Indian Firms Investing Megabucks on Leadership Pool

Leadership interventions, considered a softer side of an organisation till recently, are beginning to show quantifiable gains, said Rajeev Bhadauria, Director, Group HR at steelmaker Jindal Steel. "We have seen phenomenal results from our six-month leadership programme, where we trained 200 people in three cohorts studies for two months each. It has ploughed back 218 crore for us, in actual terms," he says. Jindal Steel plans to put another 100 people through a six month leadership development intervention this year, involving workshops, action learning projects and one-to-one coaching, he said.

"Earlier the Big Four had leadership programmes concentrating on only 30-40 people in an organisation. This model is not relevant now. We need leadership to be available across all levels of an organisation," says Bhadauria. The Big Four comprise McKinsey, PwC, Deloitte and Ernst & Young. To tap this opportunity, many consultancy firms have set up a separate leadership practice or a leadership institute which enables them to undertake leadership intervention on a larger scale.

"McKinsey started it in the mid-90s and now almost all the bigger consultancy firms Deloitte, PwC, Bain have set up practices for leadership development. Today, leadership has become complex. Earlier the leader was the boss but now a single individual cannot do it," says Stojanovic. The entry of Big Four into leadership development is expanding the market, feel Santhosh Babu, CEO Coach and Founding MD of Organisation Development Alternatives, which imparts leadership training. The pie is expected to grow to more than Rs 500 crore over the next 18-24 months, he added.

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