20/8/2010
Hay Group, the global management consulting firm, has over 2,600 employees working in 86 offices in 48 countries. Their clients come from the private, public and not-for-profit sectors, across every major industry and represent diverse business challenges. The company’s focus is on making change happen and helping people and organizations realize their potential.

Sandra Treadwell-Monk is a Director and part of the leadership team of Hay Group India. She started her consulting career as a specialist in business strategy before joining Hay Group to focus on leadership and behaviour at work. She is Practice Leader in this area for Hay Group India, having held a similar role in the Pacific region. She has worked internationally as a consultant for the last 20 years. Sandra holds a BA from the University of New England, MBA from the Melbourne Business School (University of Melbourne) and has completed additional studies in Psychology at Monash University and the University of New England.

Sandra spoke to SHRM India about the issues involved in developing leadership, her experience of Indian businesses and other aspects of HR.
Excerpts:

You come from Australia, have worked in South East Asia, in Europe, across industries and have true cross cultural experience. How important is cross cultural experience in the kind of work that you do, which is essentially leadership development?

That is an interesting question. I think working across cultures lends a different perspective. It is possible to work well if one has worked just within one’s own country, but what we are seeing increasingly is that organizations are going global. One of the things that I have always been interested in are cross cultural issues and when I started writing my Ph. D. a few years ago, I did it on cross cultural teams at the executive level. This is because I had started to experience, during my work with coaching teams, issues related to language and culture. When you go from working in one particular culture you have premises about the world and unless you can understand someone else’s premises about the world, it is going to be very difficult for people to communicate and then collaborate; unless people collaborate with each other they are not going to be able to maximize the ‘white’ space, where innovation happens. So if everyone stays in their own respective business units for lack of understanding cultural differences, then there are business opportunities between those business units which get missed. I had an experience where I was working with one team and it was like cultural spaghetti. So there was an Australian in Canada, a North American in Australia and a South African in Europe. And this was a very senior executive team. And because this was a global organization they didn’t get to meet very often, probably only once a quarter. So one of the big interesting challenges was how do you get them to really know each other very quickly?

So how did you help this group of executives break the ice with respect to each other?
So what I have done with teams is take them away, offsite and you have a very personal interaction. It was not an interaction which was content driven. We did not talk to them about different cultures, did not tell them ‘stuff’. Instead what we got them to do is to experience each other, so they will be more involved with each other. The focus is on using techniques to give the people opportunities to get to know each other. And this is important. Let me give you an example. If you are coming from Japan – the Japanese way of speaking is more deferential, very polite and it is understood in Japan what you mean. In India the way of speaking is more cut and dried, more brusque and that is very non Japanese and for someone from Japan, particularly for female executives, it can appear as antagonistic. So when I work with such groups, the idea is to articulate and resolve such cultural differences.

So the kind of work that you do with cross cultural teams involves leadership development? Could you explain what this involves?
Because senior leaders have two roles, there are two ways in which you can approach leadership development. You can work with people developing their leadership capabilities in terms of managing their business units or managing people. Or you can work with them as leaders interacting with each other.  Because one of the critical things that happen is that senior leaders have been developed to manage their individual business units really well. They know its business figures, are involved in its strategy. Then suddenly they get promoted to sit on the CEO’s executive team. Now their focus cannot just be on their individual business unit. It has to be across the entire businesses and they might have to make decisions which go against their individual business units. Handling these situations can be very challenging. So a lot of my work these days is actually working with groups and teams to help them work more effectively together. And this does not involve taking them on outdoor exercises or team building exercises. It involves working to determine the purpose of the team, what it will achieve and how members will work together.

What is the kind of knowledge inputs that you give these individuals that helps them transition to looking at the bigger picture, rather than just the micro management approach they may have towards their individual business units?
It is not about giving these individuals skills and knowledge, because by now these individuals know how to read a balance sheet, a P&L statement. Where these individuals need to be helped is to give them a better understanding of themselves and the impact their behaviour will have on the person sitting next to them and the impact the person sitting next to them will have on them, and hence the effectiveness of the team. So because if one person is the marketing director and the other is a CFO and if there is something about the marketing director that antagonizes the CFO, the CFO is always going to be questioning the veracity of the marketing director’s inputs. So what I try and do is to help these individuals understand the basis of their antagonism and how to resolve it. It is actually giving them exercises so that they understand themselves, how they are likely to react to individual differences. It is one of the aspects which underpin a high performing leadership team.

