Leaders & Leadership Programs in a post-pandemic world (Part-I)
From a plethora of books filling the leadership section in stores to the motivational speakers galore, we don’t need a psychic to tell us that there is a wide professional audience when it comes to learning about leadership. People want to know what is the secret potion that makes someone like Steve Jobs lead effectively to spur unmatched innovation in product design. People want to apprehend the intention and intuition of someone like Elon Musk and his enviable business choices. When it comes to developing leaders within a corporation, apart from books, TED talks and online learning, employees also subject themselves to specialized corporate programs — Leadership Programs — that aim to develop future leaders from an existing pool of employees. These programs are designed as a way to inculcate relevant skills and provide the participants an opportunity to work with existing leaders within different verticals of an organization in a short span of time (couple of years). These programs have tremendous potential to be a win-win situation for employees and their employers. However, the predicament of these two stakeholders in the real world can be far from ideal.
Let’s dissect the design principles at play while launching a corporate leadership program.
Design-1: In these organizations, leadership programs are designed within the confines of set expectations that are clearly documented, communicated and published. An employee, selectively chosen for such a program, has to function optimally within those constraints to produce expected, measurable results.
Design-2: In these organizations, leadership programs are so loosely defined that mentors and sponsors at the helm of it have multiple versions of the idea of a ‘true leader’ and the organizational impact he is expected to deliver at the end of the program.
Design-1 runs the risk of producing closed-minded leaders that excel in the predictable but lack decision-making supremacy when it comes to unpredictable business situations. Design-2 runs the risk of producing leaders that come to believe more in the power of ‘being in good books’ and ‘playing it safe’ rather than quantifiable work-results and innovation when it comes to rising through the ranks. One common aspect is that both designs lack an important consideration — What kind of a leader the employee wants to become during the course of and after the completion of the program? More often than not, this question barely gets raised or answered. When it comes to developing leaders, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all methodology. Ceteris paribus, a leadership program that works wonders for one employee might turn out to be an unavoidable nightmare for another irrespective of their similar pre-existing acumen. Such filtering out of employees, to create a pool of future leaders that may have different personalities but tend to think alike, operate identically and make similar decisions has a risk of creating an organization that lacks any diversity of thought which is an essential ingredient for innovation. There is also the responsibility of overseeing these leadership programs within an organization. If the goal is to develop ‘global’ leaders that can thrive and deliver results in any part of the world where the organization operates, it becomes essential that such programs are centrally-managed by the corporate head office. Locally-managed leadership programs at a business unit level run the risk of being ineffective when it comes to providing challenging project-assignments to employees chosen for the program. They also tend to be at the mercy of budget-availability constraints at the business unit level. Sponsors and mentors at the helm of these leadership programs ought to have less of an authoritative approach and more of the utilitarian approach towards it. Adopting the utilitarian approach facilitates learning at both ends of the sponsor/mentor and mentee relationship.
Undeniably, the current pandemic (with its fatal effect on existing supply chains) has given corporate leaders a reason, an opportunity to reassess and redesign these supply chains (at Tier I, II & III levels) to focus not only on efficiency and just-in-time when choosing suppliers but also focus on resiliency, contingency planning and just-in-case aspects of operations. Similarly, the pandemic and the resulting business pivots have presented a strong business case to relook at the existing pipeline of developing leaders. This pipeline (leadership programs) needs to provide a flexible, freethinking platform for employees where they have the liberty to choose their leadership style (& roles) rather than pick a dictated one or mimic an existing one as part of the leadership program. The program needs to act as a mentoring platform for employees where they have the liberty to choose their mentors/sponsors and respectfully change them later in order to maximize the value-exchange in an ever-changing business world. The selection and grooming of future leaders needs to be inclusive of employees that think differently and are inclined more towards unexplored revenue streams than towards managing and maintaining status-quo. These freethinkers within organizations will have a relatively high probability of being the antidote (leading new business models) to any black swan events (like the coronavirus pandemic) that could cause business disruptions in the future.
Rahul Nilangekar is a Product Manager, Entrepreneur and a budding Writer. He received his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow in India. His corporate work experience spans across the IT services industry and the Automotive industry.