table.

Surprisingly, the situation is not very different for internal hires who have grown in the organisation or group and have now secured themselves a place in the executive suite. While external hires are dealing with a whole new ecosystem, internal hires are dealing with higher levels of complexity, both in terms of job role and changed relationships. Being from the same ecosystem could end up giving one a false sense of control and comfort. Not recognising that the game has changed, internal hires often get trapped into doing more of what they are experts at, rather than using that experience to contribute more strategically.

Take the case of the Sales Head who moved from handling a particular geography to handling a product nationally. He is thrilled, proud and excited. From day one, he replicates, on a national level, those initiatives that brought him phenomenal success in his region. When hit by one obstacle after another, he rolls up his sleeves and starts getting into the field, talking to distributors and clients across the country. In a matter of three months, he is burnt out, dejected and worst of all, losing confidence in his own abilities. This is the biggest tragedy that could befall new leaders. Not for lack of ability but for being left to figure out the system on their own.

The need for managing transitions is summed up by another leader in the HR field, “There are two reasons why leadership transitions need to be actively managed. Transition to a new role has become more complex because the uncertainties are higher, information velocity is higher, so the need to be prepared is far higher. Secondly, people are getting bigger roles faster, leading to the hurried arrival of the unprepared”.

It is an empathetic organisation that recognises and alleviates the stress of being a new leader. When good leaders are hard to find, organisations need to back up their faith in the chosen individual with a structured and effective process of support to facilitate success.

– CFI Research Cell