Anyone involved in leader development and coaching including leaders themselves will recognize that stakeholder management is seen as a very critical leadership competence today.

There is often a mistaken perception that stakeholder management is to do with communication, presentations, networking and building relationships.

In reality, stakeholder management is far deeper and calls for some good thinking about it.

To do that I must take you back to where this may have started – Job design.

Jobs in this century and beyond are being designed in ways that we have never seen before. So the origins of stakeholder management trace back to the way modern jobs are designed for leaders and managers.

One scholar’s work in this area I would like to refer to is Robert Simons and his landmark article in the Harvard Business Review in July, August 2000. He talks about the fact that in every manager and leader’s job, there are four dimensions of job design: span of control, span of accountability, span of influence and span of support.

Now, the common belief is that if I’m accountable for something, I must have control over all the resources to get the work done, but that is not likely to ever happen going forward. Span of accountability will be larger than the span of control.

And the nature of accountability is broader rather than narrower, or restricted to clear KPIs and KRAs. Managers and leaders are held accountable for much more complex and abstract things like customer engagement, employee engagement, culture, capability building, transformation, environment, diversity and so on.

To achieve this, it becomes necessary that for one to have the ability to influence a whole host of people within and outside the system who do not necessarily need to listen to me.

Similarly, if I have to get a lot of things done and my span of control is limited, I must access resources and support to get work done. How I sell my ideas, how I win their support, how do I build focus towards the larger purpose so that their propensity to support me is higher becomes critical.

Therefore, modern jobs are designed in a way that the span of influence and the span of support needs to be more so that that with limited span of control and a broad span of accountability, I am able to deliver in a high performance job.

Therefore, the critical competence to make that happen is not authority or only functional brilliance but my ability to manage all my stakeholders – my employees, employees of other functions, other functional leaders, members in other parts of the ecosystem, members of the board.

Therefore, when we look at stakeholder management from the perspective of a key requirement keeping in mind the modern way in which jobs are designed, then it assumes very strategic significance.

What I believe to be true is what is my personal truth.

The operative term is “what I believe to be true” – not what is the actual truth.

All of us hold many personal truths on many subjects dear to us. “Personal truths” are ‘products’ of our unique ‘histories’ “contexts” – our personal, social, cultural & professional pasts. It often originates from what we heard from the people who mattered in our lives. It is also, how we processed what we saw and experienced and heard. I have over years been able to discover and shine the spot light on many of my own personal truths.

Personal truths give us a sense of structure, certainty and security in an uncertain world. These are useful aids in the journey of life and allow us to ‘fit in’ and grow. It in many ways guides us and becomes our operating manual to the world. It is what we fall back on when we need to decide or act. When personal truths take us closer to our real selves and helps us flourish, they are useful.

Personal truths can give us trouble when:

* We are rigid about that being the only truth – that it is the only truth and there is no other truth
* We hold it in its extreme – that it is true at all times, irrespective of contexts
* We demand it – based on these truths, we make irrevocable demands on self, others and the world
* We catastrophize – when things do not go as desired, we see catastrophic consequences and come across as unable to cope with the demands not being met and display unhelpful behaviours

In my own journey with my unhelpful personal truths, awareness of these truths and what triggers them has been a starting point.

Acceptance of my limitations and striking a balance has been an important next step.

Awareness of the fears that are holding me back from changing and conviction around the potential that I can realise if I revisit these truths has been important.

So which of your personal truths do you wish to revisit?

Power and coaching? What is the connection one may wonder.

One would at first glance even feel uncomfortable with the association of power and coaching given that Coaching is about helping and power is about influence and persuasion.

As we reflect about this in all honesty, we will realise that there are power dynamics in coaching and coaches and coachees will benefit from recognizing it and navigating it in their relationship.

Coachees who are leaders in the world of business have position power. That often weighs on the coach, especially the one who does not feel completely settled about one’s one sense of worth.

The position of the coachee can at times come in the way of communicating with honesty, being able to negotiate the boundaries and call out inadequate participation in the helping process.

The coach on the other had has personal power to begin with. This power comes from the ability to display warmth, communicate with empathy and make the coachee want to engage with him or her and experience a sense of respect and reverence because of the “being” of the coach. An experienced coach may also be older and carry a reputation and therefore wield personal power.

