Every year, US$60b to US$90b is spent globally on leadership development activities and an average of 1,000 to 1,500 new books are published on leadership topics in the English language alone. In fact, in today’s fiercely competitive world, there is no organisation or company that does not have leadership development curriculum or activities in order to gain that extra edge.
Yet, when Rajeev Peshawaria, former global Chief Learning Officer of Morgan Stanley and Coca Cola, and current CEO of The ICLIF Leadership and Governance Centre, asks people “Out of all the bosses you have worked for through your career, how many would you call truly great leaders?” the answer is usually “none”, “one” or occasionally “two.” In other words, if a person is lucky, in a lifetime they will only meet one or two bosses who can be considered a great leader. This begs the question – with so much being spent on educating the people for leadership, why aren’t there more?
Value, Purpose and Leadership
It is precisely the quest to answer this question that brought Mr Peshawaria to ICLIF. ICLIF is a non-profit organisation established in 2003 by Bank Negara to provide leadership development programmes for corporations in Malaysia and the region, and Rajeev Peshawaria is a renowned name in corporate leadership with extensive global experience in helping senior management improve on the strategy, organisation design and culture of their organisations.
ICLIF’s methodology differs from others, and that is the secret to its success. Instead of focussing on formulas, ICLIF challenges conventional wisdom on leadership through its belief that effective leadership has to be discovered individually.
“The problem behind the amount being spent yearly on ineffective leadership development programs is that we are trying to teach something that cannot be taught – leadership cannot be learned in a classroom, through an executive coach or least of all by being promoted to the C level” explains Mr Peshawaria.
Rather than the futile effort of ‘teaching’ leadership, ICLIF designs its programs to accelerate the self discovery process and to provide useable ideas on how to create the required frameworks for an organisation’s sustainable success.
The first step to the self discovery process, is for a person to ask him or herself what is their purpose, be it within the corporate, political or social world. Secondly, there is a need to be clear about their values - how they are going to behave to fulfil their purpose.
Using Gandhi as an example, Mr Peshawaria explains how Gandhi decided that his purpose would be freedom and equality for all human beings. He then decided that to achieve his purpose, he would use the values of non-violence and humility as his tools. With no financial, political or military power, Gandhi became a leader to millions, and is a perfect example of how self discovery of an individual’s purpose and values transmits into leadership.
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