Sameer Dua, Founder & CEO, The Institute for Generative Leadership
Sameer Dua is the Founder Director and the Program Leader for The Institute for Generative Leadership, India which is established in association with The Institute for Generative Leadership, USA. Sameer has done several training, coaching and consulting projects with organizations of different industries and varying sizes. Some of his global clients include Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, John Deere, BMC Software, Allscripts, Persistent Systems, Amdocs, Tech Mahindra, Dana, Cargill, and Cognizant amongst many others. Sameer gets constant invitations to speak as a keynote speaker, and regularly speaks at Business off-sites, industry consortiums and business clubs. He has also worked with program participants from 52 countries and worked with top ranked British, American and European Universities. In conversation with Dominic Rebello, he reveals how he set up and runs management and leadership institutions in India and the UK, and also his extensive network of Education Centers in the early 1990s, then unheard of in India.
What drives you?
Our institute runs in partnership with the Institute for Generative Leadership in the US. We are very clear about why we, as an institution exist, which is: To awaken people to their generative power of creation; and to enable them to take care of what they care about. In the last 3 years since I set up the Institute for Generative Leadership, I have interacted with tens of thousands of individuals, and many of them have truly woken up to their generative power of creation, and started to take care of what matters to them. This is my job, and I also get paid to do this.
How big is the potential for a business like yours?
As human beings each one of us lives with a certain blindness, which means, we don't even know that we don't know. And this blindness severally impedes our growth – in each area of our life. To answer your question – how big is the potential of our work – it’s huge! Potentially, every human being needs a mirror, and by mirror – I mean a coach. The job of a coach (mirror) is to show individuals, teams and organisations what they cannot see on their own.
Any major customers that you now cater to?
We’ve worked with and continue to work with organisations such as Mercedes Benz, John Deere, Siemens, BMC, Amdocs, Cosmos Bank, Endurance Technologies, Hager, Persistent Systems, Schaeffler Group, and many more.
What kind of numbers do you expect from a business like yours?
I don't look at this from the point of view of numbers, and which is why I don't even have the numbers of my industry. For us learning means to shift embodiment, and to shift our capacities for taking action, and hence generating results. And because people in industry internationally have started to understand the importance of experts, we get called upon to coach and train senior leadership teams to generate new actions and new results.
How do you plan to scale up?
In my earlier organization, scaling up for me meant increasing the number of campuses, increasing revenues, etc. – which is the traditional understanding of scaling up. Now, for me scaling up is not scaling up from the perspective of revenue or physical centres, but in terms of scaling up the impact of our education. In my just released book ‘Declaring Breakdowns: Powerfully creating a future that matters, through 6 simple steps’ I invite my readers to create a future of their choice, and take action to achieve that future.
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Who would primarily be your consumer audience?
Our audience is anyone who is committed to taking care of what they care about – and are interested in generating extra-ordinary results in their life. We do not want people who are committed to their excuses, but those who are committed to their results.
Where do you see yourself five years down the road?
As I have mentioned above, my first book titled “Declaring Breakdowns: Powerfully creating a future that matters, through 6 simple steps” has just been released. I’d like to have this book translated in different Indian languages. The idea is for the distinctions in the book to reach a wider audience. I will have at least 2 more books published in English next year, and perhaps 2 more over the next 4 years. 5 years from now, I see us have having a large number of coaches and program leaders all supporting the work that we do, in different parts of India and others parts of the world.