EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT AND ITS PRESENCE IN INDIA

While "executive" and "manager" and "leader" are often used

interchangeably, "executive" is commonly used to signify the top 5% to 10% of
the organization.

Introduction to Executive development program:

“Executive Development is an ongoing systematic process that assesses,

develops, and enhances one’s ability to carry out top-level roles in the
organization.”

EDP is the process of equipping people with the tools, knowledge and
opportunities they need to develop them and become more effective. This
process helps executives to address behavior or issues that are impending their
own job effectiveness. Executive development programme helps executives
strengthen management and leadership skills, increase company profitability,
develop succession planning to ensure company sustainability, and receive
customized training geared to their company’s needs. Today, it is the growth
that makes one person stay at the company. The opportunity and challenges is
what keeps a person satisfied and charmed with his job. Companies have
understood this fact and therefore are forming policies and procedures to
develop their employees.

Need of Executive Development Programme

Executives need development programmes in broadening their

understanding of how factors such as competition, world economies, politics,
and social trends influence the effectiveness of the organization. They need to
develop along with the changing needs of the organisation.

Where executive development program can be conducted?

Executive development programs can be organized in various situations i.e. on-

the- job or off-the-j ob in the company or outside the company. It involves the
use of many techniques. e.g. decision-making skills, interpersonal skills, job
knowledge, organizational knowledge, general knowledge by special courses,
meetings, conferences, group discussion, Executive Development Programme
seminars, get together etc.
Who execute EDP programmes?

These techniques of executive development program are deployed by executive

trainers, specialists, external trainers and educationists.
Approaches to EDP:

Basically there are 2 approaches---------

1) CLASSROOM METHOD

2) NON CLASSROOM METHOD

1) CLASSROOM METHOD : Classroom training takes place within the

organization or outside at seminars and universities. Some common
techniques followed in classroom method:

 LECTURE

 CASE METHOD

 ROLE PLAYING

LECTURE:

Most training experts criticize lectures because they are passive learning
devices, focusing on one-way communication to learners who do not have the
opportunity to clarify material. Lectures generally fail to gain and maintain
learner attention unless they are given by someone who is able to make the
material meaningful and promote questions and discussions. Lectures are most
appropriate for situations where simple knowledge acquisition is the goal (e.g.,
describing company history during a new employee orientation session).
However, lectures are not well suited to serve as the sole training method for
teaching management skills, because the format does not provide trainees with
feedback or the opportunity for practice.

CASE METHOD

As the name suggests, the case method requires management trainees to analyze
cases or scenarios depicting realistic job situations. Cases often are structured
like a play that opens in the middle of a story and uses flashbacks to describe
the action that led up to the opening scene, where an employee has just made a
key decision. The rest of the case lays out the documentation and data available
to the decision maker at the time of the decision. Questions are posed at the end
of the case that ask the trainees to analyze the situation and recommend a
solution. For instance, they may be asked to state the nature of the problem,
identify the events that led to the problem, and indicate what the individual
should do to resolve the problem.
The case method rests on the assumption that people are most likely to retain
and use what they learn if they reach an understanding through "guided
discovery." Trainers act as guides or facilitators. Cases typically do not have
right or wrong answers. Therefore, the aim of the method is not to teach trainees
the "right" answer, but rather to teach them how to identify potential problems
and recommend realistic actions.

Critics of this method balk at the lack of direction trainees receive when
analyzing a case. What if they arrive at a poor decision? Moreover, trainees do
not get the opportunity to practice their skills. For instance, after analyzing a
case involving a subordinate who has repeatedly arrived at work late, the
trainees may conclude that the manager should have said something sooner and
must now provide counsel. However, the case method does not afford trainees
the opportunity to practice their counseling skills.

ROLE-PLAYING

As an instructional technique, role-playing presents a hypothetical problem

involving human interaction. Trainees spontaneously act out that interaction
face-to-face. Participants are then given feedback by the trainer and the rest of
the group on their performance so they may gain insight regarding the impact of
their behavior on others. The issues addressed during feedback typically revolve
around these types of questions:

 What was correct about the participant's behavior?

 What was incorrect about the participant's behavior?
 How did the participant's behavior make the other participants feel?
 How could the trainee have handled the situation more effectively?

Role-playing may be used to develop skill in any area that involves human
interaction. The method is most often used for teaching human relations
skills and sales techniques. Role-playing provides management trainees with
an opportunity to practice the skill being taught. It thus goes beyond the case
method, which merely requires the trainee to make a decision regarding how
to handle a situation. These two methods are often used in conjunction with
one another. That is, after analyzing a case and recommending a solution,
trainees are asked to act out the solution in the form of a role-play.

Critics of the role-playing method point out that role-players are often given
little guidance beforehand on how to handle transactions. This may cause them
to make mistakes, resulting in embarrassment and a loss of self-confidence.
When their mistake-ridden role-play is finished, they sit, never getting the
opportunity to do it correctly.
NON CLASSROOM METHOD: Some common non classroom techniques
are:

 CAREER RESOURCE CENTRE

 JOB ROTATION

 COACHING AND MENTORING

 SPECIAL ASSIGNMENTS

CAREER RESOURCE CENTERS

Some organizations make learning opportunities available to interested

candidates by establishing career resource centers, which usually include an in-
house library with relevant reading material. In some companies, candidates
simply are given recommended readings lists. Other companies provide
management candidates with comprehensive career-planning guides that
contain company-related information about available resources, career options,
and counseling contacts. These individuals also may be given workbooks that
provide written assignments.

