my learning diary!!

To start with, I am posting my leadership learning diary i submitted for the leadership course...


Learning and growth is the essence of life. If life is not for learning, then what is life for?

Just to set up a background, we have had a wonderfully insightful course on leadership in the last term of this term here at Singapore and what will follow from here would be the essence of what I understood and learned from the classes. Learning and growing has always been a pleasure and privilege and it will continue to be.

We all wonder, are leaders born or made? Even I do and always have. As we discussed in the class, effective leaders are authentic leaders. They grow from their experiences, their pains and tribulations, the frustrations, their joys and all that somehow seems to touch them.

There is something called a formative experience which somehow shapes a person from an ordinary human being to an extraordinary human being and most of us have such experiences. But there is something essentially different between how a normal person deconstructs those experiences and how a person with an ingrained fire in him deconstructs that experience.

What do I mean by someone in fire in him/her? Well, this fire may not always be there or it becomes fire because of years of pain, inactions or miscalculations. But, it is there and it is very important to discover this fire.


Abraham Lincoln, whom I consider to be one of the greatest leaders of all times, would be considered to be by many as a born leader. I think he was not a born leader. He lived in his life in a way that what he created out of an extraordinarily impoverished background made him look like a born leader.

There must have been times in his life where he felt like giving up because he failed and failed over and over again. What distinguished him from others was his determination to optimise his potential and never give up. He behaved in extraordinary ways to extraordinary circumstances.

It is not that we do not face such experiences which have the potential to change us for good or for bad. What is important is how we respond to such situations. When his girlfriend died, he was devastated as it does happen with many people in their youth and this is a tremendous personal disaster for them. However, what is important is how they fight back and what kind of perspectives do they extract from what happened.

The nature of the tragedy may not be exactly the same; however, a personal turbulence has massive potential to change a human being, depending on the kind of feedback he received from his environment.

I had a similar experience when I was 23 and I was completely devastated for a period of one and half years. The people in my environment felt that I had lost it and even beyond a point they began to create distances from me. I was completely heartbroken and my will to live beyond was diminished.

However I survived and moved on. The lessons I generated from that experience has completely changed the way I interact and respond to people now. The paradigms that were created have changed me as a person and although I went through tremendous amount of pain when that happened, I do not regret it because that mistake and the subsequent trauma is one of the reasons that I can deal with people with stability and confidence without hurting myself.

So what exactly is authenticity? As the word says, it is being genuine and to follow our natural instincts and behaviours. It does not mean by any means that it is incorrect to have role models. Role models are good as long as we look at the way they have lived their lives in principle and for our own understanding of what those principles mean to us.

Let me illustrate to drive the point further. My role model is Sir Richard Branson. Now why do I say that he is my role model? I say so because I identify with him as a person and I appreciate the kind of life ha has lived and how he has lived it. He has been a maverick who has always done what seemed to him the right thing to do even if the world thought he went crazy. This is true of the world acclaimed Virgin Atlantic Airways as the world thought it was doomed right from the beginning.

I think and feel that the principles that he has stood by are important to live a life and not surviving. It is extremely important to act in accordance with your vision and conscience. Although we must not ignore the feedback that we are receiving from the environment but that must not be the deciding factor in what we end up doing.

Authenticity calls for the understanding that there is not a single person in this world who is essentially and completely like me and no other person would go through the kind of situations and circumstances that I have gone through. Authenticity calls for learning from these experiences and form our impressions of the world around us.

Authenticity calls for deconstructing our behaviour in the past and identifying patterns of behaviour. We must attempt to understand what we stand for and how we are likely to behave in critical situations.

There is another principle I believe is important is certainty. This means that leaders know where they are going and they are almost certain that they will reach where they want to go. Leaders lead the direction because they can see the pathway and others cannot and that’s why there are followers.

Leaders have the courage of their convictions and once they have scratched and debated the idea with themselves, then no matter what, they will stand by what they think are right. Leaders are open to ideas but the most important person to a leader is themselves.

For example, in case of Mahatma Gandhi, he led the policy of non-violence against the colonial rule. Now, to any logical mind this would sound foolish and for any type of unjustified violence, the answer would be to retort back. I am sure that Mahatma Gandhi believed in the principle of non-violence so strongly that he got an entire nation to buy in and led the country to independence, as quoted by the history.

Leadership begins with the conviction about your principles and values and if there is anyone for whom it is most important to be convinced about those ideas, it is you.


If Bill Gates did not believe so profoundly in the power of personal computing, would the world be what is today? If Mother Teresa did not believe passionately in the power of love and compassion, could she ever touch the world the way she did?

Passion is power. And power starts with the strength of a belief turned into a conviction and a passion to change what is wrong and what can be improved and must be improved? The next step is a decision.

What is a decision? A decision is to act on a course of action and committing to a result. Once a decision has been made, leaders are committed. A decision is power because it comes out of clarity and clears confusion.

Leadership is not quite fun, not quite glamorous. It is immense responsibility and personal pain. The leader is looked upon by his followers as the one who will show them the path that they have decided to walk on. It is massive commitment to change.

