04 Sep Navigating the Evolving World of Corporate Coaching
Hastha Krishan speaks with Dr. Shalini Lal about the evolving roles of mentorship and coaching in today’s professional landscape, especially in India. Dr. Lal shares her insights on adapting leadership to rapid changes, fostering a digital mindset, continuous learning, and the impact of AI on career development and organizational design. Through her organization Unqbe, Dr. Lal helps leaders build future-readiness for themselves and their teams.
Hastha: Let me begin by asking if you are a mentor or a coach, or is there a mild or significant overlap.
Dr. Shalini Lal: Coaching is often easier to define because it tends to be a paid assignment with clear objectives, so it’s obvious when I’m in a coaching role. Mentorship, however, is less straightforward. Many people reach out to me for advice and guidance, and while I provide support, I often wonder if that makes me a mentor. It’s not always clear. There’s a very thin line between these two roles in India.
While there’s a clear differentiation between coaching and mentoring in other parts of the world, my experience is more rooted in the Indian context, where these roles often overlap. People often reach out to me, especially because they see me on LinkedIn or something I shared resonates with them. They want to have a conversation, and I frequently do these pro bono career sessions. I used to call them micro-coaching sessions since they are usually 30 minutes long. If someone has a career dilemma, they can reach out to me. Every few months, I set aside a day specifically for these sessions.
Hastha: Considering that the future of work is evolving even as we speak, how do you think organisations and individuals can effectively handle this changing paradigm?
Dr. Shalini Lal: To be honest, we have already entered an era of very rapid change in the external environment, which means all of us have to keep growing. Different people find different ways to do this. Some look for a mentor with expertise and experience who can offer guidance. Mentorship of this nature could be a more general role, like a friend, philosopher, or guide who provides support over time. Or someone specialised who’s an expert in a particular area that isn’t easily found through a quick search on ChatGPT or Google. People are looking for mentors who have already solved the problems they’re currently facing and can help them navigate those challenges. In this era of massive change, if you’re proactive, you’re searching for people who have the experience to help guide you through the process.
Hastha: There are always challenges in business. In India, what are the main challenges when it comes to building a free marketplace, particularly regarding leadership tools, supporting culture, and organisational design?
Dr Shalini Lal: Traditionally, our country has a culture characterised by what’s technically known as “power difference.” This means that in hierarchical relationships, the gap between someone senior and someone junior often also translates into a significant power difference. If you look at research globally, you’ll often find that India is one of the countries with high power differences. Here, hierarchy matters—people care about your level in the organisation and interact with you differently based on how senior or influential you are.
In addition, we place a lot of weight on legacy and experience in India. We respect people who have been around for a long time, which makes sense given our history as an agricultural civilisation. Someone who has seen many seasons come and go would naturally have a much better perspective than someone with only a few years of experience. However, we now live in a world where old solutions seldom help. This shift means that while experience and legacy are valuable, we also need to be open to new ideas and approaches. We may think we know an answer – but we are hallucinating in our own little worlds. It’s also a challenge now because if you’ve worked for a long time, as I have done for the past few decades, you might believe you have the answers.
However, we often find ourselves in our own bubbles, assuming that the way we’ve always done things is still relevant when it may no longer be. This is a significant challenge in traditional organisations: how can fresh thinking be encouraged when senior people only sometimes realise that their perspective might not be the best way to look at the world anymore?
Hastha: Today, compared to a decade or a decade and a half ago, mentees come from a completely different school of thought. They tend to revalidate their mentors’ points of view with ChatGPT, articles from various sources and possibly, YouTube videos. They seek diverse perspectives. So, today’s decision-making is entirely different from how it was in the past. Your perspectives on this?
Dr. Shalini Lal: A few decades ago, it was challenging to access so much information. But today, with AI—and I use it all the time—I can tell you there isn’t a single day that goes by without me verifying my ideas. I’m very conscious of the fact that I might think I have the answer, but I could be completely wrong. So, I validate anything I think of by using an AI platform to see if I’m missing something I should learn.