JOB ROTATION

Job rotation exposes management trainees to various organizational settings by

rotating them through a number of departments. Thus, trainees have an
opportunity to gain an overall perspective of the organization and learn how
various parts interrelate. Additionally, they face new challenges during these
assignments that may foster new skill development. Trainees usually have full
management responsibility during these assignments. For example, in one
hospital new department supervisors rotate through all major departments on a
monthly basis, serving in a managerial capacity during their "tours." Although
they often learn a lot from such training, they also may make harmful mistakes
during their learning period because they lack knowledge of the functional area
that they are supervising.

COACHING AND MENTORING

Coaching is a method of management development that is conducted on the job,

in which experienced managers or peers advise and guide trainees in solving
managerial problems. Typically, less experienced managers are coached by
their direct supervisor or a coworker on their specific performance of
managerial tasks. An upper-level manager is likely to coach several lower-level
managers at once, offering feedback, helping them to find expert advice, and
providing resources.

Mentoring is different from coaching in several ways. Mentors are experienced

supervisors who establish close, one-on-one relationships with new managers,
called protégés. A mentor usually is someone two or three levels higher in the
organization than the protégé who teaches, guides, advises, counsels, and serves
as a role model; the mentor is not necessarily the protégé's direct supervisor.
Mentoring can help the protégé to form common values with the organization's
senior leadership and better understand his or her role in the company.
Additionally, protégés are often advocated for and protected by a mentor. A
mentor may ensure that the protégé is assigned high-visibility projects, or even
change negative opinions about the protégé that may be held by others in the
company. While a coach focuses on job-specific advice, a mentor is likely to
give advice on a broader range of topics related to the protégé's career success.

SPECIAL ASSIGNMENT

Companies sometimes assign special, nonroutine job duties to trainees in order

to prepare them for future assignments. One such special project is called action
learning, which derives its name from the fact that the trainees can learn by
doing. Candidates are given real problems generated by management. Trainees
might be given a written assignment that specifies objectives, action plans,
target dates, and the name of the person responsible for monitoring the
completion of the assignment. For instance, trainees might be asked to study the
company's budgeting procedures and submit a written critique.

Another type of special project is the task force, where trainees are grouped
together and asked to tackle an actual organizational problem. For example, the
task force may be asked to develop a new performance appraisal form, solve a
quality problem, or design a program to train new employees. Trainees not only
gain valuable experience by serving on a task force, they also have the
opportunity to "show their stuff" to others within the organization.

CATEGORIES OF EXECUTIVE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME

Executive development programmes fall into 2 categories:

Internal EDP: such programmes are internal to the organization. These are
organized by the organization itself.

External EDP: such programmes are external to the organization, i.e. these are
organized by institutes outside the organization.
Examples in India’s context:

In the private sector, Tata management Development Centre (TMDC)at

Jamshedpur conducts such programmes for Tata executives . Kirloskargroup,
Reliancegroup And Lakshmi group(Chennai) have developed their own
executive development centers to train their executives on general and
organization specific issues. In addition ,in-house training division of the
business houses are also developing requisite infrastructure to train their
executives ,in an attempt to reduce their dependence on outside agencies. In the
public sector , Steel Authority of India Ltd. (SAIL) has its full-fledged
executive development centre at Ranchi.

Institutes offering Executive Development Programme in India for

executive to different emerging problems of the corporate world. :-
 Administrative Staff College of India
 Management Development Institute
 Indian Institute of Management
 Quality Management International
 National Institute of Training in Industrial Engineering
 All India Management Association
 Indian Society for Training and Development
 National Institute of Personal Management.

Themes of Executive Development Programme

 LESSONS ON STRATEGIC THINKING

 CUSTOMER FOCUS
 DEVELOPING LISTENING SKILLS
 TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS
 DEVELOPING OTHERS
 CONFLICT RESOLUTION
 CONFIDENCE
 LEARN FROM MISTAKES
 MANAGING CHANGE
 RELATIONSHIP BUILDING

Why EDPs fail ???

Most of the business organizations fail to provide an environment which

can be
encourage, nurture and promote the growth of executive development, i.e., a
climate which can
Executive Development Programme supports it rather than oppose. Following
reasons may be listed to failure of executive development programmes:

1. Purpose of the executive development efforts in most of the organizations are

often characterized by insincerity .They conduct it as and a matter of ritual
rather than a systematic one. Some organizations also arrange EDP for their
executive only to enable them to enjoy a paid vacation.
2. Some organizations are too much concerned to get the immediate benefits of
EDPs. They always concern themselves with the immediate pay-out and select
EDP s which are designed only to impart business like knowledge rather than
giving philosophic ideas or conceptual insights.
3.Organizations retain the service of consultant and professionals trainers to
conduct EDP s for their executives .Such an arrangement often suffers from
difficulties , happenings in the organizations , as such professional trainers and
consultant do not get adequate information about the functioning of the
organization for whom the programs are designed. Due to absence of interaction
with such outside agencies, EDPs suffer from major limitations like
impracticability in introduction, irrelevance, etc.
4. In some cases, lessons imparted in EDP s are in direct conflict with the
philosophy of the
Organization. Such incongruence, therefore, becomes a source of immediate
frustration
for the executives as they confront different situations in the respective
organizations.
5. There is no system to evaluate the effectiveness of the EDP s by such outside
agencies.
Post training evaluation system, in the form of scientific feedback mechanism,
therefore,
is considered essential for success of such programmes.

CONCLUSION:

There is a wide range of practices in the field of executive development today.

On one hand, there are organizations that have for many years had very
thorough executive development programmes. On the other end of the
spectrum, there are some organizations that have curtailed many of the
executive development activities.

SUBMITTED
BY:

SANGHAMITRA DEY (Roll no:

47)
 SANTANU KAUSHIK
BORA(Roll no: 48)
SARMISTHA BORA(Roll no:49)
SEEMA SAIKIA(Roll no: 50)