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Category: HR (page 1 of 6)

C-Level Leadership Trends from Korn Ferry and Related Reflections

The grass is not as green as it looks when it comes to corporate C-level leadership. Are C-suite jobs becoming more complex and short lived? If you are an aspiring C-suite leader, what does this mean for you?

These are selected notes from recent Korn Ferry Insight articles:

* According to recent updates from Korn Ferry, around 222 CEOs (US) left their roles in January, the highest number for the month in at least 23 years.  This comes after a record 2,221 top bosses – at US public, private, or government organizations – left their posts in 2024, a figure which itself topped the prior record of 1,914 set a year earlier.

* Disruption is a major cause of CEOs leaving, and then the CEO actually leaving is probably impacting that disruption further. Directors, themselves under pressure from a surge in activist investors, are showing less patience with CEOs who aren’t delivering positive results. At one point in 2024, nearly 40% of CEOs who left were forced out.

* When a CEO quits, it’s almost always a shock to the system. “All types of dynamics surface calling the success of the company’s future into question”.
As a result, experts say that firms need to make a special effort to develop promising talent. That may mean identifying potential successors who are currently working two or even three layers below the CEO job. 

* Firms also seem to be reducing C-suite roles by collapsing and combining positions. Some tech companies have merged the CFO/COO roles, for instance, while others have folded CCO duties into those of the CMO – a role that has added responsibilities for sales, customer experience, and more – or have rebranded them under titles like CRO. This may be because combining roles could enable firms to respond faster to changes involving markets and competitors. The role-merging has happened thus far only on a small but noticeable scale.

* Developing C-suite leaders with cross-functional experience also helps firms build a pipeline of ready successors. Still, experts caution that consolidation in the C-suite runs risks. The executive who’s taking on the additional responsibilities might not perform well in their new role. Burnout is a risk.


These are some of my reflections:
1. Companies have to increase focus on consciously developing and retaining leaders. Only focused efforts lead to positive outcomes at a systemic level.
2. A CEO change mostly leads to further leadership, talent and structural organizational changes. This can lead to major disruptions for talent, especially when uncertainty is high. Key talent engagement and retention should be on top of a leader’s agenda in such environments.
3. When a senior leader takes on multiple functions, time and attention tends to become a major challenge. Consciously or sub consciously, some teams and topics will get lesser leadership attention, leading to frustration for those members. This could lead to further disengagement. In such scenarios, it becomes critical for C-level leaders to ensure a strong second level of leaders, who can lead with high autonomy.
4. There seems to be increased chatter about broader job cuts in organizations in 2025 as well (which normally accompanies organization, work structure changes across all levels). eg. even when teams get consolidated, there are leadership and direction changes, which end up impacting even the junior levels.
5. Based on the trend of consolidation of leadership responsibilities, cross-functional/generalist experience could be back into serious leadership development focus.

Sources:
* The Shrinking C-Suite?; March 18, 2025; Korn Ferry Insights
* The Great CEO Exodus… Continues; March 12, 2025; Korn Ferry Insights

Middle Manager Reality Check

Image Source: Robin Higgins, Pixabay

Middle Managers often feel “sandwiched” and frustrated in organizations, especially during changes. Recent studies indicate further reduction in the number of middle managers in organizations.
How do middle managers navigate successfully, manage selves and stay increasingly relevant in a fast changing/evolving world?
Organizations also need to tread cautiously with a longer term perspective and focused work on changing mindset and culture, as they plan changes.

These are selected notes, interesting data from a couple of Korn Ferry articles – Where’d My Manager Go? (LinkedIn), and A World with No Managers? (Korn Ferry website).

