Develop Those Around You: Leadership's Biggest Challenge India 2026
Leadership is not just about developing yourself — it is about developing those around you. Invest in your team and the rewards come back tenfold. Avinash Chate on India 2026.
Here's the insight that changes everything about how you think about leadership: it's not just about developing yourself — it's about developing those around you. Invest in your team and the rewards come back tenfold. I've seen this principle at work across 11 years of corporate training in India — from Bajaj Auto to JSW to the Indian Army. According to NASSCOM-Deloitte, India needs 1.25 million AI-ready professionals by 2027. The only leaders who will build that pipeline are the ones who make developing others their biggest priority.
TL;DR- Leadership is not just about developing yourself — it is about developing those around you, which is leadership's biggest and most neglected challenge
- Invest in your team's development and the rewards genuinely come back tenfold: stronger output, higher loyalty, better results
- Most Indian managers focus on their own growth while underinvesting in the people they lead — this is the defining gap
- The best investment a leader can make is spending deliberate time and energy on each team member's development
- Leaders who develop others build multiplier teams that outperform individuals and create lasting organisational impact
Why Developing Others Is Leadership's Biggest Real Challenge
Developing yourself is the first level of leadership — and most ambitious professionals work hard at it. Developing those around you is the second level, and it is dramatically harder. It requires you to subordinate your own visibility to someone else's growth. It requires patience, repetition, and a willingness to give credit generously. It requires you to stay invested in someone's development even when there is no immediate return. At Bajaj Auto, Tata Tech, and the Indian Army, the leaders who have built the strongest teams are those who made developing others their primary measure of success — not just their own performance.
The 10x Return: How Investing in Your Team Compounds Over Time
The tenfold return on investing in your team is not a motivational metaphor — it's what I've measured across 11 years of work with Indian corporates. A manager who develops five direct reports into high-performers creates exponentially more organisational value than the same manager would have created by performing brilliantly as an individual. Each developed team member then develops their own people, and the investment multiplies. At L&T and Mahindra, the leaders with the highest long-term impact are never the ones who performed the best individually — they're the ones who built the best people around them. That's the real multiplier effect.
| Leadership Focus | Developing Self Only | Developing Those Around You |
|---|---|---|
| Impact Multiplier | 1x (your own output) | 10x (team output + their teams) |
| Legacy Duration | Ends when you leave | Continues through the people you built |
| Retention Effect | People stay for the role | People stay because they are growing |
| Performance Ceiling | Your own capacity | The collective capacity of the team |
| Cultural Signal | Individual heroics celebrated | Team growth becomes the culture |
Why Most Indian Leaders Neglect Developing Those Around Them
Here's why most Indian managers underinvest in developing their teams. First, their performance reviews don't measure it — they measure output, revenue, and delivery. Second, developing others is slower and less immediately visible than doing the work yourself. Third, the Indian corporate culture still over-celebrates individual heroics and under-rewards leadership that makes others shine. Fourth, many managers are simply not sure how to develop people — they weren't developed themselves, so they don't have a model to follow. All four of these are systemic problems that individual leaders can still choose to override — and the ones who do build the most sought-after teams in their organisations.
What It Actually Looks Like to Develop Those Around You
Developing those around you is not a vague aspiration — it has specific, daily behaviours. It means having a development conversation with each team member every week, not just a status update. It means giving a stretch assignment with an explicit learning intent, not just because the work needs doing. It means delivering specific, behavioural feedback within 24 hours of a key moment — positive or developmental. It means asking each team member what they need to grow, and then actually providing it. At Ferrero, Siemens, and KPIT, the managers who do these four things consistently produce teams that outperform every other team in the same organisation within 90 days.
