At XLRI, Fr McGrath’s Basic Managerial Skills or BMS was the most popular course – completely experiential, creatively designed and facilitated by the senior batch.

It taught us in the very first few months that becoming a good manager was very important.

Cut back to 2026.

As someone who has been leading a coaching led leader development company, I must admit to a huge fallacy about leader development.

L&D professionals, Talent managers, Leadership development firms, consultants and coaches tend to call everything they do leadership development. Developing someone to be or become an effective manager somehow does not seem glamorous.

While we do a lot of work to develop leaders, I must admit that a lot is also to help leaders develop not leadership but basic managerial abilities.

Unfortunately, a very large number of professionals make a very poor transition from being an individual contributor to a manager.

At the heart of that poor transition is their inability to manage all forms of boundaries – task boundaries, time boundaries and relationship boundaries.

They are unable to say what they will do and what others will do and therefore they can’t delegate. They are unable to set clear expectations or priorities. They fail to give feedback, be honest, draw the line, and define an adult to adult relationship.

But they do grow into leadership roles and at that stage these missed developmental milestones become troublesome and development is to solve problems.

No wonder, survey after survey will tell us that manager scores are poor.

While real leader development does take place and it must carry on, we must recognise the real issues and use responsible semantics.

Years ago, when managers had more time and tenure in the relationship and worked face to face, some handholding, some mentoring, some guidance, some skill development, some role modelling took place. With hierarchy collapsing and a lot of work becoming remote and managers becoming virtual managers, I think we have descended on what appears to be a managerial crisis.

I think it will serve us well to go back to the basics and invest significantly on making people good managers before we start to make them great leaders.

What this will translate into is investment in manager development early in the employees careers (unmindful of fears that they will learn and leave), designing learning solutions that are appropriate for that level and then continuing to reinforce the lessons all through the life of the manager and leader.

Developing good managers is as important as developing great leaders.

Youtube link: https://youtu.be/o2QDrofXJ3g

One dimension of our personal and professional lives, which does not receive the attention it deserves is decisions made when people hit the “low road”.

There are three kinds of low road decisions I would like to explore: emotional low road decisions, AI low road decisions and digital low road decisions.

Let’s start with emotional low road decisions.

Be it the decision to attend a party in the wrong island with the wrong people, the decision to invade a country, the decision to invite investors to fund your business, the decision to get into a relationship, to break up from a relationship, many people take emotional low road decisions.

“Emotional low road decisions” are decisions without impulse-control, out of anger, with inadequate emotional regulation and self-regulation, based on overconfidence, overestimation of one’s abilities, underestimation of consequences, distorted perception of reality, poor empathy, moral licensing, a sense of infallibility and so on.

All of these are rich in emotional data. Unfortunately, many do not access this emotional data or pay attention to it. The inability to be aware of, access and use emotional data reflect poor emotional intelligence. (Which is different from being emotional. One is to be hijacked by emotions and the other is to be informed by emotions.)

Let us now look at another rapidly evolving global development: the “AI low road”.

Blindly following AI is in no way different from being blindly led by one’s emotions.

Because, when you blindly follow AI, you are stopping to apply your own thinking, not testing hard realities, listen to your contextual and native intelligence, ascribe more to AI and its abilities than it deserves. To surrender to “AI said so” is a low road too.

Finally, as we discuss the subject of mental health in the life of millennials and gen zs today, it can often be traced back what I would like to call emotion led decisions made from the “digital low road”.

One dimension of this digital low road is succumbing to the algorithmic influence or believing what you see or what is amplified or what bombards you and deciding on that basis.

The other dimension of the “digital low road” is decisions made from the pressure of social comparison (likes, comments, and perceived popularity that shapes choices, often subconsciously)

Then there are decisions made from the fear of missing out rather than thoughtful choices.

This low road can run contrary to the popular belief that millennials and gen Zs have a mind of their own. It takes a lot of emotional intelligence to be reflective, question things, discern the intrinsic value and of course not be addicted to the overload of information and stimulation.

For these reasons, it is my belief that decision making will emerge as the most critical dimension of life skills in the decades ahead.

Youtube: https://youtu.be/zOgyf5L5RSo

Why is it that a new leader brought into an organization with such great promise slowly appears to be looking not so promising after the first couple of years? This subject needs much attention.

I am sure you have been involved in brining leaders into organizations with significant expectations that they will bring in transformation, change, solve some of the vexed problems, lead the organization into hyper growth.

The organization ends up ascribing a lot of wisdom, competence, authority and stature to that person. Even more if that person came from a large “haloed global corporation.”

Thanks to all this and some very specific skills that this person brings to the table, the first couple of years are outstanding. The leader is able to quickly able to solve some of the vexed problems, bring an expertise that the organization desperately lacked, perhaps deal with some low-hanging fruits and give relief that this much awaited person has finally arrived and filled a gap. The first couple of years are very promising. Many things get done.

Around the third-year things slowly seem to plateau. People are now beginning to ask why the leader is not solving some of the larger problems appropriate to his pay and grade that they assumed he or she would solve. They ask why the leader has not yet built processes, built or retained and grown a team.

Peers begin question the price that has been paid for the early success, the relationships that have been frayed, the people not taken along. The Board goes back to the original hiring mandate and asks if the larger objectives were fulfilled or not and often finds they were not.