The coach also has expertise power – professional credentials as well as coaching competence. Once the personal power leads to acceptance and helps build the foundation of the relationship, expertise enhances the reverence.

Finally, the coach will need to transcend the position power of the coachee and begin to develop a mutual sense of respect and reverence for the coachee based on his or her warmth and allow to be influenced too.

So, there is power at play in coaching. Coaches will need to accept it, be aware of it and negotiate it skillfully in the interest of the coachee.

Have you heard promoters, founders and leaders claim that “we are family” when referring to their relationship with their employees and team members?

I have often wondered what “family” means in an organization context. I have also wondered if organizations can at all be “family”?

At one level, the notion of family can make the leader the head of the family and therefore place a certain responsibility of having to “take care of their people”.

At another level, “family” feeling is more about the sense of community, warmth that one experiences and the feeling that one will be supported in difficult times. That seems realistic.

At a third level, “family” may also mean that people have grown so familiar with one another and relationships have become so personal that it is hard to be honest with one another, hold each other accountable or share feedback and so on. That can be troublesome.

Finally, it is useful to ask what kind of family one is referring to , given that the underlying meaning of families itself have changed so much.

We seem to be more accepting of challenges around physical health. On the other hand, the subject of mental health continues to remain stigmatized.

My personal experience with my mental wellness has led me to come to some broad conclusions and personal truths that have served me well:

1. Like with physical health, I believe there is nothing called perfect mental health.

2. The binary view of being mentally healthy or being mentally unwell is also limiting. I have personally experienced myself moving across a continuum depending on my life circumstances and contexts.

3. My inherent “feeling orientation” has helped me stay acutely aware of how I have felt under most circumstances and that has served as a good barometer of my own sense of wellness. It has also promoted congruence between the way I feel and the way I act. It has also on occasions led me to be guided and carried away by my emotions and not pay heed to other facts.

4. Like all of us work hard to stay physically healthy, I have had to work hard to identify and cultivate habits and actions that promote my wellness. Staying hopeful and optimistic about the outcome of my efforts and the goodness of others and the future itself has been the most important habit.

5. My work over the past 40 years with understanding myself, expanding my awareness and most importantly expressing myself in ways that I can be understood has served me well. It has placed at my disposal an array of tools and methods that help me manage myself – an important gateway to mental wellness.

6. My first experience of my mental health moving down the continuum was in the early 1990s when I found myself in a job situation that was extremely caustic and of course my own coping skills grossly inadequate. I was treated for a few months for my condition. A change in my context helped me bounce back very quickly. I learnt something very important – the work I did and the kind of people I worked with was more important than the the Organisation or pay. That awareness has been with me since.

8. Having a supportive environment has been a huge blessing in my life. My wife and daughters have never ever judged me for my emotional vulnerabilities and that helped me accept that not feeling healthy mentally at a certain point in time is “not my fault or failure”. It is just one part of me needing attention.

9. My ability to be honest and ask for help has served me well. Over the years I have sought help from counselors, therapists, analysts, coaches, Spiritual Gurus and of course friends and family.

As I look back what has helped me is AASHA – Awareness, Acceptance, Seeking Help, Hope and optimism and Actions.

The world is filled with advice and tips and secret recipes on “how to manage millennials” or other cohorts representing the younger generations.

Given my work with leader development, I often get asked the same question by leaders who are often told that they need to find a way to “manage the younger generation”.

And then I find tomes written about how they need feedback, they need challenges, they need clarity about their careers, they need purpose and a whole host of other things. Really? I needed all of that too. In fact, most of us could do with some of that.

I really find the very framing of this so call “subject” flawed. In fact I find it some what judgmental and even unempathetic.

In all these years, I have never ever encountered anyone ask me, “how do I manage myself better so that I stand a better chance of relating with eh younger generation?” I wish more and more ask that question. Because, that is the right question.

That is indeed the real problem. The reality is that everyone from every generation holds a set of personal truths that give them an anchor and way of approaching life. Those from one generation may not subscribe to the personal truths of the other generation. That does not mean they need managing.

In fact, the same leaders who struggle with “managing the younger generation” at work, have difficulties in preserving and nourishing their relationship with their children at home – managing them so to speak.

