What the Owls Told Alex: Leadership Secrets Schools Don’t Teach Young Adults

By Suketu Kohli

Leadership is the differentiator between success and failure. Based on years of research on What makes a Great Leader, What the Owls told Alex guides readers on how to be a leader in their sphere of life. The book presents a simple yet comprehensive framework on the traits required for leaders.

The book follows Alex on the journey of finding his life’s purpose and becoming a leader of his school football team. During Alex’s journey, he is privy to a host of super story tellers who narrate short stories from history, mythology, and folklore to explain the nuances of leadership. By joining Alex on his quest, you’ll learn how to:

• leverage lessons from empires of old to become a better leader;
• lean on values when making important decisions;
• identify what you love to do and want to get better at;
• determine the steps you must take to achieve your vision.

Each episode of the book ends with reflection questions that will enable you to chart your personal leadership journey and shine as a leader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Mar 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665717151

Suketu Kohli

Suketu Kohli is an internationally recognized leadership development consultant and executive coach. In his current assignment at Amazon Web Services, he leads the Public Sector Sales University function for Asia Pacific & Japan. He has consulted with premium management consulting organizations and is a regular instructor on corporate educational programs. He holds an Executive Master in Change from INSEAD business school and has coached a multitude of senior professionals to become superior leaders. His innovative approach to leadership and capability development has won him many prestigious awards. He lives in Singapore and is passionate about mentoring young students and professionals.

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 Suketu Kohli.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Interior Image Credit: Dnyati Wagh

ISBN: 978-1-6657-1716-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-1715-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021925832

Archway Publishing rev. date: 02/28/2022

CONTENTS

Stories: about mirrors, sources, and gardens

Introduction

Episode 1 #Values

Episode 2 #Vision

Episode 3 #Self-Awareness

Episode 4 #Strategic Thinking

Episode 5 #Teamwork

Episode 6 #Coaching

Episode 7 #Empathy

Episode 8 #Listening

Episode 9 #Inspiring

Appendix

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Endnotes

Don’t be the crowd, be the reason for it.

For my son Avya,

the inspiration to write this book.

For mothers, the world’s best coaches.

STORIES: ABOUT

MIRRORS, SOURCES,

AND GARDENS

Most people tell a story when they want to share about their life and experiences, and choosing the form of a story is not random. A story is what we get familiar with very early on in our lives. They are told to us, at a time that we even cannot read and speak. It is hard to overestimate the enormous value of (grand)parents, siblings, teachers telling stories to small children. Stories provide fun and often other intense emotions. They spark our imagination and serve as catalyst for creativity. As such It helps to train and develop some of our most essential psychological and emotional muscles: in the safe environment of significant others, the small child gets confronted with intense moments of joy, fear, surprise, sadness. As Christopher Bollas has highlighted, the small child acquires the grammar of being, even before it acquires the grammar of language. Stories help us to feel this whole range of emotions, to start to develop a vocabulary for them and to begin the process of sense-making with respect to these feelings, make sense of these feelings. Children are dependent on others to learn this. And there is more. The muscles of fantasy and imagination are trained too. A child that listens to a story, engages with it, enters a world of fantasy. It may travel, fly, be a hero and a monster, or kill a monster, imagine to be a prince or princess for a while……. because all good stories have an ending, and we need to learn to safely arrive back in reality. These are all huge psychological achievements. Stories often send us a message: there are monsters, there is evil, but good forces will win. It is good to be courageous, it is important to help others. A story is a vessel to transfer values that are important to a family or community. On special occasions the same stories are told, and children want to hear them again and again. Stories help us to remember who we are and who we might become. That is why we may call a story a mirror to ourselves: we see what we might not want to see, as well as what we would love to see in ourselves. In that sense a story is also a source of meaning, memories, moral warnings, and callings. A story inspires us to go back to our source. We may see ourselves as a garden in which stories are the plants, flowers, trees and pathways.

Stories matter lifelong. That is why we are very appreciative of this book by Suketu Kohli that puts stories center stage. Navigating through life and work, stories are of great help and meaning. They are also crucial for leaders and professionals working in organizations, as well as for adults navigating through life. Stories are bridges between our inner world of experience and the world of external realities.

Hopefully and unavoidably, we will keep being intrigued and enriched by listening to stories and by telling stories ourselves. Let us look in our mirrors, return to and protect our sources and enrich the garden of our individual and shared humankind with our stories.