* Last year, in a sign of the aggressiveness with which firms are removing them, middle managers represented 31.5% of all layoffs, and an average of 22% between 2018 and 2022.
* And when middle managers depart voluntarily, they are not being replaced, which creates a void in leadership.
“If you cut and cut and cut, but don’t change mindsets, you can accelerate vertical hierarchy,” says Mark Arian, CEO of Korn Ferry Consulting. “You can end up in a bit of a death spiral.”
* In theory, trimming the middle layer can strengthen workflows: Autonomy and decision-making extend downward, and customer responsiveness improves, along with accountability and morale. But “that doesn’t necessarily happen”. In practice, sometimes authority coalesces at top levels, leaving underlings awaiting signals.
* But experts say today’s middle managers are under unprecedented pressure. Half are burned-out. Thirty percent are too stressed to support their teams, according to employees participating in LinkedIn’s Workforce Confidence survey.
* Experts advise firm leaders to proceed with great caution. “When you get rid of middle managers, the margin for error becomes minuscule.”
* Rather than making deep cuts, experts advise piloting studies of new organizational structures.
* Experts advise training teams to be inclusive and knowledgeable about the expertise and leadership of each trainee.

In my observation and personal experiences, during most times after the organizational deep cuts, the vaccum between the top and front line grows leading to major communication gaps and frustration among team members. Top levels of the organizations do not end up having sufficient time to manage the increased demands and need for attention. For those reasons, it is extremely important to work on workforce culture and mindset changes proactively, in order to ensure better readiness. Most times, there is a mad scramble after the quick cuts are implemented. It is also important to think about the inter generational shifts in the workplace and related impacts.

Is Being In HR Getting Tougher?

McKinsey recently shared an interesting discussion regarding how the HR function’s own stress is showing. This is a very relevant and needed discussion because during most times of intense changes, HR members also feel exasperated and in a thankless role (referenced in a recent New York Times article). They feel caught in between, and hit from all sides. Many HR professionals can relate to this discussion, based on their own experiences.

One differentiator for great HR professionals and leaders is that they take the time to reflect, process, learn from the challenges and figure out ways to work through them proactively with a growth mindset. This discussion is valuable food for thinking for not just HR professionals but also for all key stakeholders.

Here are some highlight notes for me from the discussion.

* Research reporting that 35 percent of HR leaders surveyed don’t believe their management team cares about their mental health.
* The HR function lives in the friction between caring for the employee and caring for the organization. 
* Organizations need to understand the importance of partnering with their HR colleagues and engaging them early when they’re thinking about strategic changes. The earlier you engage your HR business partners in those conversations, the better it is for the organization.
* When it comes to capability building, we need to be thoughtful about what we put on HR versus the rest of the enterprise and ensure that people leadership is a joint capability.
* It’s very easy to add things to the portfolio of trainings, surveys, and information gathering. It’s a lot harder to stop doing things. So creating and building that muscle and challenging the status quo is something that every organization needs.
* As an HR leader, I can bring joy if I can be my authentic self with a team that is excited to work with me and views my input as a real contribution. 
* If my day-to-day is going to be more joyful, more energetic, and more fun, then I am working with people I like and respect who like and respect me. And we’re engaging on some cool topics together, making our organization a better place.
* Sometimes HR is the messenger caught in the middle.
* Over time, the administrative side will likely become easier or more automated. However, there is still an unbelievable need for a human element that can translate even self-serve tools to help a colleague in need.
* Trust is hard earned but can go away in a second. And it can go away in a second because of HR but also, unfortunately, because of business leaders. It’s important to be thoughtful in those moments. The unified voice helps build trust, but a little division amplifies quickly across teams and organizations. If leaders understood that impact, they might choose their words differently.
* We also need to build trust within HR. HR has to stick up for HR, too. And everybody has to own the full agenda. We need everybody in HR to speak up. Otherwise, you may build immediate trust but undermine trust in HR as a whole.

Source:
Why being in HR is getting tougher—and how to break through; November 1, 2024; McKinsey & Company







About Fear And Resilience In Organizations

Content Credit: BiancaVanDijk (Pixabay)

I wanted to share some useful notes from the book, “The Psychology Of Fear In Organizations” by Dr. Sheila M Keegan, a Chartered Psychologist, and Fellow of the Market Research Society and Bath Business School. A lot of these play out in organizations every day and it helps a lot for leaders to be aware.

