Asian CEOs need to develop next-gen leaders to sustain growth

SINGAPORE: To sustain the rapid business growth in India and the entire Asia, a proactive and strategic focus on leadership development for organisations has become imperative, a latest survey says.

According to a study by global consultancy The Gallup Organisation commissioned by Singapore Ministry of Manpower, the absence of strategic focus on leadership development would make it even more difficult for the next generation of leaders in the region to assume leadership roles.

"Organisational leaders may spend 90 per cent of their time running their organisations and 10 per cent of their time identifying and grooming the next leader. But often it is the latter 10 per cent of the effort that will help solve 90 per cent of out future problems," Singapore Workforce Development Agency Chief Executive Ong Ye Kung said.

"There are different models for developing leaders and it will be interesting to hear the experiences of leaders across different Asian countries and cultures at the Singapore Human Capital Summit," Kung added.

The study, conducted jointly with University of Nebraska, evaluated leadership profiles in two Indian cities -- Mumbai and Bangalore -- and four other Asian cities: Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore.

As per the study, which would be released next month during the Singapore Human Capital Summit, CEOs in Asia expressed a willingness to develop the next generation of leaders in their respective organisations, but very few of them are proactive and strategic in doing so.



The Singapore Human Capital Summit would be organised by the Singapore Ministry of Manpower and Workforce Development Agency (WDA) in October.

About 89 per cent of the CEOs provided mentorship when asked by their employees, while only 23 per cent had formal mentoring programmes in place. The study revealed that very few of these CEOs were driving a strategic mentoring programme in their respective organisations.

The survey also highlighted areas that Asian leaders could improve upon. Employees in Mumbai, Bangalore, Beijing and Hong Kong feel their leaders should be more people centric and focus more to develop their staff.

While, employees in Mumbai and Bangalore among others also think that their leaders could respond more effectively to adversity and recover more effectively from it.

"Our studies show that many organisations fail to grow rapidly and strongly because they have poorly prepared their leadership bench strength to sustain rapid growth. It is not too late for us to start thinking how we can deal with this leadership challenge but we will have to move swiftly if Asia is to sustain and accelerate its growth," The Gallup Organisation managing partner Peter Ong said.

Besides, the study also found that a majority of the CEOs believe job rotations and cross-cultural exchanges are more valuable career milestones as compared to more traditional formal classroom leadership training.

Most of the employees in the six cities surveyed were optimistic about their CEOs leadership, ranking them favourably against leadership qualities such as the ability to adapt to rapid changes, emphasis on development and mentoring ethical standards.