Take, for example, the ability to deal with subordinates, peers and superiors. In the next five to seven years after the initial stage, you start looking at the individuals ability to deal with relationships outside the organisation - with customers, suppliers, shareholders, etc. At this stage you need to carry out, not only a 360-degree evaluation, but a 720-degree one.Most organisations, at least in India, fail to give correct feedback to employees. Our style is non-confrontational. But there are ways in which you can give feedback whichare not necessarily direct. That can be done through dialogue. But in most cases, no feedback at all is given. So a talent pool is formed, but there is a question mark about whether the right people have been inducted into it.Often the pool is skewed because you havepeople in it who have not been fully evaluated nor given any feedback about themselves. That is happening in a lot of organisations. These organisations say: we are not seeing leaders emerge. My answer to that is: have you evaluated the pool properly over the years? Have you taken the pains of spending a few years creating it? It cannot be done at the last minute.In India, we often talk about CEO succession. To me, that should be the last item in your agenda. Textbooks also make the mistake by saying the role of the CEO isto find his successor. They claim the role of the board is also to find a successor. My answer to that is the role of the organisation is to create a pool whose members can occupy various positions in the organisation. Leaders evolve from within as the organisation grows. If more opportunity is created, the organisation gets rejuvenated. That is the way to building leadership.Coaching woesAt different levels of the leadership pyramid, the attributes a leader needs to have are not necessarily the same. The leader who is handling a small group of people within the organisation faces challenges very different from those confronted by a leader who is handling multiple businesses which are outward facing. I feel that one important thing we fail to do is to train people properly to do what is expected of them. Nor do we tell them how they can improve. We presume they will do so on their own. These are the twin challenges of the process of training people. Often the individual is not aware he needs training or he does not believe that the training is required. The organisation also lacks the training and other tools needed to correct the flaws in a person. And that becomes a challenge in terms of further growth. You need to have appropriate training and hand holding of a person to make sure that he grows in a particular role, understands the role and executes the role effectively, at whatever level it may be.In modern business parlance of the West, the word coaching is regularly used. But I think that in India the word is not understood. If you tell a person he or she needs to be coached, he will misunderstand and think he is being told he is not good enough. Here people start with the presumption that they know everything. I guess coaching at various stages will become more acceptable in the future.
Posted on: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 17:26:18 +0000
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