*Business psychologist and coach, Chris Welford identifies five telltale signs of a fear-based culture.
1. There is a preoccupation with status and conformity, and where rules have precedence over common sense.
2. Distinct in-groups exist and there is little opportunity to cross the boundaries between them.
3. Everything is measured but nothing is questioned.
4. Appraisals are only ever one-way.
5. The accent is on pace but short-term gain is known to be at the long term cost.

…Not surprisingly, in a fearful working climate, employees tend to mirror the behaviour of their managers. Management over-control generally has the effect of discouraging risk-taking, squashing initiatives and dispelling creativity and novel thinking.

… Feeling fearful, threatened or undermined at work can have a major effect on our work performance, as well as on our mental and physical health. Fear impacts our relationships with our colleagues and managers. We bring fear home with us…

How To Develop Personal Resilience, A Critical Element For Working Effectively Through Fear
…On a personal level, developing resilience is an ongoing process that involves a mixture of adjustments. Resilience can be developed by:
* having supportive work networks and healthy relationships.
* focusing time and energy on things we have some control over, rather than expending energy on aspects that are outside our control.
* actively looking for opportunities for self discovery and broadening our perspectives.
* practising cognitive restructuring: changing the way in which we think about negative situations.
* paying attention to our body as well as our mind, paying attention to one’s own needs and feelings.
* keeping a long term perspective, and considering the broader context.
* taking decisive actions.
* maintaining a hopeful outlook…

These are only few perspectives on a much broader topic.

Quick Evolution Of Skill Demand In Jobs – Data Analytics, AI, ML

India is already among countries with the greatest demand for data analytics from the workforce, around 17% of job postings already looking for data analytics skills.
Looks like the India job market is evolving fast, even in comparison with rest of the world. This also holds valuable food for thinking for the education ecosystem and how much/how well they cater to these requirements.

The snapshot above is from the Business Standard (based on data from Cornerstone) yesterday.

With all of the data push, there is an ever increasing need for focus on quality leadership, management practices and processes, and employee health and well being.

Notes on India Executive Compensation – from Deloitte India 2024 Rewards Report

Interesting notes on executive compensation from Deloitte’s 2024 India executive performance and rewards survey report. Noticed a related discussion on ET TV. According to Deloitte report site, their survey covers information from over 400 companies across all major sectors.

In general, executive compensation continues to grow, and evolve fast with the market. Senior leadership roles come with much higher complexity, risks, stress and decreasing tenure. All the more reason for CEOs to have sounding boards and coaching support.

According to a Mint analysis of data from the past decade (2020), a CEO or MD of an average BSE 500 company stayed in the role for 3.4 years. Fewer than half of Indian CEOs completed three years in office. The tenure varied with industry and women were underrepresented. The global average for the world’s largest 2500 companies during 2004-18 was 5 years (PwC study).

Regarding age, “in NSE-500 companies, a typical Indian CEO today is 57 years old (roughly similar to Fortune-500 firms, where the average age of the top executive is 57.7 years). For the mid and small sized companies, the average age of CEOs comes down to about 50-52 years.”

