Only two in ten CXOs say leaders act early in crisis, reveals Great Place To Work® at For All Summit™ 2026

Balbir Singh, Chief Executive Officer of Great Place To Work® India, highlights leadership readiness gap as over 1,200 leaders convene in Mumbai

Mumbai, 12 February 2026: Just 2 in 10 CXOs believe their leaders took early action and maintained stability during business crises, according to new findings shared by Great Place To Work at the For All Summit™ 2026 in Mumbai.
The data also shows that every second CXO identifies managing change as their single biggest leadership challenge, indicating a widening leadership readiness gap across India Inc.

The findings were presented at the Great Place To Work® For All Summit™ 2026, described as the country’s largest workplace culture summit, which brought together more than 1,200 senior leaders. The discussions focused on redefining leadership models in the face of technological disruption, workforce shifts and organisational transformation.
Balbir Singh, Chief Executive Officer of Great Place To Work® India, said leaders who embrace what he termed The Great Adaptation are shaping organisations through clarity, agility and consistent action. He said organisations that identify leadership potential early, invest in mentoring and build trust through consistent behaviour are better positioned to navigate disruption.

The summit highlighted a transition in leadership thinking from command driven models to enablement focused frameworks. Ajay Vij, Senior Country Managing Director at Accenture, said modern leadership is less about individual brilliance and more about enabling collective capability, noting that effective leaders make the team stronger rather than positioning themselves at the centre.
Pramod Bhasin, Founder of Genpact, reinforced the idea of distributed leadership, advising organisations to bring in individuals with stronger domain expertise and provide them autonomy.

Artificial intelligence was also central to the discussions. CP Gurnani, Co Founder and Executive Vice Chairman of AIONOS, and Arun Kohli addressed AI adoption as a productivity multiplier rather than a displacement risk, highlighting India’s demographic profile and data scale as advantages. They emphasised the importance of communication and rapid skill development to ensure effective implementation.
Rituraj Chaturmohta of Uber for Business pointed to everyday operational friction as a barrier to employee experience, noting that trust based systems and removal of routine irritants have greater impact than large scale programmes.

The summit also featured Mithali Raj, former captain of the Indian women’s cricket team; Prof. John Amaechi OBE, Founder of APS Intelligence and former NBA player; Gaurav Sehgal, Senior Vice President Human Resources Asia at Synchrony; Gurcharan Das, author and former Chief Executive Officer of Procter and Gamble India; and Dr Santrupt Misra, National Spokesperson of the Biju Janata Dal Party and former Chief Executive Officer of the Chemicals Business at Aditya Birla Group.
Sessions focused on leadership accountability, AI adoption, employee experience design and purpose driven influence. All sessions were supported by sign language interpretation to ensure accessibility in line with the summit’s For All framework.

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