Roger Lehman

Director, Executive Masters in Change

Emeritus Senior Affiliate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise

INSEAD- Business School for the World®

&

Senior Lecturer

MIT Sloan School of Management

Erik van de Loo

Professor of Organisational Behaviour

INSEAD - Business School for the World®

INTRODUCTION

In middle India, three thousand years ago, lived a renowned scholar named Vishnu Sharma. One day, the king of the land invited him to his palace and requested him to school his sons in leadership. Many scholars had failed the task before Vishnu Sharma, as the princes were arrogant and mischievous. Instead of adopting a traditional approach, Vishnu Sharma narrated stories to the princes to teach them leadership and political philosophy. The princes became deeply engrossed in the teachings and went on to become exceptional students. The collection of stories by Vishnu Sharma are called Panchatantra.

What the Owls Told Alex is inspired by the Panchatantra and is an homage to its pedagogical style.

My first tryst with learning leadership happened when I was five years old. My grandmother used to feed me a mixture of rice and lentils steamed in a pressure cooker. The concoction would then get a generous dose of clarified butter. The dish, called khichdi, would be laid piping hot on the table. One day, in my eagerness, I prodded my fingers into the middle of the viscous khichdi. The lava-like khichdi was hot on the inside. It scalded my hands.

My grandmother said, Let me tell you a story for you to learn how to eat khichdi.

Her words soothed me, and I listened intently to my first lesson learned through a story.

Grandma narrated:

King Nanda ruled northern India in the third century BC. He was evil and tyrannized the population. Chanakya, a wise brahmin, could not bear to see the kingdom going to waste. He groomed a brave boy named Chandragupta Maurya to take on the king.

As days passed, the boy grew stronger and wanted to attack the capital of the king. Chanakya advised him that attacking the heart of the empire would mean inevitable defeat. They should start attacking the peripheral villages and conquer them individually, thus steadily encircling King Nanda. This strategy worked, and Chandragupta went on to defeat the king.

My grandmother explained, If you try to eat the khichdi straight from the center, you will burn yourself; if you start from the sides and go all around, you can enjoy it while it is still hot.

This story was my primer in leadership. A leader listens to advice. A leader thinks strategically. A leader is aware of one’s strengths and weaknesses.

Leader and leadership

Leadership is considered an individual skill, but leadership is a composite interaction between the leader and the social environment. Thus, leadership development is about developing the individual and building the capability in him/her to relate and grow by interacting with the environment.

Leadership framework

This book uses a well-researched holistic framework to help you reflect on essential leadership traits. This leadership framework is created by performing a meta-analysis on classical leadership theories: transformational leadership, servant leadership, trait theory, charismatic leadership, and authentic leadership.

The framework has also benefited from my discussions with several leadership development experts. Besides this, I have utilized my extensive corporate and consulting experience while creating the leadership framework. This leadership framework combines the intrapersonal and interpersonal traits needed to be an astute leader.

1.jpg

Intrapersonal Traits

• Values

• Vision

• Self-awareness

• Strategic thinking

Interpersonal Traits

• Teamwork

• Coaching

• Empathy

• Listening

• Inspiring

Analysis brings us to knowledge, but stories lead to wisdom

In my experience, many corporation’s and education institution’s current methods for developing leaders mainly focus on developing analytical skills. The aspect of wisdom development, which enables intuitive thought, is missing. However, all is not lost; premium institutes like Harvard, Wharton, and IIM Ahmedabad use a humanities-based leadership development approach. The Harvard MBA program contains three courses based entirely on humanities. Wharton has a compulsory MBA workshop titled Leadership through the Arts. IIM Ahmedabad professors use literature like Don Quixote de la Mancha to discuss leadership in classrooms.

Complex decisions are taken through insight, judgment, and the application of values. Decision-making requires a holistic approach to a situation. These decisions call for strategies that go beyond rationality and into the domains of insight and wisdom. Decision-making does not require pure analytical skills but an ability to see in perspective.¹ Building perspective and wisdom brings us to the realm of stories.

There’s nothing more powerful in

the world than a good story.

—Tyrion Lannister, Game of Thrones

Stories allow simple explanations of complex subjects. Stories can inspire and connect with emotions, thus leading to more significant and sustainable change.

Stories shape values

The story is more than a literal tool; it is a psychodynamic object that appeals to our subconscious. The story brings up the taboo, the feared, and the desired; one can use it to heal or grow. The story taps into the archetype and the collective unconscious, enabling people to understand themselves and pivot them to what they can be.² Stories present guidelines based on