Our positions and roles do not give us the right to manage. It places us in a position of responsibility to manage ourselves better so that we are able to understand and empathize with people from different generations and through that be able to have good conversations and build and nurture better relationships.

We can manage ourselves so that relationships flourish.

When we discuss the subject of grooming or developing leaders, the role of a sponsor often comes up.

Some will mention that “it is important to have a sponsor if you have to progress” in a somewhat victimhood tone, implying that without the blessings of a senior, one cannot progress.

In fact, if one were to go back in history, it was the role of the Promoter, business owner or founder to spot talented individuals and “sponsor” their growth and progress. It was seen as an important part of their jobs, and a legitimate part indeed.

Somewhere along the way, such a career sponsorship role earned a bad name – it was seen as playing favourites, being biased and so on.

Enter “talent management” as a process and soon, “spotting and betting on an individual” was seen as a process to be governed by an inanimate council of people. Such councils it was believed were objective, fair and just. Many of us started telling these leaders that “talent belongs to the organization and not the leader”.

But I think we have swung to the other end. Ask individuals a simple question – who in the organization cares about your career and he or she will say, “no one really”.

My plea is that a career sponsor has a legitimate and important role to play. Let us celebrate that, trust our leaders to do it well and bring humanness into the process. Otherwise, our surveys will continue to tell us that managers and leaders don’t care about development.

When an organization hires a coach and gives the coach a brief, does the work of the coach get restricted to the given brief or does the coach engage with the person, the human being behind that role holder?

The hard reality is that the problems of living far outweigh the problems of working. While organizations might be mostly concerned about the problems of working, what they often fail to recognize is the impact of the “problems of living” on their effective working.

Experienced coaches engage with, listen to and support the whole person become effective in a holistic manner so that role effectiveness happens. Needless to say, Coaches are mindful about the limits of their competence and the boundaries of their work, but then, drawing artificial lines and not attending to the lack of life skills and psychological resources that are necessary to experience emotional well-being is as harmful.

It is my hope that organizations recognize that a lot is likely to be going on in the lives of many of their employees, across life stages and the least they can do is to be non-judgmental and the best they can do is to be empathetic and recognize that the work that a coach is doing is far more than what he or she is likely to be able to report to you. Access to potential is only through the doors of emotional well-being!

For several decades the world has been obsessed with striking the right balance between the two factors of leadership: task and people.

Way back in 1945, researchers spoke about the pulls between two factors of leadership, Task Orientation (TO) and Relationship Orientation (RO).

Douglas McGregor Spoke about it in 1960 through his Theory X and Theory Y model – should employees be coerced or involved and encouraged.

Blake & Mouton Spoke about “concern for task” and “concern for people” through his Managerial Grid in 1960.

Several movements thereafter including TQM, the Malcolm Baldrige Model for Performance Excellence and the dozens of employee engagement models have all emphasised the importance of this fine balance in one way or the other.

As we look back at the past and then look at the present, what seems to be our track record on this balance between the two factors?

I seem to believe that “task” has won for more than one reason. Watch my video to find out why.

Leaders in organizations become “eligible” for coaching often based on their level, given that coaching is considered expensive.

However, my view is that by the time they become “eligible” it might be a bit too late.

Young leaders around the age of 35, with a long run way ahead are best poised to benefit from coaching.

That younger people benefit from a directive style of learning and older people from a non-directive style is no longer valid. Everyone benefits only from a non-directive style.

I was in a workshop with a group of Managers trying to impart the skills and tools to be coaching oriented in their style.

At the very end of the workshop, one of the participants raised a fundamental question.  He quoted the names of several Indian and global industry captains and founders and asked if any of them were coaching oriented and if that was even necessary. He appeared to be alluding to the idea that it was not necessary for such a style, in order to be successful.

That question certainly set me thinking. Here are some of my reflections, by no means complete. Do join me in the search.

I believe that the job of industry captains, founders of businesses and promoters is different – their job is to help convert ideas into businesses, seize opportunities, create wealth, solve problems of significance and so on. It is not their job to be coaches or even be coaching oriented in their style all the time, especially given the extremely volatile business environments in which they operate and take risks.

