Emerging Leaders

When you pledge 12 weekends to a program that can and was only vaguely explained, you tend to be a little nervously inquisitive before it begins. That's how I felt on friday at the first session of the Emerging Leaders program that I'm participating at my workplace. I'll post my thoughts on the program as we go along, but my impressions from the first two days has been positive. There was one particular exercise in which we had to make a recommendation to our CEO about how we think the strategy of the company should be shaped in the coming days and years. While the brainstorming and the presentation was a lot of fun, it severely exposed how limited our thinking can be in areas like this.

There was also a lot to watch and learn by means of just being in contact with folks who can boast of fairly remarkable past demonstrations of leaderships. I must say it indeed was enlightening to watch the varied perspectives that got thrown around. Without dropping names I was intrigued by two separate sessions presented by two execs from our company. The first of them has, I'm certain, a lot of good things going for him in terms of his aptitude and executional efficiency. Oratory, unfortunately, is not one of his gifts. I wonder how much of an impediment that is. I wonder if the art of rhetoric is just an overrated stereotypical expectation from a leader or an absolute necessity.

The other talk was by an executive who is currently on a sabbatical. His speech was a simple collection of anecdotes, and he proved how many perspectives you can actually impart without ever having to resort to hackneyed jargon. At the end of the talk you just felt like getting up and fixing everything!

My favorite part of this weekend's session was a panel discussion that involved Ms. Shukla Bose, founder of Parikrma Humanity Foundation. Her clarity of thought was as refreshing as her vision is goosebump-inducing.