Fireside Conversation with Exemplary Leaders 1

Fireside Conversation with Exemplary Leaders

Abhishek Modi, Jihaan Shah, Debashree Nanavati, Thu Truong (Jessica), Hrithik Chopra

Royal Roads University, School of Business

STNL 422 - Leading Organizations

Patrick O’Neill

15 November 2020
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Abstract

In this paper we will scrutinize the importance of the conversations that our team had with our

leaders. With a team of five people, we had the opportunity to interview leaders from various

fields. Abhishek had the opportunity to interview a businesswoman who had various businesses

and also dealt in healing and meditation which made us understand the importance of mental

health and peacefulness. Jihaan interviewed an industry leader of copper and aluminum in

Mumbai who shared his experiences in the manufacturing world and how that works which made

us realize the importance of teamwork. Jessica had the chance to talk with a manager at a big

tech company who shared his experiences and insights handling a team of people and how to

work under pressure. Debashree had the fortuitous chance to interview a women who fights and

leads the war for women empowerment by fighting for the rights of women, while Hrithik

interviewed a local real estate developer who made us realize the importance of money and

investing.

Individual Insights of Interviews

Abhishek had a chance to interview a person with multiple businesses and multi-

modalities. The interviewee was a businesswoman who had many businesses and was also

expanding in meditation and healing. It was a reminder of a famous quote said by Socrates,

“Give me beauty in the inward soul; may the outward and inward man be at one.” A significant

highlight was that there is no single goal in life, goals keep evolving and growing just as the

person does. Also, it was an opportunity to learn that acceptance of fear is more important than

having fear and that a leader should be accountable for his or her actions and not play the blame

game. This inspired me to change my thinking about the concept of fear in life. Mrs Sudha
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Murthy, a world famous author and the owner of the company Infosys, had related stories with

the leader and shared the thinking of not letting success get to head and living a simple life by

upholding virtues. This strengthened my belief that anyone can be a leader despite their

backgrounds and perspective of life. Moving on in life, I will definitely look at leadership from a

new-found and enhanced perspective.

Jihaan had an opportunity to speak to a businessman he would want to become in the

future. Mr. Nilesh Makhija, an owner of Mumbai’s copper and aluminum industry spared a few

minutes to speak to me and share wonderful thoughts, through which I have gathered important

insights that I would like to share. Mr. Makhija mainly elaborated on the importance of taking

risks as a leader and how to overcome challenges. He stressed on basic ideologies he learned on

his way of becoming an entrepreneur about how to lead from the front and motivation to

employees. Estee Lauder once said, “I never dreamed about success, I worked for it.” I got

reminded of this quote when Mr. Nilesh kept stressing to never focus on the outcome but instead

to focus on the process. This thought has not left my mind since the time the interview with my

exemplary leader was finished. These lines by him have had a huge impact on the way I have

started to think of becoming an entrepreneur. I have mainly taken insights about how to

overcome the obstacles he faced to reach that position which I may encounter in the future.

Jessica had a chance to interview Mr. Minh Huy, he is a manager, who is leading a team

of consultants supporting customers in Asia for computer softwares - Microsoft company in

Malaysia. From his inspirational leadership story, I was reminded of a famous quote about

leadership of John C. Maxwell, “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows

the way.”. One of the peculiarities of his job is that he specializes in handling several projects at

the same time in risky situations; therefore, I can't help admiring his ability to work under high
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pressure, such as how he can calm down to lead his team to get a lot of risky tasks done at the

same time. Moreover, he is also a creative, intelligent manager by leveraging everything

interesting around his life. Last but not least, he has the courage to face his fears, accept and

admit his mistakes, and how he takes the risky challenge to develop himself with the experiences

and lessons he learns from those challenges. It was his unobtrusive spirit and development

efforts that strongly inspired me, motivating me to want to conquer future challenges to become

a perfect management version like him - always be respected by superiors and subordinates.

