In Vivékin terms, what is the significance of this story? Here is someone who has done something rather innovative – but what is the dominant Leadership Intelligence here? Because he is being innovative, does it imply that it is Inventive Intelligence? Surprisingly though, it is not. To understand why, we first need to break this story down a little more. He used Analytical Intelligence when he studied the different kind of panels and inverters available and decided which combination to use, Operational Intelligence while setting up the whole system (even if he didn’t do it himself, he drove the process) and some amount of Communicative Intelligence while dealing with the equipment dealers and engineers/ technicians who set up the system. But not really Inventive Intelligence, as he didn’t apply knowledge from another domain for this innovation. He simply extended what he already knew – the ability to channel solar energy using solar panels to power something other than just a solar heater.

But where does he use Ethical Intelligence? To understand this, let us take a step back and try to understand why it is that he even chose to embark on such a project. Was it to save on his electricity bills? To start and follow a green initiative in order to conserve energy? To free up energy for others to use? To set a precedent in his community in the hope that it would inspire others to follow in his steps? It could have been one or the other, or all. The point is that he explored a possibility, weighed his options, looked at the long-term implications and then made a decision. Without a doubt, this is a perfect example of a dominant Ethical Intelligence.

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Appreciation of the excellence from your team alone is not enough since a leader also needs to be constantly challenged to improve further. Externally, this comes from the business environment they operate in; their team acts as internal challengers of the solutions/models that they come up with. This provides them with a broader perspective to improve and refine their solutions/models. When Mr. Narayanamurthy was the CEO of Infosys, I remember reading an interview where he was asked about India’s younger generation. He mentioned that what excited him about the generation was their ability to challenge the norms. He drew inspiration from some of the young members in his own team who challenged him and were always up for a challenge from him. While there may not be a direct link to this aspect in Vijeeta’s article, it is interesting to note that although she finds Rahul’s methods of preparation for a game quirky, she understands the importance of it and ensures that he gets his space by not allowing their children to disturb him. It reflects her willingness to support him in his quest for bettering his performance.

The above mentioned points are among the many important facets that make a great leader. What is remarkable though, is that such instances happen to all of us in our everyday lives in different forms and we fail to notice the significance of it. Identifying and understanding them not only makes for a good leader at work but also a good role model in life.

Drawing on mathematical logic–I admit I used it rather loosely–I said that western frameworks are “necessary but not sufficient.” And I was thinking here of the oft-quoted example to show the relationship between necessity and sufficiency: being a mammal is necessary but not sufficient to being human. My argument was that we need to understand that frameworks from western thinking are necessary but not sufficient for strategic success. They form one option that needs to be placed alongside Indian thinking (one another option among many others that I did not refer to–Chinese, African, whatever) so that both western and Indian frameworks become options for any strategist to choose from–options that should be level with each other, and not arranged in a hierarchy as is the case now with western theories placed much above Indian ones.

All of us have, at some point in our personal or professional lives, been confronted with situations where we have either averted a major “disaster” or fallen headfirst into one because of what we said. And when we look back on what transpired, very often we realize, it isn’t “what” we said, but “how” we said something that produced that desirable (or disastrous) outcome.
There is no getting away from it, or getting around it – communicating effectively is something we all need to do, in all walks of life, day in and day out.

The video below is a wonderful example of how your choice of words can influence people or situations differently.

Of the five Leadership Intelligences (Analytical, Communicative, Inventive, Operational and Ethical), it is evident that it is the Communicative Leadership Intelligence that comes into play here. In the video, the lady (in black) exercises this LI to change the way the visually challenged gentleman is perceived by people around (it can also be argued that she does this by appealing to the crowd’s Ethical Leadership Intelligence) thereby considerably increasing the donations made to him.

Enjoy the video:

Watch every Monday morning for a leadership intelligence exercise that Vivekin Group selects from
its ELITE program and provides free of cost to its subscribers.
Want to get such exercises regularly? Make sure you sign up for Vivekin’s RSS feed.

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The Exercise
This week’s exercise helps you work on your communicative leadership intelligence.
It involves reading a joke and then providing a response to the question that follows.

The Joke
Three men are on death row–an Italian, an American, and an Indian–and are to be executed on the same day. On the scheduled day, the prison warden comes to them and asks the Italian, “What would you like for your last meal?” The Italian says “Nothing better than a big bowl of spaghetti with meat balls rolling in rich marinara sauce!” And then turning to his friends he remarks in a sad voice, “Reminds me of my mother.” The dish is procured quickly, the Italian relishes it, and is executed. The warden then asks the American what he would like to eat. The American sighs and says, “Oh! I’d love to have a steak real rare, and a few slices of fresh risen bread.” It takes some time to cook this meal because they have to wait for the bread to rise. But after a few hours, the meal is brought to the American. He relishes it, and is executed. Now the warden turns to the Indian and says, “Brownie! What would you like to eat?” The Indian exclaims, “Oh! What would I give for a bowlful of fresh mangoes from the plains of south India!” The warden exclaims, “What? Mangoes! They’re out of season and will take at least a year to get here!” The Indian replies, “No problem! I’ll wait.”

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As with most jokes, there are several versions of this joke. One version appears in
Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein’s, Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through the Pearly Gates

The Task
You now have three minutes to respond to the following question:
If you were fourth in line to be executed, what would you request for your last meal?

Provide your response through the comments box below this post. Comments will be made public late in the evening on Tuesday.

Benefits
The exercise will help enhance your communicative intelligence by doing three things.

• It will exercise your capacity for wit
• It will enhance your ability to understand the pattern of previous responses in the joke and
• It will exercise your intelligence in building on that pattern to provide a better response

“That’s like saying, ‘I’ve bought an iPhone, so I can run Apple Inc.’”
—Chris Whitmore, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG.
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Quotes From a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article

From a book my 12-year old daughter was reading: Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days by Jeff Kinney