What has been your experience of Indian business?
Well it’s too early to form a conclusive opinion, because I have been here only for six months. But I think the challenge for large Indian businesses, Indian conglomerates, is to make the decision as to how autonomous they would like their businesses to be and how much control would they like to exert over their business units. We do have data which indicates there is a paternalistic approach in terms of leading others and decision making. It seems to me that Indian businesses are a bit reluctant to embrace matrix structures, for example the coming together of a product head and a regional head for the market in which the product is sold. The importance of matrix structures is that it helps avoid situations where the geography says you don’t understand us and the product vertical says you don’t understand the product and so matrix structures help bring in dual responsibility. However, it is not only Indian businesses which are challenged by matrix structures. I have found in my work in Asia that MNCs with corporate head office outside Asia, have to work very hard to have the matrix structure perform at the optimal level.

So what you are essentially saying is that Indian businesses have not embraced these matrix structures?
What I am starting to see is that Indian businesses are moving to offshore. They have cash to buy overseas. And as Indian businesses move outside of India they are going to be increasingly challenged by the functional structure (Sales, HR, operations, finance etc.), where they are going to embrace other geographies, other cultures. But this is not a culture conflict. Organisations go through different stages of growth. When I started working in Asia, in Singapore, a lot of clients were multinationals, organizations based in America and Europe. They would send their executives to Singapore or Indonesia for three years, with the perspective that they would eventually go back. My experience with the MNCs now is that this is changing. North American, European and western MNCs have had to go truly global. They can no longer parachute expertise because local markets don’t accept it. So talent has to be nurtured from within the local markets and you also have to move people around different cultures so that you have a truly global organization.

While you’ve been here only for six months, what is it that excites you about leadership in India? 
I think leaders in India are much more prepared to be innovative. They are very prepared to move a senior person from one business to another. They are very happy to move people from functional areas to handling business units, from one business unit to another, from heading a cement firm to heading a financial organization. That propensity to develop talent and move talent around is a signal of internal processes working particularly well and a willingness to be innovative. It also signals to me, that leadership is not just about understanding technical details because when you get around to heading a business, you have other people taking care of the technical details. You have to know enough, but you have got to manage the business rather than just the technical details.

So while you say leadership in India is innovative and there is a propensity to move people across businesses, what is it that you see that is lacking in leadership in India?
I am not too sure if I will put it down as lacking. We talked about paternalism as a style in some Indian businesses and I think that style permeates through different levels and particularly happens most at the middle management level. What I mean by the ‘paternalistic style’ is that combination of being coercive yet affiliative – the ‘good father’ style and I think that the challenge is going to be teaching them different ways about leading. This, the paternalistic way, does not have to be the way to lead and it’s definitely not going to be the way to be successful as you start to manage younger people. Because when you manage young people/Gen Y, the paternalistic model - being told what to do - doesn’t work with them.

Are you then saying that this paternalistic approach is symptomatic of all Indian businesses?
Many large Indian companies are family promoted. We do a lot of work with these companies, but we also work with the Indian components of MNCs. And so, yes, it is true as our research shows that this paternalistic approach is more visible in Indian companies.

On a totally different subject, companies do a lot of work on employee satisfaction but Hay Group instead asks companies to measure employee effectiveness. Why the distinction between the two and why in particular is there an emphasis on the latter?
It is a very important differentiation. There is research that dates back to the 1960s that shows that employees, who are happy at work, are not necessarily effective or highly motivated to do their best. They are just happy. It does not mean they are performing or that they are effective or that they are engaged.   Research shows that there is no co-relation between how happy people are at work and how effective they are. So we really need to look at ‘how effective people are’ or ‘how highly motivated they are’. Because a work environment should be fun but it should also have a buzz to it. People should want to come to work in the morning and really want to be there and if you have to stay an hour later, it is because you are getting a lot out if it, a kind of internal satisfaction. And so I think it is an important differentiator.