Debashree got to interview a personality in the field of Women Empowerment who aces

for equality by fighting for the rights of women. A personality with such a strong aura whose

smiles itself radiates positivity and inspires living. In my conversation with her she touched

many aspects that build confidence in oneself. One of the quotes that she referred to was by a

famous spreaker John C. Maxwell, “Leaders become great not by their powers but, because of

their ability to empower others”. This has been her mantra to keep encouraging women power.

She handles many empowering projects along with her union of women to help her spread the

knowledge of justice. She has been teaching this through courageous conversations and teaching

mindfulness through meditation.

Her bravery for standing strong and facing the challenges of wrong traditional beliefs that

women have to deal with in society, has made me look up to her as my ideal.

Mrs. Rekha Patel, a feminist activist, has left an impact on me to stand up for justice with

confidence and enlighten others with mindful thinking to make them the leaders of tomorrow. As

Tom Peters quotes, “Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders.”

Hrithik had the break to interview a local real estate developer in Victoria, Mr Sonny

Manhas who has a very successful real estate business in Vancouver Island. A person who
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started with nothing and now owns a multi-million-dollar business to himself. In my

conversation with Mr Manhas, we talked about our mutual passion of real estate and its market.

One of the quotes which Mr Manhas quoted during our conversation was “Money never sleeps”

which he later emphasized on saying that if you don’t find a way to make money while you

sleep, you will work until you die, which really made me feel motivated towards building my

own business in the future. He talks about the importance of investing money at the right time

and how important it is to have a regular side income which is apart from your monthly pay-

cheque. He shared his struggles which he faced when he first started his business and made me

realize that nothing great comes off easy and hard work always pays off. Our conversation ended

with another quote from him stating “Don’t work for money, make money work for you”.

Questions

a) The common insights that were gained after interviewing our leaders were their dedication and

passion towards what they are doing. These two values really define how a leader's approach

towards his/her work and also the outcome they would produce. These conversations have added

a lot of thoughts to my mind and have driven us closer to what I want to become and showed us

a clear pathway. Integrity was a major topic discussed by all leaders. They explained how it

plays an important role in being disciplined and imparting that value in subordinates as well.

Another insight that was common among all the leaders was courage in taking risks. This value

is highly under-rated by many but one of the most significant as discussed in our conversations.

“If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you have to settle for ordinary” a famous line said by

the American entrepreneur Jim Rohn. I believe risk-taking plays a huge role in shaping

leadership values. If a person can take risks, that person has an opportunity to grow and innovate

particular things.
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b) The common theme that we analyze after interviewing our leaders, that they all are “Strong

risk takers”. I strongly believe that risk takers are most likely to succeed. Because risk and

challenges light up a fire within us to not give up easily and reach the finishing line. Many of us

want to be leaders but we easily get turned off by risks. People who are great leaders ignite a

passion to reach new heights, this passion empowers them to win. My team and I strongly agree

on this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Don't be too timid

and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the

better.”

The other theme of these interviews is the “purpose of them inspiring others to be good leaders.”

These leaders inspire, persuade and encourage others to achieve their goals instead of

commanding. After our team was done interviewing their respected leaders, we all felt super

motivated to achieve great success by working hard and overcoming our fears. We can't agree

less on what George Hallenbeck has written, “Without the capacity to influence others, your

ability to make what you envision a reality remains elusive because, after all, no one can do it

alone,”

c) According to the results of the interviewed leaders, all are rooted in Asian culture - Indian and

Vietnamese culture, however, each has clearly different world views about leadership. First of

all, Mrs Sudha Murthy, although she is a successful woman, she lives a very simple life with

high virtues. Beside that Mr Nilesh Makhija always tried his best to overcome all risks and

challenges because to him the process of success was more important than the result. Turning to

