Experience is horizontal. Wisdom is vertical. Wisdom is the perspective gained by rising above the clamour of everyday traffic. Height allows you to discern the patterns. On the other hand, experience provides you with the raw material. The more experience you gain, the more observations/dots you collect. And the more dots you can plot on […]
Leaders are public speakers – and the key to good public speaking is being crystal clear about the message you want to convey. In 1937, well before he became Prime Minister, Winston Churchill was travelling in a cab to a private dinner with a few of his Conservative Party colleagues. When the cab arrived at […]
I was at Balmoral Nippers on Sunday. It’s a wonderfully well-run program, and the largest of its kind in the country with over 700 kids. “How”, I asked the lead organiser, “did you manage to achieve so much with such a small crew of volunteers?” “The main lesson”, he replied, “is that one is better […]
A note to young leaders. Mother Teresa, one of the truly great leaders of the 20th century, was once asked if she would join an anti-war rally. She declined but then added: “As soon as you have a pro-peace rally, let me know.” Good leaders define themselves by telling the world what they are opposed […]
A note to young leaders. Don’t fall for the old lie that to be happy you need to work hard and achieve success. Why wait that long to be happy? What’s more, the research shows that happy people tend to live longer, live healthier, be more productive and achieve greater success than their less-happy counterparts. […]
A note to young leaders. I’ve just spent two weeks skiing in Rusutsu, Japan. Plenty of time to meditate and reflect. I’ve had the rare joy of mentoring over 70 young leaders in the last decade or so. Here’s what I’ve learned. If I was asked to choose just three qualities that are conducive to […]
A note to young leaders. We all live in a tiny bubble – such is the narrow peephole of human consciousness. Languid holidays, by puncturing our routines, remind us of this. And once free from our bubble, however briefly, we discover just how vast and delightful the world really is. One such delight for me […]
A note to young leaders. During the Christmas break, I watched an excellent HBO documentary on Muhammad Ali called: “The Tale Of The Tapes.” Ali is today almost universally revered, and rightly so. But before his first fight against Joe Frazier, given his controversial anti- Vietnam-war stance and his conversion to Islam, Ali had at […]
A note to young leaders. I don’t normally watch TV, but the best thing about being on holidays is that you get to break a few routines. In that spirit, I recently watched a time-travel movie on Netflix called The Adam Project, in which Walker Scobell puts in a star performance as 12- year-old Adam […]
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