LEADERS IN THE MAKING: The illustrious stories of 30 HR Leaders

Dr. Arvind Agrawal

Why did you think of such a book?

AA Over the years I have been seeing several HR leaders from very close quarters. I saw them do amazing work – very impactful in their own organisations as well as in professional forums.
Whenever I read the life story of great CEOs, imminent personalities, this curiosity about impactful professionals around me grew even stronger.

That raised curiosity in my mind to deep dive in to their lives to discover –

• What were the crucible experiences that they went thru.
• What were points of inflexions.
• What choices did they make to become who they became.

In the mean time, I came across the work done by Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas on Crucible of Leadership. That shaped my thinking on how we may possibly study the life journeys of the fellow professionals.

I believed that stories of these very impactful HR leaders will be inspiring the next generation of HR leaders in shaping their future.

What are the highlights of the Book?

AA The book has detailed story of the 30 HR leaders who have been highly impactful legends.

The story covers the life journey —

• Right from childhood, who were early influencers, kind of family they were born in, their struggles and privileges, lifestyle, family rituals, nature of everyday conversations, behaviour and values they lived with.
• School and colleges – impact of specific teacher based on the subject they taught, the teaching style or the personal connect; facilities and academic environment of the school.
• Life in corporate – the nature of first job, influences of different kind of bosses, challenges of varying kind of assignments – both positives and unpleasant ones, immersive experiences of handling grass root level employees, doing business roles, dealing with setbacks and reverses and learnings from mentors.
• Engagement with professional forums – contributions made and learnings.
• Engagement with social causes.
• Hobbies and interests pursued.

Who and why should anyone read a book like this?

AA Through the stories of the 30 HR leaders, there are lessons for parents, teachers, school and college administrators, managers, HR professionals and young students who are leaders in the making.

Parents – gives them insights on how their everyday behaviour, family rituals and the values they demonstrate shape the character of the child.

Teachers – learn from these life stories that subject they teach, the way they teach and their personal connect with the student make huge impact on shaping the students personality and choice the student makes about future profession.

School and College administration – academic environment and facilities provided impacts the character building of the students. These include, how they handle cases of indiscipline, extra curricular activities, availability of the library, activities that connect the students with larger causes of the society and the nation.

Managers – the nature of assignments they give, mentoring, encouragement of learning, job rotation and self-role modelling.

What is the future course of action by HR or Management profession if one has to learn some lessons from your work?

AA There are several lessons from the crucible experiences of the 30 inspiring HR leaders. But to list few of them here are –

• Immersive experience of 2-3 years in –

1. Employee relations involving dealing with grass root level employees.
2. Business roles with clear accountability for results.
3. Demanding role.

• Be always purpose and value driven.
• Seize the opportunity to make your role meaningful – don’t wait for someone to assign/define your role.
• Must have direct connect with people.
• Have high learning ability.
• There is leader within each one of us, invoke this leadership within you, deal with the situation as it comes – both positives as well as difficult situations and have humility to learn from it.
  Engage in professional forums capturing the tremendous opportunity to learn and network.
• Contribute to social cause.

Why these 30 leaders why not others?

AA Brainstormed and came up with long list of 70 HR leaders who we believed have been highly effective.

• Further short listed those based on criteria highlighted by Prof. Rao in his Book “Effective People” (2015).
• Two people dropped out.
• Final list of 30 HR leaders.
• We realise our own unconscious biases and familiarity may have also influenced our choice of the 30 HR leaders.
• We acknowledge there are many more highly effective HR leaders both men and women – way beyond the 30 we have taken in this study. But this is as many we could deal with in one study. And this itself has taken us 6 years.!

Dr. T.V. Rao

How do you place this book in your own publications in recent times?

TVR Latest and top.

• Each book is unique and one may not compare one with another. It is like making movies. Each has a purpose, distinct contribution and also different methodology.
• My first book on 1000 Managers in Action is short life stories of corporate sector managers who demonstrated leadership impact using 360 Degree feedback chosen among 8000 managers on the basis of their 360 feedbacks. The next one “managers who make a Difference is based on distilled experience of my work at IIMA and other places and teaching OB at IIMA and other institutions. The next one of Effective People is based on my familiarity and impact made by Effective People who made a difference in the lives of others from social work, medicine, education, teaching, acting, civil services, institution building etc. and exclude corporate sector.
• This book is based on 30 HR leaders and leaders in their own right who made it to the top positions and extensive and in-depth interviews. In my view case studies focused on their crucible experiences from childhood and covers systematically their entire life period till they made it to the top and impacted others. The case studies are in-depth and analysis is based on various globally accepted and Indian developed frameworks. The analysis focused on the nature of crucible experiences, competencies, values and lessons for all categories of people.

For you what is special about this book?

TVR The frankness and authentic details in which these leaders described their crucible experiences. Limitations of length compelled us to restrict the details and select out of 60 to 80 pages of notes largely gathered and documented by Arvind to a size of 10 to 15 pages or 5000 words for each case.

• The frameworks we used for analyzing the cases studies; Crucibles of Leadership framework of Warren Bennis, Competency frameworks we have been using in India developed by NHRDN and across the globe by SHRM, CIPD, Dave Ulrich and others and OCTAPACE value framework developed by Udai Pareek and inadvertently nurtured by most of these leaders.
• All these leaders are impact making leaders in some form or the others.
• Every story is special and our analysis and findings are also special. For example, the significance of Industrial Relations and the impact of project experiences given by institutions like TISS, XLRI, IIMs are all well highlighted.
• The significance of bosses, colleagues and the first job are other impact making parts.

What message would you like to give for HR professionals and professional managers?

TVR There is a leader hidden in every one of us. Working on this book along with Dr. Arvind Agrawal and earlier books I am more than convinced that there is a leader hidden in each one of us. I hope this book and other similar books of recent times by Indra Nooyi, Inderjit Khanna etc. become a source of helping the reader evoke the leader in her/ him. The cases are illustrative and by no means exclusive or exhaustive. Both Arvind and I hope that people will be inspired to pen their own stories or get interviewed by others to get written. There is so much in India and so many leaders around. One of the HRLs who said that he is hesitant to speak about his own story as there is a thin line between self-expression and self-marketing. I think we should get out of this shyness and let a thousand or million flowers bloom. High time for the world to know the leadership talent we have in this great country. My co-author Arvind has done most interviews for this book and painstakingly documented and reduced the stories to the current size from about 4 to 5 times. He stands much richer in the detailed knowledge he has about each case. We thank each one of the 30 leaders for their kindness in opening up their stories to us and give opportunity for others to learn from their crucible experiences. We hope soon there will be more stories coming out in various fields, sectors, age groups, gender and geography. Please search for leaders in your neighborhood and document and spread how crucible experiences build our talent.

Any regrets and future directions?

TVR There are some excellent leaders that have emerged and are still emerging in India today from all ages, gender, sectors, startups, in various other professions. We could not even cover a small portion of them. The criteria we set for selecting these leaders are not necessarily sacred and can be expanded or even more focused or narrowed. By our own criteria there may be many other leaders whom we had no access or have not included for our ignorance and lack of familiarity. In all such work contact and familiarity becomes one of the criteria if we like it or not. This also could be a serious limitation and may even give the impression of including only our friends. In my book of effective people, I have used familiarity as one of the criteria after my failure to get nominations for effective people through media efforts. There could always be unconscious biases. We would like all these leaders to be spotted and more and more stories come up in future. This book should be treated an illustrative and a good beginning. We look for many more authors, leaders, and lessons from all sectors, age and gender emerge in future.