Anil Khandelwal's book explores leadership through self-awareness, empathy

Anil Khandelwal's third book argues that anyone with basic human qualities can become a leader by focusing on self-awareness, emotional regulation, and meaningful relationships

The Gym of Leadership: Insights to help you build your leadership muscles

Author: Anil K Khandelwal

Publisher: Penguin

Pages: Xl+317

Price: Rs 799 

After dishing out two bestsellers, Dare to Lead  and CEO: Chess Master or Gardener, Anil Khandelwal has written The Gym of Leadership: Insights to Help You Build Your Leadership Muscles. It differs from other run-of-the-mill titles on this subject because of its unique perspective and premises.

 

The book is based on the premise that anyone with basic human qualities can become a leader. The author, for instance, admits that he was not a born leader. He attributes his evolution as a competent leader to “several tough experiences”, though he cautions that “experience alone does not count, you need the right attitude and spirit.”

 

Mr Khandelwal also emphasises the salience of disciplined reflection. As he writes, “I learnt many lessons in managing difficult situations through a relentless process of reflection and action.” In this context, experiences may trigger a search for meaning, leading to a better understanding of self and enhanced performance. This perspective makes the book different from a typical sermon- and prescription-laden self-help book. Mr Khandelwal has been successful in seamlessly integrating his experiences with his insights to offer readers questions to reflect on.

 

This book provides a compelling argument for the importance of intangible but substantive aspects of leadership such as self-awareness, emotional regulation, managing relationships and communication and conversation. The foundational premise of this book is that the journey to become a competent leader begins from within. “Leadership... requires an investment of the ‘Self into the Self’ in the quest of becoming .... ‘an integrated human being’,” the author explains in the introduction.

 

As the catchy title of the book suggests, the premise is that foundational skills can be developed through deliberate practice, the way any individual can build muscles in a gym through rigorous practice. The gym for building leadership muscles is the “workplace”, which provides aspiring leaders a crucible of experiences to work on and learn to lead.

 

The book has four sections. The section titled “Understanding the Self” focuses on self-awareness, reflection, self-management, self-discipline, time management and resilience. Self-awareness is salient to leadership. A highly self-aware person is likely to be more effective in exercising leadership by constructively regulating emotions, leveraging relationships for greater good. “Self-awareness is amongst the most crucial qualities of a leader…it gives you self-knowledge... that you can use to become aware of the conscious and unconscious tendencies that impact you and your interactions with others, you can then work on them to get better results in your personal and professional lives,” Mr Khandelwal writes.

 

The section on “Emotional Regulation” covers three skills: Anger management, compassion and courage. “Emotional regulation is critical because it is the foundation of self-management…. A well-regulated person will have a better balance and judgment of their feelings and actions. Emotional regulation allows us to carefully judge which affective outcomes to embrace and which ones to avoid,” he writes. Mr Khandelwal gives specific importance to anger management, given the fact that anger, if not regulated well, may have a disruptive impact on forging meaningful relationships with others. Anger management is critical given the current context of toxicity in the workplace.

 

The “Relationship Management” section covers five skills: Relationship management, authenticity, credibility, humility and fairness. Meaningful relationships, Mr Khandelwal says, “…establish trust, facilitate communication, enable collaboration and shape the culture…” They lead to results and growth. Authenticity is salient in building credibility. Credible leaders put principles ahead of self-interest. Leaders need to be authentic while demonstrating humility and fairness in all their actions.

 

In the section “Communication and Conversation,” the author covers communication and listening skills, besides the saliency of non-toxic communication and meaningful dialogue. Communication skills hold the key to leadership success. It is as important as listening to understand (attend and absorb) and act. Dialogue is key to problem-solving, which includes reflective listening with an open mind. For this, a leader must be highly self-aware of self and adept at regulating emotions constructively.

 

Mr Khandelwal’s simple, lucid and conversational style makes the presentation of ideas and discussion engaging and riveting. Each chapter has three parts. The first part discusses the concept from all possible perspectives, including how the author applied the concept in different situations and learnt relevant lessons. The second part, titled “A Workout for Developing…”, provides simple, practical and actionable steps to develop the requisite skills. The third part presents questions to ponder.

 

No executive becomes a leader without seizing the developmental opportunities that come their way. Academic scholars have argued that the process of becoming a leader is a process of self-development. Each leader has to learn to manage oneself and become a better person at the level of thinking, feeling and action. Few organisations focus on these intangible and subtle aspects of leadership development. There are few books that cover this aspect of leadership development. This book fills the gap, and organisations would do well to curate their leadership development programmes and processes by incorporating insights from it to groom competent leaders. Given the leadership deficit in many corporations today, doing so has become an urgent requirement.   

 

The reviewer is professor in organisational behaviour and human resource management at Management Development Institute, Gurugram. abinash.panda@mdi.ac.in