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When we talk about skills for the future—especially in a country as diverse and complex as India—it’s tempting to focus on tools, training programs, and performance metrics. But what if the real foundation of future-readiness isn’t in what we teach, but in how we engage?
In Coacharya’s recent webinar, one idea stood out like a quiet revolution: the concept of agency.
Our panellist Dr. Gayathri Vasudevan put it simply, yet powerfully: building empathy and enabling growth is not about giving advice or handing down instructions. That is easy. The tough thing, the important thing to do, is to step back and make space for others to act, decide, and lead. It’s about giving agency.
In a world where one group often builds systems for another, where well-meaning support can easily become control, offering agency is a radical shift. It asks us to let go of being the fixer or expert and instead become the enabler. This is by no means an easy feat. It’s slower. It’s messier. It requires trust.
But without agency, skills mean little. You can teach someone how to code or manage a team, but if they don’t have the power to make decisions, take risks, or shape their own path, are they truly empowered?
Why Agency Matters in India’s Growth Story
The future of India isn’t just about equipping people with knowledge. It’s about dismantling the hierarchies—subtle or systemic—that prevent people from using that knowledge freely. And for educators, coaches, and employers, this shift starts with one brave step: listening, not instructing. Creating space, not just systems.
Entrepreneurship and Agency Go Hand in Hand
At its core, agency also fuels the entrepreneurial mindset. It’s the belief that you can shape your own life—that even in uncertain conditions, you have the power to build something new. For some, this belief is learned. For others, it’s part of the air they breathe.
K. Pandiarajan, entrepreneur and public leader, spoke of growing up in a village near Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu—a region where entrepreneurship wasn’t a buzzword, but a way of life. There, a small business owner earning ₹500 a day often commanded more respect than a salaried executive earning many times more. The message was clear: value lies not just in earnings, but in ownership. In creating something of your own.
That early exposure to an entrepreneurial culture laid the groundwork for a career that would span HR innovation, institution building, and public service. It wasn’t a straight path, but a series of inflection points, each a return to the question of purpose and self-direction.
Pandiarajan offered a powerful insight: the thread connecting entrepreneurship, leadership, and public life is human resourcefulness. That building institutions—whether in business or government—is ultimately about enabling people to do their best work and live their fullest lives.
Entrepreneurship, then, isn’t only about creating businesses. It’s about creating possibilities. And that starts by trusting people with the agency to try, to fail, to learn, and to lead.
From Listening to Leading: Coaching for Agency
If entrepreneurship is about enabling people to act, then education and employment must begin by understanding what people want to act on. And that’s where we often falter—not for lack of intent, but for lack of deep listening.
Dr. Gayathri Vasudevan offered a piercing insight: the real gap in India’s employment ecosystem lies in misunderstanding aspirations, rather than in the lack of skillsets. Today’s youth—especially first-generation learners—are dreaming big. They want meaning. They want mobility. They want more than survival.
And they have every right to.
But the systems around them, recruitment frameworks, employability rubrics, even training programs, aren’t built to meet those dreams where they are. Instead, they respond with judgment: “Their expectations are unrealistic,” or “They aren’t skilled enough.”
What’s lost in this binary is the opportunity to hold space for both the dream and the reality.
But imagine if our education-to-employment conversations began not with what’s missing, but with what matters.
Rather than dismissing a young person’s desire to earn ₹1 lakh as naive, we might ask: What does that signify for you? Security? Dignity? A desire to support your family? When we get clear on the need behind the aspiration, we can guide more responsibly, not to reduce dreams, but to help shape a path toward them.
Many young workers don’t have role models in their immediate environment. They don’t yet see someone like them navigating the same journey with success. And so, those of us in positions of privilege—as educators, employers, coaches, or policymakers—must become not just providers of opportunity, but mirrors of possibility.
In a system wired for productivity and speed, this kind of empathetic, slow listening can feel radical. But maybe that’s exactly what India needs: not faster solutions, but deeper understanding.
A shift from frameworks that categorize to conversations that connect.
A New Lens on India’s Employment Ecosystem
When we talk about employment in India, we often focus on quantity—how many jobs, how many workers. But Mr. Pandiarajan invites us to shift the lens: from how many, to what kind.
Because the real question isn’t whether people are working. It’s whether they’re working in ways that offer dignity, protection, and a future.
Over the last decade, India has moved from just 4% of its workforce being in the formal, organized sector to nearly 25%. This is significant because it has been driven not just by policy, but by structural reforms like the labour code and the rise of flexi staffing models that bring social security into previously invisible corners of the workforce.
But it’s also a revolution that has unfolded largely outside the radar of those best placed to shape it.
The Role of Coaches and HR Leaders in Building Agency
HR leaders, coaches, and institutional designers—what role have we played in this transformation? More urgently: what role could we play?
Too few in the HR and coaching community are engaging with the macro realities of employment in India. The movement toward formalisation of labour isn’t just a policy outcome, it’s a design challenge.
- How do we identify talent at the margins?
- How do we build inclusive hiring frameworks?
- How do we widen the circle of opportunity, instead of replicating privilege?
There is no shortage of talent. But there is a shortage of structures that know how to see it.
This is where coaching and HR platforms can intervene, not just at the level of skills training, but at the level of worldview. Hidden in many corporate hiring decisions are unconscious filters: a preference for pedigree over potential, for polish over perseverance.
Changing this starts with awareness. But it must go further, to a reimagining of what merit looks like, and who gets to define it.
India doesn’t need more frameworks. It needs more courageous voices in the systems that already exist.
Voices that question long-held assumptions. That speak up for invisible workers. That link micro-decisions in hiring and training to macro outcomes in equity and growth.
Because when thought leadership doesn’t come from those closest to people, it gets imposed from above. And then we miss the very people we’re trying to uplift.
Coaching as a Catalyst for Agency
If agency is the foundation of future readiness, then coaching is one of its most powerful tools.
Coaching isn’t about giving answers. It’s about holding space for people to discover their own. It shifts us from instructing to listening, from fixing to evoking, from control to co-creation. Whether you’re a leader, educator, or aspiring coach, embracing a coaching mindset can transform how you work, relate, and lead.
Because when we coach, we don’t teach or direct, we cultivate agency.
This September, take the leap. Discover Coacharya’s Mega Programs and start your journey toward impactful, agency-driven coaching.
About This Conversation
This blog is inspired by a thought-provoking conversation hosted by Coacharya as part of our ongoing Opening the Inner Eye series. The panel featured Dr. Gayathri Vasudevan, social entrepreneur and Founder of Sambhav Foundation, and Mr. K. Pandiarajan, entrepreneur, HR leader, and former Minister of Education in the Tamil Nadu goverment. The session was anchored by Coacharya’s alumni and leadership coach, Gayatri Krishnamurthy.You can watch the full webinar on Coacharya’s YouTube channel.
Webinar Video