Today, it doesn’t matter what your level is or what your past accomplishments are; no one can afford to have a mindset that they’ve figured it all out.
Hastha: Does Unqbe also handle OD initiatives?
Dr. Shalini: Yes, I’ve spent an entire year working on OD for the age of AI. I’m planning on creating a course around it. I will call the course ‘OD in the Age of AI’ because, you know, I wanted it to be all about developing organisations in a very different set of circumstances from the traditional OD way of looking at things. OD was born in a very different era, 75 years ago.
Hastha: Your book, ‘The Secret Life of Organizations,’ was published in 2019. What has changed since then, and what has remained the same?
Dr. Shalini Lal: I actually feel like withdrawing the book. Honestly, so much has changed since it was written. The work for the book started in 2013-2014, almost a decade ago, from the point of view of what lessons we can learn about building a career. Some of it may still hold, but we are living in a very different world, a much more fluid world, where career ladders have to be created. They indeed do not exist anymore. Pathways to reach the top are unclear because the competencies required to be a leader change every 18 to 24 months, and that’s the work we do with organisations. You know we have redefined leadership competencies at a senior level. The book was written for a different world, a different time!
Hastha: You mean to say frameworks and templates don’t work in OD?
Dr. Shalini Lal: Not at all. The work we do works with organisations on the evolving leadership roles, the changing leadership competencies, and how to prepare leaders for a very fast-changing world. How can people prepare for a career path that eventually leads them to the next level? It is so fluid that traditional competency mapping feels like kindergarten stuff.
The world has changed so much that what we are doing for 2024 may not be valid for August 2025. It will be a different set of competencies, and I don’t know what they would be at this point, but it will be something different – of that, I’m sure. This is how I see it: because we’re living in a fast-changing world, the earlier concept of a mentor, viz., someone who has been on that journey before and can guide you, has changed.
It has nothing to do with what the journey will look like in tomorrow’s era. Yesterday’s solutions are outdated for sure. So, there are going to be two broad categories of mentors.
The first are those whom people trust. They are just wise people who are needed because they know something deeper and possess an evergreen understanding of the world. Not merely because ten years ago they did something remarkable.
The second is a kind of mentor I have always been searching for! This person has done something very specific that you want to do but have yet to be able to. For example, I’m looking for someone who can generate a good enterprise sales funnel or someone who can teach me how to solve a specific, complex problem. That person could be any age – it doesn’t matter. But that person should have solved the issue today so they could tell you how to do it today.
We will see the emergence of many of these people – with information you cannot get in the public domain—someone who is very hands-on and has solved the problem like yesterday. The kind of mentorship that’s very specific, based on a particular situation. These mentors can be trusted as human beings, just very wise and have your best interest at heart. We live in a time where anyone wanting to succeed must be extremely hungry to learn.
Hastha: And you need to be up to speed with evolving technology. You need to understand how to use AI. You need to be able to combine tools to complement your hunger and learn to package the whole thing. Is that what you are trying to summarise?
Dr. Shalini Lal: A digital mindset and a hunger for learning are core competencies for the future. If you don’t have a digital mindset, you live practically in caveman land. Being hungry for knowledge isn’t easy—it’s challenging. I have a full-time job, and I still struggle to stay current. Most of the people I mentor or guide have an average age of 22. That’s how old my children are.
Hastha: When is your next book coming up, and what would the topic be?
Dr. Shalini Lal: That’s the same question I keep asking myself. Honestly, I’m not sure. At the start of the year, I thought it would be the end of the year; but I have done no work, so not this year. It would be reinvention. All of us see the need for organisations to be reinvented; we need to reinvent ourselves as well. What does that journey look like? We work with people on that path and know it’s not easy. So, that’s what I want to write about.
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