What Makes You a Great Leader?

A must-read for anyone with leadership goals, ‘The Elephant At the Dinner Table’ puts out 33 short stories based on the real-life experiences of author and leadership facilitator, Amit Nagpal

An ancient proverb says: “Tell me a fact and I will learn. Tell me the truth and I will believe. But tell me a story, share your experience and it will live in my heart forever.”

This is the very premise that ‘The Elephant At the Dinner Table’ builds upon to a great advantage.

Targeted at management students, aspiring, entry-level and mid-level leaders alike, the book is a must-read for the simplicity of its language combined with the wisdom of its premise.

Elaborating on his reasons for penning down the work, Amit Nagpal says: “This book is all about sharing my experiences via real-life stories and anecdotes to encourage readers to stay curious, learn from leaders, engage better with teams, and more. This book chronicles my journey as a young boy from a small town with limited resources, who began as a Medical Representative in 1988 and ended up as the Head of Training at Infosys BPM in 2010.”

This became possible primarily because of the following reasons: “Curiosity, risk-taking, focusing on strengths coupled with the attitude of a team player apart from being an advocate of lifelong learning,” he says.

Eight topics are chosen and validated via the author’s interactions with 300+ leaders and management students spread over five years. These are:

• Employee engagement
• Emotional intelligence
• Learnability
• Strength-based leadership
• Client connect
• Culture
• When leaders make a mistake
• Learning by following-seeking mentors
• Learner for life

Why The Elephant at the Dinner Table deserves your attention

Painstakingly researched and carefully selected topics backed by the author’s diverse corporate journey over three decades makes this a meaningful read. Plus, it’s for leaders young, mid-level and experienced-age and stage of career no bar. The format is simple, lucid and uncomplicated. The topic covered in each chapter is unique. Most conveniently so, one can pick up from any chapter at any given time, reflect over it and go back for more. The stories are interesting and relatable. Immense academic research coupled with illustrations packs quite a punch.

As the author says in his foreword: “Over the last five years, I have met over 300 leaders worldwide who have represented leadership at all levels. During my interactions with them, the most common refrains included the fear of not being good enough, that of unfulfilled potential and anxiety over the future, not to forget the search for a purpose-driven career and the inability to harmonise work and life.”

If any of this is familiar, this is the book for you.

THE ELEPHANT AT THE DINNER TABLE’

- BY RUPA PUBLICATIONS

• INR 595
• Available on Amazon and Flipkart in Hardcover as well as on Kindle

"Over the last five years, I have met over 300 leaders worldwide who have represented leadership at all levels. During my interactions with them, the most common refrains included the fear of not being good enough, that of unfulfilled potential and anxiety over the future, not to forget the search for a purpose-driven career and the inability to harmonize work and life"

- Amit Nagpal

Chapter by chapter, the stories-and lessons play out

The first chapter is called ‘Where have all the leaders gone?’ outlines the need and scope for the rest of the book. “A good leadership entails going beyond project completion, reaching out to team members and giving them a significant say in the decision-making process. Good leadership also means taking chances, facing risk and the possibility of making and learning from mistakes,” it says-before asking a thought-provoking question. “In recent years, the trend in employee reviews has been to acknowledge a strength or two and then focus on the person’s weaknesses and term them “improvement opportunities”. Why isn’t the focus more on the person’s strengths? Isn’t that what made him a leader in the first place?”

This is followed by a fun story on how American Express led by John McDonald came to India circa 1995. Despite the fact that McDonald was gung-ho about India’s potential, his team was far from pleased and talked about poverty and infrastructure. To humour them, he mentioned how the Indian arm led by Raman Roy had repossessed a client’s elephant on his failure to pay his card outstanding. Taken aback though he was-Roy not only improvised upon the story but actually managed to bring an elephant to the American Express office-thereby proving the point that nothing is impossible for a determined leader.

This is followed by Emotional Quotient-The Heart of Leadership. Outlining the importance of emotional intelligence, Nagpal writes, “Companies often put emotional intelligence in the bracket of soft skills which gives it a sort of secondary treatment. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are numerous examples of how people with the power to harness their emotions have strengthened the financial bottom line.” Short but fascinating stories back this notion and make this chapter unputdownable.

The next three chapters, Find a Mentor to Guide you, Shine on and Make mistakes, please focus on the criticality of finding the right person to mentor you and take you through the paces, the importance of building who you already are through persistence, patience and awareness as well as the invaluable role played by mistakes in building a leadership of long-lasting value.

Then come the topics Engaging your employees as co-creators, treating your clients as partners and Developing Cultural Intelligence focus on the importance of communication, transparency, respect for what others bring to the table whilst being comfortable in your own identity, paying attention and due diligence in finding out who exactly you are dealing with and celebrating diversity. Nuggets on cultural taboos in various countries add real value to the work.

This is followed by the crescendo-How to be a learner and leader for life and a carefully orchestrated Summing up. As Nagpal says: “In my view, the current pandemic is nothing short of a tipping point that has made everyone around the world pause, reflect and take actions to serve and lead in the new normal.”

Given the constant disequilibrium, there is a need to be one-the-ball and ever-innovative, the new-age leader will have to develop his crisis-management abilities all the more coupled with an entrepreneurial and a learning mindset.

In short, ‘Elephant At the Dinner Table’ lets you in on all that a leader in an ever-changing scenario needs to be. Well-chosen, creative illustrations and a series of exercises on all that you just read make this a complete work.

A winsome combination of the scholarly and the creative.