'Few Indian CEOs give priority to mentoring'

IN CONVERSATION

Poonam Barua is Regional Director - India, at The Conference Board (New York), representative of its top-management forum on Human Resources Council - India, and also of its Council on Corporate Governance & Risk Management - India. The Conference Board is a 90-year-old not-for-profit research organisation that provides its members- top executives from leading corporations in the US and around the world- with business intelligence and practical knowledge about best practices in management. Ms Barua talks to Archana Mohan on the need for mentoring in India Inc.

What does the concept of mentoring mean for an organisation?

Mentoring is a developmental guiding relationship"" a critical management foundation in all successful global companies and organizations.

The purpose of a "mentor" is to provide leadership and inspiration at all levels of the organization, and support and assist executives in their learning on how to drive a successful organization.

The key areas mentors will need to address are: a) understanding the organizational cultures; b) handling pressures and change in transition and business; c) confidence building with colleagues and all stakeholders; d) self-management and being politically correct in decision-taking; e) career guidance and self-development for taking on additional responsibilities and growing within the organization.

How is mentoring viewed in corporate India today?

I believe that the best HR heads in Indian companies seem to have relegated the mentoring function to a lower priority.

While this is understandable given the high business pressures on HR emerging from recruitment/ rentention/ compensation issues, a company will be unable to build long-term talent competencies for supporting business growth without the mentoring function.

Similarly, in spite of people and talent management issues being a top challenge today for most Indian CEOs, there are only a few CEOs who give high prioirity to the delivery of mentoring from their HR Directors.

On the other hand, there are CEOs like Adi Godrej, Nandan Nilekani, Azim Premji, KV Kamath, Pramod Bhasin and Anand Mahindra, who place a high priority on mentoring within their companies.

How important is mentoring for Indian organizations in the present context?

Mentoring will be key to India sustaining its advantage as the global business leader in the newer segments of industry like information technology, pharma research, BPO, manufacturing, automobiles, petroleum industry, telecommunications, etc. It will also have a critical impact on raising the bar for Indian businesses to become globally competitive.

Also, the system as a whole will benefit in providing a broad-based foundation for an excellent business workforce for the future, instead of a few high-potential individuals, who are not sufficient to deliver the magnitude of talent that corporate India will require from its future workforce.

Most of the larger companies have executive training and motivation programmes in place. Is this a part of mentoring?

There is a difference between mentoring and training executives to maintain the competency pipeline in the organization. There are many Indian companies that have training processes in position"" ICICI Bank, Bharti Airtel, Tata Consultancy, Tata Group companies, AV Birla Group, most BPO companies"" but they are not necessarily mentoring programmes.

Many companies bring in a consultant under the pretence of offering mentoring programmes, but in reality this is what we call executive coaching.

An executive coach studies interpersonal relations, office politics, corporate culture and counsels CEOs and senior functional managers to wield their power more effectively, but mentoring is much more than that.

Other than mentoring, which HR areas do you think India Inc needs to focus on?

Some areas that should receive priority for building long-term leadership in organizations are: Building sustainable talent competencies across a range of company functions, and not just in hiring and retaining good people; cross-cultural diversity, to deliver business results in any part of the world and understand its challenges with an open mind; understanding global business and how multinationals perform at best-in-class levels on a global execution scale; tackling how to build effective leaders across-the-board instead of concentrating leadership in a handful of senior management; understanding the critical importance of business ethics and good governance within the organization, and cascading it as a corporate culture; and measuring human capital development within the organization. A high attrition rate is being observed in companies all over. Your comments.

People who hire other people are also individuals with their own preferences, mindsets and biases. The entire hiring process is somewhat complicated and varies from individual to individual, company to company.

The most common mistake in hiring is to offer a job to someone just because they have qualities similar to the employer. Most employers later regret that and wish they had hired someone different.

Between all this, the employee gets disillusioned. He or she comes to the organization with a set of goals and expects the company's vision to run parallel with personal accomplishments.

And who best to co-ordinate this for the employee than a mentor? Attrition levels can easily be brought down if HR personnel start thinking like economists rather than HR personnel!