Organisations often create a lot of "make work" which is soul sapping, says leadership coach Jennifer Garvey Berger
Jennifer Garvey Berger, designer, teacher and coach of leadership programmes
Jennifer Garvey Berger designs and teaches leadership programmes, coaches senior leaders and their teams, and supports new ways of thinking about strategy and people. In her four highly-acclaimed books, she builds on theoretical knowledge to offer practical ways to make leaders’ organisations more successful, their work more meaningful, and their lives more gratifying. Berger has trained senior executives of some of the world’s biggest business organisations and government sectors around the world, including Novartis, Google, Intel, and Microsoft.
In Mumbai to conduct a workshop with top business leaders in February, US-based Berger spoke to Forbes India about how leadership is a skill that can be learnt, how leaders can motivate their teams and foster good culture at a time of mass layoffs and low employee morale, and how leaders should be allowed to fail, much like sportspeople. Edited excerpts:
Q. What are the different issues you have seen business leaders in legacy companies and new-age startups face?
There are different challenges in these two sorts of organisations; they have different strengths and weaknesses, and what the leader has to do to pull into the future is quite different. In legacy organisations, the challenge for leaders is to change, and change fast enough. A lot of these organisations are not just old, they are also quite large and often with a lot of parts that fight change. Culture change, making innovation happen, and being more agile are tricky, and what works in one part of India, or in one country, may not work in a different place. So, the huge challenge is: How do you innovate while keeping the lights on?
In a startup, they're not trying to change, but are in a wave of change all the time. They're trying to figure out how much of their vision they can hold on to, and how much they have to be flexible with, since a lot of the funding and power comes from outside and the funders are looking for short, fast returns; their objectives are often very different from the founders’ objectives. The companies are growing so fast that it strains the leadership capability. They think they don't have time to stop and breathe and develop the leadership capacity they need.