Having said that, there are a few things that they have in common with a coach or a coaching oriented leader. Both need to be strong on certain elements of emotional intelligence. Industry captains and entrepreneurs need to be strong on hope and optimism, the desire to actualize, the ability to build and nurture relationships, assert, solve problems, take decisions, manage stress and so on.

Coaches need to have a strong sense of worth, the ability to remain grounded, be empathetic and have hope and optimism, among other things.
While both need emotional intelligence, the dimensions and emphasis might vary and they also use that intelligence differently.

Industry captains who are respected are the ones who demonstrate one important dimension of emotional intelligence that augurs well for coaching, a coaching style and even a coaching oriented culture – a strong social conscience and responsibility. This social conscience in the form of a strong desire to help, make the lives of others better and promote a greater good will go a long way in creating an enabling work culture that demonstrates care and concern.

Given the power and influence they wield, this social conscience can help them support, champion and promote a workplace that cares for employees, their well-being and development – the core of a coaching oriented culture. But then, that is choice. It is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for success in business but certainly a distinguishing one.

In summary, I believe that Captains of industry need not coach but can use their influence to create conditions for such a style and culture to flourish.

In this video, I share nine ethical dimensions that coaches may like to bear in mind while they engage with their coachees. Some of these dimensions are likely to present themselves in the form of dilemmas calling for sound decision making and some are likely to be fairly black and white.

The whole intention is to ensure that a coach does not cause harm, even unintentionally.

For the competence and skills of a coach to reach the coachee, ethical boundaries are prerequisites.

I often get asked this question: How much does it cost to hire a coach?

I find it difficult to answer that question in a way that will do justice to coaching!

I can however flip that question to find better answers: What do you get when you hire a coach?

Are you paying for the number of hours that the coach gives you?
Are you paying for the number of sessions that the coach offers?
Are you paying for the assessment that the coach does and reports he or she shares?

Any such numerical measures will not do justice to the true value that a coach brings to the relationship.

Lets look at it differently.

If a leader has been placed in a role that is new and larger and more challenging and on his or her successful transition rests the success of the business, and a coach were to walk along with the leader during that journey and set him or her up for success, how valuable would that be?

If the promoter of a business is concerned about his son or daughter succeeding him to take the business and its legacy forward and finds a business mentor and coach who can work with them and help them get there, how valuable would that be?

If a Board is wanting to groom a leader to succeed the CEO and finds a coach who can work with that leader and actually helps the leader get there, how valuable would that be?

If a leader is able to pick up the phone and chat with his coach about an impeding conflict or dilemma or critical decision and is able to get perspectives that move him forward, how valuable would that be?

If a leader knows that there is someone now in his or her life that wants for him or her to succeed, is watching his or her actions, offering her feedback and perspectives without expectations, how valuable would that be?

You see, a coach is giving his or her coachee mind-space and heart-space during the course of a long relationship of about a year. The coach is offering unconditional respect and care and concern for the coachee. The coach is willing to listen to the leader in a manner that no one in his or her life would have. The coach is excited by the coachee’s success but does not judge him when he falters. That relationship is like strong rope that is a bridge between leader’s present realities and his or her potential.

We can if we wish, assign financial values to these benefits but then, do I really need to?

HiPo are individuals identified as displaying the potential to raise to future positions. Organizations typically identify such HIPOs and then invest in their development.

In this post, I wish to share an alternate perspective about this whole subject of HiPos. .

But first, my story.

In the year 1982, 41 years ago, Fr. McGrath from XLRI interviewed me to consider selection into its two-year PGD PM & IR program.

As I look back, I think, Father McGrath (Maggie as he was lovingly called) decided to select me not based on my potential to become an HR Professional. He was perhaps looking at my propensity to learn and through that actualize my potential.

Organisations rely heavily on assessment and development centres as scientific means to assess potential against a set of competencies.

Unfortunately, these “static” assessments are used to sort and segregate and then restrict development investments to those “emerging” as having potential.

I invite all of us to think of potential in a much more expansive and dynamic manner – a manner that is befitting the world we are living in and will live in, in the days to come.

This is where I wish to talk about the work of Professor Feuerstein. My familiarity with his work is thanks to my wife Sudha’s training in the Instrumental Enrichment Program and the Learning Propensity Assessment Device (LPAD), both of which are at the heart of the Feuerstein Method.

