<i>Reflexivity</i> in Leadership Coaching at a B-school in India

Abstract

The paper argues that India is no more just a jugaroo nation because of its growth trajectory among the lower middle-income economies. Innovation in India has begun to track above the average of the upper middle-income nations in all innovation indicators. India’s demographic profile of a young population needs to take advantage of this growth by using all the opportunities that the 21st. century has to offer. One such innovation in education is what the paper demonstrates as a doable model of leadership coaching. The author takes into account the significance of conventional leadership coaching and blends it with contemporary psychodynamic theory and organization-development practice. If one purpose of leader coaching is to build personalities beyond normal limitations, then education and training will have to provide non-threatening methods by which embedded dynamics in the inner theater of human personality can be explored. The case-study provides evidence of this education and exploration, drawing on Kolb’s experiential learning model, and offers an advanced leadership training course which unfolds over four modules, in an eight-year experience at a premier b-school in India. Young women and men in the final year of the MBA course become mindful and sensitive of their own influences and assumptions, and develop the ability to connect the internal psychodynamic world with societal and global processes that influence transferences and counter-transferences for effective decision-making as they get ready to take up leadership positions in various organizations. Business-case reviews about the decline and demise of enterprise bring home the dysfunctionalities of toxicity in individuals which, remaining unresolved, spreads to groups and organizations. Film-based discussions on neuro-psychology and neuro-elasticity demonstrate how the human brain messages changed responses to situations of toxicity-induced threats by releasing new and proactive leadership behaviors. Even if 10% of a Class carry forward the learning from this innovative paradigm of leadership coaching into day-to-day decision making, the original idea of young men and women who are aware of their own influences and assumptions in leadership positions will begin to snowball.