What it takes to mould leaders of tomorrow

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: While India stands at the threshold of change in its policies and economic reforms, its corporate giants too are witnessing a need to shift towards the next generation of leaders. India’s large companies have been built on the back of entrepreneurs and visionary risk-takers, who started from scratch. With this backdrop, the new set of leaders now come more prepared and experienced. So, whether we talk about TCS’s next CEO, N Chandrashekaran or Bharti Airtel’s deputy chief executive, Sanjay Kapoor or Vodafone’s next CEO, Marten Pieters or Roshini Nadar taking over HCL Corp or Infosys’ initiatives to groom new leaders and board members from within; adaptability and ability to rise to the occasion seems to be the ‘catch of the season’. This does not come naturally, as HR experts have experienced.

Companies have, down the ages, focused on training & development of ‘performance-oriented skill sets’ amongst their managers. Variety of factors including the financial meltdown has made ‘credibility of leaders’ extremely important and given ‘leadership training & development’ a new-found respect even in sectors that refused to acknowledge its importance earlier. Prithvi Shergill, lead, human resource practice, Accenture India, says, “Companies that were initially challenged have now started looking at structured leaders. A ‘systematic succession’ becomes extremely important as large companies cannot afford to groom individuals just at the ‘C’ level executives and ignore senior and mid level managers. The latter will become the next set of leaders and so it is extremely important for companies to bring out training programs at both the levels.” According to Shergill, industries that have been maturing and feeling the need to groom leaders are IT/ ITeS industry that grew 26% last year. More traditional sectors such as telecom and banking have taken up the steps in early days. At the same time patchy development continue to exist in sectors like infrastructure and retail.