Notes from the Deloitte 2024 report:
* About 45% of S&P BSE 200 companies (excluding PSUs) witnessed a change in their CEO incumbent over the past five years.
Almost six of every 10 new CEOs have been internal promotions. Amongst homegrown CEOs, business heads or CEOs of other group/parent companies were chosen to be the successors. In case of external hires, 81% of the new external CEOs were sourced from the same sector.
* About 3 of every 4 CEOs in India now earn more than INR 5 crore [approx. USD 596,000].
* Faster increase in promoter CEO compensation compared with professional CEOs.
* Average CEO compensation in India stands at INR 13.8 crore [USD 1.6 million], up 40 percent compared with pre-COVID times.
* Fixed pay for promoter CEOs now constitutes over half of the total pay. For professional CEOs, pay-at-risk (Short Term Incentives + Long Term Incentives) is much higher at 57 percent of the total pay.
* Companies assess CEO performance holistically but largely link only financial performance to incentives.
* The prevalence of stock options or ESOPs dropped from 68% to 49% over the past five years despite more companies using LTI. Larger companies with more mature compensation practices are adopting performance shares faster, in line with global best practices.
* The wide gap between median and average CEO compensation [INR 9.3 crore versus INR 13.8 crore] indicates the wide range of compensation numbers and some outliers on the higher end.
* After the CEO role, COO and CFO roles continue to command the highest compensation premiums (followed by CHRO role).

References:
* Old is gold, but new-age cos…; Feb 6, 2024
* The average Indian CEO lasts less than 4 years…; Mint, Updated Oct 2020
* Deloitte 2024 Executive…Rewards Survey Report; Apr 2024

Recent Notes From BCG on Corporate Transformations

Recent data from BCG on corporate transformation and link with total shareholder return(TSR) hold valuable food for reflection.
We see transformation initiatives in most companies nowadays, especially when leadership changes happen.

Selected Notes from the article:

* The empirical patterns of transformation are quite stable: At any point in the past 20 years, roughly 30% of companies significantly underperformed their sector for a period of multiple years, making transformation a necessity for performance reasons.
* Successful transformations are the exception, rather than the norm, even when measured on very modest criteria. Only 26% of corporate transformations successfully created value in both the short and long terms. More than 70% of companies fail to outperform their industry peer group average in both the short (one year) and long term (five years), after a previous performance downturn period (numbers quite similar to the findings in 2018 report). Sustainable value creation through transformation remains so rare.

* Pre-emptive transformations create significantly more value in the medium and long run.
* A leadership change during a transformation is associated with higher TSR performance over the five-year time horizon. The positive impact is even higher if the new leadership comes from outside of the company. However, a change in leadership is not a guaranteed success driver.
* You cannot cut your way to greatness: differential growth is critical to sustained value creation.
* Achieving sustainable growth and a future-proof operating model requires entering transformations with a long-term orientation, rather than merely focusing on addressing performance woes or catching up to peers in terms of technology stack or organizational best practices. Beyond mindset, culture, and metrics, a long-term orientation also means investing in the exploration of new ideas that could be the basis of future advantage.
* Putting a formal transformation program in place, scale of the program and the willingness to invest in change matter. Formalizing the transformation entails defining a clear governance and process-or setting up a dedicated transformation office-for coordinating and tracking progress on change initiatives, as well as regularly communicating it to the executive leadership team so that roadblocks can be addressed promptly. Moreover, it may mean putting in place a chief transformation officer to helm an ambitious change effort, which our prior research shows can improve transformation odds significantly. The role must be designed appropriately and filled by someone who is persistent, vigilant, and flexible—and who is trained for the job.

Source: Five Truths (and One Lie) About Corporate Transformation, April 12, 2024, BCG

Conflict Competence In Teams, Cognitive Reappraisal, Leadership

These are selected notes from the book, “Building Conflict Competent Teams” (Craig Runde, Tim Flanagan; 2008).

Reappraising What’s Happening

“We often think that others’ motives are worse than they actually are, and this causes us to feel threatened and get upset. Looking at the situation to find less sinister motives can dampen your emotions. This process is referred to as reframing; that is, you consider the situation from new frames of reference.
It is associated with a psychological concept called cognitive reappraisal, described by a quote from Marcus Aurelius: “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Cognitive reappraisal means reinterpreting the meaning of what you see or hear. You may initially construe another person’s actions as hostile to your interests. Perhaps you think they are moving in on your turf or trying to make you look bad in front of others. Although this is certainly possible, there may be innocent reasons for their actions. Research has shown that reappraising situations can lessen emotional tension. In particular, changes in brain activity are analogous to those that occur when a person uses reflection and mindfulness techniques. When this happens, negative emotions lessen and more positive emotions emerge….