Overcoming the Biggest Obstacles to Developing Your Team in India
The biggest obstacles I encounter when I work with Indian managers on developing their teams are: time ("I'm too busy delivering to develop people"), confidence ("I don't know how to coach"), and culture ("my organisation doesn't reward developing others, only results"). These are real obstacles — but they're not the real reason. The real reason is habit. Developing others requires a different set of daily habits from getting the work done — and habits change slowly without deliberate effort. The managers I work with at RBI and Bosch who have broken through these obstacles all did one thing: they started small. One development conversation per week. One stretch assignment per month. Habit by habit.
Building a Leadership Legacy Through People Development
A leadership legacy is built through people, not projects. The projects you deliver will be forgotten in five years. The people you develop will carry your influence for decades. I think about this every time I run a program with senior leaders at JSW, Mahindra, or the Indian Army. The question I always ask is: "When you leave this organisation, what will remain of your leadership?" The answer is almost always the people who grew under your guidance, the next generation of leaders you built, the culture you shaped. Developing those around you is the only leadership investment with a truly unlimited shelf life.
Real Leaders Who Made Developing Others Their Primary Mission
The leaders who stand out in Indian corporate history as developers of others share common traits: they gave credit generously and took accountability loudly. They backed people before the evidence was in. They gave difficult feedback in private and celebrated growth in public. They treated their team's ceiling as their own responsibility. At Bajaj Auto, I worked with a senior manufacturing leader who, in 10 years, had developed 14 direct reports into leadership roles. Not one of them had arrived fully formed. Each one was a deliberate investment. When I asked him what his greatest achievement was, he didn't mention a production record or a cost-saving initiative. He named those 14 people. That's a leadership legacy built through developing those around you — tenfold returns, compounding forever.
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Avinash Chate TEDx Speaker · Founder, The Future Corporate · 11+ yrs experience Avinash has trained Indian Army, BRO, RBI, BARC, JSW Steel and 1000+ corporate leaders across India. His work focuses on leadership development, communication skills, and behavioural training rooted in Indian values and modern business needs. |
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is developing those around you considered leadership's biggest challenge?
Developing those around you is leadership's biggest challenge because it requires you to consistently invest time, energy, and visibility in someone else's growth — often with delayed or invisible returns. It means giving credit to others when the spotlight is on you, investing patience in people who grow slowly, and tolerating the discomfort of coaching rather than doing. In Indian corporate culture, where individual performance is loudly celebrated and people development rarely features in performance reviews, making this shift requires genuine leadership courage. The managers who do it consistently are always the ones who build the highest-performing and most loyal teams.
How do I start developing my team members if I have never done it before?
Start with one deliberate development action per week per direct report. The simplest entry point is a 15-minute conversation framed explicitly as a development conversation — not a project update. The question to ask is: "What are you working on right now that's stretching you?" Then listen carefully, ask what support would help, and follow through on that support. Do this consistently for 30 days. You will notice a shift in how your team members engage with you — more openness, more initiative, more willingness to flag problems early. That shift is the signal that development trust is forming. Build on it from there.
What is the tenfold return on investing in your team development?
The tenfold return is the compounding effect of developing multiple people who each then develop their own people. A leader who invests seriously in developing five direct reports over three years creates not just five stronger performers — each of those five develops their own teams, and the investment multiplies across the organisation. There are also direct returns: developed people perform better, stay longer, and advocate for the organisation's culture. At L&T, Mahindra, and JSW, the teams with the highest retention and output are always led by the managers with the strongest track record of developing people. The investment pays back tenfold — across retention costs, performance quality, and institutional knowledge retention.
How do I develop people who are already performing well?
High performers need development as much as anyone — they just need a different kind. Where average performers need foundational skill-building, high performers need stretch into the next level of complexity: more strategic responsibility, exposure to cross-functional challenges, opportunities to lead and develop others themselves. The risk with high performers is assuming they'll develop themselves. The best will — but without your investment and attention, they'll often do it somewhere else. The most powerful thing you can do for a high performer is explicitly name where you see their potential going, give them a stretch assignment that begins the transition, and stay invested in their journey toward that next level.
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By Avinash Chate — Maharashtra’s #1 Corporate Trainer & Motivational Speaker. .