As Global Capability Centres keep expanding, hiring more people, taking on bigger mandates, and moving closer to the core of global business, a quieter problem is beginning to surface. It is not about talent shortage. It is not even about hiring. It sits somewhere in the middle, quite literally.
According to Mohith Mohan, Founder and CEO of MOAR Advisory, the biggest gap today is in mid-level leadership. “As GCCs scale rapidly, one of the most significant gaps emerging is within the mid-level leadership layer,” he said in an interview with People Matters. “While much of the conversation around GCC growth focuses on headcount milestones, capability expansion, and new mandates, the real operational pressure often sits in the layer between senior leadership and frontline execution.”
That layer, he pointed out, is now doing more than ever before, and yet, in many organisations, it is also the least prepared. The result is simple but serious: growth is happening, but not always in a way that is sustainable or consistent.
The problem is not talent, it is readiness
It is tempting to assume that the issue is a lack of skilled people. Mohan is quick to push back on that. “India’s talent ecosystem has developed strong functional and technical depth,” he said. The problem begins when strong individual contributors are suddenly expected to become effective leaders.
“The bigger gap lies in leadership readiness particularly when high-performing individual contributors or technical specialists step into people management roles for the first time,” he explained. On paper, these are top performers. In reality, the job has changed. Delivering individually is one thing. Leading people, managing expectations, and taking accountability across a wider scope is something else entirely.
And in GCCs, that “something else” is far more layered than it sounds. Mid-level leaders are expected to translate global strategy into local action, manage stakeholders sitting across time zones, align teams that may not report to them, and build capability within their own teams. “Very few leaders naturally arrive prepared for all of these responsibilities at once,” Mohan said.
If that was not enough, the job description is evolving again. “Today’s middle managers are being asked to manage not just people, but also AI agents and automated workflows,” he added. It is a subtle shift, but an important one, and most leadership development models have not quite caught up.
The missing skill: operating in two worlds at once
One of the more interesting gaps Mohan highlights is what he calls “boundary-spanning leadership”. In simple terms, it is the ability to operate confidently both within the India centre and with global headquarters.
“That includes managing upward with clarity, navigating ambiguity, influencing without authority, and balancing local execution realities with enterprise-wide priorities,” he said.
This is where many otherwise capable managers struggle. They can deliver. They can manage their teams. But when it comes to stepping into broader conversations, influencing decisions, or connecting their work to the larger business context, the gap starts to show.
He shared an example of a technology GCC that grew from 800 to 3,500 employees in four years. The organisation hired more managers as it scaled, but leadership capability did not keep pace. “A layer of technically strong managers emerged who could deliver against metrics, but often struggled with cross-functional collaboration, structured communication with senior stakeholders, and holding accountability across larger, more complex teams,” he said.
The outcome was telling. Work got done, but not always in the most effective way. “Delivery targets were met, but innovation slowed and stakeholder confidence in the centre’s independent decision-making remained limited.”
Why the middle is so hard to build
GCCs, interestingly, are quite good at hiring at both ends of the spectrum. Fresh graduates are easy to attract. Senior leaders are drawn in by the opportunity to build and shape something meaningful. The middle, however, sits in a grey zone.
“This is where professionals transition from execution-focused roles into positions that require broader leadership accountability,” Mohan said. And that transition is not straightforward.
What makes it even trickier is that the role itself does not neatly exist elsewhere. It is not quite like IT services roles, and it is not quite like headquarters roles either. “GCC mid-level leaders sit in the middle of both worlds,” he said. They are expected to deliver globally, operate locally, lead autonomously, and often do so without complete context.
Put simply, there is no ready-made talent pool for this kind of role. And that makes hiring, and more importantly, building capability, far more complex.
When the middle is weak, everything slows down
The impact of this gap is not always immediate, but it builds over time. Mohan describes mid-level leadership as the “connective tissue” of an organisation. When that layer is strong, things move. When it is not, things start to drag.
“The impact of the ‘missing middle’ is significant, compounding and often invisible until a critical business moment exposes it,” he said.
One of the first signs is slower execution. Decisions that should be taken within teams start moving upward. Senior leaders get pulled into operational issues. Bottlenecks form. “Directors and VPs can become involved in matters that should normally be resolved lower down the organisation,” he noted.
At the same time, execution quality becomes uneven. Some teams perform well, others struggle, not because of systems or processes, but because of differences in managerial capability.
Then comes the stakeholder impact. As GCCs move from delivery to co-creation, they are expected to contribute more meaningfully to global strategy. That shift depends heavily on mid-level leaders. “When those leaders are absent, stakeholder relationships can become strained or overly dependent on a few senior individuals,” Mohan said.
Hiring is not the fix anymore
Many organisations initially tried to solve this problem by hiring from outside. It seemed like the quickest fix. It did not quite work that way.
“Most organisations have tried both, and most have concluded that lateral hiring alone cannot solve this problem,” Mohan said.
Instead, there is a noticeable shift towards building talent internally. He describes the current GCC structure as an “hourglass”, wide at the bottom, narrow in the middle, and concentrated at the top. The goal now is to move towards a “diamond” shape, where the middle is the strongest and most stable layer.
That shift, however, requires intent. It means investing in internal mobility, creating clear career paths, and developing leaders before they are fully ready. As Mohan put it, “People want to see a credible answer to a very simple question: how do I move from where I am to where I want to be?”
The gaps that keep showing up
Across organisations, a familiar set of capability gaps continues to appear. These are not technical gaps, but leadership ones:
- Managing stakeholders across geographies
- Communicating clearly and confidently at senior levels
- Influencing without formal authority
- Developing and coaching teams
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Connecting work to business outcomes
“These are not just individual skill gaps, they reflect how GCCs have historically developed their people,” Mohan said.
Growth pressures are making it harder
If building the middle layer was already difficult, current conditions are making it tougher. Mohan points to three forces working together.
Attrition remains high, with mid-level churn often between 15% and 25%. That breaks continuity and weakens leadership pipelines. Role ambiguity adds another layer, as responsibilities expand faster than job definitions. And rapid scaling, especially over the past few years, has prioritised headcount over depth.
“Scaling in numbers without scaling in thought creates organisations that are large but not deep, busy but not strategic,” he said.
What needs to change next
Fixing this is not about adding another training programme. It is more fundamental than that. “Building a sustainable mid-level leadership pipeline is not a talent problem that can be solved with better hiring or a well-designed training calendar,” Mohan said. “It is an organisational design problem.”
The shift required is structural. Leadership development needs to become continuous, not episodic. It needs to be aligned with global talent strategy, not treated as a local initiative. And retention needs to go beyond compensation, focusing instead on growth, exposure, and meaningful work.
“Leadership development is not a one-time classroom intervention. It is the accumulation of the right experiences over time,” he said.
As GCCs take on more strategic roles, the importance of this middle layer will only increase. The organisations that get this right will not just grow faster, they will grow more steadily.
“The middle layer begins to stabilise, deepen, and ultimately widen, moving the organisation, deliberately and sustainably, from hourglass to diamond,” Mohan said.
It is a structural shift, but also a mindset one. Because at this stage, growth is no longer just about how many people are added. It is about how well they are led.