Leadership Mosaics across Asia

Hunt Partners hosted the Leadership Mosaics Across Asia event in association with HCLI and Tata Communications on 16th Feb’ 17 at the Sofitel- Mumbai. The research seeks to discover the different ways of leadership in Asia with focus on – Building Global Leaders for India, from India.

The Study has highlighted 3 Characteristics of Indian leaders:

  • Comfort in navigating and problem solving in a corporate environment across cultures and countries
  • Strong emotional connect- Ability to build relations internally & externally
  • Competitive spirit- Ability to adapt across boundaries

The key themes that emerged from the Panel Discussion Su-Yen, Paddy and Steinbruke:

Question: What are the essential qualities of a global business leader?

A major quality is to adapt quickly i.e. culture, social lifestyle of community, learning language and so on. Secondly you need to be aware and be present to what is happening around you at all times. Thirdly live life the way locals do, sometimes we tend to adapt only to the conditions that suit us, which is very different fromliving the life of locals. You need to be yourself, authentic and that earns you respect.

Question: In the global environment today, are global leaders in the future going to look different from now and how?

The future always looks different from the past, so will be the global leaders in future. But Indian leaders will surely leave a mark, the ability of Indian leaders to manage crisis is phenomenal. Expat leaders working in India are expensive hence the need to question the requirement of expat leaders. While in India the number of expat leaders has gone down, we still see a lot of expat leaders in China.

Question: European companies have invested in developing talent at the managerial level in India. How about the Indian MNC that are now going global & trying to develop the Indian talent pool?

Indian companies initially thought to build local leaders in their global operations as their reach & presence was much better. This met with success but also exposed a need to developing Indian leaders who understand the company operations and working culture and rotating them to help them understand the global market place. The age-old company motto to believe in the ‘Power of People’ has now changed. More and more organizations are now adapting to the motto ‘Power is where Knowledge is, Power is where capital is”.