Team leaders can have a profound impact on the emotional climate of their teams. Leaders who demonstrate positive moods and effective emotional control can create a positive climate within their teams. When a leader conveys news, her tone and demeanor may have greater impact than the content of the message. The team leader plays a critical role, but all members of the team have to work together to address conflict effectively. They need to participate in developing and upholding team norms, which support and empower individual team members to step in when they see relationship conflict emerging that can harm the team. A team member who sees other teammates acting in ways that are breaching trust or contributing to destructive conflict can intercede and remind the others of the team norms for how to deal with conflict… “

Balancing Respect – Employers And Candidates

According to a recent Korn Ferry Briefings podcast (The Frenzy To Find Work), around 77% of job seekers were ‘ghosted’ (abruptly cutting off contact/all communication) by companies last year. Studies from the platform Indeed also indicate similar percentages in recent years.

According to a report from the hiring platform Greenhouse, around 45% of job candidates have been ghosted after an initial conversation with a recruiter. Researchers also found that candidates from historically underrepresented backgrounds are 62% more likely to be ghosted after a job interview.
These studies may be U.S. focused but I’m guessing this aspect of India market is not different.

During recent years, we saw companies complaining about candidates doing the same. When the job markets are strong, the pendulum tends to shift.

All parties seem to be overly focused on the short term. The reasons for ‘ghosting’ on either side could be many. This leads to classic “Lose-Lose” situations.

How can we think “Win-Win”?

Companies need to figure out at a bare minimum, to use technology (most tools nowadays support this) effectively to at least inform/update the candidates on where they stand (even if it’s a short message). Behaviors/habits of recruiters/recruitment teams need to be aligned. In many cases, these teams are short staffed and therefore, recruiters tend to focus/prioritise completely on closing open roles. Companies need to ensure that their brand value and trust do not erode by ignoring this important aspect.

Similarly, candidates also have a responsibility to inform companies on where they stand in terms of their decision making.

Think long term, win-win. This builds engagement and effectiveness both ways.

Toxic Work Environments

Toxic work environments can be dangerous, result in physical and mental health issues, and impact sustainable business results (often missed in the short term). Are they more widespread that we assume?

Poor leadership could be one of the leading causes and indicators.

Many will experience, are or would already have experienced a challenging, toxic work environment or leader at some point in their career. That can be debilitating and intense. It may also change you. It is difficult to understand pain until you’ve experienced it yourself.

* Among the top Predictors of Employee Turnover During the Great Resignation, professors from MIT Sloan and NYU Stern found (2022) that a toxic culture is 10.4 times more likely to contribute to attrition than compensation. A toxic corporate culture is by far the strongest predictor of industry-adjusted attrition.
* From a poll of 1,000 UK employees (2021), 7 in 10 Brits shared they’ve worked in a toxic environment at some stage of their career. According to Oak Engage’s Toxic Workplace Report (2023), 75% of UK employees admit they have experienced a toxic workplace culture. 87% agreed that a toxic workplace culture has had a negative impact on their mental health and 73% agreed that a toxic workplace culture has contributed to their burnout.
* According to a poll (2023) of more than 1,300 U.S. adults conducted by online career platform Muse, nearly two-thirds of workers have faced so-called toxic work environments.
* According to Talent Works (2022), the majority of women in technology have experienced toxic work environments, with 21% experiencing it frequently.
* According to one survey in India, tech workers are willing to accept lower salaries and even take pay cuts, if it means being a part of a company with a non-toxic work culture. In another one (2023), 87 per cent felt work-life balance is top priority for combatting toxic work culture and 31 per cent attribute pressure at the workplace as one of the main concerns for mental health issues.

What approaches have worked for you, to effectively manage through a toxic work environment?

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