Decide to Lead

LeadLab by
Sangeeth Varghese

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 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

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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

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 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

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 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

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Weekly excitement ;)

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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.

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Leader of the week

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

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Decide to Lead

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 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

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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

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 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

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What do we learn from
George’s story?

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 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

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George is not alone in this
world. He has many
friends..

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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.
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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

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Leaders are born when
they decide to lead

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 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

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 Just imagine.

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 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"

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