Professor Reuven Feuerstein, a clinical, developmental and cognitive psychologist saw intelligence as the ability to learn. He further concluded through years of research and work with children that this ability to learn could be increased through human mediation – providing a bridge between the learner and the content of learning, keeping the learner needs in mind. (Like a Coach)

To this end the Feuerstein assessment method (LPAD) involved test – teach – test: test to establish a base line; enhance the learning ability through mediated learning; test again to arrive at the person’s learning propensity.

If this idea were to be applied to the field of leader development, what would it look like?

We would first look at selecting a larger universe of individuals to develop.

We would then assess them not to segregate and pick up a few but to establish a base line.

We would then impart at least a foundational level of developmental inputs including mediated learning to all of them to enhance their learning ability.

At the end of the journey, we would assess to see the learning that has occurred.

By adopting a dynamic rather than static view of potential, organizations may be able to embrace a much more diverse and broad-based talent pool – a much needed ingredient for success in the days to come.

In my mind, potential is learning potential and not leadership potential – after all, if leaders know how to learn, they can learn and grow forever.

Attitude: “predisposition to behave in a specific way in certain situations”. 

Skills: the learned ability to do something competently. “Hire for attitude and train for skills” is the adage that many businesses, especially service businesses have lived by for decades. 

Despite all the radical changes, this adage is still true. The ones who put a smile on your face are the ones with the right attitude, not the most skilled. But, that is not really the focus of this article! As someone who is on a daily basis dealing with requests for coaches for their Managers and leaders, I am left wondering about the relevance of this adage among professionals, managers and leaders.

In the increasingly complex world of business, people with a unique set of skills are rare to find and organizations do hire or promote individuals even when they suspect that there might be “poor attitudes”.

Clearly, at senior levels, the issue is quite complex and the tradeoff between competencies and dispositions are not so easy to make. Lets understand this better. Individuals may be genetically inclined to do well in certain spheres of human endeavor and struggle in in certain others, emotional intelligence being one.

In the early days of one’s career, the implications of these “attitudes” may have been less pronounced and as a result organizations may have ignored it. Organizations may also have rewarded such individuals for their results, and somehow given the message that their means are acceptable. 

Individuals may also display these behaviours only with certain people and in certain circumstances and therefore leave decision makers confused – excellent with customers but very difficult with internal colleagues. 

While it is not prudent to offer a generalized set of solutions, a few guidelines are possible: 

1. Paying attention to person – role fit when we know what individuals enjoy and what they don’t, can help.

2. Ignoring early warning signs or worse rewarding it can very seriously send the wrong message to the individual and people around him.

3. If we wish to help, it may help to take an empathetic view towards such individuals – not see them as wrong doers but as individuals who have difficulties in certain areas. This might open the door for help reaching them. 

4. If coaching is being considered as a way of helping, it is prudent to be patient. It may take a while to yield results. The coach must have a deep understanding of allied disciplines like therapy to be able to assess if coaching alone will work or if the individual will need counseling or therapy too. 

5. One may also need to be cognizant about the role of the environment on the individual. Certain organization cultures may have been more conducive for such individuals than others. 

In summary, many organizations will unfortunately continue to hire or promote for skill and struggle with the consequences of “attitudes”.

Over the past few years the corporate world including the start-up world has been seeing a series of financial irregularities reported – many confirmed, many alleged. These have involved executive leadership, entrepreneurs and of course the junior most employees. This is certainly a time to ponder. 

For one there is diversity – it has nothing to do with public or private enterprise, senior or junior employees, owners or managers. Everyone seems to be afflicted by this malady. While it is easy to identify individuals, punish them if we can and frame tighter policies and hope that we have solved the problem, the issues to me are deeper. 

At one level, greed has psychological connotations – there is a possible connection between certain personality disorders and greed. At another level, it is sociological. Does the larger society we live in, the times we live in, the pressures and shifting value systems and symbols of “what we celebrate” fuel such actions? 

Does the popular western paradigm of celebrating success only through financial measure have something to do with this? Does the design of work and facelessness and anonymity that modern job design offers, have something to do with this? Does the action of organizations to apply “values” selectively, have something to do with this – what Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner call “particularism”. 

In my view ownership for this pervasive value shift lies with all of us – just like keeping the planet green does.