By the third year the leader also begins to silently realize that he or she has run out of steam.

Why does this happen?

Central to this year three problem is the excessive reliance on the leader’s individual abilities and playbooks used in another game.

While these may have provided some early relief, it was assumed that the leader would respect and enrich the culture and not blame it build a stronger team and not replace everyone partner and not compete with peers institutionalise processes and strengthen the eco-system

It is also assumed that the leader would not stop learning and acquiring new abilities to solve new and unforeseen problems that the organization is going to face.

What will it take for a leader to do all this?

It will call for a balance between action and reflection. Reflection about how I need to evolve and grow, what are the new ways in which I need to operate having delivered the early success in solving some vexed problems, how I prepare myself for a solid sustainable future.  It will also call for humility and openness to feedback.

If such a leader does not get help, he or she can leave (hence the three year itch) or fall by the wayside.

Youtube: https://youtu.be/EI9XI1POcGE

Lets talk about leadership and boundaries.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of effective leaders is their ability to manage their boundaries. This helps them focus, direct their energy and devote their mind space to the most critical matters. These leaders are mindful of what they take on, what burdens they choose to carry and what they sign up for.

To understand this better, let us talk nine reasons why leaders struggle with their boundaries and why it can make them quite ineffective.

1. the need to be always available, always accessible, easily interrupted, letting people consume their time at any time.

2. having a difficulty to say no, feel awkward about disappointing. Not wanting to let others down or delay or even conveying that they cannot do it

3. finding it hard to draw boundaries between what is professional and what is being very familiar. When people get too familiar, then it becomes hard to establish norms, say what is right or wrong, give authentic direct feedback because relationships seem to somehow come in and interfere.

4. making it easy for people to delegate upwards and taking on what the team should be doing and then become a bottleneck.

5. over committing to projects not knowing that they do not have the bandwidth, they do not have the resources, it is not possible to do it. Worse, when they make commitments on behalf of their team, they underestimate what it will take to do a good job and end up actually disappointing everybody.

6. when one is constantly absorbing others stress and disappointments. Maybe wanting to reduce discomfort among others and  take on so much that at the end of many interactions they feel drained.

7. the inability to digitally distance oneself and instead always be on, always having to respond instantly. Anxiously waiting for what is coming one’s way, what one needs to say and how quickly one needs to get back.

8. neglecting self-care and knowing that one is exhausted, one is on the verge of being burnt out, that one needs to really find time for oneself to recuperate.

9. to believe that one’s worth depends on doing for others, taking care of others, that one is wanted all the time, that making sacrifices is important.

All of these nine things can drain leaders and also make them ineffective.

Do men and women struggle with managing boundaries equally?

Men and women struggle with boundaries. Perhaps centuries of social expectations and conditioning make it harder for women to manage some of the emotional boundaries of giving care, being available than men.

With every passing generation when women are able to more clearly draw boundaries, it is not easy for people around to accept it.

All things said, managing boundaries is so important for a leader to be effective

I would like to know what you think.

Youtube link: https://youtu.be/Xi4GwVYjc-c

I want to talk about what constitutes the soul of an organization and why it matters.

CFI has just completed 20 years of existence and we have begun thinking about our next 20 years – what 2046-47 will look like and the fact that it will call for people beyond the founder to get involved in taking the institution there.

The central question I have been asking myself in this context is this: what is the one thing that we want to retain?

the unequivocal answer is “the soul of the organization”.

So what is the soul of an organization? It is easy to distinguish it from the body of an organization. The body of an organization is its strategy, its revenue, growth, the metrics, the processes, the efficiency and the scale.

The soul on the other hand is something which is dynamic, which gets slowly identified, which evolves, which can become deeper, stronger or diluted and weaker over time.

The soul is about the founding purpose. Our identity as seen by us and others. What do we stand for, how do we take important decisions when we have a dilemma? What we place greater premium on? What is the everyday experience of the organization through the eyes of employees, through the community we are part of, our customers, our employees the larger industry. All of this together constitutes the soul, the everyday experience of what we stand for, what is important to us, the human experience.

History is full of examples of organizations which got carried away by the body and lost the soul. A telling example is Howard Schultz and Starbucks. He returned to the company twice, I think around 2008 and 2022.

On both these occasions, it was beyond financial performance and stability. It was to regain the soul of the organization – to be that third place, make the baristas the pride of the organisation for the great coffee they make and serve and the connection with the employees.

My all-time favorite is this book called Small Giants written by Bo Burlingham. He chronicled in the year 2005, 14 companies which chose to be great instead of becoming big.

And becoming big is to get private equity, to go public, to scale, to achieve large numbers and so on. But these companies chose to be great, the best in what they did. And he gives reasons why they chose this greatness and how they sustained it, how they remain private and true to their soul.

I went back and looked at this list today 20 years later and I was delighted to see that there are at least about 8 of those 14 organizations which seem to continue to remain true to their original purpose after 30, 40, 50, even 60 years. They have retained their soul.

Personally for me, it is the soul that is worth striving to retain, cherish and strengthen.

What is your encounter with organisations that have retained or lost their soul?

Youtube link: https://youtu.be/_3kE0WzQdKc