To Give a Fish or Teach to Fish? Dr. Hemant Kakkar on Smarter Leadership Help

Dr. Hemant Kakkar, Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the Indian School of Business (ISB), shares key insights from his research, “To Give a Fish or to Teach How to Fish: Examining Leaders’ Autonomy and Dependency Helping Behaviors,” highlighting how leaders navigate the balance between enabling independence and offering direct support. The main points are: • The research distinguishes between dependency help (solving problems for employees) and autonomy help (guiding employees to solve problems themselves), showing that autonomy help builds long-term capability. • Dominance-oriented leaders, often with a zero-sum mindset, tend to give dependency help to maintain control, whereas prestige-oriented leaders, with a non-zero-sum mindset, emphasize autonomy help and employee development. • Status threats amplify dominant leaders’ zero-sum thinking and dependency help, while prestige leaders remain consistent in offering autonomy help. • Autonomy help works best for learning- and development-focused tasks in psychologically safe cultures, whereas dependency help is better suited to urgent, routine, or crisis situations. • Organizations should evaluate helping by effectiveness, reward collaboration and experimentation, and support leaders in shifting toward autonomy-oriented help, which, though slower initially, creates greater long-term organizational value. This podcast is brought to you by Global Management Consultancy. For more information, please visit www.globalmanagementconsultancy.com. Disclaimer: A. The background music used in this video is the property of its respective developer and is protected by Copyright. Although it is a free version, Business Talk, Global Management Consultancy and Deepak Bhatt do not hold the rights to this music. B. Dr. Hemant Kakkar graciously shared deep insights from his research, “To Give a Fish or to Teach How to Fish: Examining Leaders’ Autonomy and Dependency Helping Behaviors,” during his appearance on the Business Talk podcast channel. The uploaded video contains copyrighted material; therefore, any modifications to graphics, music, or the presence of the author or host are strictly prohibited.