Business environments are increasingly characterised by uncertainty, necessitating rapid responses from business leaders to changing environments. Leaders' ability to predict, prevent, and manage uncertainty helps people make sense and act during crises, making it a critical capability for leaders. During uncertainty, expertise is replaced by experimentation, communication, and interaction. The developmental view of leadership emphasises that leadership capability is built over time. Further, challenging experiences play a crucial role in developing leadership capability. Individuals who use challenging circumstances in their lives to develop leadership capabilities can rightly be termed as “leaders in the making.”
Leader development is an intrapersonal process that contributes to the furthering of leaders’ knowledge, skills, and abilities. It is a dynamic process where experience interacts with the leader’s self-view and allows for leadership capabilities to be acquired and developed. The learning view of leadership development suggests that individuals learn from challenging situations and these experiences form the basis of the leadership capabilities they acquire. Leader development has been the subject of much research. We, however, know little about how leaders in the making approach uncertain conditions, what decisions they make, what learnings they derive, and how these experiences contribute to the development of leadership they display later on, especially in very challenging times such as the present situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand these aspects, we conducted a panel discussion with senior corporate leaders. It emerged that “leaders in the making” assume agency to take action despite uncertainty and little opportunity, create the future rather than wait for it to happen, overcome the fear of failure to use failures as learning opportunities, reframe past challenges as laden with meaning, draw upon the collective energy of people, and adhere to personal values in trying circumstances. The rich narratives of the panellists provide valuable theoretical insights and lessons for aspiring leaders.
