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Australian Financial Review, January 22, 2002 He counts leading management expert Peter Senge as his mentor, has credentials from the world's top business schools and travels the globe giving seminars to stressed business executives. But in many ways Debashis Chatterjee is unlike the management gurus we have come to expect. In fact, he's more like a traditional guru. He speaks softly and listens carefully. His opinions are thoughtfully delivered. He gives small gifts to people he meets as a memento of the experience. The fact that Chatterjee is in demand internationally for his thoughts on leadership and management says much about the soul-searching taking place in the corporate world as well as the growing popularity of Eastern approaches to the business realm. Chatterjee was in Australia late last year to run a retreat for business executives and to deliver a speech to the International Spiritual Leadership and Management Conference in Canberra. While Chatterjee now works in his home country of India, until recently he ran the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the Sloan School of Management at MIT, and his book Leading Consciously is published internationally. His work is a fusion of strands from recent thinking about organisational leadership, particularly the emphasis on a more holistic humanistic approach to work and the search for meaning in the workplace. Asked to define leadership, Chatterjee says it is about drawing out qualities from others. Leadership is a metaphor for a human being in evolution, he says, and the process behind leadership is the evolution to the human self. Leaders lead people to themselves,'' says Chatterjee. If they are not doing this they are in dealership.'' And it has become such a critical issue because there is no quality in leadership in business, he says. Organisations are failing to deliver values, and while many people are feeling OK about making money, they are not happy about the way they make it. I see the disconnect [between rhetoric and action] everywhere. Business wants the results now. But action is next to emotion. The values in action do not necessarily cohere with the stated values. I call it the truth ache the idea that I am part of my old conditioning.'' The way to instil leadership is not about new processes or formulas. The challenge is no longer technical I cannot downsize and deliver leadership,'' says Chatterjee. It's an adaptive challenge and calls for the capacity to relate to people.'' That's not a quality every chief executive has, he adds. The title CEO is just nomenclature. A leader is someone who has an expression of a set of values. The CEO should be able to say: I have created a context where people have the capacity to build a community. It's no longer a question of my technical ability', and this can also translate into brand value. The point is we are now entering a state of the world where leadership is not going to be something we can take lightly or we can learn at school.'' Business schools, he quickly adds, have a role but have been misguided in this area. Leaders can be taught if they are already one. It can be learnt, but not through programs. It's the opposite to what we are doing, because then all Harvard graduates would be making a hell of a lot of difference to the world, but they are not talking about leadership but success. And you cannot study leadership like you study the atom.'' Change is under way, however. I see a lot of hope in India, where I am a professor in a leading business school in an underdeveloped part of India. You are already seeing a change incorporates and we will see the reality on another plane. This is a strategy of engagement, not direction. The human being comes first and the customer comes second. I can see this taking shape in a very big way all over the world.'' But looking for answers from icons such as GE's Jack Welch is no solution, he warns. It's sad to see the demand for management magic formulas or role models, he says. Welch is the exact antithesis of what it means to be human'', says Chatterjee. If we are looking for people like Welch to lead us, it is an indictment of the business world, he says. Chatterjee admires some business leaders enormously. Dee Hock of Visa is one. And his old mentor, Senge, has influenced his work, which is increasingly in demand around the world. The global appeal of his message is based on its humanity, he says. People are saying I want to go to a place where I'm fulfilled as a human being. Leadership, in the future, will be distributed. And corporate chiefs who don't recognise that will not be in charge for long, and we will not have models like Jack Welch.'' Debashis Chatterjee: kunurika@hotmail.com
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Copyright © 2002 Macquarie Institute, Australia
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