Could you give us an example as to what exercise would you carry out to find out whether XYZ employee is effective?
You essentially ask two things. One - you ask the employees do they understand what the larger mission and direction of the organisation is and then you ask the second part which is - do they understand how what they do fits into that larger mission of the organization and are they supported by the organization to achieve this. And this is the really critical thing - adding meaning to work. And the way you add meaning to work is when you understand how it relates to the bigger picture. I’ll give you a small example. One of my junior colleagues, in Australia, had to go out and interview a traffic policeman, a person who policed how long people stayed at the parking lot. She asked this policeman why you do your job. And the policeman replied there is limited parking on this parking strip and there are very small shop owners on this strip. So unless there is a certain throughput of traffic on this parking strip, these small shop owners will not make enough money to remain in business. And if they can’t remain in business, they will not be able to pay their council rents. And I know that our council undertakes a number of welfare measures for the community. And so if the council does not get its rent, who will provide for these welfare measures that benefits us all in this community? And that is why I do what I do. And so it is up to leaders to be able to make that clear - to add meaning to work.

Coming back to leadership, is it correct that leaders are only born and that leaders cannot be made?
I have worked with some leaders who I thought were just naturals. And I have seen them fall over. Some qualities are easier to develop than others but everyone has a personal challenge so far as leadership is concerned. And as you move into more and more significant leadership roles, what you start to realise is that the challenge is a personal challenge - around developing yourself and managing yourself. That is the real learning and so when I’m working with senior leaders I get them to spend some time each week reflecting on themselves, how they behaved in different situations. Because it is not about the ‘stuff’ you learn at business school. By the time you get to senior leadership you know that ‘stuff’, instead the personal challenges - about learning from your experiences and managing one’s self is more important.

Are you therefore saying, two people with the same aptitude, same understanding of business, can be developed to become leaders by helping them overcome their respective personal challenges?

Yes, of course, but not just ‘overcome challenges’, but, more importantly, to realize their strengths. What I see in organizations is potential being identified in people in their early-mid twenties. What I also see is that some of them are identified as high potentials. They reach the thirties and then these talents collapse, because the sort of roles that you move into in the thirties are different. So whst looks like a potential in the twenties, may no more be considered as a potential in their thirties.  As you get to senior executive roles, the questions are - are they ready to take the next big role – do they have the experience and the competencies? Are they willing to suffer the impact the next big role is going to have on their personal life? Are they willing to put up with the personal challenges these senior leadership roles throw up?

Does that mean potential needs to be constantly evaluated and assessed for leadership roles?
Yes, absolutely. Potential needs to be evaluated by leadership that is already there in the organization, with human resources or through an external consultant, which is where we come in. When you look at potential you need to be very fluid. When you look at potential amongst people in their twenties, what you look for are people who are willing to learn. People who are willing to put in the extra effort. People who are flexible in their thinking. This is very different from the potential we look at in people in the thirties, which is what I have explained earlier.

Your thoughts on some of the more current events which brings into focus organizational leadership in times of crisis, like the BP oil spill off the Gulf of Mexico or the Bhopal Gas tragedy?
On a general level what it seems to me that sometimes in the situations that you refer to, CEOs just do not demonstrate emotional intelligence. They fail to see that their role requires them to lead people, to lead communities. I did some work with indigenous people off the northern coast of Queensland. It was a leadership development program for a large public sector department.  One of the learnings from there, was that when you are a leader in a public sector department, in that community, you are not just a leader for the public sector department. You are a community leader and you are going to be seen as one and you need to act accordingly. You need to be in tune with the people in that community. What happened in the BP situation, was that the leadership failed to recognize that this was not just a technical disaster. It was a people disaster which impacted people’s lives and the environment. What we saw instead in the BP issue was that leadership saw it purely as a technical issue and that ‘I wasn’t there and so I don’t know’. A CEO is accountable for everything that happens in his business. The buck stops there.

To close this interview, how do you look at the future of HR in this country?
I spoke about the willingness about business in India to move people around. And one of the challenges that creates for the HR community, is to see themselves as business people. To understand business, you have got to be able to sit at the business table not just to talk about the people; you have to be able to talk about the market, the financials and the business strategy. You have got to have the knowledge and confidence to be a business partner. You just cannot be a support function, not be looked upon as someone who organizes the end of the year functions, not just someone who makes sure that there are training programs. What I see in India is that a lot of the functions that in some other companies are being shifted to line managers are still being done by HR. Like a difficult performance review, the line manager does not do it and they move it across to HR and senior HR picks it up. I also see some truly outstanding HR professionals in India, professionals who are driving the people agenda. Linking that agenda to the future challenges and success of the enterprise. I am looking forward to my time in India and continuing the discussion of leadership with the business community here.

The interview was conducted by Mumbai-based freelance writer Akshay Manwani.