Mr Minh Huy, he is a passionate manager and always promotes his creativity at work, he is also

a person who values good relationships because if an organization or a team wants to be

successful, the harmony and solidarity between colleagues will be more important than talented
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people who cannot be harmonized. Moreover, Ms Rekha Patel is a woman living for justice with

positive energy, so she wants to inspire her own strength to every woman, helping them

enlighten and develop into more leadership values. Additionally, Mr Sonny Manhas is a real

estate agent with the ideal of "Don't work for money, make money work for you", he is a smart

rich man, but he never forgets that there is no road of flowers leading to glory. As a result, even

though each leader has a different point of view about leadership, they all work towards a

common ideal in leadership that is always taking on all challenges and risks, then turning fears

and pressures into their motivations to overcome all difficulties at work and in personal life.

Reflections

1. One of the major insights gained from each team member’s interview was hard work and

never giving up. Each of the 5 leaders stressed on these two values and told us the importance of

each. I believe having these two values would strengthen any person and form the basics of

becoming a leader. Another major insight gained after conducting the interviews was having a

belief in yourself. The leaders commonly pointed out the competition out in society and how

people will try to bring you down. Ultimately the power that I have to overcome all this

negativity is self-belief. Another insight gained from the conversations was to have a vision as a

leader. This comes after all of them spoke about having a particular goal or a target and

achieving it. According to me, this creative power is needed for all leaders to know the path

which one is following.

2. As a team when we did discuss the assumptions and the beliefs which changed after

interviewing our exemplary leaders. Some of the false assumptions were that a leader holds a

place of superiority and commands for the work to be done by the followers instead a true leader
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is a people's person. A great leader motivates and shows the way to others to become great

leaders of the future. The other wrong belief we had was, many people believe that to be a great

leader you have to be born with certain innate qualities and abilities. But the truth is, great

leadership can be developed and learned by anyone with the willingness and desire to lead along

with the confidence to tackle the risks by overcoming the fear of failure. Some of us feared

failure and hence avoided taking risks until we learnt that the path to success is not easy.

3. All of my group members are from Asia, maybe that’s the reason why we have almost the

same culture ideology such as “A bad compromise is better than a good lawsuit”. However, this

is a huge change that forces us to change as a result of these conservations, we recognized that

the easy compromise just because of avoiding conflict by disagreement that not only does not

bring benefits to the work but also creates an invisible distance between leader and members.

Thus, instead of avoiding fear, we need to bravely face and deal with challenges. We have to

speak out, admit mistakes and open to negative feedback. Beside that I’m not advocating for

straightforward remarks without fear of hurting our colleagues, but we can still apply the “art” of

communication, such as gently criticizing employees or non-public speaking to help them

recognize their flaws without feeling offended or underestimated their abilities.

4. The door to innumerable opportunities would open up if the changes are acted upon. It would

result in the creation of a new radical leadership that can motivate and inspire people not just to

follow their ideals but also to work hard and become ideals themselves. A stirring revolution in

the concept of leadership would be imminent and welcomed by this world where youths are

eager to take on the reigns and give the worldly situation a new direction. In the words of George

Santayana, “The wisest mind has something yet to learn.” The irrefutable meaning behind this

quote is that there are many possibilities for even the wisest of minds to improve further. It is
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only the lack of confidence and conviction that limits the human behavior from recognizing the

limitless nature of the possibilities and outcomes that take an individual and the masses beyond

comprehended realism and greatness.

Conclusion

In conclusion, each and one of us interviewed leaders with great experience and knowledge to

share. This experience has been beneficial for every one of us as is it always amazing to connect

with people who you admire and see as a leader. Through the interview, reflections and

analyzing our own insights from each interview we’ve all learned the importance of many great

virtues such as hard work, equality, mental health and financial security. Though every virtue is

different from each other, we’ve realized to lead a happy and successful life, we need to maintain

balance. We all feel obliged that we had such a wonderful opportunity to interview people who

are all successful in their own field and got the chance to learn from them.