Leadership is about personal humility and professional will as per the journal “the level 5 leadership”.

What is humility? Humility is being humble and not being arrogant and immerses in your achievement. Humility is focus on the mission and not yourself. Someone great said- “the tree with most fruits always bends low”. The leader is not a boastful and ostentatious person, more often than not. Great leaders display tremendous calm and personal humility. It is an absolute honour to meet them and they discharge their responsibility without talking about it. They do not like to take credit. A leader looks for people to distribute credit to and if he does not find anyone, he attributes it to good luck.

The tree with most fruits always bends low.

Professional Will is the will to act and let those actions flow out of values. Actions that flow out of passion have extreme power to generate results. The name of the game is anything but mediocrity. The game is called brilliance, excellence, world class, nothing else. Will is the king of mental powers as per Robin Sharma of “the monk who sold his Ferrari” fame. Will is the power to walk your talk and leaders display that will.

Leaders display personal integrity and commitment to long term results and not short term rewards resulting out of unethical and incorrect behaviour. Integrity is walking the talk which creates confidence and certainty. There is no other way out. It is critical to act in accordance with personal ethics that leaders develop over time. I have never heard of a leader who treats people unjustly, resorts to unethical behaviour to gain short term benefits and I am sure these are not the traits of a leader.

I consider Peter F Drucker as a leader in the field of management literature. He was an extremely wise man. He led the field and said things which would be relevant for generations. I consider Dale Carnegie to be a leader in the field of interpersonal relations. He developed deep understanding of human behaviour through experience and research which no one else had done before and hence generated thoughts that no one said before. As a result, he is considered a leader and authority in the field of human relations and his book “how to make friends and influence people” will be read and re-read by millions around the world.

Now let me take this discussion to a personal level. Do I consider myself to be a leader? Yes, I do. Why do I consider myself to be a leader? To start with, I think my authenticity and genuineness as a human being. My ability to derive learning from my experience and my life story so far inspires me to lead people and show them the right direction.

I mentioned one of the incidents that shaped me to be an emotionally stronger human being with a heightened capacity to touch people. Here is another one. Not very long ago, I came to the threshold of death and almost escaped. Somehow I realised that the way I had been living my life had been entirely wrong and everything that I stood for, was wrong and the path I was following would only lead me astray.

I again managed to survive. The one thing I did not realise that one must accept the knowledge and wisdom when it comes because for most people it does not come at all or they do not recognise it. I have changed and since the beginning of this year, I have been looked upon as an inspiration by people and I am saying so because this is the feedback I have received from people.

There are so many people who just browse through life never really living it completely. I see my leadership opportunity in this context. The reason I say so is because I feel strongly that there is an essential fault in the way we have been led to believe how life is. I am not exactly sure at this point in time how this opportunity will evolve and how will I exploit, however, I am sure that wherever I go, I will be able to influence minds.

Is it possible for anybody to transform himself to a leader?

I think it is. To start with, we must start thinking as a leader. That begins with getting increased understanding of our selves. I heard someone mentioning a beautiful metaphor that understanding yourself is like peeling off an onion, you will always discover a new layer and you will always cry!

Thinking of changing the world is a very noble idea and it begins with changing yourself. The most effective form of leadership is to lead by example. Leaders must behave in ways that they expect people to behave. There is no way to evade responsibility and expecting to become a leader.

Leadership is not about “may” and “may not be”. Leader is about “will be” and “will do”. The one who is not sure about himself will never be able to touch someone else and influence.

We had an interesting discussion about the difference between and manager and a leader. Nothing suggests from my understanding that leaders are not good managers. So, I think I can safely make the statement that all leaders are good managers. They are good managers of people, of time and resources. However, that does not mean that the majority to their time goes in managing and micro managers. We often talk of scarcity of managers. However, managers are not as much in scarcity as leaders are. Hence, managers work for leaders.

The responsibility of the manager is to see that maximum output is derived out of limited resources. The responsibility of a leader is to find the right direction, look into the future and create lasting changes. Leaders create the future and managers assist leaders in crafting the future.

What do I want to be? I think it is an important question if we want to lead or not. I have discovered through personal experience that not everyone wants to learn and grow forget want to be a leader.

The question is thus if we see ourselves as a leader and would like to nurture and develop our abilities so we can lead people to growth and better lives. I want to be a leader and I am a leader, I am just looking for the right context where I will be the right match.

There is a scarcity of thought leaders. Eventually everything begins with a thought. The difference between two people is in the quality of their thoughts. Leaders think big and dream high. I have read it does not take any more energy to think big thoughts than it takes small ones and leaders choose to think big.



The size of the dreams is another ingredient of leaders. Leaders think big. They look at the macro picture and aim to bring about stupendous change. The problem with most people is that they cannot get themselves to think big. The people we talk about as leaders have made big things possible and eventually everything began with a small thought in the minds of leaders that what they think is possible.

Great leaders transform people and environment. They create fundamental changes and challenge status quos. Leaders have a responsibility to develop leaders.

Leaders lead, Period.

They lead the change processes and people involved in their missions. As human beings it is our right and duty to nurture the leadership potential within us.

Rockk On