decide to lead

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Decide to Lead

LeadLab bySangeeth Varghese


What Would We Discuss Today?

• Speaker introduction• Million-Leader-Mandate• This week’s excitements• Leader for the week• The story of George and his friends• Interaction and Q&A session


Speaker Profile

• Sangeeth Varghese is a Forbes columnist, an acknowledged leadership thinker, a best selling author and the founder of LeadCap.

• Is the author of the bestseller 'Decide to Lead' and wrote a popular column in ET. He has appeared in BBC and CNBC. Varghese guest edited the 2008 New Year edition of the TOI as a “young star making a difference”.

• Feb 2008, Bombay Stock Exchange Journal rated Varghese as one of the most influential leadership thinkers.

• Did his masters and research London School of Economics with a scholarship.

Catch the weekly column in Forbes: ‘The Leading Edge’. www.Forbes.com


Building a Nation of Leaders

• LeadCap is nurtured by thinkers from the Ivy League with a vision to build the first leadership democracy in the world; to build India as a nation of leaders.

– Teaching to fish is better than providing fish

– Leadership is a decision, not a position or set of skills

– Leaders breed leaders, not followers

“Is there an Indian equivalent of the American Dream? LeadCap is striving to identify it:” Forbes Magazine


Million leader mandate

• Million-Leader-Mandate aims to empower a million citizens of India with leadership opportunities, beyond their birth and living conditions.

• Saturday sessions is one of the ways we enlighten people to take that decision


Weekly excitement ;)


Leaders build communities

• New website at www.leadcap.org

• Read leadership diaries at www.leadcap.org/blog

• We are creating the world’s first ‘Leadership Village’ in Wayanad, a small place in Kerala.

• Leadership Village would be a place where everyone will be aware of their potential and would be actively working on their potential. A true leadership democracy.


Leader of the week

Anil Emage:For conceiving and leading the ‘Leadership village’. Formal inauguration on the 30th of May


Decide to Lead


Story of George

From a lower middle class family with no great education

One of the most shy and inward looking

So shy that he always looked down to avoid eye contact

No inkling of what leadership is all about


Defining moment

Being non-controversial and helpful he was once recommended to a position of responsibility in a youth organisation, during one of their membership recruitment drives


The decision

Though initially anxious and apprehensive, George decided to embrace the opportunity

Nobody expected anything much from George, but as time went by, he started opening up

He discussed his ideas, communicated effectively and shared ideas freely

He started feeling comfortable with the idea of leadership

And as George evolved, he transformed the closed hierarchical organisation into an open one


What do we learn from George’s story?


Leadership is a decision

• George had nothing that could make him a leader • No exceptional talents or a legacy that he can bank on

• George did not attend a great business school or a class to be trained in to a leader• He just took a bold decision

• He did not emerge a leader the first day itself• But he undertook his journey. He remained open. He

learnt


George is not alone in this world. He has many

friends..


Who are these friends of George?

1. A boy who read a newspaper for the first time at the age of 16. Who was scared of darkness. Who barely managed to pass his matriculation. Who had the worst of stage frights.

2. A boy who was considered an utter failure in school that he had to drop out next year. He was denied admission in all other schools that he had to be home tutored

3. A boy who was born to impoverished parents. Who was constantly ill. Who had hardly three months of formal education. Who was forced to take job as a newspaper vendor in a local train to support his family.


George’s friends

• Mahatma Gandhi• Rabindranath Tagore • Thomas Alva Edison

• Leadership is a decision


Leaders are born when they decide to lead


Imagine…

• Imagine an India where there are many Georges. Where we are open to opportunities, even outside our immediate self, family or profession

• Imagine an India where we are also thinking ‘what can I give?’ rather than only ‘what can I get?’

• Imagine an India where we are not sitting passive for someone else to control our lives, but rather are creating what we want

• Imagine an India where we accept that we are afraid, but still are willing to rise above it

• Imagine an India full of Leadership Villages• Imagine an India where we are not always whining,

but are also preparing to win


Just imagine.


Next Session

• Next week: Creation of a dream: Leadership Village

• Three easy ways to join the Million-Leader-Mandate– Join the online Million-leaders-Mandate sessions every

Saturday at 10am.– Join one of the online LeadCap communities– Add a signature below your email "Join the Million Leader

Mandate at www.leadcap.net"

decide to lead

Technology

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leadership opportunities

idea of leadership

leadership villages

leader mandate

decision george

friends of george

true leadership democracy